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business
Hence as they faced the erosion of their autonomy they attempted to fight within the system and made no attempt to whip up popular pressure against the government. Only such popular pressure could have saved them.
Hence the material for popular opposition in defence of the factory committees did exist but failed to gel due to divisions in the proletariat and the illusions of the Bolshevik members of the factory committees. Yet though my first hunch was superficial I still stand by it.
One of the distinguishing features of revolution is the way the leaders are forced to adopt popular aspirations. There was nothing in populist theory that prevented both wings of the SRs from breaking with their Social Democrat partners and making common cause with the anarchists on the issue of factory autonomy and they, unlike the anarchists would have had the trust of the more skilled workers. Further the Bolsheviks on the factory committees were a million miles from the Stalinist apparatchniks of latter times. They were experiencing at first hand the insanity of state planning when those at the centre acted in ignorance. Yet there were no Bolshevik Milyukovs to declare "Is this stupidity - or treachery!".33 (Milyukov, a liberal, denounced the Tsarist government in these terms just before the February Revolution.)
It is not essential to explain the defeat of the factory committees by looking at October. The divisions and illusions of the workers are explanation enough. Yet the potential divisions were at least as great in February but revolution forged a unity. Had October retained the revolutionary elan of the July days events might have taken a very different course.
On the 12th of December 1917 Trotsky the Peoples Komissar for international affairs was composing an ultimatum to the allies. As the Germans and the rest of the quadruple alliance had accepted the Soviet Peace formula (Peace with no annexations or indeminitys and self determination for all peoples) the allies should join in the negotiations or face the consequences. The implied threat was that Russia would sign a separate peace. Trotsky was in a good, not to say jubilant, mood. Who would have thought even a week before that the Bolshevik peace policy could have been such a complete success.
At that very moment Ioffe the chief soviet negotiator at the peace talks in Brest Litovsk was in the depths of despair for he had just learned what German acceptance really meant. General Hoffman had told him how the Germans welcomed the Soviet emphasis on self determination and noted that Poland and other territories (all the areas currently occupied by German troops) had expressed the desire to withdraw from the Russian Empire. Further should those territories "choose" union with Germany such would be a triumph of "self determination". So in the German dictionary self determination was another word for outright annexation.
Once the Soviet government back in Petrograd got over the shock three positions emerged. The Left SRs and Bukharin's left Bolshevik faction wanted revolutionary war. [next page]