Before the Revolt

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The Fifth Congress of Soviets met in Moscow between July 4 and 10, 1918. Of the delegates present, 66 per cent were Communists, the rest being mostly Left SRs. From the very beginning of the Congress the latter tried to set the Left SR peasants against the Bolsheviks. Comrade Trotsky’s emergency motion requesting the Congress to approve the order for introducing strict discipline in the frontier guerrilla units which by their policy were violating the peace treaty with Germany, met with an extremely hostile reception from the Left SRs. In his speech Kamkov called on the guerrilla units to attack the Germans actively. Next day, Spiridonova tried, with false allegations, to show that the Council of People’s Commissars was secretly sending gold, grain and manufactured goods to Germany. On July 7-8, after the murder of the German ambassador, Count Mirbach, by the Left SRs Blyumkin and Andreyev, the Left SRs’ revolt took place. The Fifth Congress suspended its work, resuming this only on the 9th when the Congress examined the question of the organization of the Red Army, and also ratified the Soviet Constitution.

[Speech by me introducing an emergency motion at the 5th Congress of Soviets of Workers’, Peasants’, Cossacks’ and Red Army Men’s Deputies July 4, 1918. This is the text of the stenographic report of the speech. – L.T.

Extracts from the official report of the Proceedings of the Fifth Congress of Soviets are given in Bunyan, op. cit. Eye witness accounts will be found in M.P. Price, My Reminiscences of the Russian Revolution (1921), R.H. Bruce Lockhart, Memoirs of a British Agent (1932), and K Paustovsky In That Dawn (Vol.3 of Story of a Life) (1967). Lenin’s speeches at the Congress are in Vol. 27 of the Collected Works.]

I have taken the liberty of requesting the Presidium, and now I request you, to allow me a few minutes of your valuable time for the purpose of introducing a motion which was not included on the agenda but which life itself it now calls for.

In certain sectors of our front zone come disturbing events have been observed, the significance of which I do not want to exaggerate but which nevertheless are significant on the plane of principle. And if we remain indifferent to these occurrences, they could grow into facts that would constitute a menace to the policy which you have wished, and, I think, still wish, to pursue.

In the Kursk sector of the Ukrainian front, in the zone of the demarcation line between us and the Germans, there were alarming signs a few weeks ago that certain elements are carrying on an agitation among some units of our army, aimed at inciting them, regardless of their commanders and of the directives of the central Soviet power, to go over to the offensive.

I do not intend at this moment, comrades, and I have no right, to take up the question of which policy – war or peace – is right or wrong: this question has been allotted a special item on the agenda. But, in any case, I have no doubt that there is no-one in this hall, neither any delegate nor even any of our visitors and guests (unless our enemies have managed secretly to get in among us), who would suppose that the question of war or peace, of launching an attack or concluding an armistice, is a question that can be left to the decision of individual units and detachments of the Red Army.

I have received a telegram from our military commissar at Kursk, Krivoshein – and I mention here, in parentheses, although this question is for me, as Commissar for Military Affairs, a matter of complete indifference, that Comrade Krivoshein, one of our best and most energetic commissars, belongs to the Left SR Party – which informs me that, as a result of ‘provocations’ which I have reported, certain units have now demanded that an attack be launched. The N. regiment has passed a resolution not to attack ‘without orders from the central authorities.’ He reported on the 15th, in the telegram which I have just quoted, that the fifth company of the Third Regiment had launched an attack. This happened, he says, for reasons of various kinds.

Later, a day or two ago, on the 3rd, in the same area, at Lgov [Lgov is about 75 miles west of Kursk, on the railway line from Moscow to Kiev], Commissar Bych was murdered and Brigade Commander Sluvis wounded – again I mention, in parentheses, that Sluvis belongs to the Left SR group – and Krivoshein, whom I have already named, reported that it appeared to him, from the information at his disposal, that certain sinister elements were egging units on to proceed at once to attack, ignoring the orders of the central and even of the local Soviet authorities. He says that this murder was the work of the same leading group which is carrying on the demagogic agitation.

Similar reports are being received from other localities as well. I have only to add that I sent a commission to Kursk and Lgov to investigate the affair, and that this commission has been fired on by the same gang, two comrades being wounded.

From Nevel [Nevel is near the Byclorassian border, on the railway from Petrograd to Odessa, and is the junction for the line to Warsaw] one of our commissars reports that a dishonest demagogic agitation is being carried on there, the gist of which is that the Soviet power is betraying our Ukrainian brothers. They retail filthy legends about how we are buying up all the cloth and handing it over to the Germans, sending grain to Germany and so on – in short, those legends of corrupt and dishonest bourgeois demagogy with which we are very familiar.

I fully understand that some ignorant peasants may be confused by such legends, and, when I am speaking, I have in mind not them but those persons who are trying to involve particular units in conflict, contrary to the will of the All-Russia Congress of Soviets. In addition, I have been informed from Zhalobovka that there, at the checkpoint, some persons dared to threaten with a bomb the chairman of our peace delegation, Comrade Rakovsky. Unfortunately, they were not detained and shot.

You will appreciate, comrades, that one cannot trifle with matters of this sort; that I, as the person responsible at present for the conduct of Red Army units [Kamkov: ‘Kerensky!’ Shouts: ‘Down with whoever it was who shouted!’] ... Kerensky! Kerensky stood on guard for the will of the bourgeois classes, but I am here answerable to you, the representatives of the Russian workers and peasants, and if you censure me and take a different decision, one with which I may or may not agree, then I, as a soldier of the revolution, will submit to it and carry it out.

The last, the Fourth, All-Russia Congress of Soviets (which adopted the policy of peace with Germany), and the Central Executive Committee and Council of People’s Commissars which it elected, pursued a definite policy which expressed the point of view – whether that point of view is correct or incorrect is another question – of the party which represents the will of the overwhelming majority of the classes that do not exploit the labor of others. I am obliged to carry out that part of this policy which has to be implemented through the War Department, and when I am told that certain units of the Red Army are killing, for example, Commissar Bych, or wounding a Brigade Commander, the Left SR Sluvis, and when Commissar Krivoshein reports that gangs are corrupting the troops, and, when we send five or six persons to investigate, they fire on them – then I know that we shall have either to advocate a policy of indulgence or else to hurry up and relentlessly call to account whoever is responsible for all this.

I think, comrades, that, if you were to ask me who these sinister agitators are, I could not tell you exactly, but if you were to ask me: ‘Are there among them Right SRs who are trying by this method to push us into war?’ – I should say: ‘That is likely.’ If you were to ask me: ‘Are there among these delegates representatives of that party which is not satisfied even with the Brest Peace, and wants to provoke us into war, so that Moscow and Petrograd may be occupied?’ – I should say: ‘That is likely.’ If you were to ask me: ‘Are there among them agents of the Anglo-French stock-exchange, who have made a landing on the White Sea coast?’ – I should say: ‘That is likely.’ And they are all working harmoniously together, by means of provocation, lies and bribery, and trying to impose upon you a decision which you alone, by your free will, by your votes, can adopt or not adopt.

So as to set limits to the developments which I have reported to you, I yesterday telegraphed the following order, for which I ask your approval:

‘Two groups want to involve Russia immediately in war with Germany. The first consists of the extremists among the German conquerors and aggressors who are not satisfied even with the Brest-Litovsk peace and are trying to provoke us, so as to be able to occupy Moscow and Petrograd. The other consists of the Anglo-French imperialists who want to involve Russia again in the imperialist slaughter. Agitators hired by our enemies are working among the Red Army men, trying to draw us into the war.

‘I hereby order: all agitators who, after the publication of this order, call for insubordination in relation to the Soviet power, are to be arrested and sent to Moscow for trial by the Extraordinary Tribunal. All agents of foreign imperialism who call for offensive action and offer armed resistance to the Soviet authorities are to be shot on the spot.

‘The All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies is opening today in Moscow. I shall inform it of the activity of scoundrels and hired agents of the German and Anglo-French bourgeoisies. I shall propose to the Congress that provocateurs, hooligans and self-seekers be dealt with ruthlessly. Woe to whoever disobeys the will of the All-Russia Congress of Soviets!

‘Long live revolutionary discipline! Long live the honorable army of the workers and peasants!’

In asking your approval for this order I request you with all seriousness to devote a few minutes to that great question which, in this order, is presented for your attention. War is a grave matter, a great matter, like revolution, and we have taken on ourselves the serious obligation of carrying through to the end what has been begun.

If we have decided to fight, we should say openly that we are going to fight, and state precisely on which front and at what hour we are going to fight.

If we continue to maintain the policy which was approved at the last Congress, then we must make our plenipotentiaries carry out this policy quite resolutely and categorically. You may change this policy at any moment, from considerations of one order or another, depending on the particular international situation, but, so long as it has not been changed, you will not allow agitators whose pockets jingle with imperialist coins to set you one against another, saying: ‘The Soviet power is betraying the Ukraine and Lithuania.’ You will not let them hurl thousands or hundreds of our soldiers into attacks on certain sectors of the front. Let the assembly of the representatives of all the Soviets of Russia say to us: ‘We have placed you in a position of responsibility, entrusted you with a definite policy to pursue, and you have the right to employ, against provocation and treasonable acts which violate this policy, not merely the weapon of agitation but also the sternest measures of revolutionary repression.’

Some obvious misunderstandings have crept in here, owing to the insufficiently critical attitude of a certain section of the Congress towards what is being said and read.

It was said that you are being asked to rubber-stamp a resolution put forward by Trotsky. I did not read out any resolution: what I read to you was an order which, as it turned out, shocked certain persons somewhat because of its style. I myself, comrades, am by no means a lover of military style, as such. I have been accustomed, in my life and writing, to use the publicist’s style, which I prefer to any other. But every sort of activity has its consequences, including stylistic ones, and as the People’s Commissar for Military Affairs, who has to stop hooligans shooting our representatives, I am not a publicist, and I cannot express myself in that lyrical tone in which Comrade Spiridonova spoke.

First of all, I will allow myself to reject some belated fraternal remarks by the Left SRs, those which were directed at us in their speeches describing how we have fraternized with them at various times. For our part, we recall that in that period when, under Kerensky’s government, we were in prison, fraternizing with criminals, the party for which Spiridonova spoke here was a shareholder in Kerensky’s firm. That was in June of last year, a time when, on every occasion that we met the Left SRs, we asked them (it was not then a question of international politics, in which everything depends on circumstances imposed from without): ‘When are you going to display revolutionary honor – and conscience and break with Kerensky’s government?’ And in October when we rose against Kerensky – I have to mention this, so that there may be no further retrospective fraternization – all the Left SRs declared that they would not support this rising. Kamkov has all the more reason to smile at this because he himself said it, along with Natanson and Shreider.

I can speak quite calmly about this matter, but not in that language, a mixture of lyricism with low-grade literature, in which all the representatives of that wing speak: neither toward the diplomatic box, nor toward our own people, nor toward you, do I intend to indulge in that. But those who carried out the October revolution (not in August or in July of this year but in October of last year, as it happened), they know that the Left SRs withdrew from the revolutionary committee and removed all their workers from it except those who remained there independently of their party. In the same way, when once we fell in with their proposal to form a joint government, they replied: ‘We shall enter the government only if the Mensheviks and the Right SRs are in it.’ Yes, that is what they replied. True, we were, for a time, disposed to forgive and forget a lot of things where this party was concerned. We said: ‘It’s young, not to say green: one can’t expect it to show consistency in its action or much logic in its thinking.’ But if now we are told that this party is the vanguard of the proletariat and the peasantry, and even of the whole International, where as we Communists have moved into Kerensky’s position, I am bound to say that the advanced proletariat is grouped around Petrograd and Moscow, but certainly not in Tambov, where the uyezd congress of the Left SRs resolved, in opposition to our group, to distribute vodka to the population. I am not blaming the whole Left SR party for this, comrades, for I am quite sure that no party can be held responsible if, in some corner of its periphery, such measures are taken, but I wanted to point out that the majority of the Left SRs are to be found not in Petrograd or in Moscow but in the uyezds of Tambov province, or in Lgov, where the gangs are active, and the Left SRs have just expressed solidarity with the Lgov gangs, describing their criminal activity as revolutionary indignation against German imperialism.

Then, you will remember what Comrade Zinoviev said here. How many Left SRs are there in Petrograd who are capable of supporting with their authority the gangs of which I spoke? And when the Left SRs try to interpret banditry, among other things, as expressing the revolutionary mood of Red Army units, we do not believe it. Our Red Army units, which, well or ill, we formed (and if they are weak, that means we too are weak make them stronger! ...), want to defend the Soviet Republic honorable. They are disciplined regiments and they will never resort to such action as crossing the demarcation line in groups of twenty to cut down two or three German soldiers who happen to come their way. Only ignorant and undisciplined elements act like that – and it is they who are involved. I mentioned earlier that a representative of Latvia spoke here – and let anyone name any military units that are as disciplined, as firm and as self-sacrificing as our Lettish units: I say that if, on the fronts where we border on Livonia, Estonia and Courland, a conflict were to come about which later would cost us the blood of our own soldiers or peasants, while producing no political result, that would mean that the persons involved might be whoever you like, but no Lettish Bolsheviks would be involved, for they are organized units which stand beneath the banner of firm revolutionary discipline.

The Left SRs say that the Kursk and Lgov episodes are not examples of banditry but expressions of a healthy tendency.

What does true health consist in? In a revolutionary saying: ‘I am angry, I am indignant, but for today I submit to the overall situation and to the orders of the government which I created. And I subordinate myself like a disciplined soldier.’ Can it really be that revolutionary health is manifested when twenty men, having listened to some sinister agitators – or, perhaps neurasthenics or hysterics – fling themselves across the demarcation line, after ascertaining that the German soldiers present at that point are fewer in numbers than themselves? No. This is, so far as the Left SRs are concerned, the most shameful impressionism in politics, and, so far as these gangs are concerned, it is criminality, adventurism.

We find ourselves today in more difficult conditions than ten or fifteen years ago, when, in the course of the struggle against Tsardom, we examined the problem of the tactics of individual terror and mass revolutionary organization, and when, even then, we were for mass work and the SRs were for impressionstic terror, and we saw how these advocates of noisy guerrilla outbursts mostly found their way into the camp of the bourgeoisie.

Fifteen years ago, we stood for the principle of organized action, counterpoising mass organization to individual terror, and for this principle of organization we stand now, as well – in the shape of a regular army of the proletarian and peasant masses, as against guerrilla-ism, which has a lot in common with terror. And we say, as in its day we said about terror, that guerrilla movements disorganize our army and, in the end, destroy its discipline.

Some participants in the Congress have presumed to state that the threat from the Soviet power to these units, which are a miserable minority, means nothing and frightens none of them. If that is so, then why, in that case, have we seen an entire party, which defends these units, consider it necessary, without having adequate grounds, to bring their fear into this hall and say: ‘We know that you want to shoot us: allow us a last word, listen to us’?

No, things have not reached so tragic a state as that: those Left SRs who work seriously and honestly at the task of building the army – and there are such – are the first to inform me, over the direct wire, of any excesses, of any sort of hooliganism. I repeat: Krivoshein in Kursk, a Left SR, the commissar for the province, is an excellent commissar. There are other comrades like him in Kursk, they themselves treat these guerrilla elements as sinister and corrupt, like those who cross the demarcation line and, at the sight of a German helmet, if it be multiplied by ten or twenty, run away – while solid, conscious units like, for example, the Lettish units, which possess Party spirit and strong discipline, don’t launch senseless attacks, but also don’t take to their heels at the sight of the first German or other helmet. And we want to build just such an army – that is, to eradicate from the army the disorganized and demoralized elements, the neurasthenics and hysterics, and introduce firm discipline, which consists in behaving in a self-possessed and conscious way under the worst, most difficult conditions, when there is nothing easier than to engage in cheap demagogy about how, out there in the Ukraine, they are killing our brothers, and soon. In general, what is the point of talking about this, how, in this All-Russia Congress of Soviets, in which 99 out of a hundred Party people are activists with an old Party tempering, can any need be felt for crude demagogy? We are gathered here not to listen to that, but to decide how we can become strong, firm and powerful. And when we are told that we must bow our heads before activity which finds expression in a group of hooligans threatening to throw a bomb at Comrade Rakovsky, an action performed, moreover, by the same demoralized elements that steal the luggage of all the Germans who pass through, and that of our own people as well, we answer: ‘There is no place for this conduct here!’ Only a group that has lost his bearings can talk in such a way, and we must disband the demoralized units.

There, at the frontiers, only firm units can hold their ground. And you will say that it is their duty to hold on firmly to flue positions where we have put them, that they are not to dare to decide for themselves, on the burning soil of the frontier, that question of war and peace. I do not ask you, and I have no right to ask you, to prefer peace rather than war: I have not talked about that, comrades, and it is in vain that the Left SRs have shifted the whole problem on to a different plane. I said that we must proclaim to all the units of the army, to the working class and to the peasantry, to all the parties, all the groups, whether or not they are connected with the Soviets, that the question of war and peace can be decided by you and by you alone.

And the Left SRs approve of violations of this unshakable condition of Soviet power, they applaud from the rostrum of the All-Russia Congress those units in which scoundrelly elements, handfuls of bandits, set themselves against the sovereign organ of the entire country, they dare to say that this behavior is symptomatic of healthy activity. You must express your view on this matter, and express it decisively, without vagueness or reticence. Here, essentially, we have to decide a question which is not just a matter of the units stationed before Kursk and Lgov.

In the CEC, at former congresses of Soviets, we said to the Mensheviks and SRs: take power, and you will create an authority that will pass painlessly from one hand to the other. But in those days the Soviets were not an instrument, an organ of power, but an apparatus used by the servants of the forces which held power and which stood above the Soviets. We said that we could not resign ourselves to the lot of being a servile apparatus. Today the Soviets are the organ of power. In the Congress of Soviets you will work out and adopt a constitution which will be based on the workers and the poorest peasantry, giving expression in legal relationships to the relation of forces between them in the revolution. And if the Left SRs tell us, in connection with the military episode which has taken place, that they are unwilling to keep Soviet activity within the framework of the All-Russia Congress of Soviets, that within this framework no legal channel is available for struggle, this must not be so! Regardless of how the question of war and peace is decided, every party, every Red Guard, every one of you who disagrees with the Brest-Litovsk peace, can prepare for the next All-Russia Congress of Soviets. But if other parties claim that your decision is to be violated through ‘direct action’, if they want to demonstrate this at the front – we shall not allow them to do it! Not for this did we take power, not in order that some groups of neurasthenics and intellectuals should be able to violate the will of the worker and peasant masses of our country.

At the present moment the balance of votes to be cast for one side or the other is not being decided. What is put to us is the question: for Soviet power or against it, for ‘direct action’ or for subordination? And let no-one refer in this connection to the number of votes cast. What has the work of the credentials commission to do with this question?

It is our duty to decide the question which has been raised today not casually but seriously, fully aware of our responsibility before the whole country. We have to give a clear answer to this question: are you going to allow any Red Army unit to decide for itself what Soviet policy is to be, when this unit, having read the articles by Spiridonova and others, tries to engage in battle?

You know that the Anglo-French forces are advancing, together with the Right SRs and Mensheviks, in order to fight the Germans regardless of the Soviets. And if some isolated units – alas, some intoxicated units – commit outrages on the frontier: if other forces are landing on our coast – landing because we have no battleships; if the Czechoslovaks revolt, and the Right SRs give them leadership: if emotional speeches are made about the Ukraine, with calls for offensive action – then all this, regardless of the differences in forms and slogans, will tend, in its overall, ultimate aims and tasks, towards one point: the disrupting of peace.

I have spoken about how I see the question of war and peace. But if the Congress of Soviets says that we must fight, then we Bolsheviks can die no worse than the SRs can.

To this question, which we are obliged to answer, you will give your answer tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, after we have discussed the whole situation in its entirety. Today you will be answering another question, which is a great deal more important than the procedure for dealing with doubtful and imperfect credentials [The Left SRs alleged that the Bolshevik majority at the Fifth Congress of Soviets was achieved, in part, by giving the Committees of the Poor a disproportionately large share of the seats reserved for peasant delegates.] – party ‘kitchen’ intrigues, that’s a complicated business, some slovenly concoctions come out of that. The question you will be answering is: have I the right to tell Army units that the All-Russia Congress is the sovereign organ of the Republic?

And if the comrades say that that is the case, then they will also be saying: ‘It is here that the question of our international policy will be decided, and any attempt to violate the will of the All-Russia Congress by individual outbreaks at the front is a miserable, shameful and dishonorable provocation.’

At the same time you will be saying that the People’s Commissar for Military Affairs has the duty, until he is replaced, to carry out your will, and is therefore obliged to suppress any military provocation that runs counter to our resolutions.

They talk to me about the executions by firing squads. They remembered Kerensky! Yes, of course, comrades, a class which is demonstrating that it is in power does shoot people. But Kerensky shot at the masses in order to support British imperialism. We shall defend the independence of the Russian Soviet Republic against all imperialisms: we shall not go with Germany against France and Britain, just as we shall not go with Britain and France against Germany. We want to become stronger, more disciplined, better organized, as a Soviet Republic. And towards this end you, as the sovereign organ, must say to all groups, large and small, that engage in petty incitements to war: ‘Hands off! Here speaks the sovereign organ of the Soviet Republic: it, and nobody else, will decide whether there is to be war or peace.’