AP World
HW #20
Mr. Barbour
Why Did the Bolsheviks Win?
The following is excepted from David MacKenzie and Michael W. Curran’s: A History of Russia, the
Soviet Union, and Beyond. 2002.
The seizure of power by the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Trotskii in November 1917 (October
by the Old-Style calendar), was a crucial turning point in Russia’s political history, and one of the
most momentous events in modern world history. This and the subsequent bitter civil war placed
Russia squarely on a path leading toward Stalin’s totalitarianism and the epic transformations of
agriculture and industry in the 1930s. The Russian Revolutions of 1917, unlike the French,
American, or Chinese conquest of power, occurred in wartime amid military defeat, economic
collapse, and governmental disintegration. How did the Bolshevik party—with scarcely 250,000
members and apparently weaker than its socialist rivals, the Mensheviks and SRs [Aleksandr
Kerenskii’s political party]— achieve power in a vast peasant country whose people had just
discarded the 300-year authoritarian regime of the Romanovs and made Russia briefly into “the
freest country in the world”? Was this Bolshevik takeover, condemned by many contemporary
Russian socialists as Blanquism [named after French socialist revolutionary Louis Aguste Blanqui],
or insurrection for its own sake, consistent with Marxism? In the 1840s Marx had predicted that
socialism would inevitably replace capitalism through a violent revolution, but initially in fully
developed capitalist countries. Was Bolshevik victory the inevitable outcome of Russia’s historical
and economic development, or an accidental by-product of Russia’s defeat and breakdown in
1917?
The Soviet View
Soviet and many Western scholars have ascribed Bolshevik success primarily to the
Bolsheviks’ strengths. Official Soviet accounts, holding to the orthodox Marxist view, emphasized
that the November Revolution was the inevitable outcome of Russian historical development, but
also ascribed great importance to the decisive role of the Bolshevik party and Lenin’s individual
qualities of leadership. Declared The History of the USSR in 1967:
The October armed insurrection in Petrograd was the first victorious proletarian
uprising. The insurrection triumphed because the Bolshevik Party was armed with
the Leninist theory of socialist revolution and utilized the experience of past
uprisings of the workers. The Party, guided by the teachings of Marxism, treated
insurrection as an art, insured its organization and decisiveness. The Central Committee of the party correctly utilized revolutionary forces ... V. I. Lenin worked out
the plan of insurrection and conscientiously executed it. ...
The success of the October insurrection was the result of the vast organizational
activity of the Bolshevik Party and its Central Committee. The Bolsheviks were at
the head of the insurgents. By their bravery and courage, their unexampled devotion
to the revolution, they raised the masses to this heroic feat. The soul and brain of the
insurrection was the great Lenin. Wherever he was in the hours of insurrection ..., he
was in the center of events.... The October armed uprising in Petrograd ... showed
what heroic deeds the people can accomplish when led by the Marxist-Leninist
party.
The 27th Party Congress in 1986 adopted a revised “Program of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union,” which reiterated these themes, attributing Bolshevik victory to the well-organized,
revolutionary Russian working class led by the Bolsheviks under Lenin. The March Revolution,
argued that document, had failed to deliver the Russian masses “from social and political yokes” or
from the burden of the “imperialist war,” and it had not resolved social cont: dictions. “Thus, a
socialist revolution became a: undeniable demand.”
AP World
HW #20
Mr. Barbour
The working class of Russia was distinguished by great revolutionary qualities
and organization. At its head stood the Bolshevik Party, hardened in political
struggles and possessing an advanced revolutionary theory. V. I. Lenin armed it with
a clear plan of struggle after formulating theses on the possibility of the victory of a
proletarian revolution under conditions of imperialism originally in one of a few
separate countries.
At the summons of the Bolshevik Party and under its leadership the working
class undertook decisive struggle against the power of capital. The party united in
one powerful stream the proletarian struggle for socialism, peasant struggle for the
land, the national-liberation struggle of the oppressed peoples of Russia, into a
general movement against the imperialist war and for peace, and directed it with
the overthrow of the bourgeois order.
Western Views
Many Western accounts also consider the Bolshevik victory as the inevitable outcome of the
momentum of an invincible party, or the product of clever, even diabolical, plotting by Lenin. On
the surface, in November 1917 the Bolsheviks possessed many strengths: a highly centralized,
disciplined organization, leadership, and mass support. Although indecisive, unsure, and weak
back in March, the party allegedly had become a potent instrument under Lenin and Trotskii, who
combined organizational skill, intellectual and oratorical power, and ruthless purpose to exploit
opportunities that arose late in 1917. The Bolsheviks’ mass following—the industrial workers of
Petrograd and Moscow—was militant, impatient, and readily mobilized, living mostly in welldefined workers’ quarters. Lenin’s short-term program, outlined in his “April Theses,” of bread,
land, peace, and all power to the Soviets coincided largely with the workers’ aspirations at that
moment.
However, one can also view the reasons for Bolshevik success in more negative terms: the
product of fortunate accidents, circumstances, and divisions, weaknesses, and mistakes of their
opponents. The Bolsheviks’ chief socialist rivals —the SRs and Mensheviks—were badly split
internally. Indeed, the SRs by November were becoming two parties: a right wing favoring
peaceful methods and moving toward democratic socialism, and a radical, terrorist Left that
would ally with the Bolsheviks. Both of these rivals lacked cohesion and discipline, failed to put
forward practical programs, and proved unable to mobilize mass support. The thesis of Professor
Crane Brinton about the weaknesses of moderates in periods of revolution seems pertinent: “The
moderates in control of the formal machinery of government are confronted by ... radical and
determined opponents.... This stage [dual sovereignty] ends with the triumph of the extremists.”
Continues Brinton:
Little by little the moderates find themselves losing the credit they had gained as
opponents of the old regime, and taking on more and more of the discredit [as] . . .
heir to the old regime. Forced on the defensive, they make mistake after mistake.
Thus, the Right SRs, Mensheviks, and Kadets were all moderate parties caught between an
intransigent leftist opposition (Bolsheviks) and a weak and incompetent Provisional Government,
which they had joined and whose blunders and foot-dragging exacerbated their internal
weaknesses. The Provisional Government’s ineffectiveness provided the Bolsheviks with the
opportunity to take power. Establishing in March 1917 broad personal and political freedom in
Russia, that government failed to implement promptly its most important pledge: to hold elections
for a Constituent Assembly. Had that Assembly been convened in late summer or early fall 1917,
as was wholly feasible, Bolshevik opportunities might have disappeared with the creation of a
legitimate and permanent Russian government. Instead, Premier Kerenskii resorted to legalistic
devices, harangues, and exhortations and kept Russia locked in a disastrous and unpopular war.
AP World
HW #20
Mr. Barbour
Given the deepening mood of popular extremism in the fall of 1917, his democratic regime was
virtually foredoomed to failure.
In sharp contrast to the Soviet thesis that the Bolsheviks succeeded because of their correct
theory, careful plans, and decisive action with mass support, the American scholar Robert Daniels
argues that the Soviets fostered a myth with little basis in reality and that the Bolshevik
Revolution succeeded because of an incredible series of accidents and miscalculations by its
opponents.
One thing that both victors and vanquished were agreed on ... was the myth that
the insurrection was timed and executed according to a deliberate Bolshevik plan....
The stark truth about the Bolshevik Revolution is that it succeeded against
incredible odds in defiance of any rational calculation that could have been made in
the fall of 1917.... While the Bolsheviks were an undeniable force in Petrograd and
Moscow, they had against them the overwhelming majority of the peasants, the
army in the field, and the trained personnel without which no government could
function.... Lenin’s revolution . . . was a wild gamble with little chance that the
Bolsheviks’ ill-prepared followers could prevail against all the military force that the
government seemed to have, and even less chance that they could keep power even
if they managed to seize it temporarily. To Lenin, however, it was a gamble that
entailed little risk, because he sensed that in no other way and at no other time
would he have any chance at all of coming to power.
Nor was the subsequent exaltation of Lenin’s leadership really accurate.
There is some truth in the contentions, both Soviet and non-Soviet, that Lenin’s
leadership was decisive. By psychological pressure on his Bolshevik lieutenants and
his manipulation of the fear of counterrevolution, he set the stage for the one-party
seizure of power. But... in the crucial days before October 24 [November 6], Lenin
was not making his leadership effective. The party, unable to face up directly to his
brow-beating, was tacitly violating his instructions and waiting for a multi-party and
semi-constitutional revolution by the Congress of Soviets. Lenin had failed to seize
the moment, failed to nail down the base for his personal dictatorship—until the
government struck on the morning of the 24th of October. Kerenskii’s ill-conceived
countermove was the decisive accident.
An American View
Professor Richard Pipes, a conservative American scholar, in a recent full-length treatment of
the Russian Revolution, stresses errors of the moderates and conservatives, as well as the leadership qualities of Lenin and Trotskii, as fostering Bolshevik victory in 1917. Pipes ascribes great
importance to the “Kornilov Affair” [Lavr Kornilov was the head of the military after the Czar
abdicated, but was fired in September for attempting to overthrow the government] as
undermining the authority of Kerenskii’s Provisional Government:
The clash fatally compromised his [Kerenskii’s] relations with conservative and
liberal circles without solidifying his socialist base. The main beneficiaries of the
Kornilov Affair were the Bolsheviks: after August 27, the SR and Menshevik
following on which Kerensky depended melted away. The Provisional Government
now ceased to function even in that limited sense in which it maybe said to have
done so until then. In September and October, Russia drifted rudderless. The stage
was set for a counterrevolution from the left. Thus, when Kerensky later wrote that
“it was only the 27th of August that made [the Bolshevik coup of] the 27th of
October possible,” he was correct, but not in the sense in which, he intended.
AP World
HW #20
Mr. Barbour
During August 1917, continues Pipes, the Bolsheviks “were reasserting themselves as a
political force.”
They benefited from the political polarization which occurred during the
summer when the libals and conservatives gravitated toward Kornilov and the
radicals shifted toward the extreme left. Workers, soldiers, and sailors, disgusted
with the vacillations of the Mensheviks and SRs, abandoned them in droves in favor
of the only alternative, the Bolsheviks.
The Kornilov Affair raised Bolshevik fortunes to unprecedented heights. To
neutralize Kornilov’s phantom putsch [attempted take over] ..., Kerensky asked for
help.... But since the Bolshevik Military Organization was the only force which the
government could invoke, this action had the effect of placing the Bolsheviks in
charge of the Soviet’s military contingent. ... A no less important consequence of the
Kornilov Affair was a break between Kerensky and the military.... The officer corps . .
. despised Kerensky for his treatment of their commander [Kornilov], the arrest of
many prominent general and his pandering to the left. When, in late October,
Kerensky would call on the military to help save his government from the
Bolsheviks, his pleas would fall on deaf ears.... It was only a question of time before
Kerensky would be overthrown by someone able to provide firm leadership. Such a
person had to come from the left....
The growing disenchantment with the Soviets and the absenteeism of their
socialist rivals enabled the Bolsheviks to gain in them an influence out of proportion
to their national following. ... As their role in the Soviets grew, they reverted to the
old slogan: “All Power to the Soviets.”... It the more favorable political environment
created by the Kornilov Affair and their successes in the Soviets, the Bolsheviks
revived the question of a coup d’etat.... The Kornilov incident convinced him (Lenin)
that the chances of a successful coup were better than ever and perhaps
unrepeatable.
Despite such revisionist Western views, in the USSR the concept of a carefully conceived
Marxist revolution with wide popular support was cultivated assiduously and on the whole
successfully. This was accompanied by the rather incongruous assertion that the success of the
revolution depended heavily on the individual leadership and driving energy of its guiding genius,
Lenin. This evident contradiction reflects the persistent dichotomy in Marxism between
determinism (inexorable laws) and voluntarism (dynamic leadership).
Bibliography:
MacKenzie, David and Michael W. Curran. A History of Russia, the Soviet Union, and Beyond. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth
Thomson Learing. 2002.
Questions: Write complete MEAL paragaph answers on a separate sheet of paper.
1. Identify and analyze the similarities between views of Soviet, western and American historians
on the reasons for the success of the Bolsheviks in gaining control over Russia in 1917.
2. Identify and analyze the differences between views of Soviet, western and American historians
on the reasons for the success of the Bolsheviks in gaining control over Russia in 1917.
3. Why might the Soviet historians and non-Soviet historians disagree over the reasons for the
success of the Bolsheviks?