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The History of the Russian Revolution

Leon Trotsky Volume One

Contents

Notes on the Text i

PREFACE ii

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE FOR VOLUME ONE vii

1 PECULIARITIES OF RUSSIA’S DEVELOPMENT 1

2 TZARIST RUSSIA IN THE WAR 11

3 THE PROLETARIAT AND THE PEASANTRY 24

4 THE TZAR AND THE TZARINA 38

5 THE IDEA OF A PALACE REVOLUTION 47

6 THE DEATH AGONY OF THE MONARCHY 57

7 FIVE DAYS (FEBRUARY 23-27, 1917) 74

8 WHO LED THE FEBRUARY INSURRECTION? 99

9 THE PARADOX OF THE FEBRUARY REVOLUTION 111

10 THE NEW POWER 130

11 DUAL POWER 148

3 CONTENTS

12 THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 155

13 THE ARMY AND THE WAR 177

14 THE RULING GROUP AND THE WAR 193

15 THE BOLSHEVIKS AND LENIN 204

16 REARMING THE PARTY 223

17 THE “APRIL DAYS” 236

18 THE FIRST COALITION 255

19 THE OFFENSIVE 265

20 THE PEASANTRY 278

21 SHIFTS IN THE MASSES 292

22 THE SOVIET CONGRESS AND THE JUNE DEMONSTRATION 312

23 CONCLUSION 326

APPENDIX I 329

APPENDIX II 336

APPENDIX 3 342

4 CONTENTS

Notes on the Text

The History of the Russian Revolution

Volume One

Leon Trotsky

First published: 1930

This edition: 2000 by Chris Russell for Marxists Internet Archive

Please note: The text may make reference to page numbers within this document. These

page numbers were maintained during the transcription process to remain faithful to the

original edition and not this version and, therefore, are likely to be inaccurate. This statement

applies only to the text itself and not any indices or tables of contents which have been

reproduced for this edition.

PREFACE

During the ﬁrst two months of 1917 Russia was still a Romanov monarchy. Eight months

later the Bolsheviks stood at the helm. They were little know to anybody when the year

began, and their leaders were still under indictment for state treason when they came to

power. You will not ﬁnd another such sharp turn in history especially if you remember that

it involves a nation of 150 million people. It is clear that the events of 1917, whatever you

think of them, deserve study.

The history of a revolution, like every other history, ought ﬁrst of all to tell what hap-

pened and how. That, however, is little enough. From the very telling it ought to become

clear why it happened thus and not otherwise. Events can neither be regarded as a series of

adventures, nor strung on the thread of a preconceived moral. They must obey their own

laws. The discovery of these laws is the author’s task.

The most indubitable feature of a revolution is the direct interference of the masses in

historical events. In ordinary times the state, be it monarchical or democratic, elevates

itself above the nation, and history is made by specialists in that line of business - kings,

ministers, bureaucrats, parliamentarians, journalists. But at those crucial moments when

the old order becomes no longer endurable to the masses, they break over the barriers

excluding them from the political arena, sweep aside their traditional representatives, and

create by their own interference the initial groundwork for a new rgime. Whether this is

good or bad we leave to the judgement of moralists. We ourselves will take the facts as

they are given by the objective course of development. The history of a revolution is for us

ﬁrst of all a history of the forcible entrance of the masses into the realm of rulership over

their own destiny.

In a society that is seized by revolution classes are in conﬂict. It is perfectly clear,

however, that the changes introduced between the beginning and the end of a revolution in

the economic bases of the society and its social substratum of classes, are not sufﬁcient to

explain the course of the revolution itself, which can overthrow in a short interval age-old

institutions, create new ones, and again overthrow them. The dynamic of revolutionary

events is directly determined by swift, intense and passionate changes in the psychology of

iii PREFACE

classes which have already formed themselves before the revolution.

The point is that society does not change its institutions as need arises, the way a me-

chanic changes his instruments. On the contrary, society actually takes the institutions

which hang upon it as given once for all. For decades the oppositional criticism is nothing

more than a safety valve for mass dissatisfaction, a condition of the stability of the social

structure. Such in principle, for example, was the signiﬁcance acquired by the social-

democratic criticism. Entirely exceptional conditions, independent of the will of persons

and parties, are necessary in order to tear off from discontent the fetters of conservatism,

and bring the masses to insurrection.

The swift changes of mass views and moods in an epoch of revolution thus derive,

not from the ﬂexibility and mobility of man’s mind, but just the opposite, from its deep

conservatism. The chronic lag of ideas and relations behind new objective conditions, right

up to the moment when the latter crash over people in the form of a catastrophe, is what

creates in a period of revolution that leaping movement of ideas and passions which seems

to the police mind a mere result of the activities of “demagogues.”

The masses go into a revolution not with a prepared plan of social reconstruction, but

with a sharp feeling that they cannot endure the old rgime. Only the guiding layers of

a class have a political program, and even this still requires the test of events, and the

approval of the masses. The fundamental political process of the revolution thus consists

in the gradual comprehension by a class of the problems arising from the social crisis the

active orientation of the masses by a method of successive approximations. The different

stages of a revolutionary process, certiﬁed by a change of parties in which the more extreme

always supersedes the less, express the growing pressure to the left of the masses so long

as the swing of the movement does not run into objective obstacles. When it does, there

begins a reaction: disappointments of the different layers of the revolutionary class, growth

of indifferentism, and therewith a strengthening of the position of the counter-revolutionary

forces. Such, at least, is the general outline of the old revolutions.

Only on the basis of a study of political processes in the masses themselves, can we

understand the role of parties and leaders, whom we least of all are inclined to ignore. They

constitute not an independent, but nevertheless a very important, element in the process.

Without a guiding organisation, the energy of the masses would dissipate like steam not

enclosed in a piston-box. But nevertheless what moves things is not the piston or the box,

but the steam.

The difﬁculties which stand in the way of studying the changes of mass consciousness

in a revolutionary epoch are quite obvious. The oppressed classes make history in the

factories, in the barracks, in the villages, on the streets of the cities. Moreover, they are

least of all accustomed to write things down. Periods of high tension in social passions

iv PREFACE

leave little room for contemplation and reﬂection. All the muses even the plebeian muse

of journalism, in spite of her sturdy hips have hard sledding in times of revolution. Still

the historian’s situation is by no means hopeless. The records are incomplete, scattered,

accidental. But in the light of the events themselves these fragments often permit a guess

as to the direction and rhythm of the hidden process. For better or worse, a revolutionary

party bases its tactics upon a calculation of the changes of mass consciousness. The historic

course of Bolshevism demonstrates that such a calculation, at least in its rough features, can

be made. If it can be made by a revolutionary leader in the whirlpool of the struggle, why

not by the historian afterwards?

However, the processes taking place in the consciousness of the masses are not unrelated

and independent. No matter how the idealists and the eclectics rage, consciousness is

nevertheless determined by conditions. In the historic conditions which formed Russia, her

economy, her classes, her State, in the action upon her of other states, we ought to be able

to ﬁnd the premises both of the February revolution and of the October revolution which

replaced it. Since the greatest enigma is the fact that a backward country was the ﬁrst

to place the proletariat in power, it behoves us to seek the solution of that enigma in the

peculiarities of that backward country that is, in its differences from other countries.

The historic peculiarities of Russia and their relative weight will be characterised by us

in the early chapters of this book which give a short outline of the development of Russian

society and its inner forces. We venture to hope that the inevitable schematism of these

chapters will not repel the reader. In the further development of the book he will meet these

same forces in living action.

This work will not rely in any degree upon personal recollections. The circumstance that

the author was a participant in the events does not free him from the obligation to base his

exposition upon historically veriﬁed documents. The author speaks of himself, in so far as

that is demanded by the course of events, in the third person. And that is not a mere literary

form: the subjective tone, inevitable in autobiographies or memoirs, is not permissible in a

work of history.

However, the fact that the author did participate in the struggle naturally makes easier

his understanding, not only of the psychology of the forces in action, both individual and

collective, but also of the inner connection of events. This advantage will give positive

results only if one condition is observed: that he does not rely upon the testimony of his

own memory either in trivial details or in important matters, either in questions of fact or

questions of motive and mood. The author believes that in so far as in him lies he has

fulﬁlled this condition.

There remains the question of the political position of the author, who stands as a his-

torian upon the same viewpoint upon which he stood as a participant in the events. The

v PREFACE

reader, of course, is not obliged to share the political views of the author, which the latter

on his side has no reason to conceal. But the reader does have the right to demand that a his-

torical work should not be the defence of a political position, but an internally well-founded

portrayal of the actual process of the revolution. A historical work only then completely

fulﬁls the mission when events unfold upon its pages in their full natural necessity.

For this, is it necessary to have the so-called historian’s “impartiality”? Nobody has yet

clearly explained what this impartiality consists of. The often quoted words of Clmenceau

that it is necessary to take a revolution “en bloc,” as a whole are at the best a clever evasion.

How can you take as a whole a thing whose essence consists in a split? Clmenceaus apho-

rism was dictated partly by shame for his too resolute ancestors, partly by embarrassment

before their shades.

One of the reactionary and therefore fashionable historians in contemporary France, L.

Madelin, slandering in his drawing-room fashion the great revolution that is, the birth of his

own nation asserts that “the historian ought to stand upon the wall of a threatened city, and

behold at the same time the besiegers and the besieged”: only in this way, it seems, can he

achieve a “conciliatory justice.” However, the words of Madelin himself testify that if he

climbs out on the wall dividing the two camps, it is only in the character of a reconnoiterer

for the reaction. It is well that he is concerned only with war camps of the past: in a time

of revolution standing on the wall involves great danger. Moreover, in times of alarm the

priests of “conciliatory justice” are usually found sitting on the inside of four walls waiting

to see which side will win.

The serious and critical reader will not want a treacherous impartiality, which offers him

a cup of conciliation with a well-settled poison of reactionary hate at the bottom, but a sci-

entiﬁc conscientiousness, which for its sympathies and antipathies open and undisguised

seeks support in an honest study of the facts, a determination of their real connections, an

exposure of the causal laws of their movement. That is the only possible historic objec-

tivism, and moreover it is amply sufﬁcient, for it is veriﬁed and attested not by the good

intentions of the historian, for which only he himself can vouch, but the natural laws re-

vealed by him of the historic process itself.

The sources of this book are innumerable periodical publications, newspapers and jour-

nals, memoirs, reports, and other material, partly in manuscript, but the greater part pub-

lished by the Institute of the History of the Revolution in Moscow and Leningrad. We have

considered its superﬂuous to make reference in the text to particular publications, since

that would only bother the reader. Among the books which have the character of collec-

tive historical works we have particularly used the two-volume Essays on the History of

the October Revolution (Moscow-Leningrad, 1927). Written by different authors, the var-

ious parts of this book are unequal in value, but they contain at any rate abundant factual

vi PREFACE

material.

The dates in our book are everywhere indicated according to the old style that is, they

are 13 days behind the international and the present Soviet calendar. The author felt obliged

to use the calendar which was in use at the time of the revolution. It would have been no

labour of course to translate the dates into the new style. But this operation in removing

one difﬁculty would have created others more essential. The overthrow of the monarchy

has gone into history as the February revolution; according to the Western calendar, how-

ever, it occurred in March. The armed demonstration against the imperialist policy of the

Provisional Government has gone into history under the name of the “April Days,” whereas

according to the Western calendar it happened in May. Not to mention other intervening

events and dates, we remark only that the October revolution happened according to Euro-

pean reckoning in November. The calendar itself, we see, is tinted by the events, and the

historian cannot handle revolutionary chronology by mere arithmetic. The reader will be

kind enough to remember that before overthrowing the Byzantine calendar, the revolution

had to overthrow the institutions that clung to it.

L. TROTSKY

Prinkipo

November 14, 1930.

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TheHistoryoftheRussianRevolutionLeonTrotskyVolumeOneContentsNotesontheTextiPREFACEiiCHRONOLOGICALTABLEFORVOLUMEONEvii1PECULIARITIESOFRUSSIA'SDEVELOPMENT12TZARISTRUSSIAINTHEWAR113THEPROLETARIATANDTHEPEASANTRY244THETZARANDTHETZARINA385THEIDEAOFAPALACEREVOLUTION476THEDEATHAGONYOFTHEMONARCHY577FIVEDAYS(...

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