Rabinovich A. Ph.D. in History, professor emeritus Indiana University (Bloomington, USA)
The primary aim of my current book project is to better understand how Bolshevism in Petrograd overcame endless internal and external threats dur¬ing the devastating civil war, and the impact of this treacherous existential struggle on the earliest development of the authoritarian, highly centralized Soviet political system1. In a recently published paper, I foreshadowed some of the directions of this work by outlining my sense of the development and political impact of three concrete problems relating to the survival of the Petrograd Bolsheviks in 1919. These problems included the Left SR-led strike wave in March 1919, the near fatal military crisis of mid-October 1919, and the effort of the Petrograd Bolsheviks to build an effective government and party organization during the year.2 The purpose of this essay in honor of my dear friend and deeply admired colleague Vladlen Semenovich Izmozik is to continue this preliminary exploration by focusing on a few other key prob¬lems and their political consequences. All of these problems pertain to just the late spring and early summer of that endlessly horrific year, 1919.
Restructuring for total war
By the beginning of May 1919, at the height of the civil war, the restructuring of Soviet government in Petrograd was well advanced. The previous April, the Left SR party had been effectively suppressed as a significant Bolshevik rival. Even earlier, in February 1919, the Northern Commune headed by its own Sovkom had been eliminated as a semi-independent regional government. Henceforth, government policy-making
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1 The tentative title of this book is The Bolsheviks Survive: Government and Crises in Civil War Petrograd.
2 Aleksandr Rabinovich, "Vyzhivanie bol 'shevikov: pravitel 'stvo i krizisy v Petrograde v gody Grazhdanskoi voiny (Nekotorye predvaritel'nie vyvody)", in T. A. Abrosimova, et al., eds., Epokha voiny i revoliutsii, 1914-1922 (Petersburg, 2017), pp. 185-206.
in Petrograd and in the surrounding region was to be the prerogative of the Sovnarkom in Moscow. Slightly less than a month later, the Eighth All-Russian Communist Party Congress (March 18-23), had adopted the ruling principle that the Bolshevik party would strictly control all aspects of policy-making in Soviet government (including all important personnel matters). Henceforth, policy-making not just in the Sovnarkom but in soviets generally, as well as in trade unions and, in fact, in all political, economic, and military agencies from top to bottom, was to be determined by organized party fractions guided from above. Among additional points of emphasis in the Eighth Party Congress's mandate on organization were (1) that the party had to cleanse itself and vastly increase its membership, and (2) that it had to restore links between party members occupied full¬time by party or soviet work and their factories. This re-connection of broken ties was to be accomplished by returning Bolsheviks in government or party agencies to their original factories temporarily. Grigorii Zinoviev, then already Petrograd's unchallenged chief (vozhd), outlined most of these principles to a large assembly of Bolshevik officials and rank-and-file party members on March 29, 1919, soon after his return from the party congress in Moscow3.
The Eighth All-Russian Communist Party Congress had taken place during one of the most alarming moments for the Bolsheviks in the long and terrible civil war. Precisely then, Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak's White forces had occupied large parts of Western Siberia and the Urals, and were rapidly advancing into central Russia. Lev Trotsky, the powerful People's Commissar for War, had been forced to rush to the collapsing Eastern front a few days prior to the start of the congress4. Indeed, on the eve of the congress, prospects for Soviet Russia's immediate survival appeared so uncertain to Lenin that he essentially accepted humiliating truce terms ventured by the American diplomat William C. Bullitt. At the time, Lenin characterized these
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3 Izvestiia KPSS, No. 8, 1989, pp. 185-198. "The party must direct soviets, not replace them, " he said. We need to strengthen our influence...so that we that we are can retain pow¬er without military force." "We should have 50,000 party members in Petrograd, not 8000".
4 Consequently, Trotsky was unable to personally present his vitally important but highly controversial program for building a traditionally structured Red Army in which "spetsy" would have leading military roles. I discuss the resulting difficulties in Аleksandr Rabinovich, "VIII s'ezd Kommunisticheskoi partii, perestroika dlia vyzhiva-niia." in B. I. Kolonitskii and D. Orlovskii, оГred., Revoliutsiia 1917 goda v Rossii: sobytiia i kontseptsii, posledsviia pamiat' (Petersburg, 2017), pp. 267-280.
concessions as a second "Brest"5. To him, it was a necessary step backwards pending the imminent decisive revolutionary explosions abroad which he still conidently expected. The draft proposal then under consideration, which was provisionally approved by the Central Committee but ultimately ignored by the Western allies, would have left vast parts of Russia in the hands of the Whites in exchange for lifting the Allied economic blockade and halting the civil war and foreign military interventions6.
In the aftermath ofthe EighthAll-Russian Communist Party Congress, Petrograd Bolshevik leaders tried as best they could to systematize party and soviet structures to comply with the Congress's organizational directives, including bridging the perceived chasm between worker-Bolsheviks in government or party work and their labor constituencies7. This was hard enough. But Petrograd Bolsheviks had to try to accomplish this while giving highest priority to more immediate emergency tasks, such as securing enough bread for bare survival from drastically depleted supplies and ferreting out foreign spies and underground counter-revolutionary groups that were energized by Kolchak's success. Plus, the Petrograd Bolsheviks had to somehow try do all this with a skeleton party organization composed largely of untrained newcomers. A high percentage of party veterans had already been sent off to the front or were just then departing for the Volga or the Urals8.
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5 V. I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Moscow, 1981), T. 38, pp. 41-48; John M. Thompson, Russia, Bolshevism, and the Versailles Peace (Princeton, 1966), p. 165; Richard K. Debo, Survival and Consolidation: The Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia, 1918-1921 (Montreal & Kingston, 1992), pp. 47-50.
6 Izvestiia TsK KPSS, No. 8, 1989, pp. 156-157, 179, note 1. Under the proposed agreement Soviet Russia would give up claims, at least for the time being, to all of the Urals, Siberia, the Caucasus, the area around Archangel and Murmansk, Finland, the Baltic states, and parts of White Russia and Ukraine (Beatrice Farnsworth, William C. Bullitt and the Soviet Union [Bloomington and London, 1967]), pp. 32-54.
7 On April 1, the Bolshevik Assembly of Organizers began the process of transfer¬ring Bolsheviks already in soviet and party agencies for extended periods of time back to their factories (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 1, d. 230, l. 144). See, also, Krasnaia gazeta, April 3, 1919, p. 1. Cleansing the party through re-registration and expanding it by mass recruit¬ment was a much more complex process. This process was not begun until July.
8 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 6, d. 230, l. 33, 40-41. A premium in these mobilizations was personnel from commissariats and soviet agencies. Moreover, since virtually all factory workers belonged to trade unions while only a tiny fraction were Bolshevik party mem¬bers, the Petrograd Trade Union Council was relied on to conduct a crash mobilization of its own. Essential at the time, this clear violation of the Eighth Congress's dictum on the controlling role of the party in signiicant matters had lasting consequences. On the criti¬cal role of trade unions in mobilization see E. G. Gimpel'son, Formirovanie sovetskoi politicheskoi sistemy, 1917-1923 (Moscow, 1995), pp. 127-128.
Na Ural!
"Na Ural!" ("To the Urals!"), was the title of a leaflet by Trotsky that was very widely circulated. In April 1919, it became Petrograd's watchword. In this resonating, carefully focused appeal, Trotsky linked an end to prevailing hunger to Kolchak's defeat. "There are millions of puds of grain on the Volga and in Urals cities," he explained. "There is more than enough to ill us all up...Death to Kolchak, who wants to starve us to death"9.
In a letter "To Petrograd Workers" on April 10, Lenin pointed to the absolute necessity of "mobilizing all possible forces for the Eastern front, where the fate of the revolution is being decided". "With victory there [in the East]," he concluded, "we will have ended the war because the Whites will get no more help from abroad"10. On April 17, the first day of official mass mobilization to combat Kolchak, Petrogradskaia pravda's front page headline echoed, "Today Is The First Day Of Mobilization... The War Against Kolchak is the Last War. Having Crushed Him, We Will Be Victorious Over Imperialism!" Towards the end of April, authorities in the city proclaimed martial law (soon changed to a state of siege). The primary aim of this drastic step had less to do with the Kolchak emergency than with domestic order. The main purpose of the declaration was to facilitate stricter controls within the city of Petrograd.11 Even continuing White Finnish incursions into East Karelia did not alter the priority Petrograd gave to sacrificing everything possible for the fierce battles being waged on the far-off Eastern front. Petrogradskaia pravda's headline on May day, 1919, was typical: "Long Live Red May 1! Everyone into Streets!"... "Let our holiday be a show of strength for the fight against Kolchak!"
Trouble in the Northwest
The priority given to the largest and quickest possible transfer of scarce personnel out of Petrograd for military duty elsewhere, primarily in the East, changed overnight. For weeks, Moscow and Petrograd had tolerated incursions into East Karelia by irregular Finnish military detachments. An
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9 Listovkipetrogradskikh bol'shevikov, 1917-1919, T. 3 (Leningrad, 1957), p. 251.
10 Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, T. 38, 268.
11 TsGA SPb, f. 1000, op. 54, d. 7, l. 36-43; Petrogradskaia pravda, May 18, 1919, p. 2.
abrupt shift in priorities during the last week in April was prompted by a signiicant expansion of Finnish advances into East Karelia, Finnish troop build-ups elsewhere on the border and, most immediately, by concern that these forces were about to join with White Russian units for a combined assault on Petrograd12. On May 2, Moscow declared a state of siege in the city of Petrograd and in the neighboring provinces of Petrograd, Olonets, and Cherepovets.13 That same day, the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet formed an all-powerful "Committee for Petrograd's Defense", headed by Zinoviev14 Similarly authoritative, paid district revolutionary troikas were authorized on May 5. These troikas, approved by the party and responsible to the Committee for Petrograd's Defense, soon replaced district party and soviet executive committees at the local level15.
During this occupation scare, which peaked again in late May and early June, the high command of the Red Army ordered the start of preparations to evacuate some militarily signiicant industrial plants out of Petrograd, and to render many others inoperable.16 Simultaneously, bridges and rail lines along the enemy's likely path were readied for demolition. Each day, alarming emergency orders from the Committee for Petrograd's Defense filled Severnaia kommuna's front page. All these measures panicked workers. Constantly reminded by Bolshevik agitation and by the soviet press of the
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12 On April 29, the Bolshevik Petersburg Committee agreed to send 1000 party members to the Karelian front and 1000 to the Olonets front (TsGAIPD, f. 1, op. 2, d. 271, l. 4-5). Moscow's belated concern appears to have been triggered by informa¬tion on discussions in the Russian [Emigre] Political Conference in Paris the night of May 1/2 (Kareliia v period grazhdanskoi voiny i inostrannoi interventsii, 1918-1920 [Petrozavodsk, 1964], p. 66-67); Petrogradskaia pravda, May 3, 1919; A. I. Rupasov, A. N. Chistikov, Sovetsko-Finliandskaiagranitsa, 1918-1938 (Petersburg, 2000), pp. 39-48.
13 Krasnaia gazeta, May 3, 1919, p. 2.
14 TsGA SPb, f. 1000, op. 3, d. 58, l. 80-80 ob. Although the Committee for Petrograd's Defense was nominally responsible to the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, it was independent in practice. Among the defense committee's responsibilities were co¬ordinating mobilizations and evacuation; defense planning and preparation; and combat¬ing counter-revolution and maintaining order. After July, these operations were directed by Iakob Peters, the Commandant of the newly established Petrograd fortiied district. His authority included the city of Petrograd and 15 versts around it (TsGA SPb, f. 485, op. 1, d. 21, l. 293, 341).
15 TsGA SPb, f. 485, op. 1, d. 26, l. 173 ob.;N. A. Kornatovskii, Bor 'ba za krasnyi Petrograd (1919), (Leningrad, 1929), pp. 311-312.
16 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 109, d. 41, l. 15-16; TsGA SPb, f. 485, op. 1, d. 5. TsGA SPb,
f. 54, op. 1, d. 20, l. 22, 29-30A. 152
horrors of White Terror, they naturally assumed that they would be early victims of an enemy occupation. The leading Petrograd Bolshevik Grigorii Evdokimov didn't help matters with a sensational statement at an expanded emergency meeting of the Petrograd Soviet and representatives of trade unions on May 3, which was published in the papers the next day. "In the name of the Petrograd Soviet and the workers of Piter," he proclaimed, "if we are fated to depart this world, then each of us of will take tens [desiatoi-drugoi] of counter-revolutionaries with us!"17.
On May 5, the Committee for the Petrograd's Defense sentenced to forced labor all East Karelian males between the ages of 18 and 40 not engaged in defense work18. Archival iles for this period contain evidence of the roundup by Bolshevik authorities of large numbers of formerly prominent citizens of Petrograd for use as hostages19. Among those also interned at this time were families of deserters20. Moreover, preparations were made for the detention of many more citizens deemed dangerous, and of hundreds if not thousands of Finns living in Petrograd21. As it turned out, these attacks from Finland were the lesser of two significant military threats to Petrograd in this period. In early May, White Russians in Estonia also took Kolchak's successful drive into central Russia as a sure sign that the fall of Bolshevism was at hand. On May 13, elements of General Nikolai Iudenich's Northern Corps (the future White Northwest Army) launched an assault on Petrograd from bases near Narva, in newly independent Estonia. Simultaneously, Estonian amphibious forces supported by the British landed at Luga Bay and began a simultaneous drive on Petrograd. Within days, Red Army forces were in headlong, disorganized retreat. By then, however, Kolchak's advance had been slowed and Moscow was able
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17 Severnaia kommuna, May 4, 1919, p. 2; Petrogradskaia pravda, May 4, 1919, p. 2.
18 Rupasov, Chistikov, Sovetsko-Finliandskaia granitsa, p. 43.
19 See, for example, f. 54, op. 1, d. 20, l. 252, 253, 254 with ob.
20 Izvestiia Petrogradskogo soveta, June 2, 1919, p. 1; TsGA, SPb, f. 1788, op. 1, d. 57, l. 42-43. A request from Dzerzhinskii that families of deserters also be shot was rejected by the Central Committee on June 11 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 20, l. 3).
21 On May 9, 1919, the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet resolved to begin imprisoning "White Guardists" in concentration camps on a mass scale (TsGA SPb, f. 150, op. 1, d. 30, l. 15). In this connection, a First City District Soviet ile for 1919 seems pertinent. It contains long undated address lists of Tsarist and Provisional Government era oficials; public igures; and Finnish citizens residing the district (f. 54, op. 1, d. 20, l. 252-254 s ob).
to give Petrograd top priority for reenforcement22. Still, for some time the situation of the Reds in the Northwest was bleak. Yudenich's forces, aided by substantial Red defections, advanced with astonishing speed. At the end of May, they approached Gatchina, only 45 kilometers from Petrograd. A bit later, along the southern gulf coast, Estonian detachments neared Krasnaia gorka. Kronstadt appeared doomed; non-military personnel and families there were now ordered to evacuate the base23. Western media reported that Red Petrograd had likely already fallen.24 Not only foreign observers thought the end was near. Bolshevik oficials made hurried preparations to lee the "cradle of the revolution"25.
Jacob Peters
For much of this time, Bolshevik authorities were as concerned about Petrograd's internal security as they were about its external military defense (hence the declaration of martial law in late April). Of primary concern were naturally hostile former elites, some of them functioning as spetsy in Red army and naval forces in the Petrograd region. Also disquieting was growing unrest among thousands of new peasant Red Army recruits crammed into squalid, overcrowded garrison barracks26 and continuing disruptions among half-starving workers. On June 8, Jacob Peters, Dzerzhinskii's chief deputy in the VCheka, was transferred from Moscow to Petrograd to impose order there (as he later put it, to "get rid of counterrevolutionary bands"27). On June 11, as newly appointed "Chief of Petrograd's Defense"28, Peters launched the first of several
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22 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 18, l. 26. On May 19, the Communist Central Committee transferred Joseph Stalin to Petrograd to try to help stabilize the situa¬tion. He remained there until July 9.
23 Izvestiia Kronstadtskogo soveta, May 23, p. 1. In response to a query from Zinoviev regarding where to put these evacuees, Lenin directed that "those considered completely reliable should be sent to the Don, those who are unreliable should be placed in concentra¬tion camps" (V. I. Lenin, Neizvestnye dokumenty [Moscow, 1999)]), pp. 289-290).
24 Thus, on May 31, 1919 a page one New York Times headline informed readers that "Petrograd Reported Won; Bolsheviki Beaten on Petrograd Front".
25 See, for example, TsGA SPb, f. 54, op. 1, d. 20, l. 245, 245 ob., 246, 250.
26 TsGAIPD, f. 1, op. 2, d. 27, l. 6; d. 29, l. 14-16.
27 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 16, d. 26, l. 115-116 s ob.
28 Although Zinoviev stayed on as oficial head of the Committee for Petrograd's Defense, from now on its day-to-day operations were directed by Peters.
citywide, surprise middle-of-the-night, mass raids on "bourgeois apartments", foreign legations, and even government ofices. Petersburg historical archives contain long lists of people arrested, and weapons and valuables seized, in these frightening nocturnal assaults. Thousands of armed Petrograd workers, most of them mobilized by trade unions and district troikas, participated in them.29 Archival documents reveal widespread violations of detailed, precise printed instructions that were supposed to regulate these raids30. For Peters, however, these violations paled in comparison with the beneits of the raids. He later boasted that they had trapped, disarmed, and terrorized hordes of counter-revolutionaries; netted large numbers of military deserters; and given the masses of workers who participated in them valuable, irst-hand views of the gross injustices of their daily life31.
Krasnaia gorka
In the late spring and early summer of 1919, not only Petrograd but also the Kronstadt naval base and three strategically important forts on the gulf coast (Krasnaia gorka, Obruchev, and Seraia Loshad), were beehives of veteran officers (military specialists or spetsy), and of recalled soldiers and sailors from the imperial Russian army and navy, profoundly hostile to Bolshevism32. As Finnish, Estonian, and Northern Corps forces advanced toward Petrograd, the hopes of these embittered personnel for a quick end to Bolshevism rose dramatically and they intensiied their scheming.
Among these plotters was one Nikolai Nekludov. Nekludov was a self-pronounced liberal and military specialist who was then commandant at Krasnaia gorka, not far from Kronstadt. The night of June 12/13 Nekludov, learning of disruptions among Kronstadt sailors
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29 Peters later reported that he organized these raids through trade unions and district troikas because ofthe PCheka's unresponsiveness to him (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 16, d. 26, l. 115).
30 These instructions contain detailed sections on categories of individuals to be ar¬rested; types of weapons, kinds of valuables, and norms for foodstuffs subject to seizure; and precise penalties for violations of these instructions, including shooting for accepting bribes and/or plundering (TsGA SPb, f. 47, op. 1, d. 80, l. 105-106).
31 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 6, d. 26, l. 115-116; see, also, TsGA SPb, f. 54, op. 1, d. 15, l. 86.
32 On recalled sailors in fall, 1918, see Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks in Power, pp. 349-355. On the counterrevolution in Kronstadt during spring 1919, see V. Vinogradov, A. Litvin, and V. Khristoforov (eds.), Arkhiv VCheka (Moscow, 2007), p. 126.
resisting transfer to the nearby front, concluded that the time to act was ripe. Assuming that elements of the Northern Corps were near enough to support him (mistakenly, as it turned out), and also erroneously taking for granted that his co-conspirators in Kronstadt were poised to rise, Nekludov led a successful counterrevolutionary takeover of Krasnaia gorka33. However, while Estonian troops were indeed close-no more than 7-8 kilometers away-they were not in position to help. Moreover, for unexplained reasons Nekludov's comrades in the most important location of all, Kronstadt, remained passive34. For the better part of three days, heavy artillery at Krasnaia gorka lobbed shell after shell towards Kronstadt, and big guns on Kronstadt's largest, most powerful ships answered by pounding away at Krasnaia gorka. The outcome-much of Krasnaia gorka was ruined-was inevitable. Virtually all the rebels, Nekludov among them, managed to flee what was left of the base before it was shelled into submission and re-occupied by Red ground forces on June 16. Mutineers at Obruchev and Seraia Loshad were not as fortunate. Fifty men from Obruchev and eight from Seraia Loshad were tried and shot for treachery during the insurrections35. British naval ships operating in the Finnish gulf in support of the Whites arrived too late to help36.
During the second half of June, 1919, not long after the recapture of Krasnaia gorka, the immediate threat of Petrograd's military occupation by White forces ended and a Red counteroffensive on the nearby front was begun37. However General Iudenich, supported by the British, was far from beaten. Indeed, the threat of regular Finnish forces joining with him for a combined, more deadly assault on Petrograd loomed larger than ever. Moreover, at the beginning of July General Anton Denikin's White forces retook Tsaritsyn and began an advance on Moscow from the south. In Lenin's view, Denikin's forces now replaced those of Kolchak as a primary threat to
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33 For Nekludov's recollection of these events see N. Nekludov, Tragediia Krasnoi Gorki in N. Rutich, Belyi front generala Iudenicha: biografii chinov Severo-Zapadnoi armii (Moscow, 2002), pp. 455-468.
34 Still, twenty-one naval personnel from Kronstadt were charged with also partici¬pating in the plot and shot (RGA VMF, f. 307, op. 1, d. 16, l. 25 ob.).
35 RGA VMF, f. 307, op. 1, d. 16, l. 24, 24 ob., 25.
36 On June 18, a British torpedo boat sank the heavy cruiser Oleg, one of the ships off Kronstadt that had pounded Krasnaia gorka (Augustus Agar, Baltic Episode (London, 1963), p. 87.
37 TsGA SPb, f. 485, op. 1, d. 21, l. 249.
the survival of the revolution. In a letter of early July to party organizations throughout the country titled "Everything for the Struggle Against Denikin," Lenin pointed to the developing disaster in the south as "in all likelihood the most critical moment in the socialist revolution"38. On July 4, largely due to this rapidly escalating military emergency, authorities in Petrograd imposed a strict ban on leaves for Petrograd factory workers.
Another Strike Wave
Less than a week later, another broadly based strike wave erupted on Petrograd's rail lines and its industrial enterprises. As was the case with factory stoppages the previous March, the primary cause of labor unrest in July was catastrophic hunger-and the looming threat of mass starvation. At this point the Left SRs, who had helped lead the March strikes, were beaten. By and large, the July strikes were no longer aimed at overthrowing the Bolsheviks39. For Petrograd authorities, however, this was small consolation because there was very little they could do to ease deepening hunger, and the desperation it bred, before the August harvest, still several weeks away. Moreover, in March, if not earlier, labor strikes were banned in the workers state40; at the beginning of May, this prohibition had been reenforced by the proclamation of a state of siege.
The July strike wave began on July 7, just as citywide elections to the Petrograd Soviet concluded41. As was now customary, the Bolsheviks won these elections (July 1-8) in a landslide; however, an unexpectedly large number of unafiliated deputies overcame prohibitive campaign barriers and won seats in the new soviet. This circumstance prompted the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet to order a list of "counter-revolutionary factories"42. The strikes
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38 Lenin, PSS, vol. 39, p. 44.
39 On the March 1919 strikes, see Aleksandr Rabinovich, "Vyzhivanie bol'shevikov", pp. 184-191. For interesting insights into the goals of the July strikes, see V. Iu. Cherniaev, et al., eds., Piterskie rabochie i "diktaturaproletariata" (Petersburg, 2000), p. 187-188.
40 Severnaia kommuna, Feb. 5, p. 2.
41 Although by this time, the Petrograd Soviet was no longer a decision-making body but a facade for decisions made in party and soviet executive organs, including the Committee for Petrograd's Defense, Petrograd Bolsheviks used twice yearly soviet elec¬tions for the reafirmation of popular support for their policies. This helps explain why these elections were still treated seriously.
42 TsGA SPb, f. 1000, op. 3, d. 58, l. 120 ob.
were touched off by hungry workers in shops and lines of the Nikolaevskii railway. The railroaders had received no bread at all on July 7, a sign of the times. Worse yet, the fresh ban on leaves prevented them from using access to railroads for food procurement as was permitted in the past. In this case, the government yielded quickly. On July 9, the railroaders demands were partially met and they returned to work43. By then, however, the strikes had already spread. Among the irst to join the railroaders were workers at the Putilov metal-working and machine building plant. Putilov, which had been at the center of the March strike wave, and was surely among "counterrevolutionary" enterprises in the July soviet elections, was once again an early trouble spot44. All told, brief but destabilizing slowdowns or walkouts halted operations in close to 40 industrial enterprises and tram parks all across the city45.
The Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet met in emergency session on July 8 to deal with the developing crisis46. After hearing the Commissar for Food Supply, Aleksei Badaev, essentially conclude that everything possible was already being done to ease food shortages and that what was most needed now was patience until the harvest, the committee resolved to send another appeal to the Sovnarkom for emergency food aid and to further tighten controls over public dining halls. Plus, the committee authorized sending a military detachment from the Fortress of Peter and Paul to pacify the railway men, and also assigned armed sailors who had taken part in the recapture of Krasnaia gorka to restore order at the Putilov plant. On a more positive note, the committee reopened the question of worker leaves without, however, reaching a decision47. (The leave policy
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43 Bulleteni otdela statistiki truda pri Petrogradskom otdeli truda i sovete proizvod-stvennykh soiuzov, No. 8, 15 noiabria, p.4. These demands included an increase in the bread ration, the lifting of a ban on leaves, and the right for themselves and their families to bring food in from the countryside by rail free of charge.
44 TsGA SPb, f. 1000, op. 3, d. 58, l. 120.
45 Bulleteni otdela statistiki truda pri Petrogradskom otdeli truda i sovete proiz-vodstvennykh soiuzov, No. 8, 15 Noiabria, pp. 3-5. Among factories involved in work stoppages of one kind or another were the Baltic, Nevskii, and Okhta shipbuilding plants; the Obukhov steel and armaments works; the Baranovskii, Nobel, Novyi Lessner, Putilov, Simens-Shukert, and Westinghouse machine-building plants; the Pipe factory; the Rechkina carriage-building factory; the Laferm tobacco company; the Thornton woolen company; the Nikolskii weaving and the Kersten knitwear factories; and the Pal' and Vyborg spinning factories.
46 TsGA SPb, f. 1000, op. 3, d. 58, l. 120.
47 Ibid.
was subsequently liberalized.) Meanwhile, the Committee for Petrograd's Defense began preparing for the worst and also took steps to quell labor unrest. It's appeal to workers for patience, along with a plea from Zinoviev to grain producing regions for immediate emergency aid, appeared in the next issue of Petrogradskaia pravda448.
The record of a meeting on July 14 of district revolutionary troika representatives with Naum Antselovich, a long-time trade union leader and Peters's chief deputy in the Committee for the Defense of Petrograd, provides valuable glimpses into the breadth of the July strike wave, and the committee's forceful approach to dealing with it49. The meeting began with a report on the strikes by Antselovich. His prime concern seemed to be that communication between the districts and center with regard to the strikes had been non¬existent. The center had not been informed of what was happening at the local level. The answer of the troika representative from the Second City District, the biggest district in the city, was straightforward. The communications lapse resulted from the fact that events happened so fast that troikas couldn't stay informed themselves, let alone inform central headquarters.
At this meeting, representatives of 10 district troikas presented status reports. Of these, only the representative of the outlying Porokhovskii district reported that "during these days, all was quiet". Virtually everywhere else, striking workers were demanding an increase in bread rations and a lifting of the ban on leaves so that they could seek food outside the city. Common to a few of the reports were complaints about "Menshevik nests", disloyal factory committees and, more often, on the need for force to restore order in a few troublesome factories. Still, only rarely did a reporter point to "political" rather than primarily economic motives in explaining labor unrest locally. Thus, the representative from the Vyborg district concluded that "all workers in idle factories favor Soviet power, but they appeal for bread (especially the women). The anti-Soviet agitation is minor. Only five arrests are required in our district"50.
In closing remarks, Antselovich emphasized that although the relationship between district troikas and the newly established post of
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48 Petrogradskaia pravda, July 11, 1919, p. 1.
49 Cherniaev, Piterskie rabochie, p. 186.
50 Ibid, p. 190. A report on strikes in Petrograd in 1919 prepared by the secret-operational department of the PCheka puts more emphasis on the political character of the July protests; it concludes that there were 103 arrests during their liquidation (AU FSB SPb i LO, f. 1, l. 18ob.).
Commandant of Petrograd (Peters)51, as well the competency of troikas, had not yet been oficially deined, troikas didn't require any additional authorization. As far as he was concerned, they already had a blank check for the use of force. As he put it, "in general, troikas only need to carry out their work in such a way that it will not create the impression that everything in Petrograd is being done exclusively through Comrade Peters". "With respect to the right of troikas to carry out arrests and searches, orders for them are never rejected", he continued. "As regards the need to reelect factory committees", apparently a question raised by one of the reporters, "there will be no general decree about them because in some cases reelections could turn out badly for us"52. That same day district troikas were ordered to submit daily reports on the mood of workers in local factories "even if everything was quiet in the district"53. The July strike wave ended on July 20. Conclusion
In October 1917, Lenin had predicated the Bolsheviks' taking power on this being the spark for already simmering, decisive worldwide socialist revolutions. He also believed that this global revolution was an absolute prerequisite for the long-term survival of socialist revolution in Russia.
In Red Petrograd, expectations for decisive revolutions abroad were still strong in the spring and early summer of 1919. These hopes peaked in the late spring of 1919, following the temporary triumph of socialist revolutions in Hungary and Bavaria. Daily, broadly accurate, press reports about labor unrest throughout the world, and forecasts that each new big battle was the last one, fueled the exodus of party members and unaffiliated workers to the civil war fronts. They also fueled popular hopes that an end to revolutionary Russia's isolation and suffering was near. These hopes fluctuated. However, they were constantly and effectively rekindled by carefully designed propaganda and agitation focused on the approaching global triumph of socialist revolutions and an early end to popular suffering. This is certainly not to imply that state-sponsored violence and terror were not of increasing importance in maintaining order in mid-1919 Petrograd. It is simply to say that the survival of the revolution in Petrograd during the late spring and early
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51 On the post of Petrograd Commandant, see below p. 6, note 14.
52 Cherniaev, Piterskie rabochie, p. 191.
53 TsGA SPb, f. 54, op. 1, d. 20, l. 81.
summer of 1919 cannot be understood without also taking account of the revolutionary ideals and expectations of the Bolshevik party leadership, and the popular hopes that they inspired.
The organizational scheme adopted by the Eighth All-Russian Communist Party Congress established the hegemony of the party in government policy-making and the vital, though subordinate executive role of popularly elected soviets. Thus, at least for the duration the Petrograd region's significant degree of autonomy, and the decentralization, modest democratization, and relatively flexible lines of political authority characteristic of 1917 Bolshevism, and of earliest Soviet rule in the Northwest, were eliminated. At the same time, the eighth congress took potentially significant steps to bridge the gulf that had developed between party members on assignment and their factory constituencies.
As we have seen, however, in Petrograd the Eighth Congress's organizational scheme was immediately subverted by profound military, economic, and political crises. These forced the mobilization of a significant percentage of already very scarce veteran Petrograd Bolsheviks upon whom the success of the congress's scheme largely depended. Subsequently, external military threats, and internal political and economic emergencies of one kind or another, some of which are described in this essay, wrecked the congress's scheme altogether. They prompted creation ofthe all-powerful Committee for Petrograd's Defense, as well as of similarly authoritative district troikas. In Petrograd, by mid-July, 1919, the Eighth Party Congress's organizational scheme had been replaced entirely by a party-dominated highly militarized hierarchy in which soviets did not play even the largely secondary role the congress had assigned to them. Equally important, these crises had prompted proclamation of a state of siege, and of a siege mentality, in which resort to violence and terror for survival became widely acceptable. Whether it would permanently define the revolution remained to be see.