What I Am Reading: "October: The Story of the Russian Revolution" by China Miéville

Like with Rachel Maddow’s book about Sprio Agnew, I am only giving myself a half-demerit here for breaking my “no amateur histories” rule. China Miéville is mainly known, as far as I’m concerned, as a science fiction / fantasy novelist, and I greatly enjoyed his Bas-Lag series last year. However, like Maddow, he also has a PhD, in his case in International Affairs; so I was willing to read his crack at history, on the February and October Revolutions in Russia in 1917.

Miéville is also an incorrigible leftist intellectual, so his sympathies toward the Bolshevik revolutionaries (very clearly delineated from his lack of sympathies with the eventual Stalinist outcome) is evident. He says even in his introduction that he is not without bias, but will try to write fairly. These biases come through: Trotsky is mercurial but admirable, Kerensky is overhyped and pathetic, Maria Spiridonova is always re-introduced as “the great” in a way that may or may not be sarcastic.

The reason that I was willing to turn to a trusted non-historian for this story is that the Russian Revolution is so damn complicated. There are about twenty political groupings across fifty different organizations and sub-organizations engaging each other in multiple different conflicts. It manages to be worse, even, than Weimar German politics (that can be your next project, China: convince me as to why Luxemburg and Liebknecht should have won). I needed to read it on easy mode if I was going to make my first attempt in years to seriously grasp it.

First: a word on the China Miéville aspect. I have hopefully managed to communicate well enough in my blog posts on those novels that I think that the Bas-Lag books, especially The Iron Council, are stirring invocations of the spirit of revolution, its triumphs and tragedies and the cycle of defeat and rebirth. It is made easier in those books by a revolution that is relatively un-ideological, a rebellion on behalf of oppressed people against clearly unjust power, with internal conflicts only over methods. The revolutionaries fighting the city-state of New Crobuzon are not freighted by the need to situate their revolution within the framework of Marxist dogmatism, which makes the story accessible to anyone of a vaguely leftist or libertarian bent. Having read Miéville’s own account now of the Russian Revolutions, I can tell how much the events in Petrograd influenced that in New Crobuzon, and how the rail line in The Iron Council owed something to the trans-Siberian railway as well as to the Old West. I can also better-appreciate their non-ideological nature.

Speaking of rail lines: trains are a recurring theme in this story as well. Miéville lists their manifestations at the end:

“The tsar’s wheeled palace, shunted into sidings forever; Lenin’s sealed stateless carriage; Guchkov and Shulgin’s meandering abdication express; the trains criss-crossing Russia heavy with desperate deserters; the engine stoked by ‘Konstantin Ivanov,” Lenin in his wig, eagerly shoveling coal…looming trains, trains hurtling through trees, out of the dark… Revolutions, Marx said, are the locomotives of history…But how could you keep it [in top gear and on the rails] if there was only one way, one line, and it is blocked?” (p. 219).

This last is in reference to the box that many Marxists were trapped in: Marxist ideology dictated that a bourgeoise revolution will come before a proletarian revolution, and this precept caused many to hesitate when the Czar was overthrown. Should they coalition with the Bourgeoise? Should they declare non-opposition? Should they attempt to set up the proletariat and peasantry in the best position possible for the inevitable second revolution that would establish Communism, even if it didn’t come for years? Train stations can only come one after another, and too many politicians were handicapped by believing that history proceeded in linear order as well.

On, then, to the history. There are two revolutions on offer: the February Revolution, and the October Revolution. In the decades leading up to the overthrow of the autocracy, there were several different left-wing parties. The Socialist Revolutionaries, or SRs, were an agrarian-oriented socialist (but non-Marxist) party formed in 1901 by Narodnik (bougie, essentially) do-gooders; and the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party was a Marxist party that split in 1903 into the majority, or Bolshevik, group of hard-liners, and the minority, or Menshevik, group of comparative moderates. The two groups had many differences on organizational tactics and ideas on the approach to the (again, inevitable according to Marx) bourgeoise revolution in Russia, and the eventual larger (and perhaps more important) revolution in Europe at large.

These groups and their leadership were all repressed after Russia’s first, failed rebellion in 1905, which radicalized all opponents of the regime. The left gained steam after the first world war went very poorly for Russia. The country stood reeling and the left stood divided going into the year 1917. After this background information, the book’s chapters each cover a specific month of that year, and what follows here is a brief recapitulation of the timeline. In February, a strike in the country’s two century-old artificial capital of St. Petersburg, renamed Petrograd for nationalist reasons, brought violent repression at first, until the soldiers and Cossacks previously loyal to the Czarist regime expressed their own opposition to the war through a “ca’canny,” a Scottish labor term that Miéville is fond of, meaning deliberate following rules to the letter and no further. In one anecdote, Cossacks guarding a bridge held their line by standing completely still and allowing crowds to pass between them and through the line.

Opposition to the Czar’s regime formed in the Duma, the legislative body that had previously been vested with little actual power; and more organically through the formation of a soviet, or council, in this case made up of representatives of left-wing parties, worker, peasant, and military bodies. Both groups were reluctant to take power: the leftists in the soviet because they thought that they were not ready, and the old middle class and reformist nobility in the Duma because they tarried in breaking with the old regime. One of the early personalities that emerged was Alexander Kerensky, a Trudovik (center-left peasant populist party), a member of both bodies who had emerged as a renowned orator and natural leader. Word of the people’s seizure of power in the face of the regime’s impotence spread to other cities after this February Revolution, as Petrograd broke out in a wave of optimism and cultural expression.

As March rolled around, both organs of leadership were still treading lightly. Radicalized soldiers and workers, constantly debating in the streets, pushed the soviet to assume more power, while the soviet pushed the Duma to assume more power. The leftist parties were engaged in their debate on their own role and the role of the proletariat in what they believed was this bourgeoise revolution, and did not want to take on real power. After several politicians from Petrograd and from the Czar’s court persuaded him to abdicate, the Czar’s brother, a Grand Duke, declined to take power; and the Duma set up a Provisional Government. In the meantime, soviets sprung up all across the country, formed to govern different political and economic divisions and ethnic groups. At this time, these were mostly accommodationist, and some shared power with their local Duma or other pre-revolutionary officials. The Petrograd soviet took the reins of national leadership. Meanwhile, Vladimir Lenin and other exiled leftists began the process of returning to Russia. Lenin at the time still preached a policy of defeatism, stressing international leftist cooperation over national victory; the Provisional Government, however, was engaged in “revolutionary defensism,” continuing the war out of loyalty to the Allies and because a German overrun would threaten their hard-won gains. Many leftists, including some Bolsheviks, argued in favor of this policy, but Lenin was intransigent.

In April, as he arrived in Russia in the famous sealed train (actually very porous and with numerous stops) that the Germans allowed through their territory, Lenin published his April Theses, arguing for an end to Russian involvement in the war and for the left’s opposition to the Provisional Government. He wanted to empower workers and peasants within the context of the Revolution, but not yet to strike the final blow against Capitalism. Many on the left protested against the continuation of the war, but the soviet basically fobbed them off and did not take any action to alter the Provisional Government’s policy. On the other hand, the soviet voted against a formal union with the Duma into a single governing body, denying themselves influence and denying the Duma popular legitimacy. They were not ready to coalition with the bourgeoise of the old order. The Provisional Government was already losing legitimacy on the war issue, and ]the country’s economy and infrastructure continued their collapse. However, the various socialist parties were still timid in their pursuit of power; even the Bolsheviks had a right-wing that stressed only “watchfulness” of the government’s activities, not any form of opposition.

This changed in May, as the soviet (over Bolshevik opposition) formally combined with the Duma in an effort to pursue left and reformist policies including an end to the war, democratization of the army, self-determination for national and ethnic minorities, and others. The Bolsheviks also worked to court Leon Trotsky, a member of the small Mezhraiontsy faction of the RSDWP, who had gained fame as the leader of the first soviet in the 1905 revolution and had just returned from exile. The Bolsheviks, through their hardline antiwar position, were gaining influence as the Kerensky government continued Russian involvement in the war and otherwise made few reformist moves.

My main takeaway from this book was that the Bolsheviks themselves, though radical conspirators, were fractious and didn’t necessarily operate coherently at all times. This was evident in June, when a massive Bolshevik demonstration was cancelled at the last minute in the face of Provisional Government pressure. Instead, the Bolsheviks co-opted the government’s own demonstration, showing the Duma and the soviet that they were increasingly in control of the popular will in Petrograd. This situation did not change when Kerensky launched his namesake offensive against the Germans; though considerable advances were made for the first days, the Russian troops soon ran out of supplies, and were pushed back. Soldiers deserted the front lines in massive numbers, and added to the country’s general chaos and lawlessness. In fact, by now, things were unravelling so fast that the Bolsheviks were in danger of being pushed too far from below, and even Lenin had to tamp down some hotheads who wanted to move immediately to seize power.

July saw what would later be known as the July Days, an uprising in Petrograd by radical soldiers, led by the First Machine Gun regiment and by the highly radicalized sailors of Kronstadt. The Bolsheviks, whom many of these military units looked to, were swept along in the activity. The rallying cry of many was “All Power to the Soviet,” by the soviet was still unwilling to take over. After a tense rally before the governing building, the protests were dispersed with acrimony but without much violence by loyalist troops. The worm turned at this point, and the Provisional Government cracked down on the Bolsheviks, making use of the conveniently-timed publication of “news” that Lenin had worked as a spy for Germany. Bolshevik papers were shut down and activists and leaders were arrested; Lenin fled to Finland, and started planning a break with the rest of the left. Meanwhile, Kerensky ended the power-sharing agreement between the Duma and the soviet, rolled back what reforms toward national self-determination had been enacted, and took full power. He appointed the right-wing General Lavr Kornilov as Supreme Commander, as the situation at the front line continued to deteriorate.

August. Kornilov pressured Kerensky from the right to assume or allow him to assume more dictatorial powers, including direct military rule of Petrograd and the surrounding region. Though Kerensky allowed him fuller control of the military apparatus, including the end of such radical reforms as the election of officers and the reinstatement of corporal punishment, he resisted pressure for full control. The Bolsheviks theorized Kerensky as a “Bonapartist,” because, like Napoleon, he walked a tightrope triangulating between the demands of the left and the right, and enforced his decisions through his control of military power. In Kerensky’s case, this approach made him an increasing number of enemies. The Bolsheviks, in opposition, continued to gain power, while Kornilov’s forces failed to prevent the Germans from capturing Riga.

Kornilov didn’t last long, however. In a farcical turn of events, his efforts to get Kerensky to assume greater power was miscommunicated through incompetent intermediaries as an effort to take power at Kerensky’s expense, and Kerensky called for his removal and arrest. This left Kornilov no choice but to mobilize the right-wing troops he had been sitting on in order to eventually suppress the left, and these troops marched on Petrograd. The left, including the Bolsheviks (in, obviously, a reversal of policy), rallied to the city’s defense, helping to organize heavily enthused troops and laborers. This meant that they also rallied to the regime’s defense, and did not obstruct Kerensky’s formation of a Directory to assume executive power. The coup collapsed in the face of this organized resistance and the hesitation of its own troops, and the situation ended without any large-scale fighting. Despite the left’s massive boost in power and enthusiasm, and the obvious defeat of reactionary forces, Kerensky still chose to pursue a middle course, not giving in to any socialist policy prescriptions or efforts to formalize their involvement in the government.

This was too much, and in September, the soviet finally voted to form a revolutionary government made up only of left-wing parties, without the participation of any bourgeoise elements. The Bolsheviks supported this vote, even Lenin strove at this moment for cross-party socialist unity between the Bolsheviks, the Menshevik-Internationalists, the Left SRs, the Mensheviks, and the Right SRs. The parties caucused in a Democratic Conference, which then agreed to form a “Preparliament.” There was also a plan for an eventual convocation of an All-Russia Congress of Soviets, in late October. However, Lenin soon changed his tune. Miéville credits Lenin with an excellent instinct for political opportunism; now he thought that the time was right to seize power. Petrograd was threatened by the advancing Germans, and Europe was a tinderbox awaiting the world revolution. Many others in the party were not on board yet, and wanted to continue with the broad left-wing coalition; though this effort was dealt a blow when the Democratic Conference decided to stick with Kerensky and the bourgeoisie. Others (including Trotsky, now leader of the Petrograd Soviet) wanted to wait at least until the All-Russia Congress.

This was the situation heading into October. After numerous debates, Lenin finally convinced the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks to vote in favor of proceeding with an uprising, though OpSec was not remotely maintained after the party officially broke with Kerensky. Extensive wrangling was needed over the uprising’s timing, and to convince some members, namely Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev, who voted and spoke against an uprising. However, Trotsky’s creation of a Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC), an alternate military hierarchy under official control of the soviet (and unofficial control of the Bolsheviks) moved events along. Trotsky tried to supplant the generals in control of the military and the defense of Petrograd. On October 23rd, Kerensky struck first against this obvious threat, with more imprisonments and the shutdown of Bolshevik newspapers. The party rallied and counterattacked, but for an excruciating amount of time mobilized only in a defensive posture. Finally, in the early hours of October 25th, ironically just as the Preparliament had voted to form an all-left government and kick Kerensky out, Lenin tipped the scales into a full uprising to overthrow the government. The Bolsheviks commanded so much power at that point anyway that the takeover was mostly orderly, other than a carnivalesque siege of the Winter Palace where the last remnants of Kerensky’s government held out after he himself escaped.

This, then, was the October Revolution; neither it not the February Revolution were a fait accompli, but both were essentially the boulder reaching the bottom of the hill after considerable build-up of retrospectively bad policy and political moves. As the All-Russian Congress of Soviets met, before the siege was even over, there was briefly a moment of left unity as all the left parties voted in favor of a socialist unity government. This tantalizing possibility did not come about, however, as the more moderate socialists immediately set about criticizing the Bolsheviks, and soon walked out. Instead, a revolutionary government was proclaimed.

This is Miéville’s real sympathy – the possibility of a socialist government that didn’t slide into Stalinism. He has nothing but obvious disdain for Kerensky and for the Mensheviks and other moderates and bourgeoise parties who supported him (often portraying them as buffoonish), but he lingers for a while on the might-have-been where Russia, though eventually wracked by blockade and civil war, faced it as something other than a Communist one-party state. Though there was a brief coalition government between the Bolsheviks and the Left SR, it did not survive the punitive Treaty of Brest-Litovsk that ended Russian involvement in the war. Russia underwent a civil war, and the Bolsheviks became ever more repressive as they faced challenging circumstances. Eventually, Lenin and Trotsky’s policy of world revolution was replaced by Stalin’s “socialism in one country,” and many Old Bolsheviks were purged in the ‘30s. The Soviet Union became what it was.

I think that the format of a close look at the year of 1917 itself does this topic justice, as there are so many reversals and policy changes that a broader look (for example, one including the civil war) could have easily blurred them all together. One month per chapter is a format that works. Miéville brings an obvious enthusiasm to the topic, and the book relates many anecdotes of hope and despair, and is quick to highlight moments of incongruity. Sometimes I think he is a little harsh on some of the more moderate actors, who weren’t necessarily sinning by wanting to cooperate with the bourgeoise in forming a government. Similarly, Bolshevik determination is easy to recontextualize as dogmatism and pig-headedness. On the other hand, it is hard to argue with results, and Kerensky’s government, to which I had previously been vaguely sympathetic, definitely did not deliver them. Though Petrograd is the book’s main focus, it also peeks in on other parts of the Russian empire, noting which factions were ascendant when and giving light to groups, such as a conference of Muslim women seeking religious and political reform (or revolution, for some).

The Russian Revolution was a chaotic time, pregnant with possibility, and this book shows that nobody knew what tomorrow would bring. They acted accordingly: confused, hesitant, and contradictory; even the eventual victors were not ruthless or decisive as their eventual victory may have implied. Though the end was a conspiracy, that was not the predetermined outcome. I found it not dissimilar to the confusion that led to the beginning of Nazi rule fifteen years later. In both cases, nothing good resulted.