13.11.1997

The second Russian revolution

From ‘The Call’, paper of the British Socialist Party, November 15 1917

The expected has happened. Kerensky and the Provisional Council has been overthrown, and the soviet has taken control in Petrograd.

Would that the soviet had never surrendered its power at the beginning of the Revolution, Russia would have been in a far stronger position than she is now. As it is, the second revolution may still have been brought about in time. The reactionaries are hoping for civil war.

How affairs will shape in the event of an armed conflict, we cannot at the time of writing predict. We know that Maximalist opinion has rapidly spread throughout Russia. The workmen, peasants and soldiers have remained faithful to the Revolution. Even if the reactionaries are able to muster a force to oppose the new government, there are nevertheless strong hopes that the Revolution will be saved.

It is not too difficult to trace the events that led up to, and made necessary the deposing of Kerensky and the Provisional Government. From the first moment that he began to compromise with the middle class parties he has steadily drifted towards the right. He became an easy tool in the hands of the reactionaries. He sanctioned the disastrous offensive. He sought the suppression of the army committees that protected the army from the reactionary generals.

It is established now that he was closely implicated in the Kornilov rising. His object at first was to suppress the soviet and establish a triple dictatorship, including himself. That he was not the leader of the Kornilov rising instead of its apparent suppressor was simply the result of a misunderstanding.

Since then his opposition to the soviet took another form. The recent coalition government and Provisional Council was designed to remove all powers from the soviet. This it would have done but for the action of the Maximalists. It was becoming noticeable too that the government was reverting to the imperialist policy of tsarism. Kerensky, from leader of the Revolution, became leader of the counterrevolution.

The programme of the new revolutionary government brings the immediate objectives of the Revolution back to what it was at the commencement: immediate democratic peace, the granting of land to the peasants, and the convocation of a constituent assembly.

Russia must have peace now - there is no question about that. Kerensky admitted that she is worn out. Russia once again holds out the offer of a general democratic peace, which, if the people of Europe desired it, can be secured now. If however a deaf ear is turned once again to her entreaties, what is she to do?

Revolutionary Russia does not desire a separate peace. The Revolution prevented the tsar from making a separate peace. The soviet prevented Miliukov from doing the same. It is the reactionary minister of war, Verchovsky, who proposes a separate peace to Kerensky. But if Russia is compelled through sheer exhaustion to make a separate peace, the responsibility will rest on the governments and people of the Entente ... Russia has a right to say that she has been betrayed by her allies.

Once again the democracy of Russia stretches out its hand to the people of Europe. Surely the eyes of the people have by now been opened to the real character of this war. Are they to continue to allow the imperialist governments to drag the world to its ruin? Or will they respond to this further appeal from Russia to end this horrible carnage, and establish the reign of peace and freedom?