Bolshevik Message in 1917 Lih Full Text

Lih, Bolshevik Message in 1917, Page 1
The Bolshevik Message in 1917

A Three Part Series by Lars T. Lih
With Two Documentary Appendices
First published in Weekly Worker, 17 December 2020, 7 and 28 January 2021
Contents:
Introduction: Takeaways
I. The Curious Case of Comrade Kamenev
II. Lenin and the Bolshevik Message in 1917
III. Irakli Tsereteli and the Unwritten Constitution
Documentary Appendix I: Kamenev One-Liners

Documentary Appendix II: Lenin on the Bolshevik Message
Takeaways
1. The Bolshevik message to the soviet constituency in 1917 can be formulated as

follows: an exclusive worker-peasant vlast based on the soviets is the only way to
effectively defend the revolution and carry out its goals. The October revolution
happened because a majority of the soviet constituency came to accept this argument.
2. The soviet constituency had to make a choice between agreementism (soglashatelstvo)
– the contention that soviet goals could be achieved on the basis of some sort of political
‘agreement’ with elite society – or the opposed anti-agreementist Bolshevik message.
3. Contrary to song and story, the Bolshevik leaders in Petrograd prior to Lenin’s return
were completely on message, as thoroughly documented in ‘The Curious Case of
Comrade Kamenev’. Historians who rely on the recycled one-liners found in secondary
sources are challenged to explain away a massive collection of opposing Kamenev one-
liners.
4. Historians have failed to ask or investigate which parts of Lenin’s April Theses were
controversial among Bolsheviks and which were not. The heart of Lenin’s Theses –
opposition to the imperialist war, to the Provisional Government, to revolutionary
defencism; support for an exclusive worker-peasant vlast – was not controversial because
these positions represented a Bolshevik consensus.
5. The misreading that Lenin’s Theses called for ‘socialist revolution’ in Russia itself as
opposed to ‘bourgeois-democratic revolution’ (phrases that do not appear in the Theses)
was set in stone by hostile Menshevik critics even before Lenin’s Theses became publicly
available. Kamenev’s primary criticism of the Theses was based on this Menshevik
misreading. In articles published in April, Lenin went out of his way to reject this
misinterpretation (as did Trotsky in August).
6. In ‘Lenin and the Bolshevik Message’, Lenin’s loyalty to the consensus Bolshevik
message throughout 1917 is documented. Particularly striking is the absence of any hint
of ‘kurs na sotsialisticheskuiu revoliutsiiu’ (a phrase found in Menshevik polemics in
1917 and later enshrined in Stalin’s Short Course) or any appeal to the soviet system as a
new type of state (as opposed to its role as a vehicle for a worker-peasant vlast).
7. The crucial clash between agreementism and anti-agreementism was already fully on
display for all to see in the rhetorical duel between the anti-agreementist Kamenev and
the agreementist Tsereteli at the All-Russian Conference of Soviets held in late March
(that is, prior to Lenin’s return).
8. The third article in the series, ‘Irakli Tsereteli and the Unwritten Constitution’,
documents how Tsereteli set the terms for debate within the soviet system by assuring the
soviet constituency that the soviet system had de facto sovereignty, that the ‘vital forces’
of ‘bourgeois’ society were ready to help carry out the program, and that consequently
the soviet program would indeed be carried out. The unrealism of these promises meant
that the Bolsheviks were later able to present themselves as champions of the soviet
system’s unwritten constitution.
I: The Curious Case of Comrade Kamenev
Lev Kamenev was the de facto leader of the Bolshevik party for a few weeks in March and early
April 1917, before Lenin’s return to Russia. Even after, he remained in the top leadership core of four or
five persons. Yet he has gone down in history as someone whose outlook differed from Lenin in profound
ways – as someone who was practically indistinguishable from a ‘moderate’ Menshevik – as someone
who supported the ‘bourgeois’ Provisional Government, denied that the war was imperialist, was hostile
to the idea of soviet power, supported ‘revolutionary defencism’ and in general acted in non-revolutionary
ways. Anyone who reads this article and the accompanying documentation will realize that this portrait is
the complete opposite of the truth. A curious case, indeed!
The following article is the first entry in a three-part series under the general title ‘The Bolshevik
Message in 1917’. The second entry will be devoted to the way Lenin defined the message that the
Bolsheviks wanted to send to the workers, soldiers and peasants of Russia in 1917. Since Lenin and
Kamenev are so often pictured as polar opposites, these two entries will not only document the content of
the message, but reveal an underlying core consensus. The third entry will look at the Bolshevik message
from yet another angle, namely, from the point of view of the ‘moderate’ or ‘agreementist’ socialists who
opposed it. Front and center here will be Irakli Tsereteli, the main proponent of ‘revolutionary
defencism’.
As accompanying documentation for the present article, I have prepared a long list of extracts
from Kamenev’s pronouncements in March and April 1917 under the title ‘Kamenev One-Liners’ (see
Documentary Appendix I). Later I will explain the nature of this document and why I gave it this rather
odd name. Suffice to say here that it provides a more complete view of what Kamenev was saying and
doing during this period than anything now available. As a general introduction to the projected series, I
will set out the Bolshevik message in terms that are valid for the whole revolutionary year, from February
to October.
The Bolshevik Message in 1917
This message and the accompanying tactical guidelines are a core Bolshevik consensus, uniting
Kamenev and Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky. The heart of the message can be stated in one sentence: an
exclusive worker-peasant vlast based on the soviets is the only way to effectively defend the revolution
and carry out its goals.
Let’s start unpacking this sentence by defining vlast. Vlast can be defined as the sovereign
authority in a society, the institution with the right to make ultimate decisions and to see those decisions
enforced. It is variously translated as ‘regime,’ ‘power,’ ‘authority,’ ‘government’ and more. The
Bolsheviks called for a vlast that could carry out revolutionary goals vigorously and with all the power of
the state. The essential feature of the this revolutionary vlast was its class basis: workers and peasants.
The institutional embodiment of this vlast – the soviet system that was asserting itself across Russia – was
less essential, but still an overwhelmingly likely outcome under the concrete circumstances of Russia in
1917.
Now let’s move on to ‘defend the revolution and carry out its goals.’ The Bolsheviks were not
original in their understanding of these words and did not want to be. The first revolutionary goal: ending
the war as rapidly as possible, but with a ‘democratic’ peace (no annexations, no indemnities, national
self-determination). Second: land to the peasants, along with liquidation of the pomeshchiki (gentry
landowners) as a class. Third: an effective state response to the accelerating economic crisis in a way that
prioritized the interests of the narod – ‘the people’, a category that comprised workers, peasants, and
urban ‘petty bourgeoisie’. Finally, defense of the revolution essentially meant preventing the dispersal of
the soviets and the wide range of democratic organizations – ‘the committees’, as exasperated elite Russia
referred to them – recently set up in the army, the factories, and the villages.
These aims can be summed up in the traditional triad: peace, land, bread. But no one needed the
Bolsheviks to tell them that peace, land and bread were basic goals. All the socialist parties in the soviet
system – and even many reformers in the parties of elite Russia – accepted these goals just as I have
defined them. What distinguished the Bolsheviks was rather their stance on a basic choice that confronted
the soviet constituency – the workers and soldiers who elected representatives to sit on the soviets – about
how to achieve these commonly accepted aims.
The Bolsheviks insisted that only an exclusive worker-peasant vlast could carry out the goals of
the revolution. ‘Exclusive’ is the meaning of ‘all’ in ‘All Power to the Soviets!’ The soviet constituency
faced an unavoidable choice in its pursuit of its aims: achieving revolutionary goals by means of a
political agreement with elite reformers, or by rejecting any such agreement. ‘Agreement’ (soglashenie)
was the word both sides used to describe the content of basic choice, this unavoidable fork in the
revolutionary road ahead. The Bolsheviks coined the term ‘agreementism’ (soglashatelstvo) to show their
heavy disapproval of the tactics advocated by the ‘moderate’ socialists. The Bolsheviks were not the only
anti-agreementists, since similarly-minded factions were a significant presence among the Mensheviks
and the SRs. They were, however, the only anti-agreementist party.
We now can reformulate the Bolshevik message: the revolutionary narod cannot achieve its goals
by means of a meaningful political agreement with elite society, or even its liberal reformist wing. Why
not? Because of a profound clash of class interests between narod and elite society. Since the Provisional
Government that was set up during the February days was the representative of elite society, it was
therefore counterrevolutionary in its essence – so asserted the Bolsheviks. Consider (the argument
continued): the war is imperialist, Russia’s ‘Allies’ are imperialist, the war aims inherited from the secret
treaties negotiated by the tsarist government and still in force are imperialist. Yet the agreementist
socialists want to arrive at a democratic peace and revision of war aims with the cooperation of the
Provisional Government, and behind them, the Allies. This effort is doomed to defeat. Yet these so-
called ‘revolutionary defencists’ asks the soviets to support the war effort with the bogus claim that the
Provisional Government is sincerely working to revise war aims in a democratic direction.
Similar critiques were aimed to agreementist tactics for all the other revolutionary aims. Do you
really expect gentry landowners to give land to the peasants? Do you really expect Russian capitalists to
push the state to regulate the economy in a way that favors the narod? Class interests are the motor of the
revolution, and therefore – asserted the Bolsheviks – a clash between the Provisional Government and the
revolutionary narod is absolutely inevitable. This point was reiterated again and again by Kamenev and
Stalin in March, and later by Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin, and an army of Bolshevik agitators afterwards.
Right now (March-April), the soviet constituency – naïve and new to politics – do not yet grasp
these essential truths. We Bolsheviks will show them otherwise – but our efforts would be in vain if
events did not teach the same lesson still more convincingly: agreementism – and the agreementists –
must be rejected.
From this outline of the driving forces and prospects of the Russian revolution is derived a set of
tactical guidelines. The actual replacement of the Provisional Government by a worker-peasant vlast will
take place when – and only when – a solid majority of the soviet constituency are disillusioned with
agreementism. This imperative has positive implications for what the Bolsheviks must do and negative
implications for what they must avoid. At this point, I will narrow the focus to the last two weeks in
March 1917, after Kamenev and Stalin had returned from internal exile and before Lenin returned from
foreign exile. What were the concrete measures adopted by the Bolshevik leadership in Petrograd to put
their tactical guidelines into practice?
On the positive side, the Bolshevik leaders called for and began to carry out agitation campaigns
based on concrete policy proposals that (a) would reveal the Bolsheviks to have real-world answers to the
urgent concerns of the soviet constituency and (b) would be unacceptable to the agreementists and to the
Provisional Government. Such campaigns were traditional tools of what I have elsewhere termed the
campaignism of the prewar international Social Democratic movement.
The central slogan/proposals adopted by the Bolshevik leaders in March consisted in two
demands on the Provisional Government: publish the secret treaties! Announce an immediate call to
begin peace negotiations on democratic principles with any or all belligerents! In late March, these two
demands were put forth in the factories and other local rallies. When the Bolsheviks proposed that the
All-Russian Soviet Conference in late March make corresponding demands on the Provisional
Government, they were soundly rebuffed by the agreementist leaders of the soviet majority. Irakli
Tsereteli, the chief spokesman of the agreementist socialists, immediately sensed what turned out to be
the case: these measures would alienate Russia’s allies (indeed, they were meant to) and lead eventually
to a separate peace with Germany and Austro-Hungary.
These demands and the campaigns built around them continued throughout the year. Here is a
remarkable fact: the Second Congress of Soviets in October installed a government based exclusively on
the soviets and issued two notable decrees. One decree issued a call for immediate general peace
negotiations and announced the publication of the secret treaties. The other decree ended gentry
landownership and transferred land to the peasants – a measure which, of course, the Bolsheviks had
always called for. In other words, what the Bolsheviks demanded at the March All-Russian Soviet
Conference, prior to Lenin’s return – namely, an anti-agreementist and exclusively soviet government, a
call for general peace negotiations, publication of the secret treaties, immediate land to the peasants –
predicted exactly what the Second Congress of Soviets in October actually did.
The reader may have picked up on the word ‘demand’. Let’s dwell on this word a little, since it
led to some confusion later on, first between Lenin and Kamenev in April, and then among historians up
to the present day. People hear that Kamenev and Stalin asked the soviets to demand that the Provisional
Government open general peace negotiations, call for revolutions in allied countries in order to bring
about a democratic peace, and to publish the secret treaties, and so on and so forth. Then these people
reason: if the Bolsheviks demand that the Provisional Government do this or that, it must be because they
hope and expect that the Provisional Government might actually do these things. And this means they
were little more than reformers who gave the liberal government ‘critical’ or ‘conditional’ support. And it
also means, doesn’t it, that these Bolsheviks thought soviet power was unnecessary, since the liberals at
the helm of the Provisional Government could be counted to carry out revolutionary policies.
The idea that Bolshevik leaders thought these things needs only to be stated clearly and explicitly
to reveal its complete absurdity. In the first place, any such belief would have been stupid and
uninformed. Who stood at the helm of the Provisional Government’s foreign policy? The Foreign
Minister, Pavel Miliukov, and the War Minister, Aleksandr Guchkov. Both of these men had long
political careers and their truly imperialist views on foreign policy were known to any informed observer.
Second, Kamenev was just about the last person on Russia to be naïve in this particular way about
Miliukov and Guchkov: there exists a long paper trail of Kamenev’s prewar exposés of liberal foreign
policy and of the imperialist ambitions of Miliukov and Guchkov in particular. Thirdly, as we shall see, at
the same time they were making these ‘demands’, Kamenev and Stalin were telling anyone who would
listen that the Provisional Government was counterrevolutionary in its essence and would inevitably
move against the revolution in the near future.
So – why did they make these ‘demands’? Kamenev explained this very clearly a couple of weeks
later in April in his critique of Lenin, who condemned ‘demands’ as an agitation technique. Kamenev’s
explanation is worthy of our close attention:
You know, comrades, that at the present moment, not one meeting goes by without a resolution
being passed that demands the publication of the secret treaties. Should we, as a political party,
take on ourselves to demand the publication of the secret treaties – announce that this is our
political demand? People will say to me: excuse me, you’re demanding something impossible.
But the demands I make are not founded on the expectation that Miliukov will respond to me and
publish the treaties.
The policy of making demands that I am advocating is an agitational device for the development
of the masses, a method of exposure of the fact that Guchkov and Miliukov cannot do this, that
they do not want the publication of the secret treaties, that they are against the policy of peace. It
is a device for showing the masses that if they really want to create a revolutionary policy on an
international level, then the vlast must be transferred into the hands of the Soviet.
The negative implication of the need to attain majority support was the imperative of avoiding
premature and disorganizing attempts to overthrow the Provisional Government before the Bolsheviks
had a solid majority in the soviet constituency for their anti-agreementist message. For this reason, the
Bolshevik leaders in March were very careful to point out that they were not calling for an uprising now,
this very minute. And, on this point, there was no real disagreement with Lenin. Kamenev and Stalin said
in March: we don’t want to replace the government now, but a little later, when we have majority support.
Lenin said in April: we don’t want to replace the government now, but a little later, when we have
majority support. Too many historians look at these positions and conclude that there is a great gulf
between Kamenev and Lenin: one didn’t want to replace the government, and the other did!
We will end this section by repeating the one-sentence summary of the Bolshevik core consensus
that we have just now tried to unpack: an exclusive worker-peasant vlast based on the soviets is the only
way to effectively defend the revolution and carry out its goals.
Kamenev one-liners: dealing with anomalies
For most readers, I would guess, the following discussion will be completely unsurprising.
Kamenev thought the war was imperialist? Well, yeah, he was a Bolshevik, wasn’t he? But for a certain
type of reader – the knowledgeable ones, the specialists, those who are familiar with the secondary
literature about 1917 either because they read it or they write it – much of what I show here will be
flabbergasting. Why is this? Because these knowledgeable ones have a certain interpretive framework and
because they think this framework rests on indisputable facts – and this framework excludes even the
possibility that Kamenev said what he in fact did say.
I have sometimes referred disparagingly to the supposed facts that prop up the standard
interpretation as ‘recycled one-liners’ – and indeed, this is a fairly precise description. There are a certain
number – not a very high number – of Kamenev quotes that travel from secondary account to secondary
account. All specialists know them. And because of them, they are completely skeptical of my findings
about Bolshevik consensus.
There are only two problems. First, as far as I am aware, there exists to date no detailed account
of Kamenev’s arguments and pronouncements during this period (and very little for other periods). I
don’t think there is a single document by Kamenev from March/April available in English (besides the
ones I have already put online). To remedy this, I am preparing a document with a much more complete
set of translations. The second problem is that within these documents lurk a great many one-liners that,
far from supporting standard interpretations, pose insuperable problems for them.
A personal note: For the last decade or so, I have advanced a new interpretation of the course of
Bolshevik events in this short period, one that points to a core Bolshevik consensus which can be
precisely defined. And the most common reaction I get from my specialist colleagues is: Lars, that can’t
be right, what about this [recycled one-liner] or that [recycled one-liner]? And this is a perfectly justified
and legitimate challenge! I should be able to explain away seeming anomalies, that is, data that seem on
their face to cause problems for my particular interpretation. And one by one I have investigated these
challenges: for a catalogue of my research results, see most conveniently the online series ‘All Power to
the Soviets!’ that John Riddell made available on his blog.
But, annoyingly, my diligence in this respect means I’m always on the defensive! I always look
like I’m trying to explain away inconvenient facts – which I am, because I should. So now I intend to go
go on the offensive and to put forth inconvenient facts for others to explain away. My document
‘Kamenev One-Liners’ presents a whole heap of anomalies – many, many more than were ever presented
to me. They show Kamenev again and again saying and doing the things he couldn’t have said or done if
the standard interpretation was valid. I’ve paid my dues by taking seriously all the anomalies flung at me.
It’s time for those who cling to the old interpretation to pay some dues of their own by seriously
considering in good faith how this material can possibly fit with the standard interpretations that portray
Kamenev as a demi-semi-Menshevik.
‘One-liners’ is a somewhat figurative description – many items in my document stretch out to
short passages. Furthermore, I am not suggesting that they provide a complete and fully nuanced picture
of Bolshevik activity during March and April: I have extracted the items that in and of themselves cause
most damage to opposing interpretations. Nevertheless, these ‘one-liners’ present a fully accurate picture
of what Kamenev was saying and thinking in this crucial period.
My Kamenev one-liners are taken from newspaper editorials, speeches, and resolutions that we
can reliably say came directly from Kamenev or with his full endorsement. My document is divided into
two parts: before Lenin arrived in Russia and after. In the following section, I will document the
Bolshevik message using material from the one-liners. In the final section, I will look at what Kamenev
found troubling about April Theses. Our interest here is not whether Kamenev correctly understood what
Lenin was saying, but rather: what does his critique show about his own views of what was happening in
Russia and how the Bolsheviks should respond. As we will see, Kamenev was an eloquent and passionate
exponent of the Bolshevik message and a firm supporter of the drive for full soviet power.
Before Lenin’s return: Kamenev propagates the Bolshevik message
The basic logic of the Bolshevik message is set out clearly enough in Kamenev’s first Pravda
editorial that appeared right after his return to Petrograd. First and foremost is the inevitable clash
between the ‘democratic’ narod and the ‘bourgeois’ Provisional Government:
We must realize that the paths of the democracy and of the Provisional Government will diverge
—that, when the bourgeoisie comes to its senses, it will inevitably attempt to halt the
revolutionary movement and not permit it to develop to the point of satisfying the essential needs
of the proletariat and the peasantry.
Why is this inevitable? Because of the ‘social nature of the strata’ that support the Provisional
Government. Since class forces are the underlying motor of the revolution, we can be sure that, although
the Provisional Government isn’t openly counterrevolutionary as yet, ‘it is only because they don’t have
the strength for it’.

Therefore, of course, the Provisional Government deserves nothing more than a vote of no
confidence from the soviets. Or, as Kamenev puts it more strongly, ‘absolute lack of confidence
[absoliutnoe nedoverie] in any liberal promises’. From this it follows that socialist agreementism is
doomed: ‘The active forces of the great revolution are working for us; they are exposing the inadequacy
and the limitations of any attempt to solve the tasks of the revolution by means of compromise.’
Bottom line: ‘This full satisfaction of the demands [of the proletariat, peasantry, and army] is
possible only when full and complete vlast [vsia polnota vlasti] is in their own hands.’ The immediate
goal, then, is a worker-peasant vlast that rejects agreementist compromise, eliminates the
counterrevolutionary liberals from power, and carries out the goals of the revolution. Or, in the snappier
form adopted a couple of months later: All Power to the Soviets!
The most overwhelming force driving apart the Provisional Government and the soviet system is
the imperialist war. An unsigned Pravda editorial on 26 March that I believe was drafted by Kamenev
explains why the imperialist war makes support for the Provisional Government impossible:
Some will say to us: why don’t you call outright for support of the Provisional Government, just
as the bourgeois and radical press is doing, as the party of Socialist-Revolutionaries is doing, and
Plekhanov and all social-patriots are doing? … Those who talk of ‘support’ forget or do not wish
to say that this government by its origins and by its interests remains a government of imperialist
war.
The whole opening section of Kamenev’s speech to the March all-Russian soviet conference was
a rabble-rousing denunciation of the war. In a climactic passage, Kamenev spoke of the immense damage
done by the imperialist war, not only to the Russian narod, but also the narody – the popular masses – in
all countries:
In this grave moment, do not allow illusions to possess us: only one thing is demanded of you, the
same that we should demand of ourselves—the truth. Too many high-sounding words have
covered up the robber policies that triumphed and led to war … We must say that this is not a
narodnyi war, that this war was not dreamed up by the narody, that the imperialist classes of all
countries have doomed us to this war.
In his speech to the conference, Kamenev urged the soviets to demand that the Provisional
Government move toward peace: ‘We must say: revolutionary Russia demands that the Provisional
Government formulate the will of revolutionary Russia toward peace, and [revolutionary Russia] expects
that only an uprising of the oppressed narody of other countries will support the Russian revolution.’ Can
we deduce from this that Kamenev seriously believed that the Provisional Government might actually call
for ‘an uprising of the oppressed narody of other countries’? Please. In the very same speech, Kamenev
insisted on the counterrevolutionary nature of the Provisional Government:
The Provisional Government comes out of the milieu of militaristic bourgeois circles. It has been
able to fulfil a few of the tasks set out by us [the Soviet] and by our masses in their revolutionary
creativity, despite its class nature, only under the pressure of the revolutionary masses. This same
government is the banner that covers up the organization of counterrevolution. We must say that
this counterrevolution that is being organized is already attacking the Soviet of Worker and
Soldier Deputies.
He also insisted – in a key statement – that the soviets were well on their way to become a fully-
fledged revolutionary vlast:
Our attitude toward the Provisional Government at the present moment can be expressed this
way: we foresee inevitable clashes, not between individuals, not between official bodies, not
between groups, but between the classes of our Russian revolution. We therefore should direct all
our forces toward supporting – not the Provisional Government, but – the embryo of a
revolutionary vlast as embodied by the Soviet of Worker and Soldier Deputies, which sits here in
our person.
The metaphor of an ‘embryo’ vlast was one way the Bolshevik leaders avoided a direct call for
revolutionary replacement of the Provisional Government right now while making clear their firm
intention to install a vlast based on the soviets a bit later on. As Kamenev told the All-Russian Soviet
Conference in late March: ‘right now we do not want to overthrow this Provisional Government, we do
not want to take the initiative of any revolutionary struggle against this government at the given moment,
this very minute’ – nevertheless, it is clear that that the soviet system ‘will grow into the vlast’. I rather
doubt that Kamenev’s agreementist opponents or any elite observers were particularly reassured by
Kamenev’s statement that ‘we do not want to overthrow this Provisional Government right now, this very
minute’.
Why didn’t the Bolsheviks call for an overthrow of the government ‘right now, this very minute’?
On the one hand, the Bolsheviks themselves, not to mention the still chaotic soviet system, were not ready
to effectively take and hold power: ‘Have we developed to the point that we can create the dictatorship of
the proletariat? No. What is important is not taking the vlast—what is important is keeping it. This
moment will come, but it will be advantageous for us to put it off, since right now our forces are still
inadequate.’
On the other hand, the Bolsheviks were far from enjoying majority support from the soviet
constituency and therefore they needed to find imaginative ways to acquire this support. As Kamenev
said in camera to fellow Bolsheviks on 18 March: ‘We are the representatives of the revolutionary
element in Petrograd, but in the meantime, it seems that the wide masses do not understand us. Evidently,
since we are essentially correct, we are formulating our resolutions and decisions in a way that the masses
do not understand.’ The best way to acquire majority support was to set in motion massive agitation
campaigns that would put forth concrete proposals to current problems – proposals that, realistically
speaking, only a worker-peasant vlast would be inclined to carry out. The goal of such campaigns was to
enable the soviet constituency to ‘see clearly the actual aims of the governments’: ‘And when millions of
soldiers and workers on all fronts see clearly the actual aims of the governments that dragged them into
the bloody shambles, it will mean not only an end to the war, but also a decisive step against the system
of violence and exploitation that causes all the wars.’
Campaigns aiming at a full, exclusive worker-peasant vlast were necessarily directed, not only
against the government, but against the ‘revolutionary defencism’ of agreementist socialists who argued
that a democratic peace and a revision of war aims could be achieved with the cooperation of the
Provisional Government. When the Bolshevik Central Committee in Petrograd passed the following
resolution on 22 March, ‘revolutionary defencism’ had barely begun to cohere, yet the Bolsheviks leaders
were swift to condemn it. The resolution opposed, not only ‘the imperialist current that is zealously
cultivated and inflamed by the liberal bourgeoisie’, but also ‘the nationalist current in the revolution, as
represented by the petty bourgeois groups that have attached themselves to the revolution’. Any hesitation
in opposing this socialist ‘nationalist current’ would be a betrayal of basic principles.

As the ‘One-Liner’ document shows, Kamenev hit all these talking points again and again
throughout March, Reading through this material is instructive, precisely because it is so repetitious and
insistent. Kamenev set forth the core Bolshevik message loud and he set it forth proud. Tying it all
together was a view of ‘the Soviets of Worker and Soldier Deputies in the cities and the Soviets of
Peasant and Batrak Deputies in the villages, as embryos of a revolutionary vlast that will be prepared at a
given moment in the further development of the revolution to institute a full and complete vlast in alliance
with revolutionary democracy so that the demands of the insurgent people may be fully realized.’
After Lenin’s return: Kamenev on how to achieve a worker-peasant vlast as soon

as possible
In April 1917, Kamenev wrote Pravda articles and made speeches at party conferences that
criticized what appeared to him to be troublesome aspects of Lenin’s April Theses. These articles and
speeches are famous in their way: see how the Bolsheviks failed to grasp the wisdom of Lenin’s bold new
vision! Yet, if any historian has analyzed Kamenev’s actual argument – if any secondary account does
more than quote in passing two or three notorious phrases – it has escaped my attention. In my ‘One-
Liner’ document, I have provided sufficient extracts from Kamenev’s pronouncements for us to see what
was on his mind in April. And what was on his mind was the fastest and most effective way to achieve
full soviet power.
Kamenev may or may not have understood Lenin’s outlook correctly – for us, this is not the
interesting question. In my view, mutual misunderstandings account for the lion’s share of this dispute.
Before getting into Kamenev’s concerns, a couple of remarks on Kamenev’s understanding the April
Theses will be helpful. First, and most importantly, please note what did not bother Kamenev about the
April Theses. He leaves without criticism Lenin’s insistence on no support for the imperialist war, no
support for revolutionary defencism, no support for the Provisional Government, and full support for a
worker-peasant vlast based on the soviets to be established only on the basis of majority support from the
soviet constituency. Why should he have opposed this core part of the Bolshevik message? He had been
hitting away at the same points himself since his return to Petrograd in mid-March.
What, then, did bother Kamenev? Answer: Lenin’s alleged call for ‘the immediate
transformation of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist one’. But if we turn to the actual
April Theses, we are hard put to find any such call – Kamenev is reading something into Lenin’s theses
that isn’t there. I think I can explain why Kamenev imposed this interpretation (see the following article
in this series). I will point out here that when Lenin realized the damage caused by this misinterpretation,
he wrote an article entitled ‘A Basic Question’ in which he energetically disassociated himself from it.
The text of this article with commentary can be found in my ‘All Power to the Soviets!’ series.
Why was Kamenev so insistent that the bourgeois-democratic revolution was not yet complete?
Because he was a pedant obsessed with the proper Marxist label for the ongoing revolution? No – as my
excerpts plainly show, his overriding concern was about the viability of the worker-peasant alliance.
According to the rules of Marxist discourse then applying (they changed later), a worker-peasant vlast
could only be the outcome of a democratic revolution, not a socialist (and therefore purely proletarian)
one. And why was Kamenev so concerned with the peasant-worker alliance? Because both his long-term
Bolshevik convictions and his perceptions of what was going on around him told him that soviet power
was a viable proposition only through the worker-peasant bloc.
Thus we can easily perceive how off-base and even bizarre is the common interpretation of
Kamenev’s argument: the bourgeois-democratic revolution is unfinished – and therefore we should allow
the Provisional Government to go on its way undisturbed and allow elite society to run things. No, no, no
– Kamenev’s argument is exactly the opposite. The bourgeois-democratic revolution is unfinished – and
therefore we need to replace the liberal Provisional Government as soon as possible with a worker-
peasant vlast that will be up to the job of completing the democratic transformation of Russia. And if the
bourgeois-democratic revolution is in fact finished, it means that the worker-peasant bloc is no longer
viable – and in that case the chances of any kind of truly revolutionary vlast in Russia in 1917 are very
dim! ‘If the bourgeois-democratic revolution is finished, then this bloc could not exist, no definite tasks
would stand before it, and the proletariat would conduct a revolutionary struggle against the bourgeois-
democratic bloc. Working together at such a moment would be completely impossible.’
The insistence on the worker-peasant bloc is the heart of Kamenev’s critique. Here is a
paraphrase of his full argument in April:
Our most urgent aim is – or should be – to replace the Provisional Government in the near future
with an exclusive worker-peasant vlast based on the soviets that alone will be capable of defending the
revolution and carrying out its goals. To achieve this aim, we need, first and foremost, a strong alliance
between workers and peasants. We need to respect the non-socialist goals of our allies. We need
aggressive agitation campaigns that make vivid demands on the Provisional Government in order to
expose its counterrevolutionary nature. We cannot be passive, waiting for objective circumstances to do
our job. We need to make concrete policy proposals for solving pressing problems, or the soviet
constituency will listen to other voices. But some aspects of Comrade Lenin’s theses seem to imply that
this standard Bolshevik view of things must now be ditched – thus dooming our fundamental goal in this
revolution, the one that is now going on in Russia: establishment of an exclusive worker-peasant vlast.
Thus Kamenev. Let us briefly focus on a few of his key points. As Kamenev remarked, the
official name of the soviets themselves – ‘Soviets of Worker and Soldier Deputies’ – ‘shows that they
represent a bloc composed of petty bourgeois and proletarian forces, before which stand unfinished
bourgeois-democratic tasks’. The central item in the list of unfinished ‘democratic’ tasks is land to the
peasants: ‘the revolution is not yet completed, because the whole mass of gentry [pomeshchik] land still
finds itself in the hands of the gentry. We should acknowledge that gentry landowning—formally and
factually a classic holdover of feudalism—is not yet liquidated.’
Kamenev explicitly notes that the revolution in Russia is not the classic type of bourgeois
revolution in which the bourgeoisie itself runs the show. On the contrary, this is a twentieth-century-style
‘bourgeois revolution’ in which the proletariat, not the bourgeoisie, has hegemony. And the central
challenge of preserving proletariat hegemony is ‘working with the bloc, supporting it, constructing our
tactics with the aim of making sure we do not tear apart the bloc’. This imperative continued to be the
mantra of Bolshevism, receiving eloquent expression, for example, in Lenin’s final articles in 1923.
Kamenev reiterates the points made in March about the inevitable clash between the Provisional
Government and the soviets, while explaining that ‘the Provisional Government will inevitably clash not
only with the proletariat as a class with a socialist outlook, but also—in view of the fact that the
government is bourgeois and imperialist—it will also clash with the entire petty-bourgeois bloc’. The war
is a central reason for the inevitable clash of the government with the whole range of democratic
organizations: ‘Either the revolution will cut short the war or the war will attack the conquests of the
revolution.’
Kamenev’s critique in April is usually dismissed as the losing side of the battle within the party,
as a roadmap that was not followed. On the contrary, his analysis in his April remarks of the driving
forces and prospects of the Russian revolution is shrewd and insightful. The worker-peasant bloc was
indeed central to Bolshevik tactics – and Lenin very soon went out of his way to show that he never
doubted it. Any ‘steps toward socialism’ in the form of advanced state regulation of the economy would
only take place if the peasants signed on (see Lenin’s ‘A Basic Question’ mentioned earlier).
Kamenev’s misunderstanding of Lenin’s April Theses is in its way a fortunate thing – even
though it led to major misunderstandings of what Kamenev himself was up to. Nevertheless, his reading
of the April Theses goaded him to insist on axiomatic points that might otherwise have gone
unarticulated. His whole critique was based on the aim of installing in the near future an exclusive
worker-peasant vlast based on the soviet that would replace the Provisional Government. This project
could only come to fruition if there existed a viable worker-peasant alliance based solidly on overlapping
class interests.
We should give the last word to Kamenev, in a pithy remark that more than most evokes the
revolutionary atmosphere of the time: ‘In one of these crises, and perhaps in the very near future, the
question of the vlast will be posed in the sharpest possible form.’ Be ready!
II: Lenin and the Bolshevik Message
Previously in this series: All during 1917, the Bolsheviks delivered a consistent message
to the soviet constituency, that is, the workers and soldiers who elected soviets in the capital
cities of Petrograd and Moscow as well as many other urban centers. The heart of this message
can be stated concisely: an exclusive worker-peasant vlast based on the soviets is the only way to
effectively defend the revolution and carry out its goals. Formulated in positive terms, the key
implication of this message was: All Power to the Soviets! Stated in negative terms, the key
implication was rejection of agreementism [soglashatelstvo] – the derisive label coined by the
Bolsheviks to describe any claim that revolutionary goals could be achieved by means of some
sort of political ‘agreement’ with educated Russian society.
In the first instalment of this three-part series, I documented the Bolshevik message by
looking at the pronouncements of party leader Lev Kamenev in March/April 1917. This
abundant evidence from Kamenev puts paid to the highly influential ‘rearming’ narrative that
insisted that the Bolshevik message in 1917 came directly out of Lenin’s brain and was then
imposed on the party after Lenin’s return to Russia in April. Even before Lenin returned,
Kamenev eloquently made the case for a vlast (sovereign authority) based on the soviets to
replace the ‘bourgeois’ Provisional Government. He objected to certain parts of Lenin’s April
Theses only because he was convinced that they would cause problems for the drive to install
soviet power as soon as possible.
In this instalment, I look at how Lenin himself defined the message that he thought the
Bolsheviks should be sending to the mass soviet constituency. Accompanying this essay are
three newly translated articles that address this very topic. Previously we showed Kamenev
saying things that he could not possibly have said if the standard picture of Bolshevism in 1917
were correct. In this essay, we will show Lenin failing to say things he most certainly should
have been saying if the standard picture of Bolshevism in 1917 were correct.
He was there in the room …
Immediately upon Lenin’s arrival in Petrograd on 3 April, he was called upon to give
reports on his Thesis three or four times, first to strictly Bolshevik audiences and then to
audiences that included other parties. One person who heard all of these presentations was
Wladimir Woytinsky, who has left us an invaluable account of his impressions. Of course, like
all participants in these meetings, Woytinsky was highly partisan and his comments require
critical analysis. At the time Lenin arrived, Woytinsky still self-identified as a Bolshevik, but he
was also an ardent agreementist – and he quickly realized that ‘agreementist Bolshevik’ was an
political oxymoron, an unsustainable position. Nevertheless, his remarks tell us a great deal,
partly because he wrote them down in the early twenties, before the issue of the April Theses
became thoroughly politicized. His memoirs were not published until 1990, that is, long after the
standard interpretation had been set in stone. Here I focus on one striking observation that in my
view brings out a highly important yet entirely overlooked aspect of Lenin’s Theses.
What struck Woytinsky was the strange combination in Lenin’s report of standard
Bolshevik boilerplate with unexpectedly novel arguments: ‘On the lips of the orator [Lenin],
tired and hackneyed formulae were mingled together in a strange fashion with words, slogans,
thoughts that were so novel, so unusual, that they demanded sustained attention to follow the
train of thought.’ Woytinsky goes on to say that Lenin gave most attention to the negative
slogans: ‘The larger part of his report was devoted to providing justification for two slogans: not
the slightest concession to “revolutionary defencism”! No support for the Provisional
Government!’
As my first instalment showed, precisely these slogans were central to the message that
Kamenev, Stalin, and Pravda had already been assiduously propagating prior to Lenin’s arrival.
Woytinsky’s impression of the audience reaction to Lenin’s report – though necessarily highly
subjective – confirms this division into ‘very familiar’ and ‘strikingly novel’. On the one hand,
Lenin’s discussion of the more abstract issues that were involved in revising the party program
led to ‘psychological resistance’ from his listeners. On the other hand, the Bolshevik audience
was highly supportive of the general tenor of the Theses, much to the disgust of the agreementist
Woytinsky.
Woytinsky’s eyewitness account brings out what I believe is the gateway to wisdom
about the April Theses: the division between the basic message that was completely non-
controversial among Bolsheviks vs. Lenin’s new personal enthusiasms. This second part, as
Woytinsky well brings out, was so novel that misunderstandings and confusion were inevitable.
And in fact, right from the get-go, Lenin had to expend a good deal of energy clearing up
misunderstandings. A little later we will look at his attempt to clear up the most crucial
misunderstanding of all.
Our focus in the present essay, however, is on the part of the Theses that the Bolsheviks
understood with no trouble at all – the part of which they automatically approved. Why? Because
this was the part that set forth the core message and represented a Bolshevik consensus (not
counting a few oxymoronic Bolsheviks such as the agreementist Woytinsky, who promptly
became a prominent Menshevik spokesman). When Lenin rejected support for the imperialist
war and revolutionary defensism, when he called for the Provisional Government to be replaced
by soviet power, no Bolshevik protested. No one said: hey, Lenin, you can’t call the war
imperialist! That’s so pre-February! No one said: lay off the Provisional Government! Miliukov
(Minister of Foreign Affairs) and Guchkov (Minister of War) may have been rabid imperialists
back in the day, but now that the tsar has gone, they will assuredly carry out a radical peace
program if we say pretty please. No one said: don’t be so mean to ‘revolutionary defensists’ such
as Tsereteli (Kamenev explicitly noted his opposition to revolutionary defensism as a motive for
his misgivings about the Theses). No one said: soviet power? What a bizarre idea!
The April Theses are famous for being controversial and for causing a scandalized
reaction. And indeed they did cause a scandal – among agreementist non-Bolsheviks who were
already hostile to Kamenev’s anti-agreementist line and were hoping against hope that Lenin
would return and squash it. But here’s the paradox: if we want to understand Bolshevism in
1917, the crucial part of the April Theses is the non-controversial part, the part that used vivid
slogans to present the already existing core Bolshevik message. And as we shall see, this is also
the part that Lenin himself placed emphatically in the foreground when he set out to state the
Bolshevik message in the most straightforward terms possible.

Today I saw upon the stair …
We have just observed how the April Theses can be divided into two parts: the part that
caused controversy and misunderstanding among Bolsheviks for a short period, and the part that
caused no controversy at all because it set forth the standard Bolshevik message. But there is a
third part of the April Theses that has been highly influential, at least among historians. And, like
the little man upon the stair, this is the part that wasn’t there.
Consider the following statement in which a prominent historian of Bolshevism describes
Lenin’s April Theses:
In a summation of his views published in the party’s main newspaper, Pravda, on April 7
– the celebrated ‘April Theses’ – he [Lenin] defined the situation in Russia as the
transition between the first, ‘bourgeois democratic’, stage of the revolution and the
second, ‘socialist’, stage.’1
Notice the quote marks around ‘bourgeois democratic’ and ‘socialist’. These tell us that
these words represent Lenin’s actual description of stages of the revolution. Yet a glance at the
actual text of the April Theses will quickly show that neither the words nor the concepts appear.
Whence this strange illusion? To answer this question, we must go back to 1917 and
understand the role that the formula ‘socialist revolution in Russia’ played in the ongoing
polemics between agreementists and anti-agreementists as they battled each other for the loyalty
of the soviet constituency. There are many ways in which one might describe events in Russia in
1917 as a ‘socialist revolution’. Here are three ways that were widespread at the time and
certainly not controversial among Bolsheviks, plus a fourth one that was universally held to be
inapplicable.
1
Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks Come to Power (New York: W. W. Norton, 1976), p. xxxiv. My
aim is not to fault Rabinowitch in particular but simply to use a highly authoritative voice in order to document a
very widespread misreading.
One: The revolution was socialist because the majority of the Russian population
accepted without question the goal of a socialist society. All parties in the soviet camp were
socialist, and there was no challenge to this ideological dominance whatsoever.
Two: All wartime governments were adopting unprecedented measures of state economic
regulation, and such measures were widely seen as steps toward a socialist economy, even if now
used for perverted militaristic ends.
Three: The imminent outbreak of a socialist, proletarian revolution in Western Europe
was an article of faith for Bolsheviks and many other Russian socialists besides. This expectation
was intensified by the world war and its accompanying social unrest. Since long before the war,
the Bolsheviks and others and had further insisted on a scenario in which a thorough-going
democratic revolution in Russia would spark a socialist revolution in Western Europe that in turn
would alter the course of events in Russia in a socialist direction. This scenario is an essential
part of what the Bolsheviks thought they were doing in 1917 and gave them the necessary
confidence to carry out their project of an exclusive soviet vlast.
Four: The idea that Russia itself could embark on successful socialist transformation,
even before the beneficent influence of a European revolution began to be felt, was rejected by
all socialists of whatever political persuasion. All Marxists observers accepted as an axiom that
the peasant majority of Russia – although a mighty force for democratic revolution – was an
insuperable obstacle to a socialist transformation of the Russian economy and society. This
axiom, it will be remembered, was an essential part of Trotsky’s ‘permanent revolution’, as set
forth in his original writings of 1905-1907.

Given that socialist revolution in Russia in this sense was seen as an absurdity, the
agreementists had every motive to tie it as tightly as possible to the project of an exclusive vlast.
You call for soviet power? But that must mean you want a fully-fledged socialist revolution right
now, here, in backward Russia – and that’s crazy talk! This logic, such as it was, was set out
succinctly by Georgy Plekhanov, a central figure in the early history of Russian Marxism but by
1917 a fierce and marginalized socialist defensist. For him, the April Theses were inacceptable
because:
The socialist revolution presupposes a long work of enlightenment and organization in

the depths of the working class. Today, among us, this is forgotten by people who call the
Russian toiling masses to the seizure of the political vlast, since this can only make sense
given the presence of the objective conditions needed for social revolution. These
conditions do not yet exist.
Plekhanov’s formulation is worth noting because, as we shall shortly see, Lenin explicitly
responded to it.
This argument – to wit, since the Bolsheviks want a full soviet vlast, they must also be
calling for immediate soviet transformation in Russia – was already flung at the Bolsheviks
before Lenin’s arrival. This fact struck me only recently as I delved into the clash between
agreementists and anti-agreementists at the All-Russian Soviet Conference in late March/early
April, that is, before Lenin’s return to Russia (the conference is discussed at greater length in the
final article in this series). Given reigning stereotypes today, I find it rather funny that Kamenev,
the anti-agreementist spokesman in these debates, was already accused by his opponents as
advocating permanent revolution.
We can therefore state with confidence that, no matter what Lenin actually wrote,
agreementist socialists would accuse him of advocating immediate socialist transformation. As it
happened, some aspects of Lenin’s rhetoric did invite misunderstandings of this nature. For
example, he talked about a first and second ‘stage’ of the revolution. The two stages could easily
be read as ‘bourgeois’ vs. ‘socialist’ revolution (see the historian’s description quoted above).
But what Lenin meant by ‘second stage of the revolution’ was the assumption of full soviet
power: nothing more, nothing less. In a resolution passed by the party conference in April that
was drafted by Lenin himself, the ‘second stage’ is defined precisely: ‘The second stage of the
revolution that will transfer the entire state vlast into the hands of the soviets and other organs
that directly express the will of the majority of the narod (organs of local self-government, the
Constituent Assembly, and so forth) .’
As I say, even if Lenin had been perfectly clear on such points, he would have been
accused of advocating immediate socialist transformation. In fact, this reading of the April
Theses was set in stone before Lenin’s Theses even appeared in print. Lenin presented his
Theses to a mixed Bolshevik/Menshevik audience on 4 April. On the following day, Plekhanov’s
newspaper Edinstvo compared his Theses to the ravings of a madman. On 6 April, the
Menshevik party newspaper weighed in and claimed that Lenin was calling for a kurs na
sotsialisticheskuiu revoliutsiiu, setting the course toward socialist revolution. Ironically, this
hostile Menshevik formulation was later enshrined in Stalin’s Short Course (1938) and became a
mandatory formula for all Soviet historians long after his death.
Only on 7 April – after all these hostile interpretations had set the stage – did Lenin’s
Theses appear in print, already accompanied by attempts to combat various misunderstandings.
Finally, on 8 April, Pravda printed a short article by Kamenev explaining his misgivings about
the Theses. According to Kamenev, Lenin felt that the ‘bourgeois-democratic revolution’ was
finished and therefore that an immediate transformation of this revolution into a ‘socialist’ one
was on the agenda.

We have just explained why Kamenev was so upset by this (mis)reading of Lenin’s
Theses. In the debates between agreementists and anti-agreementists, the opponents of soviet
power were the ones who insisted that soviet power only made sense if the Russian revolution
were socialist. Kamenev, a fervent advocate of soviet power, was naturally upset by what he
thought was Lenin’s argument, since it seemed to concede this point to the agreementists (for
further details on Kamenev’s critique, see the first instalment in this series). But, as a quick look
at the text of the Theses will show, Lenin does not say anything like this. Thus, when Stalin’s
Short Course and most later historians describe the April Theses as calling for the transformation
of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist one, they are basing themselves on
Kamenev, not Lenin.
By this time, Lenin realized that some clean-up work was necessary and so he wrote an
article entitled ‘A Basic Question’, published in Pravda on 21 April, that is, during the Bolshevik
party conference. Officially Lenin aimed his polemics at Plekhanov, but his real target was
undoubtedly fellow Bolsheviks who were wondering what Lenin really meant. He could not have
been more clear, more explicit, and more emphatic in his rejection of any logical connection
between the idea of direct socialist transformation in Russia and the Bolshevik project of an
exclusive worker-peasant vlast based on the soviets. (The text of this article, along with
Plekhanov’s original article and my commentary, can be found in my online series ‘All Power to
the Soviets!’)
First, Lenin reaffirmed the Marxist axiom about the peasants as an obstacle to socialist
transformation:
What classes do the Russian toiling masses consist of? Everybody knows that they
consist of workers and peasants. Which of these classes is in the majority? The peasants.
Who are these peasants as far as their class position is concerned? Small or very small
proprietors. The question arises: if the small proprietors constitute the majority of the
population and if the objective conditions for socialism are lacking, then how can the
majority of the population declare in favor of socialism? Who can say anything or who
says anything about establishing socialism against the will of the majority?
Second, while sarcastically quoting Plekhanov’s argument as given above, Lenin pointed
out that a soviet vlast was based squarely on the imperative of democracy:
In whose hands should ‘the political vlast’ be, even from the point of view of a vulgar
bourgeois democrat from Rech [the official newspaper of the liberal Kadet party]? In the
hands of the majority of the population. Do the ‘Russian toiling masses’, so ineptly
discussed by our muddled social-chauvinist [Plekhanov], constitute the majority of the
population in Russia? Undoubtedly they do – the overwhelming majority! How then,
without betraying democracy—even democracy as understood by a Miliukov [Kadet
party leader] – can one be opposed to the ‘seizure of the political vlast’ by the ‘Russian
toiling masses?
Third, Lenin reaffirmed the international scenario outlined above:
Further steps towards socialism in Russia will become fully possible, and – given the aid
to the workers here that will come from the more advanced and experienced workers of
Western Europe, who have broken with the Western European Plekhanov – Russia’s
genuine transition to socialism would be inevitable, and the success of such a transition
would be assured.
Fourth – and most crucially – Lenin affirmed that any ‘steps toward socialism’ in the
form of state economic regulation would be taken only with full understanding and support from
the Russian peasants. While these measures were not socialist in and of themselves, such
policies of state regulation would undoubtedly ‘benefit the majority of the narod’. This
affirmation by Lenin had vast consequences for the future, but this is a topic for a later time. We
note in passing that this commitment to move toward socialism only with peasant support is a
decisive difference between Trotsky’s original scenario of ‘permanent revolution’ and Lenin’s
own understanding of ‘steps toward socialism’ in 1917.
In my series ‘All Power to the Soviets!’, I presented an article by Trotsky from August
1917 in which he makes the same argument as Lenin: the project of exclusive soviet power is in
no way tied to immediate socialist transformation in Russia nor is it in any way barred by
labeling the ongoing revolution as ‘bourgeois-democratic’. A ‘bourgeois-democratic revolution’
certainly does not imply that the bourgeoisie should be running the show (thus reaffirming a core
axiom of prewar Bolshevism.) The imperative of a soviet vlast in Russia follows from
democratic premises rather than socialist premises. Trotsky scornfully summed up the
Menshevik/SR position: ‘To hell with democracy! Long live Plekhanovite sociology!’
We can sum up the situation with another crucial comment by an eye-witness participant
in these events, the pioneering historian of Bolshevism Vladimir Nevsky. Like Woytinsky’s
account quoted above, Nevsky’s insight has not yet made it into any secondary account. The
reader will benefit from giving it close attention:
We must stress that even in the ranks of our party were people who at first understood
these theses incorrectly, taking them as a call to an immediate implementation of
socialism, despite categorical explanations [to the contrary].
In fact, Lenin’s position [in the April Theses] was the natural development of the doctrine
that he had worked out long ago in the previous periods of the history of our party, since
one of the basic propositions of Bolshevism … was the one put forward already during
the first Russian revolution [in 1905]: the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat and
the peasantry. This same idea also implied all the conclusions and all the measures
inevitably arrived at, as soon as the party was convinced of the necessity and the
inevitability of a proletarian-peasant dictatorship
But (readers may ask) if Lenin, Trotsky, and other Bolshevik leaders all rejected in 1917
any connection between socialist revolution in Russia and the project of a soviet vlast, why is
this connection such an undisputed mainstay of historical interpretation today? The main reason
is that first Trotsky (in Lessons of October in 19124) and later Stalin (in the Short Course of
1938) decided – for polemical reasons having nothing to do with serious historical investigation
– to adopt Kamenev’s formulation and to affirm that Lenin made a heroic theoretical
breakthrough, namely, a call for the transformation of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a
socialist one.
We cannot go into this fascinating story in more detail here, but I cannot refrain from
extracting an ironic moral. Many people today are stubbornly committed to the standard
‘rearming narrative’ whereby the April Theses ‘rearmed the party’ by introducing something
very much resembling Trotsky’s earlier scenario of permanent revolution. Among these people
are many who affirm their strong loyalty to Bolshevism and to the ideas of Lenin and Trotsky.
These same people (I’ve discovered) also manifest an abiding hostility to Lev Kamenev in
particular. And yet, their reading of the April Theses originates in a polemical misreading by the
Mensheviks, by Plekhanov, and by Kamenev himself in April 1917. Further, an interpretation of
the April Theses that was directly and unambiguously rebutted by both Lenin and Trotsky in
1917 is defended by this school of thought as gospel. As a result, the hostile
Plekhanov/Menshevik/Kamenev misreading of the April Theses remains dominant on the left as
well as among academic historians.
Lenin and the Bolshevik Message
Let us now turn our attention to three short articles from 1917 that aim to set out the
Bolshevik message to the soviet constituency concisely but comprehensively. Two were written
directly by Lenin, and the remaining one was undoubtedly published with his full authorization.
The full text of these articles, newly translated, is available here as an appendix.
Why should we be so interested in the Bolshevik message? The central reason is that this
message represents our most potent clue to the meaning of the October revolution to those who
carried it out. The people who made the October revolution were the workers, soldiers and other
members of the narod who elected soviets all across the country. In October this soviet
constituency elected a national congress that gave a working majority to the anti-agreementists.
What was the political meaning of this act of confidence? The answer, first and foremost, must
be found in the message broadcast by the Bolsheviks throughout the year explaining why the
anti-agreementist Bolsheviks deserved support and why the original agreementist majority
should be voted out.
Let me briefly introduce these three articles that authoritatively set out the Bolshevik
message. In April the Bolsheviks held their first national party conference after the fall of
tsarism, and the conference passed an extensive series of resolutions that defined them as a party
in the post-February context. These resolutions were published as a booklet to be an authoritative
guide to the Bolshevik message, and no doubt it also served as a textbook for party spokesmen
nationally. Later I will say a few words about the resolutions themselves, but of direct interest for
our theme is the introduction that Lenin penned for this booklet. Here Lenin stated proudly that
‘our party comes out before the narod, and, through the resolutions of its conference’, gives it
the following message – and then he proceeds to distill what he saw as the essence of their
content.
In early May, the Bolsheviks emblazoned the front page of Pravda with a sample
Mandate as part of the effort to increase Bolshevik representation in the soviets via reelection.
The Mandate first came to my attention because, to my knowledge, it is the first authorized party
document to contain the famous slogan in its canonical three-word form: Vsia vlast sovetam! (All
Power to the Soviets!). As such, I published it with commentary in my All Power series. But the
famous slogan is not our focus of interest here. As the first article in the present series
demonstrates, Kamenev and other Bolshevik leaders had making the same point long before
Lenin arrived on the scene, although using other language. More important for us, the Mandate
tells us how the Bolsheviks officially defined the political significance of electing a Bolshevik
delegate and, therefore, the political meaning of the eventual bolshevization of the soviets. While
Lenin most likely did not personally draft the Mandate – it is not included in his collected works
– its publication in such a prominent way to serve such a vital purpose must have been directly
authorized by the party leader.
At the end of September, Lenin wrote yet another article for Pravda (operating under
another name for legal reasons) that aimed at sending the core Bolshevik message ‘to those down
below, to the masses, to the office employees, to the workers, to the peasants, not only to our
supporters, but particularly to those who follow the Socialist-Revolutionaries, to the non-party
elements, to the ill-informed’. This article – entitled ‘Tasks of the Revolution’ – is perhaps the
final manifestation of Lenin’s hope that the hitherto agreementist socialists might themselves
declare an exclusive soviet vlast. After giving up on this indeed forlorn hope, Lenin began to call
for an uprising. But as the present article makes clear, even an uprising made political sense only
on the assumption that a majority of the soviet constituency had by then decisively rejected
agreementism.
These three articles are extremely straightforward and hardly need commentary. They all
say essentially the same thing. Central is the core demand that can either be expressed
affirmatively (an exclusive vlast based on the soviets) or negatively (the rejection of
agreementism). Worthy of note: in the Lenin-drafted articles, the rejection of agreementism
precedes and clears the way for the positive goal of an exclusive soviet vlast. ‘The capitalist
cannot travel the same road as the worker.’ ‘Agreementism with the capitalists is disastrous.’
Lenin then justifies this core demand and explains why the basic goals of the soviet
constituency cannot be achieved unless agreementism is rejected. Do you want a democratic
peace? This won’t happen unless the government repudiates the secret treaties to which the
gentry landowners and the capitalists swear fealty. Do you peasants want land? Take it
immediately, despite the obstruction of the gentry landowners. Do you want an effective
response to spiraling economic breakdown? It won’t happen if the capitalists have any say in
state economic regulation.
In ‘Tasks of the Revolution’ from autumn 1917, Lenin goes out of his way to stress that
the Bolsheviks do not reject the goals of the agreementist socialists, but only their deeply
mistaken method. He points to land reform measures that were demanded by the peasants
themselves, publicized by the peasant-based Socialist-Revolutionary Party, and published in
Izvestiia (at that time the organ of the agreementist leadership). He quotes the Menshevik party
newspaper that insisted on more energetic economic regulation.
Lenin is therefore able to insist that the Bolshevik program protects the interests of the
narod – the Russian common people as opposed to elite society – rather than simply a narrow
class policy aimed at the workers. He reaffirms the Bolshevik commitment: the upcoming soviet
vlast will do nothing without the firm support of the peasants. In this way, the Bolshevik
message of 1917 is tied firmly to what the prewar Bolsheviks called ‘hegemony’, that is, political
leadership by the proletarian party in order to carry out the revolutionary interests of the
democratic peasantry.
The contours of this message do not change in any significant way between April and
September. What does change is Lenin’s perception of the extent of support given to the message
by the soviet constituency. In April, Lenin states that the learning process still lies ahead: ‘It is
absolutely impossible to find a way out of the blind alley, given the policy of trust in the
government of the capitalists or support for it.’ By the end of September, he proudly claims that
events have shown the correctness of the message, so that even the mass base of the agreementist
parties perceives its essential truth.
Finally, we should observe what is not in these articles: any mention of ‘socialist
revolution’. In fact, the very word ‘socialist’ is avoided. The closest we get is a reference to
heroic ‘socialists’ in Western Europe such as Karl Liebknecht. Even when Lenin is
unambiguously talking about socialist revolution – in Western Europe, of course, not in Russia –
he uses circumlocution: ‘a mighty European revolution that will throw off the yoke of capital’.
The same striking absence of ‘socialist’ in the Bolshevik message can be further
documented in the much more extensive and detailed set of resolutions from the Bolshevik party
conference in April. The core Bolshevik message can be found in five of these resolutions: on
the war, on the Provisional Government, on the land question, on coalition government, and on
the soviets. These resolutions represent simply a more detailed justification of the Bolshevik
message as outlined in the Lenin articles discussed here. The words ‘socialism’ and ‘socialist
revolution’ are entirely absent from these key resolutions. We should note also that two of the
most fundamental issues of 1917 – the land question and the nationality question – are explicitly
labeled as aspects of the ‘bourgeois-democratic revolution’.
In a resolution drafted by Lenin and devoted to a very broad definition of the situation in
Europe and Russia, we do find a mention of socialist revolution in Western Europe: ‘The
objective conditions for socialist revolution were undoubtedly already at hand before the war,
and have matured further and continue to mature as a consequence of the war.’ In the case of
Russia, however, the resolution insists that ‘the proletariat of Russia, acting in one of the most
backward countries in Europe, surrounded by the masses of the petty-bourgeois population,
cannot adopt the goal of the immediate implementation of socialist transformation’. The same
resolution also insists that any ‘steps toward socialism’ – that is, more extensive state economic
regulation of the kind already set in place by various wartime governments – will be made with
the conscious support of the peasantry. In other words, this resolution essentially repeats the
arguments of Lenin’s ‘A Basic Question’ quoted earlier.
This striking pattern of avoidance is hardly a coincidence. Much evidence from 1917
convinces me that a conscious decision was made early on by the top Bolshevik leadership to not
employ the term ‘socialism’ in their agitation and propaganda. I am not the first to notice this
absence. Nikolai Sukhanov, an anti-agreementist Menshevik who remains to this day the most
widely read memoirist of the revolution, wrote in his account: ‘Was there any socialism in the
[Bolshevik] platform? No. I maintain that in a direct form the Bolsheviks never harped to the
masses on socialism as the object and task of a soviet government; nor did the masses, in
supporting the Bolsheviks, even think about socialism.’
I assume the motivation behind this determined avoidance was the one mentioned at the
beginning of my remarks: the fact that ‘socialist revolution in Russia’ had been weaponized by
agreementist socialists to discredit Bolshevik anti-agreementism. In any event, the embargo on
using the word ‘socialism’ was abruptly lifted as soon as the Bolsheviks took power in October.
Still, we certainly must regard the Bolshevik message as formulated prior to October as our most
important key for unlocking what the October revolution meant for the people who made it.
There are many things we could say about the realism or lack of it in the Bolshevik
message. In my personal view, Lenin’s ‘Tasks of the Revolution’ reveals some of the highly
over-optimistic assumptions built into the message. The attentive reader of Lenin’s article would
hardly be surprised by the dire fate of political freedom under Bolshevik rule. Nevertheless, on
one key and all-decisive point, the Bolshevik message was realistic and insightful: the
unworkability of agreementism.
But the aim of the present remarks is not to assess the Bolshevik message, but simply to
ascertain its content. Once we clear away the Menshevik/Trotskyist/Stalinist/academic
misreading of the message – once we see clearly what is not there – we are able to see what is
there. Not ‘setting a course for socialist revolution’, but ‘an exclusive worker-peasant vlast based
on the soviets as the only way to effectively defend the revolution and carry out its goals’. And
then we can also see the continuity and consensus in the Bolshevik message.
Any reader of this essay who takes the time to peruse with diligence the list of Kamenev
one-liners from March and April provided in my first instalment and to put them alongside the
Lenin articles attached to this entry will see that the Bolshevik party could (and did!) claim to
stand for a consistent message from the very start of the revolution. The whole party easily
assimilated this message and successfully propagated it through the year, not because Lenin
came up with a radical new vision that was imbibed by the party in a couple of weeks, but
because the familiar logic of prewar Bolshevism was directly applicable to post-February Russia.
I will conclude my remarks with a comment I wrote a decade ago and still firmly
maintain: In 1917, Lenin became a strong leader of a unified party. But the party did not have
unity because Lenin was a strong leader – Lenin was a strong leader because he led a unified
party.
III: Irakli Tsereteli and the Unwritten Constitution
In Petrograd at the end of March 1917, delegates from soviets all over Russia gathered for the
first national meeting of the soviet system. A striking feature of the All-Russian Conference in March was
a set of dueling speeches between the Menshevik Irakli Tsereteli and the Bolshevik Lev Kamenev.
Despite their party affiliations, these orators were the spokesmen of two wider standpoints that were in
fundamental opposition one to the other: agreementism vs. anti-agreementism. The Menshevik Irakli
Tsereteli was the spokesman for agreementism, that is, the political tactic based on the viability of a
working political agreement with the ‘bourgeois’ forces of society. The Bolshevik Lev Kamenev was the
spokesman for anti-agreementism, that is, the political tactic based on the rejection of any such
agreement, and thus, ipso facto, looking forward to full soviet power (vlast).
The essence of this dispute can be distilled in just a few words taken from these speeches: ‘the
path of agreement’ vs. ‘inevitable clash’. This article will reveal the contours of this great divide, one that
manifested itself over a wide variety of issues and yet had a tight inner logic. Thus the fundamental clash
dividing the Russian socialists throughout the revolutionary year was set forth in the All-Russian
Conference of soviets at the end of March in complete clarity. But we will also look at what united all
soviet spokesmen, whether they were agreementist or anti-agreementist – what I call the unwritten
constitution of the soviet system. As we shall see, even though the anti-agreementist Bolsheviks were in a
small minority at the beginning of the year, the logic of the unwritten constitution already favored them.
Historians have pretty much overlooked this first all-Russian gathering of soviet delegates, but it
took place at an extraordinarily revealing time. The original political agreement between the Petrograd
Soviet and the Provisional Government goes back to the very beginning of March. In mid-March, both
Kamenev and Tsereteli arrived in Petrograd from Siberian exile and quickly assumed leadership positions
in their respective camps. The sessions of the conference took place from March 29 to April 3. Within
hours of the closing of the conference, Lenin and Zinoviev arrived to shake things up. Thus the
conference gives us an extensive, well-documented look at the state of play in the soviet camp on the eve
of Lenin’s return.
The Menshevik leader Irakli Tsereteli probably needs an introduction to many readers, although
he was a central figure in the politics of 1917. Tsereteli was a longtime Menshevik who, like many
prominent Mensheviks (and like Stalin), was originally from Georgia. After the revolution of 1905, he
was elected to the Second Duma (the Duma was the new legislature created in the aftermath of the
revolution), but in June 1907, after the unconstitutional disbanding of the Duma, he was arrested, spent
six years in prison, and then compelled to reside in Western Siberia. At the outbreak of the first world war
in 1914, he adopted the Zimmerwald position of opposition to the war. After the February revolution
freed him and other political exiles such as Kamenev and Stalin, he was able to return to Petrograd where
he arrived on 19 March. He quickly became the acknowledged leader of the forces within the soviet camp
who urged support for the Provisional Government.
Tsereteli’s name will be forever associated with ‘revolutionary defencism’, a genuinely new
synthesis of anti-imperialism and national defense. The logic behind it went something like this: the war
right now is indeed imperialist and pursued for illegitimate, undemocratic aims, but the February
revolution allows us to renounce war aims such as annexation and to pursue a genuinely democratic
peace. But while we carry out this policy of revising war aims, we of course must continue to defend
Russia against the imperialist German invaders.
Thus a split grew up in the soviet camp between ‘revolutionary defencism’ and
‘internationalism’. Despite these labels, the real defining issue that divided the Russian socialists was
agreementism. If Russia was going to continue the war until final victory, then some sort of solid political
agreement was necessary between soviet forces and elite society. Conversely, if Russia was to avoid a
devastating civil war between these two parts of society – and avoiding civil war was a central value for
Tsereteli – than the war had to be continued, but with refurbished anti-imperialist aims. Thus
‘revolutionary defencism’ demanded agreementism and agreementism demanded ‘revolutionary

defencism’. This logic will become more clear as we examine the debate over agreementism, to which we
now turn.
In 1917, the Bolsheviks coined the euphonious word soglashatelstvo as a term of abuse for their
socialist rivals who aimed at some of agreement, deal, partnership, understanding between the soviet
system and elite society, or at least with the progressive ‘vital forces’ within elite society. The coinage
soglashatelstvo is based on the very ordinary Russian word soglashenie which has the very ordinary
English translation ‘agreement.’ So why not talk of ‘agreementism’ instead of ‘compromise’ or
‘conciliation’, the usual and very misleading terms? The critique of agreementism was central to the
Bolshevik message—so much so that Lenin argued the rejection of agreementism by a majority of the
soviet constituency in fall 1917 was equivalent to its acceptance of full soviet power – thus legitimizing
an armed uprising.
‘Agreementism’, my new translation of this key word, is thus simply a more direct and more
accurate translation of a central item in Russian political discourse in 1917. Two other terms that were
central to political debate in 1917 are harder to translate – and in fact, they are translated in various ways
even in the same text, thus making their centrality invisible. One such key word is vlast, which can be
defined as the sovereign authority in a society, the institution with the right to make ultimate decisions
and to see those decisions enforced. It is variously translated as ‘regime,’ ‘power,’ ‘authority,’
‘government’ and more. All of these pick up some connotations of vlast, while ignoring others, and
importing into the term yet others. I have observed how one and the same historian will use terms such as
‘tsarist regime,’ ‘soviet power,’ and the ‘firm authority’ demanded by the liberals – all of these in a single
paragraph – without ever mentioning that these are all instances of the vlast. But for Russians in 1917,
vlast was a single word and a single, if complex, concept. Furthermore, the sudden disappearance of the
Romanov dynasty put the question of the vlast unavoidably front and center. Everybody across the entire
political spectrum was convinced that what Russia needed more than anything was a tvërdaia vlast, a
tough-minded vlast that could get things done.

Narod is usually translated ‘the people,’ but it implies a much sharper, clearly defined contrast
with elite educated society then anything in our experience. It included workers, soldiers (mainly peasants
in uniform), civilian peasants, urban lower classes, as well as the more plebian, ‘democratic’ sections of
the intelligentsia. The term ‘revolutionary democracy’ (or simply ‘the democracy’) pointed essentially to
the narod in its political aspect. The term ‘narod’ also has an emotional resonance that was an essential
part of the rhetoric of all the socialist parties. The quotations that follow will give a better idea of what
words such as agreementism, vlast and narod meant than any explanation from myself.
In the first two instalments of this series, we examined the Bolshevik message, which can be
summarized as follows: an exclusive worker-peasant vlast based on the soviets is the only way to
effectively defend the revolution and carry out its goals. We showed that this message was based on a
Bolshevik consensus that was much more fundamental than the many disputes that arose within party
ranks during 1917. We also showed that Kamenev and other Bolshevik leaders such as Stalin had been
propagating exactly this message already in March, before Lenin’s return to Russia – despite the
inaccurate narrative defended by many historians and by activists on the left. But the full meaning of the
Bolshevik message in the highly charged context of 1917 can only be discovered when we see it in
company with its rival: the agreementist message that commanded a majority in the soviet system until
fall 1917 and that was crafted by Tsereteli more than any other single politician.
The Great Divide: Agreementism in 1917
In order to show both the logical undergirding of the debate over agreementism and the range of
issues which it touched, I have constructed a little quiz. First, in order to set forth the essential nature of
this clash, I have extracted statements from the speeches of Tsereteli and Kamenev. These quotations will
provide the reader with a sense of the essence of ‘agreementism’ and ‘anti-agreementism’. I then present
a list of fifteen questions that touch on a wide range of the central political issues of the day. For each
question, I paraphrase the agreementist and the anti-agreementist response. My paraphrases are all based
directly on the speeches of Tsereteli and Kamenev at the March All-Russian Soviet Conference.
I present the dramatically opposed positions on each of these issues in the form of a quiz: the
reader has to choose which responses are based on the speeches of the agreementist Tsereteli and which
on those of the anti-agreementist Kamenev. At the end of the quiz, I provide a key. The quiz format is not
only for fun and games (a consideration not to be despised, of course) but to make a vital point about this
debate and its political significance. I expect this quiz to be extremely easy! And what does this fact tell
us? First, the basic logic of agreementism vs. anti-agreementism, as set forth in the quotations given
below, manifests itself in a wide range of issues in unambiguous fashion. And this clarity, we must
remember, is present in March, in wide-ranging debate at an all-Russian conference, before Lenin’s
arrival. Second, if the clash between agreementism and anti-agreementism is fairly obvious to us, then it
must have been completely obvious to informed participants and observers at the time. And it was!
In the following section, Kamenev and Tsereteli set forth the essence of their disagreement in
their own words, taken from their speeches at the All-Russian Conference of Soviets in late March.
Tsereteli and Kamenev Define the Clash over Agreementism
Tsereteli the agreementist:
Comrades, it was not the proletariat alone or the army alone who adopted this path of agreement;
but, I affirm, this path of agreement was adopted by an enormous part of the bourgeoisie—
otherwise we would not have had the Provisional Government … If one were to say that already
the time is ripe for us to regard the Provisional Government as a small group of people expressing
the self-centered interests of a particular sector of the bourgeoisie that is attempting to fight
against the Soviet of Worker and Soldier Deputies, it would mean that one does not see what is
occurring.
Kamenev the anti-agreementist:
revolutionary vlast [state power] as embodied by the Soviet of Worker and Soldier Deputies,
which sits here in our person.
Tsereteli the agreementist:
As long as there exists a platform which unites around it the enormous nucleus of the working
class and the revolutionary army, as long as the responsible circles of the bourgeoisie have not
deviated from this platform, we cannot say that our aim is to create another organ of executive
vlast as embodied in the Soviet of Worker and Soldier Deputies with the idea that we should
direct this vlast to overthrow the vlast embodied in the Provisional Government …
We proclaim that the Russian democracy is sacredly fulfilling its duty to Russia and to all the
peoples [narody] of the world [by pushing for a democratic peace and revision of war aims] and
will continue to fulfill this duty, but until its aspirations are realized not only in Russia but also in
other countries, it considers it a debt of honor to stand in the defense of the country, and it views
the present war in the light of the conditions under which it is being waged—under the
ascendancy [gospodstvo] of the Russian democracy—as the business [delo] of Russian
democracy.
Kamenev the anti-agreementist:
Too many high-sounding words have covered up the robber policies that triumphed and led to
war. Not high-sounding words, not a cover-up for the imperialist war, but the truth, the naked
truth about what kind of war this is—this is what all the peoples [narody] demand. We here, we
alone—the victorious revolution—can say this truth, and we must say it. We must say that this is
not a narodnyi war, that this war was not dreamed up by the narody, that the imperialist classes of
all countries have doomed us to this war …
There is, comrades, one situation when we will say that this war—not started by us, but fought
over markets and colonies—has indeed become ours, when we will not only support our brothers
dying in the trenches, but when we will say: let us create a revolutionary army, let us arm the
whole narod, declare revolutionary war. This situation is when the toiling classes of society
conquer the vlast by themselves for themselves, when these classes will defend in a revolutionary
struggle the principles of a system in which there will be neither war nor classes. Our war, the
one we will conduct, will be fought to create this system.
Agreementism and the Issues of the Day: A Quiz
1. Is there a clear and present danger from bourgeois counterrevolution in Russia?
a. A significant majority of the bourgeoisie understands the necessity for moving forward
alongside the revolutionary democracy – the soviet constituency – to accomplish the ideals of the
democracy at home and to bring about a democratic peace abroad by revising war aims. Yes, the
‘dark forces’ are trying to create a split between the workers and the soldiers by slandering the
workers. The best way to counteract these efforts is to demonstrate the patriotism of the workers
by straining every muscle to support the army.
b. A bourgeois counterrevolution aimed directly at the soviets is already forming; it uses the
Provisional Government—which covertly tolerates it—as a banner. Be on your guard!
2. Is there a qualitative difference between the two warring coalitions?
a. There is no essential difference between the two sides in this war: they are all imperialist
bandits. The Provisional Government is under the thumb of the Anglo-French capitalists, and the
only way to revise the war aims of the Allies is by a popular uprising.
b. One coalition –the Germans and the Austrians – is a militaristic threat to Russia’s very
existence and is now encamped on its borders. We owe a debt of honor to the other coalition –
our Allies with democratic political systems – not to act unilaterally but rather to strive for a
general revision of war aims.
3. Is a fundamental clash between the Soviet and the Provisional Government an inevitability in
the near future?
a. No doubt a clash is theoretically possible but it is highly unlikely. If such a clash should occur
—if the bourgeoisie that now backs the Provisional Government were to refuse to honor the
original agreement—then, yes, we will need to talk about replacement of the government. But
even then, a not insignificant part of the bourgeoisie will still be on our side.
b. Yes, and soon, because we’re dealing here with classes – classes with irreconcilable
differences. And so, when the inevitable clash occurs, replacing the Provisional Government with
a vlast exclusively based on the soviets will be put on the agenda a practical task.
4. On 25 March, just before the All-Russian Conference opened, the Provisional Government
issued an official declaration that gestured toward support of the views of the Petrograd Soviet about war
aims and a democratic peace. Was obtaining this declaration a great victory for Russian revolutionary
democracy?
a. In itself, it’s not a bad thing—but really, so what? This carefully-worded and oh so diplomatic
document is the very least we can expect from a soi-disant revolutionary government—and it
took us a whole month to get even that! Besides, who cares if a few individuals (and can we trust
long-standing imperialist politicians like Guchkov and Miliukov?) announce their rejection of
aspirations toward conquest. We need to think in terms of classes, not chance individual leaders.
b. The government’s declaration is a great victory for the Russian revolutionary democracy.
Foreign policy is always a harder nut for democratic forces to crack than domestic reforms. The
history of the declaration also shows that we who represent the soviet are able to successfully
exert pressure on the government.
5. What is the main aim of kontrol, that is, keeping a vigilant and informed eye on the doings of
the government?
a. Kontrol is necessary because we can’t trust these guys a second. Vigilant kontrol will reveal a
growing chasm between pious declarations and actual deeds.
b. Kontrol is an essential tool for keeping the government on the strait and narrow path of the
original agreement, and therefore, it should serve to reassure the democracy that the agreement
remains in force.
6. Did the Provisional Government really arise out of the revolution itself?
a. The Provisional Government did arise from the depths (nedra) of the revolution. The
government fights with us against the tsarist counterrevolution and against the ‘dark forces.’ It
will help us build a democratic Russia and to bring about a democratic peace.
b. The Provisional Government did not arise from the milieu (sreda) of the revolution. These
people were, are, and always will be alien to us.
7. We all agree that a ‘double vlast’ [dvoevlastie, usually translated ‘dual power’] is an
unworkable contradiction in terms. The very definition of a vlast – the final sovereign authority in the
country – presupposes that only one such authority exists. But is ‘double vlast’ an accurate description of
Russia’s present situation?
a. No, ‘double vlast’ does not exist in Russia at this time. In the original agreement between
revolutionary democracy and the government, the soviet wanted neither to take over the vlast
itself nor to hand it over to forces alien to the revolution. Thus there is only one executive vlast—
the Provisional Government—that can legitimately issue authoritative orders. Yes, one or two
times in emergency situations, the Petrograd Soviet took it upon itself to issue such orders, but
these were exceptions that occurred in the early days of the revolution.
b. Yes, Russia is experiencing a crippling ‘double vlast’. And, since any double vlast is inherently
unstable, the situation will soon have to be resolved one way or the other: either an undivided
vlast of the counterrevolutionary bourgeoisie, or an undivided vlast of the narod.
8. Who expresses ‘the will of the narod’, that is, the workers, peasants, soldiers and other lower
classes?
a. The will of the narod is expressed by both the Soviet and the Provisional Government, working
together on the basis of a common platform defined by the original and originating agreement.
b. The soviets, and only the soviets. Thus the soviets are the embryo of a fully-fledged
revolutionary vlast.
9. Has there been a clean rupture with tsarist foreign policy?
a. No, not in the least. We are still conducting a war whose aims are defined by secret treaties we
know nothing about – treaties negotiated by tsarist bureaucrats with complete lack of
transparency that tie us hand and foot to the Anglo-French capitalists.
b. A decisive break with tsarist foreign policy has indeed occurred, as shown by the Provisional
Government declaration on war aims issued just the other day. Of course, this rupture does not
preclude full cooperation with our allies France and England .
10. Is the cooperation of the Provisional Government with the Soviet due to sincere
understanding of the situation and an acceptance of basic Soviet aims, or is it due to a reluctant and short-
lived accommodation to force majeure, that is, the dominant position of the workers and especially the
soldiers on the streets of Petrograd during the February revolution?
a. The latter (accommodation to force majeure).

b. The former (sincere understanding of the situation).
11. Can we have confidence in the Provisional Government?
a. Are you kidding? We certainly can’t trust the individual members of the government any
further than we can throw them. Given the class composition of the Provisional Government, the
only rational attitude is absolute lack of confidence [absoliutnoe nedoverie].
b. Of course, we shouldn’t blindly trust a government that is, after all, a body that represents and
is responsible to the bourgeoisie. Of course, there is always a possibility that things will change
later on. But to picture the government straining at the bit to break the terms of our agreement is
not to see what’s happening. At the present time, the government and, behind it, a significant
majority of the bourgeoisie, deserve our confidence.
12. Under what terms should the workers provide material support of the army?
a. We should not disorganize the army, if only because we need it to combat counterrevolution.
But this is not our war—it is a war of the bourgeois gentlemen (gospoda burzhua), not the narod.
b. This war is very much the business of Russia’s revolutionary democracy. We should strain
every muscle, in concert with all the vital forces of the nation, to give the army everything it
needs. To limit ourselves to the paltry negative standard of ‘don’t disorganize’ is glaringly
insufficient: we need to assure the peasant soldiers who make up the army that this is their war.
13. How urgent is peace?
a. Extremely urgent. Every extra day, every unneeded drop of blood, prolongs the sufferings of
the narod, enriches the elite, and threatens the revolution. (Of course, if the revolutionary classes
take full power, it will finally become our war and we will be ready to fight for revolutionary
aims.)
b. We all want peace—but it has to be a general democratic peace, negotiated in coordination
with our allies. As we speak, we are working to bring about a general revision of war aims. But in
the meantime, we have to keep on fighting (and therefore talk of immediate peace is
demobilizing).
14. We know you cannot say this part out loud, or perhaps even contemplate it in foro interno.
But, if forced by circumstances to choose the lesser evil, which would it be: a ‘shameful’ separate peace,
or a risky, all-or-nothing military offensive? (NB: in June 1917, the coalition Provisional Government
launched a risky offensive, and in spring 1918 the Bolshevik signed a ‘shameful’ separate peace.)
a. While working to revise war aims, we need to undertake a truly effective and ‘strategic’
defense, and this certainly includes the possibility of ‘active operations.’
b. We should offer to open immediate negotiations with any country that is willing to accept basic
democratic principles (no annexations, no indemnities, right of national self-determination).
What’s shameful about that? (And if other countries reject our offer and refuse to negotiate, can
we be blamed for negotiating with only one side?)
15. Is coalition—the formal entry of socialist parties into the government—the logical and
inevitable outcome of an ‘agreementist’ tactic?
a. No. Coalition is unneeded and undesirable.

b. Yes, thus demonstrating the basic flaw of the whole tactic.
[Key to agreementist (Tsereteli) responses: 1.a; 2.b; 3.a; 4.b; 5.b; 6.a; 7.a; 8.a; 9.b; 10.b; 11.b;
12.b; 13.b; 14a; 15a]
The Unwritten Constitution
Anyone who has taken the Agreementist Quiz will have acquired a firm grasp of the fundamental
choice facing the soviet constituency, and thus the fundamental dividing line between, on one side, the
Bolsheviks and other anti-agreementist groups versus, on the other side , the agreementist parties who
enjoyed a majority in the soviet system in spring 1917. But to fully understand the political implications
this division, we need to look at a feature of the agreementist definition of the situation that the
Bolsheviks were only too happy to accept. This feature can be called the unwritten constitution of
Russia’s new political system, as seen by the soviet constituency and the socialist parties (and one never
accepted by elite society). A constitution defines the location of the sovereign authority, the vlast, in a
political system. An unwritten constitution is one that is not formally ratified but rather sets forth a
compelling and widely accepted narrative about the origin and legitimacy of the system.
The key claim in revolutionary Russia’s unwritten constitution as set forth by Tsereteli and other
agreementist spokesmen was that the soviets had de facto sovereignty. The ‘revolutionary classes’
represented in the soviet had made the February revolution, and they could therefore legitimately expect
to see any government in revolutionary Russia carry out the soviet program. The Bolsheviks had no
reason to reject this definition of the situation. Let us take a closer look at how Tsereteli portrayed the
unwritten constitution.
The Provisional Government was not viewed by agreementist spokesmen as an above-class
sovereign authority, or as an expression of the overarching Russian state, or even as an institution
responsible to the whole population. Rather, it was presented as the political expression of elite society, of
‘the bourgeoisie.’ This picture was complicated, but only slightly, by the presence in the cabinet of
Alexander Kerensky, still seen in March as a genuine representative of the Soviet. The Provisional
Government as a whole was pictured by agreementist speakers as the representative of the bourgeoisie,
and in fact responsible to it.
Where then was the vlast located in this system? As we have seen, the agreementist leadership
did not describe the prevailing arrangement as ‘double vlast’ – indeed, they consistently and insistently
denied that this description was anything but slander. The Provisional Government had the vlast, no one
else – so the agreementist spokesmen said. Nevertheless, at the same time, they also assured the soviet
constituency that they – the revolutionary workers and soldiers – had de facto sovereignty. They were in
charge (khoziain polozheniia, ‘master of the situation’). This assurance was backed up the following
propositions, which can be viewed as the legitimizing narrative underlying the unwritten constitution of
the soviet system:
1. The workers and revolutionary soldiers of Petrograd carried out the revolution.
2. They, the ‘revolutionary classes,’ brought the Provisional Government into existence due to the
original and originating agreement, negotiated via the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, in
the early hours of the February revolution.
3. The Provisional Government committed itself in this agreement to carrying out the will of the
revolutionary narod that mandated vast democratizing reforms at home and an energetic search for
democratic peace abroad.
4. The soviet system has the right, not only to set the contours of the government’s basic
program, but to impose kontrol over policies and to name ministers. For its own reasons, it may choose
not to exercise this option – but this choice remains its decision.
The duel over agreementism was not over this legitimizing narrative. It was not over whether to
retain or transfer this de facto vlast to another body. It was over the following fundamental choice within
the unwritten constitution: could the de facto sovereignty of the soviets best be exercised via a political
agreement with elite society as represented by the Provisional Government? Could the revolutionary
program – vast democratization at home, democratic peace abroad – be realized by means of such an
agreement? Or was any such agreement unworkable and bound to fail?
The following quotations document Tsereteli’s obsessive insistence on assuring his listeners that
‘revolutionary democracy’ as embodied in the soviets was indeed ‘master of the situation’:
Comrades, never has the Russian democracy [that is, the narod, the soviet constituency] been in
such a position of responsibility as at the present time, because it has never had such enormous
strength inside the country as it has now, after the overthrow of the old system …
Inside the country, the democracy is not in the position of an irresponsible minority, but in the
position of an enormous force, and without its assistance a government cannot exist in Russia, it
cannot govern the country …
[The All-Russian Conference of Soviets] views the present war in the light of the conditions
under which it is being waged – that is, given the ascendancy [gospodstvo] of Russian democracy
– as the business [delo] of Russian democracy …
We on our part are fulfilling our duty at a time when the democracy has triumphed in Russia …
Comrades, if our conference does not place itself on this path [revolutionary defencism], it shows
that it does not understand what an enormous, determinative power [sila] the democracy
constitutes during the revolutionary period …
Only because the bourgeoisie accepted this agreement [to carry out a common democratic
platform] did the democracy recognize this government and commit itself to support all the steps
of the government taken in this direction …
In view of the balance of forces that now exists, I think that the Soviet of Worker and Soldier
Deputies, should it consider this necessary for the interests of the whole narod, could even seize
the vlast.
Why did Tsereteli insist with such vehemence on the ‘determinative power’ of the revolutionary
democracy? First, he wanted to reassure his listeners that elite, educated society had no choice but to
satisfy revolutionary demands. Second, Tsereteli made heavy use of Spiderman’s mantra: with great
power comes great responsibility. The revolutionary narod must use its immense power wisely – for
instance, by exhibiting ‘wisdom’ about the need to defer its ‘extreme class aspirations’ or by
enthusiastically mobilizing for the war effort.

Whatever the motives of Tsereteli, the undeniable fact remains that the soviet constituency itself
thought it had the de facto vlast: the right and the duty to make ultimate decisions on the most crucial
issues. Any attempt to deprive it of this vlast was ipso facto counterrevolutionary. Agreementist
spokesmen insisted on this implication as much or more than their opponents. Agreementist and anti-
agreementists parted ways on how best to exercise this de facto sovereignty: by taking ‘the path of
agreement’ or by rejecting it as unworkable. Given this definition of the situation by the soviet
constituency as a whole, then, events could unfold in only one of three broad ways.
1. As Tsereteli hoped and predicted: clear and visible progress on the revolutionary program will
convince the soviet constituency of the basic sincerity of elite society or, in any event, of its ‘vital forces’
as opposed to the admittedly counterrevolutionary ‘dark forces’. A Constituent Assembly elected by both
narod and educated society will quickly give rise to a generally recognized vlast and thus put an end to
any lingering ambiguity about the location of sovereign authority. Russia will proceed peacefully into the
future.
2. As Kamenev hoped and predicted: there will be an ‘inevitable clash’ between the Provisional
Government and the soviets on basic issues, and this will convince the soviet constituency that the anti-
agreementist Bolsheviks had been right all along: the only way to effectively exercise de facto
sovereignty of the soviets is to make this sovereignty de jure, to deprive elite society of any political
influence whatsoever, and to install an exclusively soviet government.
3. As those outside the soviet system – the liberal Kadets and points right – hoped and predicted:
the soviets will renounce their de facto sovereignty, either voluntarily or (more likely) under compulsion.
Under the terms of the unwritten constitution, this last outcome would be perceived as successful
counterrevolution. The following implication should therefore be kept in mind: if a clear majority of the
soviet constituency ever decided to no longer give the benefit of the doubt to elite society – if it ever
concluded that elite society was counterrevolutionary to its core and partnership with it was impossible –
then the outcome predicted by Kamenev is the only one that respected the unwritten constitution of
March 1917. And, in the end, this is what happened. The soviet constituency rejected agreementism for
what seemed to it as compelling reasons. The Bolsheviks were then able to use the unwritten constitution
that was first put in place by their agreementist opponents in March to present themselves in October as
the champions of this constitution – and to portray the agreementist parties who refused to accept October
as the constitution’s enemies.
Final Comments
There are three takeaways from our examination of the Kamenev-Tsereteli duel over
agreementism. First, the duel was fought out in late March 1917 at the first all-Russian conference of
soviets in full view of the country. All participants and observers to the debate understood the profound
nature of the clash, and they understood as well that the Bolsheviks had made themselves the spokesmen
of anti-agreementism. Lenin’s arrival soon thereafter did not change the essential contours of the great
divide, as shown by the actual Bolshevik message broadcast to the soviet constituency throughout the
year.
Second, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Tsereteli was doing Kamenev’s work for him. One
is reminded of those cartoons that contrast ‘what you say’ to ‘what they hear.’ What did the soviet
constituency actually hear when Tsereteli told them so eloquently that they were masters of the situation?
Was it not the following: you are going to get your demands satisfied; if these demands are not satisfied,
it is the fault of the Provisional Government; in this eventuality, you workers and soldiers have the right,
the ability and even the duty to replace the Provisional Government. And, taking a step back, we have to
say that Tsereteli also made some very unrealistic promises to the soviet constituency about how much
cooperation was to be expected from elite society. He wrote checks based more on wishful thinking than
a realistic appraisal of the very real conflicts separating elite society and narod – and so he went
politically bankrupt when the checks became due.

Third, thanks to their loyalty to the unwritten constitution, the Bolsheviks were able to present
themselves throughout the year as its rightful champion. Accepting their minority status in the beginning
of the year, they later gained the legitimacy to form a fully soviet government, after the tide turned and
the soviet constituency abandoned any belief in agreementist tactics. In contrast, the agreementist
socialists in late 1917, by and large, rejected the right of the new anti-agreementist majority to form an
exclusively soviet government. They showed that their true loyalty was to their agreement with educated
society and with the Allies rather than to the unwritten constitution they themselves had propagated.
In a very real way, soviet power was proclaimed in the immediate aftermath of the February
revolution. Tsereteli’s insistence on the de facto sovereignty of the soviets – his message that the soviets
were ‘masters of the situation’ – established an unwritten constitution for revolutionary Russia, as seen by
the soviets. The significance of October is not, then, that it proclaimed soviet power, but rather that the
soviets had now made the fateful choice of adopting the anti-agreementist recipe of an exclusive worker-
peasant vlast and, therefore, of giving leadership to the one party that had consistently advocated anti-
agreementism from the very beginning of the revolution.
Documentary Appendix I: Kamenev One-Liners
[Anyone familiar with the secondary literature on Russia in spring 1917 will have read many times a list
of quotable quotes by Bolshevik leaders Lev Kamenev and Iosif Stalin, purporting to show that they
rejected the project of soviet power, no longer considered the war imperialist, had turned into
“revolutionary defencists’, gave ‘critical support’ to the Provisional Government, and so forth. I have
given much attention to explaining away these one-liners, that is, to showing what they really mean in
context. But, as it happens, there is a long list of neglected one-liners by these same leaders that show just
how preposterous is the standard description of their position. Tired of being on the defensive, I here
provide a long series of such one-liners (using the term figuratively and loosely), and I challenge those
who defend traditional interpretations to explain them away in the same manner as I have earlier
explained away the standard examples flourished by my critics. I am not suggesting that this material
provides a complete and fully nuanced picture of Bolshevik activity during March and April; rather, I
have extracted items that in and of themselves cause most damage to opposing interpretations.
Nevertheless, the following ‘one-liners’ present a fully accurate picture of what Kamenev was saying and
thinking in this crucial period.]
Part I: Before Lenin’s Return

14 March 17: ‘The Provisional Government and revolutionary Social Democracy,’
Pravda, unsigned editorial
Full worker-peasant vlast
The proletariat and the peasantry and the army composed of these classes will consider the
revolution now begun as completed only when it has satisfied their demands entirely and in full—
when all remnants of the former regime, economic as well as political, have been torn up to their
very roots. This full satisfaction of their demands is possible only when full and complete vlast
[vsia polnota vlasti] is in their own hands. Insofar as the revolution is going to develop and to
deepen, it will come to this, to the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.
Provisional Government is counterrevolutionary by nature
The Provisional Government, in accordance with the social nature of the strata from which it
came, would like to hold back the development of the revolution at its first steps. If they haven’t
done so as yet, it is only because they don’t have the strength for it … We must realize that the
paths of the democracy and of the Provisional Government will diverge—that, when the
bourgeoisie comes to its senses, it will inevitably attempt to halt the revolutionary movement and
not permit it to develop to the point of satisfying the essential needs of the proletariat and the
peasantry.
Against agreementism
The active forces of the great revolution are working for us; they are exposing the inadequacy and
the limitations of any attempt to solve the tasks of the revolution by means of compromise.
Absolute lack of confidence in the government
The slogan of the moment still remains: organization of the forces of the proletariat, consolidation
of the forces of the proletariat, peasantry and army by means of the Soviets of Deputies, absolute
lack of confidence [nedoverie] in any liberal promises.
18 March 17: Comments to Petersburg Committee

We need to win over a majority of the soviet constituency, and we can be confident that
we will succeed, if we present our message correctly
It is surprising that the Bolsheviks are not occupying a dominant position in the Petrograd Soviet
of Worker and Soldier Deputies—and why do they allow into the Soviet the liquidators, who do
not express the outlook of the Petrograd workers? We are the representatives of the revolutionary
element in Petrograd, but in the meantime, it seems that the wide masses do not understand us.
Evidently, since we are essentially correct, we are formulating our resolutions and decisions in a
way that the masses do not understand.
We should take the vlast when we are confident of being able to keep it – and this
moment is coming.
Have we developed to the point that we can create the dictatorship of the proletariat? No. What is
important is not taking the vlast—what is important is keeping it. [Nevazhno–vziat’ vlast,
vazhno–uderzhat’.] This moment will come, but it will be advantageous for us to put it off, since
right now our forces are still inadequate.
15 March 1917: ‘Without Secret Diplomacy,’ Pravda

We need to show the soviet constituency the actual aims of the imperialist war
The narody, drawn into an imperialist war against their will, [need] a clear answer about the
reasons why this war is being fought. And when millions of soldiers and workers on all fronts see
clearly the actual aims of the governments that dragged them into the bloody shambles, it will
mean not only an end to the war, but also a decisive step against the system of violence and
exploitation that causes all the wars.
22 March 17, ‘On War and Peace’, Resolution passed by Central Committee
International revolution is required to bring the Russian revolution to its full conclusion
The Russian revolution—the first in a series of revolution and uprisings by the proletariat that the
imperialist war will inevitably engender—can only secure for the peoples of Russia the maximum
of democratic liberties and social reforms if it becomes the starting point for the revolutionary
movement of the western European proletariat against their own bourgeois governments.
Against revolutionary defensism
The Social Democratic Party, as the leader of the proletariat in this struggle for peace, must
tirelessly make clear the true meaning of the present imperialist war and must struggle
undeviatingly against the imperialist current that is zealously cultivated and inflamed by the
liberal bourgeoisie, but also against the nationalist current in the revolution, as represented by the
petty bourgeois groups that have attached themselves to the revolution. Any vacillation in this
struggle and, what is worse, any bowing to this nationalist current, would be a betrayal of the
tasks of the international proletariat and, thereby, the true interests of the tasks of both the
proletariat and the entire toiling population of Russia.
22 March 1917: ‘On the Provisional Government’, Resolution passed by Central

Committee
Provisional Government is counterrevolutionary
The Provisional Government, as one put forward by the conservative bourgeois classes of [elite]
society and tied by its interests to Anglo-French capital, is incapable of resolving the tasks put
forward by the revolution. Its active opposition [protivodeistvie] to the further development and
deepening of the revolution is paralyzed only by the growth of the revolutionary forces
themselves and of their organizations. [We must] make clear the true class essence of the present
government.
Full and complete worker-peasant vlast
The Soviets of Worker and Soldier Deputies in the cities and the Soviets of Peasant and Batrak
Deputies in the villages, as embryos [zachatki] of a revolutionary vlast that will be prepared at a
given moment in the further development of the revolution to institute a full and complete vlast
[polnota vlasti] in alliance with revolutionary democracy so that the demands of the insurgent
people may be fully realized.
26 March 17: ‘Our Platform’, Pravda (unsigned), presenting the two Central
Committee resolutions from 22 March
Support for the Provisional Government is unacceptable
Some will say to us: why don’t you call outright for support of the Provisional Government, just
as the bourgeois and radical press is doing, as the party of Socialist-Revolutionaries is doing, and
Plekhanov and all social-patriots are doing? … Those who talk of ‘support’ forget or do not wish
to say that this government by its origins and by its interests remains a government of imperialist
war. We are socialists and internationalists. In our struggle with imperialist governments we do
not for a minute tie our hands. Therefore for us the task of the moment is the organization of
proletarian forces and of the revolutionary democracy generally, to whom only the further
deepening and development of the revolution will present the question of taking up a full and
complete vlast [polnota vlasti] from the hands of a Provisional Government that has exhausted
itself.
International Revolution is required to end the war with a democratic peace
Only a peace that has been created by the peoples rising up against imperialism is capable of
satisfying the demands of the toiling masses of all countries and nations. The path to this peace is
through the struggle of the proletariat in each of the warring countries against the imperialist
ambitions of their own country …
But liberated Russia must do what tsarism could not do and did not want to do: by its own
revolutionary example, by its open declaration of the necessity of ending the imperialist war that
is tormenting the peoples of the whole globe, it must draw all the toilers—all those who in all
countries have no interest in wartime profits—onto the path of the struggle against imperialism.
29 March to 3 April, Bolshevik resolutions at All-Russian Soviet Conference

Resolution on War: The War is Imperialist and threatens revolution
The present war arose on the ground of imperialist (aiming at conquest) aspirations of the
dominant classes of all countries, aiming at the conquest of new lands and at the subordination of
small and backward states. Each extra day of war enriches the financial and industrial bourgeoisie
and destroys and weakens the forces of the proletariat and the peasantry of all warring countries.
In Russia, furthermore, this prolongation of the war creates a menacing danger to securing the
conquests of the revolution and to carrying it out to the end [do kontsa].
Resolution on War: Only a worker-peasant vlast can make war justifiable (and will
publish and repudiate the secret treaties signed by the tsarist government)
Only a complete liquidation of the entire foreign policy of tsarism and the imperialist bourgeoisie
together with the liquidation of the international secret treaties and a genuine transfer of the vlast
into the hands of the proletariat and the revolutionary democracy would herald a [genuine]
change in the imperialist character of the war as far as Russia is concerned.
Resolution on Provisional Government: Its class essence ensures its enmity toward
deepening the revolution
Provisional Government consists of representatives from the conservative-bourgeois classes who

are tied to the interests of Anglo-French imperialism … the forces of counterrevolution, now
organizing by using the Provisional Government as a banner and with its open tolerance, have
already begun an attack against the Soviets of Worker and Soldier Deputies; the Soviets of
Worker and Soldier Deputies are the only bodies that express the will of the revolutionary narod.
29 March to 3 April, Kamenev speeches at All-Russian Soviet Conference

The counterrevolutionary Provisional Government deserves no credit for any
revolutionary measures
We must say: the Provisional Government comes out of the milieu of militaristic bourgeois
circles. It has been able to fulfil a few of the tasks set out by us [the Soviet] and by our masses in
their revolutionary creativity, despite its class nature, only under the pressure of the revolutionary
masses. This same government is the banner that covers up the organization of counterrevolution.
We must say that this counterrevolution that is being organized is already attacking the Soviet of
Worker and Soldier Deputies.
An atmosphere of counterrevolution
The comrade from Pskov said that we breathe an atmosphere of counterrevolution. This needs to
be said in any resolution in which we state our attitude to the Provisional Government: yes, we
breathe an atmosphere of counterrevolution.
The vlast of the soviets is the only counterforce to counterrevolution
Let me ask you: where do we find pushback [otpor] to this counterrevolution? In the Provisional
Government, used by the bourgeois counterrevolution as a front for its organization and to which
it swears fidelity? Or is the only pushback, not only to tsarism but to bourgeois counterrevolution,
found in the embryo of the revolutionary vlast of the narod itself: this Soviet of Worker and
Soldier Deputies?
Don’t kid yourself: the war is imperialist
In this grave moment, do not allow illusions to possess us: only one thing is demanded of you, the
same that we should demand of ourselves—the truth. Too many high-sounding words have
covered up the robber policies that triumphed and led to war. Not high-sounding words, not a
cover-up for the imperialist war, but the truth, the naked truth about what kind of war this is—this
is what all the narody demand. We here, we alone—the victorious revolution—can say this truth,
and we must say it. We must say that this is not a narodnyi war, that this war was not dreamed up
by the narody, that the imperialist classes of all countries have doomed us to this war.
Did I mention that the war is imperialist?
Let all our comrades know, let all former members of the International of the workers know, that
we salute not only the socialist in the streets of Berlin who called on the narod to throw over their
subjugation to capital and is now therefore sitting in Wilhelm’s prison—not just him, but all those
who remain faithful to the banner of international socialism, who, at the first sounds of the
imperialist call to arms, said: “no, bourgeois gentlemen, this is your war! We may still be
insufficiently strong to oppose our will that aims at the brotherhood of the narody to your will
that aims at dividing markets and colonies among yourselves, but we protest against the fact that
you, the slaveowners, use us to divide up and grab profits.”
Kamenev calls for “demands” on the government (Query: Did Kamenev seriously think
that the ‘counterrevolutionary’ Provisional Government would call for uprisings in Allied
countries? Or was he making ‘demands’ solely for agitational purposes?)
We must say: revolutionary Russia demands that the Provisional Government formulate the will
of revolutionary Russia toward peace, and [revolutionary Russia] expects that only an uprising of
the oppressed narody of other countries will support the Russian revolution and will create a
peace that in some small measure will make up for the immense waste of narodnyi blood, of
narodnyi forces, that the vampire of militarism has already sucked out of the world.
Agreementism is doomed, no support for Provisional Government
revolutionary vlast as embodied by the Soviet of Worker and Soldier Deputies, which sits here in
our person.
The policies of the Provisional Government are determined by its class nature
Political parties and assemblies [such as this one] do not judge according to specific individuals,
but according to the class nature of those strata to which a given individual belongs. And if this is
the case, than we must say in this resolution that putting on one side the course of development of
the Russian revolution and putting on the other side the class from which Guchkov and Miliukov
have emerged, [there is] another organ of the revolutionary vlast—not [yet] a vlast, but its
embryo.
Kontrol by the soviets of the Provisional Government aims, not at ensuring that
government policy is revolutionary (which will never happen), but to prepare for the
government’s removal
We must call for support, not for this legal defender of the illegal support for counterrevolution—
the Provisional Government—but rather for the establishment of the strictest kontrol, in
expectation of the moment when the development of the revolution in its elemental path leads to
a clash of the different classes of Russian society. We will then be compelled to fight off the
attacks of the Guchkovs. These are the truths we must proclaim …
‘Absolute lack of confidence’ in the Provisional Government (repeating the phrase from
Kamenev’s first editorial on 14 March)
I think that if revolutionary democracy wants to further develop the revolution, there is only one
position it can take: absolute lack of confidence [absoliutnoe nedoverie] in the government, one
that did not arise from the milieu of revolutionary democracy. [Applause] … We must say: the
Provisional Government comes out of the milieu of militaristic bourgeois circles.
We fully intend to replace the Provisional Government with a soviet vlast – only not ‘this
very minute’
In this resolution about relations to the Provisional Government, unless you counterpose the
organ of the revolutionary vlast to the Provisional Government, unless you state what is actually
the case, [namely,] that this organ will grow into the vlast, then—[although] right now we do not
want to overthrow this Provisional Government, we do not want to take the initiative of any
revolutionary struggle against this government at the given moment, this very minute …
A ‘double vlast’ (dvoevlastie, usually translated ‘dual power’) is intolerable, and can only
end with the single vlast of the soviets
We now confront the undoubted fact of a double vlast. From the report made yesterday by
comrade Steklov, it is completely clear that the relation between the revolutionary movement and
the Provisional Government is not only the result of an agreement, but at the same time the result
of a struggle both internal [that is, between the parties to the agreement] and, to a considerable
degree, stubborn … We need to say, in the resolution on our attitude to our Provisional
Government, how we understand this double vlast, and also, whether there exists, besides the
Provisional Government, another organizing center of the revolution, and [if so], what mutual
relations exist between them … The will of the revolutionary narod expresses itself in one organ
—an organ that is incarnated in the multifarious Soviets of Worker and Soldier Deputies scattered
over the whole Russian land. This is where the will of the narod is concentrated and in no other
place. And if this is the case, we must speak, not of support for the Provisional Government, but
exclusively of support for these Soviets of Worker and Soldier Deputies.
The soviets are not yet a vlast
The will of the revolutionary narod expresses itself in one organ—an organ that is incarnated in
the multifarious Soviets of Worker and Soldier Deputies scattered over the whole Russian land.
This is where the will of the narod is concentrated and in no other place. And if this is the case,
we must speak, not of support for the Provisional Government, but exclusively of support for
these Soviets of Worker and Soldier Deputies.
The foreign policy of the Provisional Government is identical to tsarism
And, comrades, I call you to face the truth. Dare to look this truth in the eye. We have overthrown
tsarism, and this means the liberation of the narody inside Russia. But does it also mean our
liberation from the methods of foreign policy that tsarism used, with complete lack of any input
from society [pri polnom bezglasii vsekh]?
No confidence in the Provisional Government
We need to say in the resolution exactly, clearly and definitely that the issue is not that the
Provisional Government is composed of these individuals or those, but rather, that it represents
the interests of a certain class of society—one that does not cease to be a specific class with its
specific interests, even though ten or twelve [individual] representatives make this or that
declaration. We need to say to the narod that if the government is tied by its interests to English
and French capitalism, then we cannot give our confidence to specific individuals. Political
parties and assemblies [such as this one] do not judge according to specific individuals, but
according to the class nature of those strata to which a given individual belongs …
Support for the Provisional Government? Are you kidding?
When we speak of support, are we talking about support for the dozen or so individuals, in whom
we do not believe, because we don’t believe in a single one of these individuals, we don’t believe
in Guchkov nor Miliukov? Or are we talking about confidence and support for a party [the Kadet
liberal party] that characterizes the role of the Soviet of Worker and Soldier Deputies in the way
we have just seen [Kamenev had just quoted imperialistic resolutions from the recent Kadet party
congress]? Or are we talking about support for the bourgeoisie as a class, that is openly busy with
counterrevolution? What kind of support are we talking about: support for a party, for a group,
for individuals or for classes in this revolution?
Ending this brutal war is our first priority
Gathered here together as sovereign [polnovlastnye] representatives of the narody of Russia, we

must say: ‘We not only call to all the oppressed, all the enslaved, all the victims of world
imperialism to an insurrection against slavery, against the imperialist classes, but we also say in
the name of the Russian revolutionary narod: not one drop of unnecessary blood will we allow to
flow to serve the interests of the bourgeoisie, either ours and theirs’ … The Russian revolutionary
army and the proletariat did not carry out a revolution simply in order to allow the blood to flow
even one extra hour, one extra unnecessary minute.
Support for the Provisional Government implies coalition—the kind of coalition called
for by socialists on the extreme right wing of Social Democracy such as Plekhanov
It would be completely logical for those representatives of the Soviet of Worker and Soldier
Deputies who yesterday defended a certain attitude toward the war in a manner well-known to us,
as expressed in the resolution [about the war] that we [that is, you, the majority of the
Conference] adopted, and it would be logical for those comrades who proposed to us that we
support this government, as in the resolution [about the government] proposed by Executive
Committee – yes, I would consider it logical on their part if they took the step [coalition] that has
already been predicted by one of the socialist groups, the group headed by G. V. Plekhanov. He
has written that, if we take the war as it is now, along with the secret treaties whose repudiation or
publication has been rejected here—if we call for support of the Provisional Government—then it
is natural to extend this support right up into entry into the government. I myself stand on
another point of view.
29 March to 3 April, Bolshevik party conference, end of March

‘An expression of support—even a hint—is impermissible.’
The point about support in the resolution proposed by Steklov [that is, the agreementist
resolution] is utterly unacceptable. An expression of support – even a hint – is impermissible. We
can’t support the government because it is imperialist – because, despite its declaration, it
remains in alliance with the Anglo-French bourgeoisie … In last evening’s amendments to the
resolution, we said that support was not possible. In view of the double vlast, the will of the
revolutionary narod is incarnated, not in the Provisional Government, but in the Soviets of
Worker Deputies, and it is they that must be strengthened, for they are bound to clash with the
Provisional Government.
The soviets and only the soviets express the will of the revolutionary narod
The task of the Congress is to proclaim to all Russia that the sole expresser of the will of the
revolutionary narod is the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, and that we must
strengthen and support them and not the Provisional Government.
Part II: After Lenin’s Return
8 April 17: ‘Our Differences’, Pravda

Endorses speeches and resolutions presented at All-Soviet Conference
[Lenin criticizes the policy of Pravda] as expressed at the time of the congress of Soviets and in
the statements of the Bolshevik delegates at that Congress. This policy of Pravda is precisely
formulated in the resolutions about the Provisional Government and the war as drafted by the
Bureau of the Central Committee and accepted by the Bolshevik delegates at the congress.
Against revolutionary defencism
[We will defend this platform] against the demoralizing influence of ‘revolutionary defencism’ as
well as against Com. Lenin’s critique.
Against agreementist socialist leaders in the Soviet
[Lenin’s tactic] differs profoundly from the tactic that the representatives of Pravda at the All-
Russian Congress defended against the official vozhdi of the Soviet [that is, ‘moderate’ socialists
such as Tsereteli] as well as against the Mensheviks who are dragging the Soviet to the right.
12 April 17: ‘On Lenin’s Theses’, Pravda

Against revolutionary defencism
What should be the policy of the party in relation to the war? The defencists says: we need to
defend the revolution at the front. Pravda says: we need to unfurl right now in Russia an
extremely broad campaign aimed at the whole narod for universal peace, and by so doing helping
out the proletariat of all countries to have an uprising against their governments. What say
Lenin’s theses? Nothing.
Uprising not now but later
If Com. Lenin is correct that “we need to overthrow the Provisional Government, but definitely
not right now”—and he undoubtedly is correct about this—then we must forthrightly label any
call to an immediate overthrow as one that is not appropriate at the present moment [emphasis
added], one that is harmful and that disorganizes the forces of the revolutionary proletariat.
Worker-peasant bloc implies that the revolution is “bourgeois-democratic”
But steps toward socialism, to the overthrow of capital, can only be done by the workers. But the
workers take into account that in the context of an uncompleted democratic revolution in the most
economically backward country in Europe, in a moment, when the village has not yet even
liquidate [all the effects of] serfdom,-- that this context and this moment does not at all
correspond to “decisive steps” to socialism.
20 April 17: Kamenev vs. Tsereteli at the joint meeting of the Soviet Executive
Committee and the Provisional Government during the April crisis that preceded the
creation of the first coalition (excerpt from Stalin’s Pravda article from 25 April 1917)
At the same time as Kamenev is debating with Lenin, he is given a highly responsible
assignment in a crucial political crisis in which he articulates the Bolshevik consensus
It is extremely characteristic that these arch-imperialist and counter-revolutionary
speeches of the ministers [of the Provisional Government] met with no rebuff from the
representative of the Executive Committee majority, Tsereteli. Scared by the ministers'
blunt definition of the situation, and dumbfounded by the prospect of their resignation,
Tsereteli, in his speech, implored them to make a concession that was still possible by
issuing an ‘explanation’ of the Note [affirming Russia’s treaty obligations] in a desirable
spirit, at least for ‘home consumption’. ‘The democracy’, he said, ‘would support the
Provisional Government with the utmost energy’, if it consented to make this concession,
which, essentially speaking, would be a purely verbal one.
A desire to gloss over the conflict between the Provisional Government and the
Executive Committee, a readiness to make concessions, so long as the agreement
[soglashenie] remained in place – such was the keynote of Tsereteli's speeches.
Quite the opposite was the tenor of Kamenev’s speech. If the country was on the verge of
disaster, if it was in the throes of economic, food-supply and other crises, the way out lay
not in continuing the war, which would only aggravate the crisis and might devour the
fruits of the revolution, but in its speediest liquidation. To all appearances the existing
Provisional Government was not capable taking on itself the job of liquidating the war,
because it was aiming for a ‘war to a finish.’ The solution therefore lay in the transfer of
the vlast to another class, a class capable of leading the country out of the impasse…
When Kamenev concluded, there were cries from the ministerial seats: ‘Well, then, take
the vlast yourselves!’.
24 April 17: Kamenev on how to achieve a worker-peasant vlast as soon as

possible (critique of Lenin’s proposed resolutions in Kamenev’s report to the April
Bolshevik party conference)
Paraphrase of Kamenev’s overall argument
[Our most urgent aim is – or should be – to replace the Provisional Government in the near future
with an exclusive worker-peasant vlast based on the soviets that alone will be capable of
defending the revolution and carrying out its goals. To achieve this aim, we need, first and
foremost, a strong alliance between workers and peasants – after all, the very name ‘soviets of
worker and peasant deputies’ reflects this alliance. We need to respect the non-socialist goals of
our class allies. We need to recognize that the basic task facing this alliance – land to the
peasants, liquidation of the pomeshchiki (gentry landowners) as a class – has not yet been
accomplished. We need aggressive agitation campaigns that make vivid demands on the
Provisional Government in order to expose its counterrevolutionary nature. We cannot be
passive, waiting for objective circumstances to do our job. We need to make concrete policy
proposals for solving pressing problems, or the soviet constituency will listen to other voices. We
need the kind of kontrol over government actions that will help us achieve a worker-peasant vlast.
Bottom line: we need to persuade a majority of the soviet constituency of the correctness of our
line, avoiding the Blanquist adventurism implied by premature attempts at taking over the vlast.
But some aspects of Com. Lenin’s theses seem to imply that this standard Bolshevik view of
things must now be ditched – thus dooming our fundamental aim in this revolution, the one that is
now going on in Russia: establishment of an exclusive worker-peasant vlast.]
Why Kamenev’s speech is so revealing
[Kamenev may or may not have understood Lenin’s outlook correctly – for us, this is not the
interesting question. What is essential to take away is these three points. 1. Kamenev’s whole
critique was based on the aim – axiomatic for all Bolsheviks – of installing in the near future an
exclusive worker-peasant vlast based on the soviet, a vlast that would replace the Provisional
Government. 2. Kamenev reiterated the same Bolshevik talking points he had maintained earlier
in Pravda throughout March and at the All-Russian Soviet Conference: the war is imperialist,
revolutionary defencism is unacceptable, the Provisional Government is hostile to the revolution
by its class nature, we must and we can persuade the soviet constituency of the correctness of our
message, and so on. 3. Kamenev’s description of Bolshevik operational tactics are an accurate
forecast of what actually happened (which is not to say that Kamenev was right where Lenin was
wrong – as noted, Kamenev probably did not understand Lenin’s outlook correctly).]
The replacement of the Provisional Government by an exclusive worker-peasant vlast is
an urgent matter of the near future
In one of these crises, and perhaps in the very near future, the question of the vlast will be posed
in the sharpest possible form.
A worker-peasant vlast implies a ‘bourgeois-democratic revolution’, not a purely socialist
revolution in which the proletariat does not need allies
[In the latter part of March,] the Bolshevik line received a definite, precise expression. We are
against revolutionary defencism and against the Provisional Government, but, at the same time,
we are against the immediate overthrow of the Provisional Government and against the
immediate transformation of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist one. [Why?] In
Russia … the revolution is not yet completed, because the whole mass of gentry [pomeshchik]
land still finds itself in the hands of the gentry. We should acknowledge that gentry landowning –
formally and factually a classic holdover of feudalism – is not yet liquidated, and that therefore
the aforementioned evaluation [that is, Russia is now experiencing a socialist revolution] is
premature …
If the bourgeois-democratic revolution is finished, then this bloc could not exist, no definite tasks
would stand before it, and the proletariat would conduct a revolutionary struggle against the
bourgeois-democratic bloc. Working together at such a moment would be completely impossible
…
The very name of the soviets – ‘worker and soldier deputies’ – implies a worker-peasant
bloc
We regard the soviets of worker and soldier deputies as the organizing centers of our forces and
the centers of the vlast. We must acknowledge that they are the central nodes [uzlami] of the
revolution. Their name alone [that is, “worker and soldier deputies”] shows that they represent a
bloc composed of petty bourgeois and proletarian forces, before which stand unfinished
bourgeois-democratic tasks … If we acknowledge the soviets as centers of the organization of our
forces, we therefore also acknowledge that there are tasks that can only be accomplished by an
alliance [soiuz] of the workers and peasants. And this means that the bourgeois revolution is not
yet finished, that it has not yet exhausted itself.
The proletariat indeed has a special role: the ‘hegemon’, the freely accepted political
leader, of the worker-peasant bloc
I think that we all understand that when a Bolshevik talks about the bourgeois revolution, he has
in mind, not the classical bourgeois revolution that we usually see in the 18 th century, but a
revolution that is taking place in the 20th century and therefore contains in itself all the
particularities of this century, that is, it is taking place in a time of war and there exists the
hegemony of the proletariat … In the process of revolution, the party of the proletariat will
present itself exactly and precisely as the party of socialist transformation [perevorot]. But that is
one specific task. The other task consists of working with the [worker-peasant] bloc, supporting
it, constructing our tactics with the aim of making sure we do not tear apart the bloc.
Our mantra must be: make sure we do not cause a schism between workers and peasants
[cf. Lenin’s final articles in 1923]
I think we must choose one of two tactics: either the proletariat stands before tasks that can be
carried out by itself alone, and not a single other social group is able to help him—and in that
case we break up the bloc and move over to carrying out tasks that can be fulfilled only by the
proletariat.
Or we take into account the fact that under the circumstances of the present moment this [worker-
peasant] bloc is viable and it has a future—and then we participate in the bloc and build our
tactics such that this bloc is not torn apart [razorvat’] … We are going forward with the bloc and
we can still take a number of steps together. I hope that a proletarian party will act in this manner.
The Provisional Government is counterrevolutionary and will clash with both the
socialist proletariat and the democratic ‘petty bourgeois masses’
Only by taking into account the concrete context—the existence of revolutionary petty-bourgeois
masses who travel with the proletariat only part of the way—can we build our tactics. We must
say that this Provisional Government will inevitably clash not only with the proletariat as a class
with a socialist outlook, but also—in view of the fact that the government is bourgeois and
imperialist—it will also clash with the entire petty-bourgeois bloc … Comrade Lenin doesn’t like
the word ‘revolutionary democracy,’ because it muffles the socialist face of the proletariat, but in
essence we have to say that the clash of the bourgeoisie with the entire revolutionary democracy
is inevitable.
We need majority support in the soviet constituency (as Com. Lenin seems to realize)
When Comrade Lenin says that the Provisional Government rests on the confidence given it by
the Soviet and therefore overthrowing it [at the present time] is not possible [svergnut’ ego
nel’zia], then he by that very acknowledgment sets boundaries to the tasks of the proletariat at the
present moment …
We as a proletarian party should state that we cannot speed up this process [by premature
attempts at overthrow]. For this reason, I’m completely in accord with Comrade Lenin when he
speaks out against too sharp a turn toward the slogan “Down with the Provisional Government!”,
but I think the point should have been made just a little earlier … And as a result of this
[inevitably looming] large-scale clash of the petty bourgeois with the Provisional Government,
the slogan ‘down with the Provisional Government’ will lose its Blanquist character. This slogan
will then compel these masses to aim at the establishment of a government that will actually
fulfill its demands.
The war ensures that the Provisional Government will act in a counterrevolutionary
fashion against soviet and other mass organizations
The continuation of the war is incompatible with the degree of freedom now enjoyed by the petty-
bourgeois masses: to fight a war with the kind of [mass] organizations that now exist, to fight in
an atmosphere of [continual] mass rallies, is a thing that is completely unheard-of and doomed to
defeat in every way. Thus a contradiction has arisen: on the one side, complete freedom and
organizations not seen before, and, at the same time, the attempts of the imperialists to continue
the war. And this will inevitably push the Provisional Government to struggle against this free
organization of the petty-bourgeois soldier masses and against a whole range of freedoms …
Either the revolution will cut short the war or the war will attack the conquests of the revolution.
To fight a war like they are fighting now is a thing that is of course impossible.
It is not enough simply to repeat that the war is imperialist, we have to propose concrete
ways of achieving peace
It is now utterly clear that the war is imperialist and that it can be ended only by socialist
revolution. It is correct that defencism must be rejected. I maintain that this war can be ended
only by a worldwide revolution and that fraternization is the most direct means for this. But
besides having a definite policy for the front in the form of fraternization, shouldn’t we also,
inside the country, carry out a struggle for peace as a political party should? If we don’t do it,
then the other parties will take this task upon themselves …
If you know that the struggle for peace begins in actual fact only when the revolutionary
proletariat stands at the vlast, and at the same time you know that the time for this hasn’t come,
then why aren’t there concrete suggestions for [the intervening period], but nothing more than
demands to liquidate the war? We have to show the masses concrete methods of struggle for the
period when the vlast has not yet come into our hands.
We need a positive policy for the period between the present moment and the moment
when we replace the Provisional Government
We give no confidence to the Provisional Government; we know that it must give up its vlast
after clashing with the organized Soviets and that the Soviets will be compelled to take over the
vlast whether at that moment it wishes to or not—but do we have any kind of tactic up to that
moment, when the vlast has not yet been transferred into the hands of the bloc? … We have to
show the masses concrete methods of struggle for the period when the vlast has not yet come into
our hands; we must make an effort so that comrade Lenin’s general, magnificently laid out
maximum program is brought into contact with real life by taking into consideration the
circumstances of the present war …
Of course, all of our activity can be considered explanation, but then it would be enough to write
resolutions and explanations. That’s hardly enough. We need concrete active steps that will give
the masses the possibility of arriving through their own practical experience at a whole series of
definite attitudes toward the Provisional Government … [By limiting yourself to ‘explanations’ à
la Lenin,] you are playing into the hands of our opponents and you will just sit around until
objective conditions give you the vlast.
Lenin’s “patient explanation” is no substitute for “genuine political work”
We will be left without [genuine] political work, we’ll be nothing but theorists, propagandists,
who write excellent treatises about the future socialist revolution, but who distance ourselves
from the situation we are now experiencing as political activists, as a political party with a
definite outlook. But, in the opposite case, if we demand a series of political actions, we will
know what demands from the Soviet should be proposed by the comrades who are carrying on
responsible work in the Executive Committee [of the Soviet], we will know that we cannot limit
ourselves to explanations … If you go to the Executive Committee and you are asked what you
have decided about the Provisional Government, and you say: it’s not time yet to replace it,
although at the same time it should be replaced [eventually], and for that reason we’re going to
wait until the vlast is transferred into the hands of the Soviets, and until then we will explain and
explain—by doing this, you will be giving the vlast into the hands of our opponents.
Kontrol by the soviets is an agitation technique to help us remove the Provisional

Government (and certainly not, ha ha, to get it to carry out revolutionary policies!)
But if we understand kontrol as a stage to the transfer of the vlast and organize it as a beginning,
as a stage, then that will be our political demand, one that will really lead us forward, because the
vlast should belong to the Soviets, but the Soviets are not taking the vlast.
Making ‘demands’ is an effective agitation technique; it in no way implies any
expectation that the government will actually carry out the demanded policies, but the
opposite: we bet our political future on the refusal of the Provisional Government to carry
out revolutionary policies
You know, comrades, that at the present moment, not one meeting goes by without a resolution
being passed that demands the publication of the secret treaties. Should we, as a political party,
take on ourselves to demand the publication of the secret treaties – announce that this is our
political demand? People will say to me: excuse me, you’re demanding something impossible.
But the demands I make are not founded on the expectation that Miliukov will respond to me and
publish the treaties. The policy of making demands that I am advocating is an agitational device
for the development of the masses, a method of exposure of the fact that Guchkov and Miliukov
cannot do this, that they do not want the publication of the secret treaties, that they are against the
policy of peace. It is a device for showing the masses that if they really want to create a
revolutionary policy on an international level, then the vlast must be transferred into the hands of
the Soviet.
This agitation technique is particularly useful in the context of welding together a
worker-peasant bloc
The policy of making demands—a policy that makes it a responsibility of a political party to
group around itself the forces of the masses, not only proletarian masses but also petty-bourgeois
ones? In the form of a practical demand, we see the necessity of grouping these masses [around
ourselves] in full awareness that when these masses really understand the policies of the
government, it will lead them to a direct clash with it and put before them the issue of the
overthrow of the Provisional Government—an overthrow that will thus follow as a result of a
lengthy process of the organization of our forces.
Documentary Appendix II. Lenin on the Bolshevik Message
1. Introduction to April Conference Resolutions (first published 3 May 1917).

‘Our party comes out before the narod, and, through the resolutions of its conference,
says to it’ the core Bolshevik message.
Workers, comrades!
The All-Russia Conference of the Russian Social-Democratic Worker Party united by the Central
Committee – known commonly as the party of the ‘Bolsheviks’ – has concluded.
The Conference has adopted very important resolutions on all the fundamental issues of the
revolution and the full text of them is published below.
The revolution is passing through a crisis. This could be seen in the streets of Petrograd and
Moscow between April 19 and April 21. This has been acknowledged by the Provisional Government. It
has been acknowledged by the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet of Worker and Soldier
Deputies. Still further confirmation of it has been given, as I pen these lines, by the resignation of
Guchkov.
This crisis of the vlast, this crisis of the revolution, is no accident. The Provisional Government is
a government of gentry landowners and capitalists who are tied up with Russian and Anglo-French capital
and compelled to continue the imperialist war. But the soldiers are worn out by the war, they are
becoming more and more aware that the war is being fought in the interests of the capitalists; the soldiers
do not want war. Furthermore, the grim spectre of an appalling debacle, of famine and complete
economic breakdown [razrukha] is advancing upon Russia and other countries.
The Petrograd Soviet of Worker and Soldier Deputies has also got into a blind alley by
concluding an agreement [soglashenie] with the Provisional Government, by supporting it, by supporting
the war loan, and, consequently, supporting the war. The Soviet made itself responsible for the
Provisional Government, and, seeing no way out of the situation, has also got itself into a muddle through
this agreement with the capitalist government.
At this great historic moment, when the future of the revolution is at stake, when the capitalists
are torn between despair and the thought of shooting down workers, our party comes out before the
narod, and, through the resolutions of its conference, says to it:
We must understand which classes are the motive force of the revolution. Their various
aspirations must be soberly assessed. The capitalist cannot travel the same road as the worker. Petty
proprietors are unable either to fully trust the capitalists or right away to make a decisive move toward a
close fraternal alliance [bratski-tesnyi soiuz] with the workers. Only when we understand the distinctions
between these classes shall we be able to find the correct road for the revolution.
The decisions of our Conference on all the basic issues of the life of the narod draw a clear
distinction between the interests of the different classes and show that it is absolutely impossible to find a
way out of the blind alley, given the policy of trust [doverie] in the government of the capitalists or
support for it.
The situation is one of unparalleled difficulty. There is one way out and only one—the transfer of
all state vlast to the Soviets of Worker, Soldier, Peasant, and other Deputies throughout Russia, from
bottom to top. Only if the vlast passes to the working class, supported by the majority of the peasantry,
will it be possible to count on speedily regaining the confidence of the workers of other countries, to
count on a mighty European revolution that will throw off the yoke of capital and put an end to the
criminal bloodshed in which the peoples are embroiled. Only if the vlast passes to the working class – if a
majority of the peasants support it – shall we be able to cherish the firm hope that all the toiling masses
will show complete confidence in that vlast and that all, without exception, work selflessly to bring about
a transformation of the entire way of life of the people in the interests of those who labor and not in the
interests of the capitalists and gentry landowners. Without such selfless work, without a gigantic effort on
the part of each and every individual, without firmness and the determination to rebuild life in a new way,
without the strict organization and comradely discipline of all workers and all poor peasants—without all
this there is no way out.
The war has brought all mankind to the brink of destruction. The capitalists have become deeply
involved in the war and are unable to extricate themselves. The whole world faces disaster.
Comrade workers! The time is drawing near when events will demand new and still greater
heroism—the heroism of millions and tens of millions—than you displayed in the glorious days of the
revolution of February and March. Be ready!
Prepare yourselves and remember that if, together with the capitalists, you were able to achieve
victory in a few days [in February] by a simple outburst of the indignation of the narod, that will not be
enough for victory against the capitalists, for victory over the capitalists. To achieve such a victory, to
have the workers and poor peasants take the vlast, keep that vlast and make proper use of it, you will need
organization, organization, and organization.
Our party is helping you as much as it can, in the first place by clarifying the awareness of the
distinctive positions of distinct classes and their distinct strengths. The decisions of our Conference are
devoted to this. Without this clear awareness, organization does not mean anything. And without
organization, action by the millions is impossible, success is impossible.
Don’t put your trust in words. Don’t be misled by promises. Don’t overestimate your strength.
Organize at every factory, in every regiment and every company, in every residential block. Work at your
organizing every day, every hour; do that work yourselves, for this is something you cannot entrust to
anybody else. Work to steadily, soundly and indestructibly build up full confidence in the advanced
workers on the part of the masses. Such is the main content of all the decisions of our Conference. Such is
the main lesson taught by the entire development of the revolution. Such is the one guarantee of success.
Comrade workers! We call upon you to carry out the hard, serious, untiring work of consolidating
a purposive, revolutionary proletariat of all countries. This is the one and only way out, the only way to
save mankind from the horrors of war and the yoke of capital.
2. May Mandate (unsigned front-page editorial in Pravda 7 May 1917). ‘As we

elect our representative to the Soviet of Worker and Soldier Deputies, we give him the
job of defending’ the core Bolshevik message.
Draft of a Mandate
For use in electing delegates to the Soviet of Worker and Soldier Deputies
As we elect our representative to the Soviet of Worker and Soldier Deputies, we give him the job
of defending the following views:
I. The War
The present war was begun by tsars, crowned kings and uncrowned robber-capitalists; it is a
predatory war, bringing only death and destruction to all the narody [peoples] of the world, but millions
in profits to a handful of capitalists. The secret treaties that Nicholas the Bloody signed with the English
and French capitalists, have to this day not been published. Yet blood is flowing because of these dark
and foul treaties up to the present moment.
Unless the vlast goes into the hands of the workers, soldiers, and the poorest peasantry—those
who genuinely do not want to be predators—we will continue to spill our blood only to serve the interests
of a handful of capitalists and landowners.
Ending the present predatory war with a just peace is only possible against the will of the present
governments, only by tossing out the capitalists and landowners in all countries. Socialists of all countries
must follow the example of Karl Liebknecht, who is sentenced to hard labor because he fought the good
fight against “his” Wilhelm and “his” capitalists.
II. The Land
All land—not just tsarist, state and monastery lands, but also those belongs to the landowners—
must be transferred without compensation to the peasants.
The peasants must take these lands immediately and sow crops right away. We must not wait for
the Constituent Assembly, which has not yet even been summoned. Any delay will put the whole
enterprise under threat. To wait would be disastrous! The plan of the landowners is to stretch things out
and, if that succeeds, disrupt the whole transfer of the land to the peasant.
The land, along with live and dead stock of landowner estates, must be taken over in organized
fashion, under the supervision [kontrol] of the Soviets of Peasant Deputies and the Deputies from
Agricultural Workers. No disorders should be permitted. Revolutionary discipline is necessary. Soldiers
from the front should send their delegates to the Soviets and Committees, that will have the kontrol over
the seizure of the land.
III. Labour
The 8-hour day must be introduced for all men and women workers in the towns and villages,
with increase in working wages that will at least keep pace with the cost of living. We must establish the
kontrol of the Soviets of Worker and Soldier Deputies over the production and distribution of products.
Without this, the country is threatened by famine. Not the “kontrol” of the capitalists, but only the kontrol
of the Soviet and Worker and Soldier Deputies can give bread to the cities, and cheaper industrial items to
the villages.
IV. The Vlast
All of the vlast [vsia vlast] in the country must belong solely to the Soviets of Worker, Soldier,
Peasant, and other Deputies (we must include the Soviets of the railroad workers and other civil servants).
Agreement [soglashenie] with the capitalists, leaving the capitalist gentlemen with the vlast, prolongs the
war and worsens the situation within the country.
No confidence to the “new” Government [the recently formed coalition of socialists and
liberals], for it remains a government of capitalists—no support for it, not a penny of money. No
confidence to the “defensist” parties that preach agreement with the capitalists and participation in a
government of capitalists!
V. The Police
Under no circumstances should we permit the restoration of the police. Instead of the police,
instead of a standing army, we need a militia, universal arming of all citizens of both sexes.
VI. The Economic Breakdown [razrukha] and the Cost of Living
A successful struggle with the economic breakdown and the lack of bread requires (1) ending the
war as soon as possible, (2) transferring as soon as possible the entire vlast into the hands of the Soviets
of Worker and Soldier Deputies. A Provisional Government that still consists of a majority of capitalists
cannot successfully struggle against economic breakdown. It preserves the profits of the capitalists and
the advantages of the landowners. It does not want to permit the workers to have supervision [kontrol]
over production and distribution of products – the kontrol that alone can lessen the breakdown. The
Provisional Government is incapable of the revolutionary measures that alone can save the country from
famine.
All of the vlast to the Soviets of Worker and Soldier Deputies! [Vsia vlast Sovetam Rabochikh i
Soldatskikh Deputatov!] The whole world will believe in it. Only then can we end the war and bring
Russia to happiness.
* *
*
Our delegate is obliged to act in the Soviet on the basis of this mandate. Anyone who deviates
from this path will be recalled by us, and in his place we will elect another delegate who supports our
views.
3. ‘The Tasks of Revolution’ (published in Pravda 26 and 27 September). We

must take the core Bolshevik message ‘to those down below, to the masses, to the office
employees, to the workers, to the peasants, not only to our supporters, but particularly to
those who follow the Socialist-Revolutionaries, to the non-party elements, to the ill-
informed’.
Russia is a country of the petty bourgeoisie. A gigantic majority of the population belongs to this
class. Its wavering between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is inevitable. Only when it joins the
proletariat is the victory of the revolution, of the cause of peace, freedom, and land for the working people
assured easily, peacefully, quickly, and smoothly.
The course of our revolution is showing us this wavering in practice. Let us then not harbour any
illusions about the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties; let us stick firmly to our proletarian
class path. The poverty of the poor peasants, the horrors of the war, the horrors of hunger—all these are
showing the masses more and more clearly the correctness of the proletarian path, the need to support the
proletarian revolution.
‘Peaceful’ petty-bourgeois hopes about a ‘coalition’ with the bourgeoisie or agreementism with
them, that it will be possible to wait ‘calmly’ for the ‘speedy’ convocation of the Constituent Assembly,
etc., have been mercilessly, cruelly, implacably destroyed by the course of the revolution. The Kornilov
revolt was the last cruel lesson, a lesson on a grand scale, supplementing thousands upon thousands of
small lessons in which workers and peasants were defrauded by local capitalists and landowners, in which
soldiers were defrauded by officers etc., etc.
Discontent, indignation and wrath are growing in the army, among the peasantry and among the
workers. The ‘coalition’ of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks with the bourgeoisie –
promising everything and fulfilling nothing – is irritating the masses, is opening their eyes, is pushing
them towards an uprising.
The opposition from the left is growing among the Socialist-Revolutionaries (Spiridonova and
others) and among the Mensheviks (Martov and others), and has already reached up to forty per cent of
the Council and Congress of those parties. And down below, among the proletariat and the peasantry,
particularly the poorest sections, the majority of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks belong to
the ‘lefts’.
The Kornilov business [kornilovshchina] is teaching us. The Kornilov business has taught people
a good deal.
It is impossible to know whether the soviets will be able to go farther than the leaders of the
Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, and thus ensure a peaceful development of the revolution, or
whether they will continue to mark time, thus making a proletarian uprising inevitable.
We cannot know this.
Our business is to help get everything possible done to make sure the ‘last’ chance for a peaceful
development of the revolution, to help by the presentation of our program, by making clear that it is based
on the narod as a whole [obshchenarodnoe], making clear its absolute accord with the interests and
demands of a vast majority of the population.
The following lines are an attempt to set out this program.

Let us take it more to those down below [nizy], to the masses, to the office employees, to the
workers, to the peasants, not only to our supporters, but particularly to those who follow the Socialist-
Revolutionaries, to the non-party elements, to the ill-informed [tëmnye]. Let us lift them up to the level of
independent judgment, to making their own decisions, to sending their delegations to the [Democratic]
Conference, to the soviets, to the government and our work will not have been in vain, no matter what the
outcome of the Conference. This will then prove useful for the [Democratic] Conference, for the elections
to the Constituent Assembly, and for all other political activity in general.
Experience teaches the correctness of the Bolshevik program and Bolshevik tactics. From April
20 [the ‘April days’, the first major post-February political crisis] to the Kornilov revolt – so little time, so
much lived through.
The experience of the masses, the experience of oppressed classes taught them a huge amount in
that time; the leaders of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks have completely cut themselves off
from the masses. Our extremely concrete program – insofar as we succeed in bringing it to the masses –
will reveal this better than anything.
Agreementism With the Capitalists is Disastrous

1. To leave the representatives of the bourgeoisie, even a small number of them, with the vlast –
to leave with the vlast such notorious Kornilovites as Generals Alexeyev, Klembovsky, Bagration,
Gagarin, and others, or such as have proved their complete lack of strength in face of the bourgeoisie, or
their ability of acting Bonaparte-fashion like Kerensky, with the vlast – is, on the one hand, merely
opening the door wide to famine and to the inevitable economic catastrophe which the capitalists are
purposely accelerating and intensifying; on the other hand, it will lead to a military catastrophe, since the
troops hate the General Staff and cannot enthusiastically participate in the imperialist war. Besides, there
is no doubt that Kornilovite generals and officers remaining in power will deliberately open the front to
the Germans, as they have done in Galicia and Riga.
All this can be prevented only by the formation of a new government on a new basis, as
expounded below. To continue agreementism of any kind whatsoever with the bourgeoisie after all that
we have gone through since April 20 would be, on the part of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and
Mensheviks, not only an error but a direct betrayal of the narod and of the revolution.
Vlast to the Soviets

2. The whole vlast in the state must pass exclusively to representatives of the Soviets of Worker,
Soldier and Peasant Deputies, on the basis of a definite program and under the condition of the vlast being
fully responsible to the soviets. New elections to the soviets must be held immediately, both to register
what the narod has experienced during the recent weeks of the revolution – weeks particularly rich in
content – and to eliminate some crying injustices (lack of proportional representation, unequal elections,
etc.) which here and there remain uncorrected.
All the vlast in the localities, wherever there are not yet any democratically elected institutions,
and also in the army, must be transferred exclusively to the local Soviets and to commissars elected by
them, and other institutions, if elective.
Everywhere and without exceptions, with the full support of the state, must be carried out the
arming of the workers and also of those troops who have shown their revolutionary nature by their ability
in practice to suppress the Kornilovites.
Peace to the narody

3. A soviet government must straight away offer to all the belligerent narody (i.e., simultaneously
both to their governments and to the worker and peasant masses) to conclude an immediate general peace
on democratic terms, and also to immediately conclude an armistice (even if only for three months).
The main condition for a democratic peace is the renunciation of annexations (seizures)—not in
the incorrect sense that all the great powers get back what they have lost, but in the only correct sense that
every nationality without any exception, both in Europe and in the colonies, shall obtain its freedom and
the possibility to decide for itself whether it is to form a separate state or whether it is to be a component
part of some other state.
In offering the peace terms, the Soviet Government must itself immediately take steps towards
their fulfilment, i.e., it must publish and repudiate the secret treaties by which we have been tied to the
present time, those which were concluded by the tsar and which give Russian capitalists the promise of
the pillaging of Turkey, Austria, etc. Then we must immediately satisfy the demands of the Ukrainians
and the Finns, ensure them, as well as all other non-Russian nationalities in Russia, full freedom,
including freedom of secession, applying the same to all Armenia, undertaking to evacuate that country as
well as the Turkish lands occupied by us, etc.
Such peace terms will not meet with the approval of the capitalists, but they will meet with such
tremendous sympathy on the part of all the narody and will cause such a great world-wide outburst of
enthusiasm and of general indignation against the continuation of the predatory war that it is extremely
probable that we shall at once obtain a truce and a consent to open peace negotiations. For the worker
revolution against the war is irresistibly growing everywhere, and it can be spurred on, not by phrases
about peace (with which the workers and peasants have been deceived by all the imperialist governments,
including our own Kerensky government), but by a break with the capitalists and by the offer of peace.
If the least probable thing happens, i.e., if not a single belligerent state accepts even a truce, then
as far as we are concerned the war becomes truly forced upon us, it becomes a truly just war of defence.
Just the awareness of this fact by the proletariat and the poor peasantry will make Russia many times
stronger even in the military sense, especially after a complete break with capitalists who are robbing the
narod; furthermore, under such conditions it would, as far as we are concerned, be a war in alliance with
the oppressed classes of all countries, a war in alliance with the oppressed narody of the whole world, not
in word, but in deed.
The narod must be particularly cautioned against the capitalists' assertion which sometimes
influences the petty bourgeoisie and others who are frightened, namely, that the British and other
capitalists are capable of doing serious damage to the Russian revolution if we break the present
predatory alliance with them. Such an assertion is false through and through, for ‘Allied financial aid’
enriches the bankers and ‘supports’ the Russian workers and peasants in exactly the same way as a rope
supports a man who has been hanged. There is plenty of bread, coal, oil and iron in Russia; for these
products to be properly distributed it is only necessary for us to rid ourselves of the landowners and
capitalists who are robbing the narod. As to the possibility of the Russian narod being threatened with
war by their present Allies, it is obviously absurd to assume that the French and Italians could unite their
armies with those of the Germans and move them against a Russia offering a just peace. As to Britain,
America, and Japan, even if they were to declare war against Russia (which for them is extremely
difficult, both because of the extreme unpopularity of such a war among the masses and because of the
divergence of material interests of the capitalists of those countries over the partitioning of Asia,
especially over the plunder of China), they could not cause Russia one-hundredth part of the damage and
misery which the war with Germany, Austria, and Turkey is causing her.
Land to the toilers

4. The Soviet Government must immediately declare the abolition of private property on gentry-
landowner land [na pomeshchichi zemli], without compensation, and transfer all land over to management
by peasant committees, pending the solution of the problem by the Constituent Assembly. Gentry-
landowner equipment must also be transferred to the management of these same peasant committee, with
the proviso that they be placed first of all at the disposal of the poorest peasants for their use free of
charge.
Such measures, which have long been demanded by an immense majority of the peasantry, both
in the resolutions of its congresses and in hundreds of mandates from the localities (as may be seen, for
instance, from the summary of 242 mandates published by Izvestia of the Soviet of Peasant Deputies), are
absolutely and urgently necessary. The procrastination from which the peasantry suffered so much during
the time of the ‘coalition’ government is no longer tolerable.
Any government that is slow to introduce these measures should be regarded as a government
hostile to the narod, one worthy of being overthrown and crushed by an uprising of the workers and
peasants. On the other hand, only a government that realises these measures will be a government of the
narod as a whole [vsenarodnoe].
Struggle Against Famine and Breakdown [Razrukha]

5. A soviet government must immediately introduce worker kontrol of production and
distribution on a country-wide scale. Experience since May 6 [when the first coalition government took
office] has shown that in the absence of such kontrol all the promises of reforms and attempts to introduce
them are powerless, and famine, accompanied by unprecedented catastrophe is becoming a greater
menace to the whole country week by week.
It is necessary to nationalise the banks and the insurance business immediately, and also the most
important branches of industry (oil, coal, metallurgy, sugar, etc.), and at the same time, to abolish
commercial secrets and to establish unrelaxing supervision by the workers and peasants over the
negligible minority of capitalists who wax rich on government contracts and evade transparency and the
just taxation of their profits and property.
Such measures, which do not deprive either the middle peasants, the Cossacks or the small
handicraftsmen of a single kopek, are urgently needed for the struggle against famine and are absolutely
just because they distribute the burdens of the war equitably. Only after capitalist plunder has been curbed
and the deliberate sabotage of production has been stopped will it be possible to work for an improvement
in labour productivity, introduce universal labour conscription and the proper exchange of grain for
manufactured goods, and return to the Treasury thousands of millions in paper money now being hoarded
by the rich.
Without such measures, the abolition of property in gentry-landowner land without compensation
is also impossible, for the major part of the estates is mortgaged to the banks, so that the interests of the
landowners and capitalists are inseparably linked up.
The latest resolution of the Economic Section of the All-Russian TsIk [national governing body]
of the Soviets of Worker and Soldier Deputies (Rabochaya Gazeta No. 152 {Menshevik party
newspaper]) recognises not only the ‘harm’ caused by the government's measures (like the raising of
grain prices [government fixed prices had been doubled in August] for the enrichment of the gentry
landowners and kulaks), not only ‘the fact of the complete inactivity on the part of the central organs set
up by the government for the regulation of economic life’, but even the ‘contravention of the laws’ by this
government. This admission on the part of the ruling parties – the Socialist-Revolutionaries and
Mensheviks – proves once more the criminal nature of the policy of agreementism with the bourgeoisie.
Struggle Against the Counter-Revolution of the Gentry Landowners and Capitalists

6. The Kornilov and Kaledin revolt was supported by the entire class of the gentry landowners
and capitalists, with the party of the Kadets (a party that puts ‘freedom of the narod’ into their official
title) at their head. This has already been fully proved by the facts published in Izvestia TsIK.
However, nothing has been done for the full suppression of the counterrevolution – not even to
carry out a full investigation – and nothing serious can be done without the transfer of the vlast to the
Soviets. No commission without the backup of the state vlast can conduct a full investigation, or arrest the
guilty, etc. Only a soviet government can do this, and must do it. Only a soviet government can make
Russia secure against the otherwise inevitable repetition of ‘Kornilovite’ attempts by arresting the
Kornilovite generals and the ringleaders of the bourgeois counter-revolution (Guchkov, Miliukov,
Riabushinsky, Maklakov and Co.), by disbanding the counter-revolutionary associations (the State Duma,
the officers' unions, etc.), by placing their members under the surveillance of the local soviets and by
disbanding counter-revolutionary armed units.
This government alone can set up a commission to make a full and public investigation of the
Kornilov case – and all the other cases, yes, including those started by the bourgeoisie. Only to such a
commission could the party of the Bolsheviks, in its turn, call on the workers to give their full co-
operation and to take its orders.
Only a soviet government could successfully combat such a flagrant injustice as the seizure by
the capitalists of the largest printing presses and most of the newspapers with the aid of millions squeezed
out of the people. It is necessary to suppress the bourgeois counter-revolutionary newspapers (Rech,
Russkoye Slovo), to confiscate their presses, to declare private advertisements in the papers a state
monopoly and to transfer them to the government newspaper to be published by the soviets – a newspaper
that will tell the peasants the truth. Only in this way can we knock out of the hands of the bourgeoisie a
powerful weapon for lying and slandering, defrauding the narod, leading the peasantry into illusions, and
preparing a counter-revolution – and so we must do it.
Peaceful Development of the Revolution

7. A possibility very seldom to be met with in the history of revolutions now presents itself to the
democracy of Russia [that is, to the soviet constituency of workers and peasants], the soviets and the
Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties—the possibility of convening the Constituent Assembly at
the appointed date without further delays, of making the country secure against a military and economic
catastrophe, and of ensuring the peaceful development of the revolution.
If the soviets now take the full state vlast exclusively into their own hands for the purpose of
carrying out the program set forth above, they will not only obtain the support of nine-tenths of the
population of Russia, the working class and an overwhelming majority of the peasantry; they will also be
assured of the greatest revolutionary enthusiasm on the part of the army and the majority of the narod, an
enthusiasm without which victory over famine and war is impossible.
There could be no question of any resistance to the soviets if the soviets themselves do not waver.
No class will dare start an uprising against the soviets, and the gentry landowners and capitalists, taught a
lesson by the experience of the Kornilov revolt, will concede the vlast peacefully and yield to the
demands and ultimatum of the soviets. To overcome the resistance of the capitalists to the soviet program,
supervision over the exploiters by workers and peasants and such measures of punishing the recalcitrants
as confiscation of their entire property, coupled with a short term of arrest, will be sufficient.
By seizing the full vlast, the soviets could still today – and this is probably their last chance –
ensure the peaceful development of the revolution, peaceful elections of deputies by the people, and a
peaceful struggle of parties inside the soviets; they could test the programs of the various parties in
practice and the vlast could pass peacefully from one party to another.
If this opportunity is missed, the entire course of development of the revolution, from the street
demonstrations of April 20 to the Kornilov revolt, shows that there is bound to be the bitterest civil war
between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Inevitable catastrophe [caused by agreementist coalitions]
will bring this civil war nearer. It must end, as all the facts and considerations accessible to human reason
go to prove, in the full victory of the working class, in full support given to the workers by the poor
peasantry, in order that the program we have set out is implemented. It may, however, prove very difficult
and bloody, and may cost the lives of tens of thousands of gentry landowners, capitalists, and officers
who sympathise with them. The proletariat will not stop before any sacrifice for the salvation of the
revolution – a salvation which is impossible without implementation of the program set forth above. On
the other hand, the proletariat will support the soviets in every way – if they make use of their last chance
to secure a peaceful development of the revolution.

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Lih, Bolshevik Message in 1917, Page 1

The Bolshevik Message in 1917

With Two Documentary Appendices

First published in Weekly Worker, 17 December 2020, 7 and 28 January 2021

Documentary Appendix I: Kamenev One-Liners

1. The Bolshevik message to the soviet constituency in 1917 can be formulated as

I: The Curious Case of Comrade Kamenev

the complete opposite of the truth. A curious case, indeed!

The Bolshevik Message in 1917

and carry out its goals.

how to achieve these commonly accepted aims.

Provisional Government is sincerely working to revise war aims in a democratic direction.

their tactical guidelines into practice?

campaignism of the prewar international Social Democratic movement.

to a separate peace with Germany and Austro-Hungary.

move against the revolution in the near future.

explanation is worthy of our close attention:

Kamenev one-liners: dealing with anomalies

possibility that Kamenev said what he in fact did say.

about Bolshevik consensus.

the Soviets!’ that John Riddell made available on his blog.

‘One-liners’ is a somewhat figurative description – many items in my document stretch out to

of what Kamenev was saying and thinking in this crucial period.

Before Lenin’s return: Kamenev propagates the Bolshevik message

between the ‘democratic’ narod and the ‘bourgeois’ Provisional Government:

the strength for it’.

form adopted a couple of months later: All Power to the Soviets!

insisted on the counterrevolutionary nature of the Provisional Government:

fledged revolutionary vlast:

of violence and exploitation that causes all the wars.’

in opposing this socialist ‘nationalist current’ would be a betrayal of basic principles.

After Lenin’s return: Kamenev on how to achieve a worker-peasant vlast as soon

full soviet power.

was a viable proposition only through the worker-peasant bloc.

democratic bloc. Working together at such a moment would be completely impossible.’

paraphrase of his full argument in April:

factually a classic holdover of feudalism—is not yet liquidated.’

II: Lenin and the Bolshevik Message

sort of political ‘agreement’ with educated Russian society.

soviet power as soon as possible.

He was there in the room …

the slightest concession to “revolutionary defencism”! No support for the Provisional

Bolshevik message in the most straightforward terms possible.

Today I saw upon the stair …

Consider the following statement in which a prominent historian of Bolshevism describes

Lenin’s April Theses:

socialist, and there was no challenge to this ideological dominance whatsoever.

used for perverted militaristic ends.

Three: The imminent outbreak of a socialist, proletarian revolution in Western Europe

confidence to carry out their project of an exclusive soviet vlast.

forth in his original writings of 1905-1907.

The socialist revolution presupposes a long work of enlightenment and organization in

agreementists and anti-agreementists at the All-Russian Soviet Conference in late March/early

advocating permanent revolution.

agreementist socialists would accuse him of advocating immediate socialist transformation. As it

Constituent Assembly, and so forth) .’

Theses to a mixed Bolshevik/Menshevik audience on 4 April. On the following day, Plekhanov’s

Theses appear in print, already accompanied by attempts to combat various misunderstandings.

was on the agenda.