The October Revolution
The Bolsheviks, having persuaded the Petrograd Soviet to create a ‘Military Revolutionary Committee’ (MRC) to arm and organise, decided to seize power after Lenin was able to overrule the majority of party leaders who were against the attempt. But he didn’t set a date. He believed it had to be before elections to the Constituent Assembly gave Russia an elected government he might not be able to challenge, and before the All Russian Congress of Soviets met, so they could dominate it by already having power. Many thought power would come to them if they waited. As Bolshevik supporters travelled among soldiers to recruit them, it became apparent the MRC could call on major military support.As the Bolsheviks delayed attempting their coup for more discussion, events elsewhere outpaced them when Kerensky’s government finally reacted – triggered by an article in a newspaper where leading Bolsheviks argued against a coup - and tried to arrest Bolshevik and MRC leaders and send Bolshevik army units to the frontlines. The troops rebelled, and the MRC occupied key buildings. The Provisional Government had few troops and these stayed largely neutral, while the Bolsheviks had Trotsky’s Red Guard and the army. Bolshevik leaders, hesitant to act, were forced into acting and hurriedly taking charge of the coup thanks to Lenin’s insistence. In one way, Lenin and the Bolshevik high command had little responsibility for the start of the coup, and Lenin – almost alone – had responsibility for the success at the end by driving the other Bolsheviks on. The coup saw no great crowds like February.
Lenin then announced a seizure of power, and the Bolsheviks tried to influence the Second Congress of Soviets, but found themselves with a majority only after other socialist groups walked out in protest (although this, at least, tied up with Lenin’s plan). It was enough for the Bolsheviks to use the Soviet as a cloak for their coup. Lenin now acted to secure control over the Bolshevik party, which was still divided into factions As socialist groups across Russia seized power the government was arrested. Kerensky fled after his attempts to organise resistance was thwarted; he later taught history in the US. Lenin had effectively backed into power.
The Bolsheviks Consolidate
The now largely Bolshevik Congress of Soviets passed several of Lenin’s new decrees and created the Council of People’s Commissars, a new, Bolshevik, government. Opponents believed the Bolshevik government would swiftly fail and prepared (or rather, failed to prepare) accordingly, and even then there were no military forces at this point to retake power. Elections to the Constituent Assembly were still held, and the Bolsheviks gained only a quarter of the vote and shut it down. The mass of peasants (and to some extent workers) didn’t care about the Assembly as they now had their local soviets. The Bolsheviks then dominated a coalition with the Left SR’s, but these non-Bolsheviks were quickly dropped. The Bolsheviks began to change the fabric of Russian, ending the war, introducing a new secret police, taking over the economy and abolishing much of the Tsarist state.They began to secure power by a twofold policy, born out of improvisation and gut feeling: concentrate the high reaches of government in the hands of a small dictatorship, and use terror to crush the opposition, while giving the low levels of government entirely over to the new worker’s soviets, soldier’s committees and peasant councils, allowing human hate and prejudice to lead these new bodies into smashing the old structures. Peasants destroyed the gentry, soldiers destroyed the officers, workers destroyed the capitalists. The Red Terror of the next few years, desired by Lenin and guided by the Bolsheviks, was born out of this mass outpouring of hate, and proved popular. The Bolsheviks would then go about taking control of the lower levels.
Conclusion
After two revolutions in less than a year, Russia had been transformed from an autocratic empire, through a period of shifting chaos to a notionally socialist, Bolshevik state. Notionally, because the Bolsheviks had a loose grasp on government, with only slight control of the soviets outside major cities, and because quite how their practices were actually socialist is open to debate. As much as they later claimed, the Bolsheviks didn’t have a plan for how to govern Russia, and they were forced into making immediate, pragmatic decisions to hold onto power and keep Russia functioning.It would take a civil war for Lenin and the Bolsheviks to consolidate their authoritarian power, but their state would be established as the USSR and, following Lenin’s death, taken over by the even more dictatorial and bloodthirsty Stalin. Socialist revolutionaries across Europe would take heart from Russia’s apparent success and agitate further, while much of the world looked at Russia with a mixture of fear and apprehension.
