The Russian Revolution

At its third session on October 15, the Soviet acquired a formal organization. Present were 226 delegates from 96 industrial enterprises. Socialists came in force, too, among them the Bolsheviks, who had initially boycotted the Soviet because they opposed the formation “of organs of proletarian self-rule before power had been seized.”†

At the October 15 session an organizational step was taken which, although hardly noticed at the time, would have the most weighty consequences in February 1917, when the St. Petersburg Soviet was resuscitated. An Executive Committee (Ispolnitenyi Komitet, or Ispolkom for short) of thirty-one persons was formed: fourteen from the city’s boroughs, eight from the trade unions, and nine (29 percent) from the socialist parties. The latter allotted three seats each to the Menshevik and Bolshevik factions of the Social-Democratic Party and three to the Socialists-Revolutionaries. The socialist intellectuals were not elected by the Soviet but appointed by their respective parties. Although they had only a consultative vote, their experience and organizational skills assured them of a dominant role in the Ispolkom and, through it, the Soviet at large. In 1917, the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet would consist exclusively of intellectuals nominated by the socialist parties.¹¹⁵ The rising influence of the radical intelligentsia found expression in an appeal to the workers issued by the Soviet on October 15 with an explicit threat of physical coercion against strikebreakers. “Who is not with us is against us, and to them the Soviet of Deputies has decided to apply extreme methods—force.” The appeal urged the strikers forcibly to shut down shops which ignored the strike and to prevent the distribution of government newspapers.¹¹⁶

At the meeting of October 17, the Soviet adopted the name Soviet of Workers’ Deputies (Sovet rabochikh deputatov) and expanded the Executive Committee to fifty, with the socialist parties being allotted seven seats each, for a total of twenty-one (42 percent). It was decided to issue Izvestiia as the Soviet’s official organ.

Similar soviets sprang up in some fifty provincial cities, as well as certain rural areas and in a few military units, but the St. Petersburg Soviet enjoyed from the beginning a position of undisputed primacy.

In the evening of October 14, Witte was in receipt of a telegram from Peterhof asking him to appear the following morning with the draft of a manifesto. Witte claims that he was unable to write the manifesto because he was feeling unwell, and entrusted the task to Alexis Obolenskii, a member of the State Council who happened to be spending the night at his home.¹¹⁷ Since it is unlikely that he failed to realize the importance of this document, and he appeared healthy enough both before and after the event, the more likely explanation for his missing this unique opportunity to make history was the fear of bearing the blame for a step which he knew the Tsar took with the utmost distaste. If one is to believe him, he first familiarized himself with the manifesto the following morning aboard a ship which was taking him and Obolenskii to Peterhof (the railroads being on strike).¹¹⁸

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For his basic text, Obolenskii drew on the resolutions of the Zemstvo Congress held in Moscow on September 12–15. The zemtsy had rejected the Bulygin Duma as entirely inadequate, and offered their own program:

1. Guarantees of personal rights, freedom of speech and publication, freedom of assembly and association;

2. Elections to the Duma on the basis of a universal franchise;

3. The Duma to be given a determining voice in legislation as well as control over the state budget and the administration.¹¹⁹

In drafting his text, Obolenskii borrowed not only the contents but also the format of the September Zemstvo Congress resolutions. As a result, the substantive part of the October Manifesto turned out to be little more than a paraphrase of the zemstvo demands.

The Tsar spent most of October 15 with Witte and other dignitaries discussing and editing the manifesto. Among those he consulted was Trepov, in whose judgment and good faith he retained unbounded confidence. He forwarded to him Witte’s memorandum and the draft of the manifesto, requesting his frank opinion. Even while getting ready to sign the manifesto, Nicholas must still have contemplated resort to military force, for he also asked Trepov how many days he thought it possible to maintain order in St. Petersburg without bloodshed and whether it was altogether feasible to reassert authority without numerous victims.¹²⁰

In his response the next day (October 16), Trepov agreed in general with Witte’s proposals, even as he urged restraint in making concessions to the liberals. To the question whether he could restore order in the capital without risking a massacre, he answered that