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business
in the conditions of our revolution this was the only correct formulation of the problem.
But the leaders of the Bolshevik Party were hostile to all this. They formulated the basic task of the revolution incorrectly. And they continually carried on, not a policy of alliance, but the contrary policy of rupture split, and mutual isolation.
Sukhanov11
It is true that Lenin's intransigence was met by equal intransigence from the moderate socialists. The walkout by the SRs and the Mensheviks from the second Congress of the Soviets was gift for until then there was still the possibility that many nominal Bolsheviks might have supported a compromise. But Lenin seems to have been deliberately provoking this confrontation. The banning of the bourgeois press is a case in point. Sukhanov describes the action, which banned all non-socialist papers in Petrograd within a day of the Bolsheviks taking power, as pointless, serving only to antagonize wavering elements.12 Unless, that is, that to antagonize the moderate socialists and so kill any hope of a compromise was precisely the point.
This policy of polarization provoked opposition amongst leading Bolsheviks. Even though this opposition included half of Sovnarkom (Council of Peoples Komissars ie the Soviet Cabinet) and resulted in five resignations from the Bolshevik Central Committee13 Lenin's authority was so great he was able to bludgeon the opposition into line.
The Left Socialist Revolutionaries (Left SRs) were initially determined on a broad socialist government but the bitterness of the family strife amongst Socialist Revolutionaries soon forced them into Lenin's arms. Left SR participation provided a fig leaf for Bolshevik rule but the Left SR commissars were too isolated to effectively blunt the Bolshevik autocracy.14
If October itself was not a revolution what followed looked remarkably like one. The soldiers and peasants needed no encouragement but the workers had been on the defensive in the weeks preceding October15. Taking October at it's face value the workers decided to take action to avert the effects of the economic crisis. While outright seizure of factories occurred only in minority of factories workers self management soon became the norm16.
There are two interpretations of the failure of this movement. The anarchist view is that the movement was crushed by the bitter opposition of the Bolsheviks. The most dramatic account is in Voline. He describes his own experience when he attended a meeting at the Nobel works which was a factory in Petrograd facing closure.17 Shlyapnikov, then minister of labour, had told the workers that there was no alternative to closure but they enthusiastically adopted Voline's suggestion that the workers run the factory themselves. Thereupon Shlyapnikov told the workers that such a selfish act would not be tolerated. Voline laconically adds that the factory closed a few weeks latter. The biggest gap in the account is that Voline does not tell us why the factory closed. Possibly it was the result of Bolshevik intervention but equally likely it was because the workers discovered that getting raw materials and finding customers was a [next page]