| Review of Alexander Rabinowitch's The Bolsheviks Come To Power:
The Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd
First published in 1978, Alexander Rabinowitch's The
Bolsheviks Come to Power: the Revolution of 1917 attempts to shed a new light on the
rise of the Bolshevik party in post-revolutionary Russia in its emphasis on the importance
of Russia's economic situation and the "factory workers, soldiers and sailors"
for the Bolshevik's ascendancy to power. Rabinowitch purports to dispel the
traditional eastern and western notions of this event; one, that it was inevitable, the
other that it was accidental, by underlining a fundamental issue he believes is overlooked
in these explanations. Rabinowitch contends that the success of the Bolshevik
revolution rode on the concerns of the workers and soldiers which "corresponded
closely to the program of political, economic, and social reform put forth by the
Bolsheviks, " (xvii) the only party at the time willing to address the need for
internal political changes and seeking to end World War I. The influence of these
citizens, Rabinowitch notes, was most expressly felt in Petrograd, and it is in the
capital city that he focuses his study.
In an introduction, Rabinowitch chronicles the life of Lenin
and the revolution in Russia from the abdication of Nicholas II. In careful
analysis, he suggests that the overwhelming success of the Bolshevik party was due in
large part to its "flexibility," a notion that contradicts traditionally held
views that the party was a strictly disciplined small group of professional
revolutionaries. Rabinowitch notes the transition in 1917 from "Lenin's
pre-Revolutionary conception of a small, professional, conspiratorial party to one with
doors opened wide to include tens of thousands of new members, so that to a significant
degree the party was now both responsive and open to the masses." (xxi) This,
according to Rabinowitch, gave the party access to the pulse of the nation. The
Bolsheviks were more likely than anyone to be able to mold themselves and their platform
around the individual dreams and goals of the class they claimed to support. As
evidence of this "democratic character," Rabonowitch cites the "continuing
free and lively discussion and debate over the most basic theoretical and tactical
issues" (311) at all levels within the Petrograd Soviet. He notes the "not
infrequent times Lenin was the loser in these struggles." (312) Rabionowitch
also describes the "independence and initiative" (312) permitted to subordinate
party bodies like the Petersburg Committee and the Military Organization. The most
compelling illustration of "the party's relatively free and flexible structure and
the responsiveness of its tactics to the prevailing mass mood" cited by Rabinowitch
is "the second half of September" of 1917 when "party leaders in Petrograd
turned a deaf ear to the ill-timed appeals of Lenin, then still in hiding in Finland, for
an immediate insurrection." (313)
Rabinowitch also emphasizes the economic situation in Russia
and the Provisional Government's inability to ameliorate it as a leading reason for the
Bolshevik rise to power. According to Rabinowitch, governmental ineffectiveness led
to longer bread lines, skyrocketing inflation and factory lay-offs. The Bolshevik
party and its slogan of "Peace, Land and Bread" appealed to the masses not only
because it promised to end their specific grievances, but also because, as Rabinowitch
notes, "only the Bolsheviks, among the major Russian political groups, remained
untainted by association with the government," (xxviii) due in large part to Lenin's
unwillingness to compromise his notion of oligarchic rule. Therefore, in Petrograd,
large numbers of supporters joined the Bolshevik party in the late spring and summer of
1917 as "economic conditions steadily worsened, garrison soldiers became directly
threatened by shipment to the front, and popular expectations of early peace and reform
under the Provisional Government dwindled." (311) The subsequent scandal of the
Kornilov affair accentuated popular dissatisfaction with a coalition government and leant
more support to the Bolsheviks. Rabinowitch concludes by arguing that the masses
placed their support in the Bolsheviks because they believed they stood for "a
broadly representative, exclusively socialist government" dedicated to ensuring no
"return to the hated ways of the old regime, avoiding death at the front, achieving a
better life and of putting a quick end to Russia's participation in the war." (314)
Without this support, Rabinowitch contends, there would have been no way for the
"ultra-radical Bolshevik party to emerge from obscurity to direct the overthrow of
the Western-style Provisional Government and to establish the first national communist
political system." (xv)
Rabinowitch begins his account of the Bolshevik rise to power
with a chapter on the "July Uprising" and continues with the subsequent
suppression of the party, its resurgence after the Kornilov affair, its call to arms and
the transfer of "All Power to the Soviets" and its eventual victory over the
Kerensky government. His analysis is punctuated with excerpts from speeches,
newspaper articles and political cartoons. Rabinowitch's book does not lack for
detail; yet The Bolsheviks Come to Power is an easy-to-read and interesting
account of a well-researched and often-examined subject.
|