Petrograd Soviet
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The Petrograd Soviet, or Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, was the council set up in Petrograd (Saint Petersburg, Russia) in March 1917 as the representative body of the city's workers.
A workers' soviet had been created in St. Petersburg in 1905, see St. Petersburg Soviet. But the precursor to the 1917 Soviet was the Central Workers' Group (Tsentral'naya Rabochaya Grupa -- Центральная Рабочая Група), founded in November 1915 by the Mensheviks to sit between workers and the new Central Military-Industrial Committee in Petrograd. The group became increasingly radical as the war progressed and the economic situation became worse – encouraging street demonstrations and issuing 'revolutionary' proclaimations.
On January 27, 1917 (all dates O.S. unless stated) the entire leadership of the Central Workers' Group was arrested and taken away to the Peter and Paul Fortress on the orders of Aleksandr Dmitrievich Protopopov, the Minister of the Interior. They were freed by a crowd of disaffected soldiers on the morning of February 27, the beginning of the February Revolution, and the chairman declared a meeting to organise and elect a Soviet of Workers' Deputies that day.
That evening between fifty and three hundred people attended the meeting at the Taurida Palace. A provisional executive committee, an Ispolkom, was chosen with Nikolai Semyonovich Chkheidze as head and mostly Menshevik deputies (Chkheize was replaced by Irakli Tsereteli in late March). Izvestiya was chosen as the official newspaper of the group. The following day, February 28, was the plenary session; elected representatives from factories and the military joined the Soviet, and again moderates dominated. Non-representative voting and enthusiasm gave the Soviet almost 3,000 deputies in two weeks, of which the majority were soldiers. The meetings were chaotic, confused and unruly – little more than a stage for speechmakers. The party-based Ispolkom quickly took charge of actual decision-making.
The Ispolkom members came only from political groups, with every socialist party given three seats (agreed March 18). This created an intellectual and radical head to the peasant-, worker-, and soldier-dominated body. The Ispolkom meetings were more intense and almost as disorderly as the public meetings and often extremely long.
On March 1 the Ispolkom resolved to remain outside any new Duma-created government. This allowed the group to criticize without responsibility and kept them away from any potential backlash.
On March 2 the Soviet received the eight-point program of the Provisional Committee and appointed an oversight committee (nabliudatel'nyi komitet) and issued a decidedly conditional statement of support. Worse, the Soviet undermined the Provisional Government by issuing its own orders, beginning with the (in)famous seven-article Order No. 1 to the military on March 1 - attacking and reducing the authority of military officers and the Provisional Government, putting anti-Government socialist Soviets throughout the military structure. The Soviet was not opposed to the war - internal divisions produced a public ambivalence – but was deeply worried about counter-revolutionary moves from the military and was determined to have garrison troops firmly on its side.
Existing as an alternate source of authority to Prince Lvov's Provisional Government created a situation described as dvoevlastie (dyarchy or dual power) which lasted from March until the October Revolution. The Ispolkom often publicly attacked the 'bourgeois' Government and boasted of its de facto power over de jure authority (to use a later quote from Trotsky) – it had control over post and telegraphs, the press, railroads, food supply, etc. A 'shadow government' with a Contact Commission (created March 8) to "inform... [the Provisional Government] about the demands of the revolutionary people, to exert pressure on the government to satisfy all these demands, and to exercise uninterrupted control over their implementation." On March 19 the control extended into the military front-lines with commissars appointed, with Ministry of War support.
The Ispolkom expanded to nineteen members on April 8, nine representing the Soldiers' Section and ten the Workers' Section. All members were socialists, the majority Mensheviks or SRs, there were no Bolshevik. After the All-Russian Consultation of Soviets, the Petrograd Soviet began adding representatives from other parts of the nation and the front-lines, renaming itself the All-Russian Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. The committee became the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (CEC or VTsIK) with over seventy members – including no peasant representatives. The mass meeting of the entire body were tapered off, being reduced from daily in the first weeks to roughly weekly by April.
Disputes over war aims led to street protests on April 20 and 21, including military units protesting outside the Mariinskii Palace. The unrest was quickly directed by Bolshevik leaders into, what some interpret, as a putsch attempt. The Ispolkom issued proclaimations to restrain disorder and repeatedly quashed Lavr Kornilov's demands to put troops and artillery on the streets. There were riots in Petrograd, and also Moscow, but anti-Bolshevik and pro-Government groups soon stopped the agitators.
The riots deeply worried the Provisional Government. There were a number of resignations and on May 1 the Ispolkom voted to allow its members to take cabinet posts (the Bolsheviks and the followers of Martov opposed the move), in return for further concessions. After negotiations a new cabinet was chosen on May 6; Guchkov and Miliukov were out; Alexander Kerensky was moved to War; and six socialists took cabinet posts.
The Bolsheviks rapidly assumed the mantle of the 'official' opposition, while the socialist groups in cabinet could now be attacked for the failures of the Provisional Government. The Bolsheviks began a strong run of propaganda – in June 100,000 copies of Pravda (including Soldatskaya Pravda, Golos Pravdy, and Okopnaya Pravda) were printed daily. In July over 350,000 leaflets were distributed. The Bolsheviks attempted another uprising on July 3–5 – a further wave of riots without success.
The rise of Kerensky, and the later shock of the Kornilov Affair, polarized the political scene. The Petrograd Soviet moved steadily leftwards just as those of the centre and right consolidated around Kerensky. Despite the events in July the Ispolkom moved to protect the Bolsheviks from serious consequences, adopting resolutions on August 4 and August 18 against the arrest and prosecution of Bolsheviks. Still leery of the Ispolkom the government released many senior Bolsheviks on bail or promise of good behaviour.
In the August 20 municipal elections the Bolsheviks took a third of the votes, a fifty percent increase in three months. There was also a general falling away in the attendance of soviet meetings, indeed many of the smaller soviets no longer existed except on paper.
During the Kornilov Affair the Ispolkom was forced to use the Bolshevik's Military Organization as its main force against the "counter-revolution." Kerensky ordered the distribution of 40,000 rifles to the workers of Petrograd, many of which ended in the hands of Bolshevik groups.
As other socialist parties abandoned the Soviet organizations, the Bolsheviks increased their presence. On September 25 they gained a majority in the Workers' Section and Leon Trotsky was elected chairman. He directed the transformation of the Soviet into an adjunct of the party, bypassing the Menshevik-SR Ispolkom and non-Bolshevik soviets to form a new Bolshevik control structure.
The Bolsheviks used their power in the Petrograd Soviet to set-up a 2nd All-Russian Congress of Soviets on October 20 (agreed September 26), despite only eight of 169 soldiers' or workers' soviets expressing support. With elections to the Constituent Assembly looming the Bolsheviks had to use their power quickly to discredit the elections. The Ispolkom denounced the Congress and the steps the Bolsheviks were taking to create its delegates. Suddenly and without reason, on October 17, the Ispolkom Bureau approved the Congress.
On October 6, with a German advance threatening the city, the government - after advice from the military – made plans to evacuate to Moscow. The Ispolkom attacked the move and Trotsky had the still-Menshevik Soldiers' Section vote on a resolution condemning the evacuation. The Provisional Government gave way and delayed any evacuation plans indefinitely. Its attempts to dispatch Petrograd garrison units to the front were resisted by the troops and by the Ispolkom.
On October 9 the Soviet considered the creation of a Committee of Revolutionary Defence. The Bolsheviks and Leon Trotsky amended the resolution to create a Military Defence Committee, to control the security of Petrograd against both German and domestic threats. The Plenum of the Soviet voted in favour of a committee to "gather... all the forces participating in the defence of Petrograd... to arm the workers... ensuring the revolutionary defence of Petrograd... against the... military and civilian Kornilovites."
The Ispolkom approved the resolution, against Menshevik resistance, on October 12 and the measure was formally approved by the Soviet on October 16, despite warnings from the Mensheviks and SRs, creating the Military-Revolutionary Committee (Voenno-Revoliutsionnyi Komitet), also called the Milrevcom or Military Committee.
The Military-Revolutionary Committee was chaired by Pavel Evgenevich Lazimir, with Nikolai Ilich Podvoiskii as his deputy. It existed as little more than a fig-leaf for the activities of the Bolshevik's Military Organization. Podvoiskii would take official control of the Committee on the day of the uprising, with Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko as secretary. The Ispolkom and the Provisional Government had been cut out of control of the forces in the Petrograd Military District, and without orders the garrison would remain neutral.
The Military Staff was side-lined when the Milrevcom took exclusive control of the garrison troops in the name of the Soldiers' Section of the Soviet on the night of October 21-22. The commander of the District, Colonel Polkovnikov, refused to allow this control and he and his staff were condemned in a Milrevcom public statement as "a direct weapon of the counter-revolutionary forces." The military command responded with an ultimatum to the Soviet, which lead to delaying negotiations and meetings over October 23–24.
The Bolshevik uprising began on October 24, as "counter-revolutionary" forces took modest steps to secure the government. The Milrevkom sent armed groups to seize the main telegraph offices and lower the bridges across the Neva. Over the night of October 24-25 the Bolsheviks took control quickly and easily.
An announcement declaring the end of the Provisional Government and the transfer of power to the Petrograd Soviet was issued by the Milrevcom at 1000 hours on October 25 – in fact written by Lenin. In the early afternoon an Extraordinary Session of the Petrograd Soviet was convened by Trotsky, to pre-empt the Congress of Soviets. It was packed with Bolsheviks and Left SR deputies.
The Second Congress of Soviets opened that evening in the Assembly Hall in Smolnyi. The six hundred or so delegates chose a Presidium of three Mensheviks and twenty-one Bolsheviks and Left SRs. The Ispolkom rejected the workings of the Congress the following day and called on the soviets and the army to defend the Revolution.
In the evening session of October 26 the Congress approved the Decree on Peace, the Decree on Land and the formation of a new government under Lenin - the Council of People's Commissars (Sovet Narodnykh Komissarov, abbreviated to Sovnarkom) – until the meeting of the Constituent Assembly. The Petrograd Soviet Ispolkom was dismissed and replaced by a new group of 101 members (62 Bolsheviks) under Lev Borisovich Kamenev. The Sovnarkom was accountable to the Ispolkom in theory, but the organization was in every aspect powerless.
