How does the working class move from accepting the existing system, to undertaking its overthrow? The experience of the Russian Revolution is rich in lessons for movements today, about the process by which – in the struggle to defend their immediate needs – masses of people step onto the stage of history and through their own activity, transform themselves and the world around them.

As an example of how this process can unfold, this article will examine the role played by the Bolshevik Party in the success of the Russian Revolution of 1917, and in particular the party’s understanding and application of the tactic of the united front.

The United Front flows from the need of workers to unite in defense of their basic conditions. As the Russian Marxist Leon Trotsky put it,

If the united front is a concrete means for the working class to organize in the defense of its interests, it is simultaneously a means by which the organized revolutionary minority can connect with and influence larger layers of workers, winning them away from reformism. Therefore when it is applied effectively, the united front concretely demonstrates the failures of reformism and presents a revolutionary alternative to it.

Leon Trotsky is, more than any other revolutionary, associated with the theory of the united front. His writings of the early 1930s on the rise of fascism in Germany are extremely important. Here he shows clearly that with a correct understanding of this tactic, the German Communist Party could have built a united struggle with Social Democratic workers and defeated fascism, and in the process, won over a majority of workers.

Throughout these writings, Trotsky returns again and again to the experience of the Bolshevik Party in the Russian Revolution. This experience had been codified by the Communist International (Comintern) into the theory of the united front in the years following the Russian Revolution, to provide a guide to the newly formed Communist Parties in different parts of the world. Trotsky writes,

In this paragraph, Trotsky sums up the process by which the Bolshevik Party, a minority current in the working class at the time of the February revolution of 1917, was able to grow in influence to carry the majority of workers by October of that year.

World War I formed the backdrop to the Russian Revolution. As the patriotic fervour of 1914 gave way to the endless months of hardship, hunger and deprivation, strikes increased in the cities, especially in Petrograd. By February 1917, Tsarism had been dealt a death blow with the first revolution. Two immediate factors produced this: a strike against victimization at the giant Putilov engineering plant in Petrograd; and the demand for bread, voiced primarily by working class women. On February 23, demonstrations led to confrontation with the military and large numbers of soldiers came over to the side of the workers. In the next five days, Tsarism was swept away, and the police and old structures of governance were disbanded. The February revolution produced a situation of dual power, as two new sources of governance were created: the Provisional Government, which represented Russian capitalism and the remnants of the old state; and the soviet, or workers’ council. The Provisional Government claimed to be the legitimate state authority. But as Guchkov, the War minister described it:

The soviet had emerged for the first time in 1905, during the revolution Lenin referred to as the Great Dress Rehearsal. Workers’ councils drew delegates from every factory. Unlike in 1905, however, the 1917 soviets included soldiers and poor peasants.

Trotsky writes that the soviet was:

This dual power could not last indefinitely. While the Tsar had gone, the revolution had not solved the fundamental issues that had brought it about. The war, the peasants’ desire for land, and the brutal rule of the capitalists in the factories remained to be dealt with. The key questions – bread, land and peace – were still unresolved.

From February to August 1917 the Petrograd Soviet was dominated by a coalition of Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries (SRs). The Mensheviks (or minority) and Bolsheviks (or majority) had both been part of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party until 1903, when they divided into two distinct factions. The Mensheviks represented the main reformist current in the Russian working class, while the Bolsheviks were committed to workers’ revolution. Many of the Menshevik leaders supported the war. The Social Revolutionaries were a party with mass peasant support and some working class following. The coalition of Mensheviks and SRs believed that workers could not take power, and that the Russian bourgeoisie – represented by the Provisional Government – must replace Tsarism. Tseretelli, a Menshevik who initially led the Petrograd Soviet, stated:

The influence of the Mensheviks and SRs in the soviet arose primarily out of a popular acceptance of their ideas. During March they had almost the whole of the 2,800-strong plenary sessions of the soviet with them, while the Bolsheviks had around 65 delegates. This should not be surprising, as it reflected the degree of class consciousness in that historical moment, the degree of understanding of the complex situation and the dangers ahead.

But the policy of compromise meant subordinating the millions of peasants and workers to the rule of the tiny Russian bourgeoisie. This soviet leadership supported continuation of the war, but it had to cloak this position with left phrases such as calling for a negotiated peace. The soviet supported the continuation of capitalism, but called on employers to improve the treatment of the workers. Nominally supporting peasant ownership of the land, the SRs opposed the direct seizure of land, promising it for some time down the road. This compromising led to repeated clashes of the soviet with workers and soldiers. But it would be several months before the composition of the delegates reflected the growing distrust of this leadership.

It is significant that one of the factors in the Menshevik/SR dominance of the soviet in this period was the composition of the soviet itself. In an effort to cement an alliance with the soldiers – referred to by the Bolshevik leadership as ‘peasants in uniform’ – the workers of Petrograd allowed an imbalance in the soviet’s representation to develop. For every 1,000 workers there was one delegate, while there was one for every company of the army. This meant that while there were 150,000 soldiers in the garrison in Petrograd, they sent 2,000 delegates to the Soviet – while the workers, who had double the numbers of the army, had only 800 delegates. This gave the conservative elements a stronger voice than they might otherwise have had.

The Bolshevik Party had deep roots in the working class, having built the party through years of illegal activity. In 1914 the Bolsheviks stood out as the only force to withstand the tide of war hysteria, which saw the major socialist parties support their governments in the war. And so in February, while there is no doubt that the revolution was ‘spontaneous’ in the sense that there was no plan for it, many of its leading elements were members of the Bolshevik Party steeled in years of struggle.

But although the Bolsheviks were on the left of the debates in the soviet, they also had a confused policy in the immediate aftermath of the February revolution. Militant sections of the party like the working class Vyborg district took a strong position against the Provisional Government, while sections of the leadership were much more conciliatory. These differences were only resolved with Lenin’s return to Russia from exile in April, and the considerable debate that followed. He won the party to a clear position that explained the nature of dual power, and cut through illusions that there might be peaceful progress through class collaboration. Lenin writes,

Looking at the balance of class forces, Lenin rejected his previously held view that the revolution could limit itself to ‘democratic’ demands. He insisted that only by workers seizing power could those demands be achieved, and that the cowardly and reactionary nature of the bourgeoisie would lead it over and over to seek to crush the movement rather than risk it going over their heads.

Lenin argued that the Bolsheviks must work inside the soviets – not as part of the collection of parties supporting the Provisional Government and disguising the rule of the capitalists, but for the seizure of full state power by the masses themselves. The slogan summing this up was "all power to the soviets".

Once this strategic orientation was decided, it remained for the Bolshevik Party to win workers to this perspective. This meant a process of ‘patiently explaining’ why the war was still an imperialist war; why the bourgeoisie would turn against the gains of the revolution, why it preferred the defeat of the revolution to a challenge to its privilege, and why the compromisers’ policies endangered the revolution.

Several serious crises tested the balance of class forces from April to July of 1917. The first, in April, came about when the Provisional Government’s Foreign Minister, Miliukov, sent a note to the Allies stating that all the Provisional Government’s current talk about peace should be ignored, that the government’s real intention was ‘to bring the World War to a decisive victory.’ In response, on April 20, workers and soldiers took to the streets in mass protest. They were met by demonstrations of the right wing that came out defending Miliukov’s position. Many of the banners on the workers’ demonstration were Bolshevik – "All power to the soviets, down with Miliukov."

The Mensheviks and SR leaders in the Soviet wanted to avoid confrontation in the streets that could disrupt the transfer of power to the Provisional Government. They banned further demonstrations, an order which was respected largely because of the Bolshevik policy of ‘patiently explaining’ rather than leaping to an immediate insurrection. The crisis ended with Miliukov’s resignation. Trotsky wrote of this episode:

This episode increased tensions. On one hand, the soviet leadership moved to the right, with the executive committee accepting to take six ministerial posts in a coalition government. On the other hand, the Bolsheviks began a successful campaign to re-elect delegates to the soviet. By May, several district soviets – those with a predominance of skilled workers – had left wing majorities. This was the Bolsheviks’ stronghold. It would take longer to win over the unskilled workers, and this happened primarily through the Bolsheviks’ stance on the economic crisis. John Reed describes how the bourgeoisie was sabotaging the economy and the war:

Unmasking this reality helped convince unskilled workers that sectional economic struggles would not be enough to overcome the sabotage of the ruling class.

June saw the next crisis. On June 3, the first All-Russian Congress of Soviets met. The revolutionary wing was less than one fifth of the delegates. The Menshevik-SR influence was stronger in the provinces than in Petrograd, which had already been in the eye of the revolutionary storm for three months. The majority of the delegates voted for compromise with the Provisional government. But at the same time, the first Congress of Petrograd factory committees had passed a resolution calling for the transfer of power into the hands of the soviet. The Bolsheviks had planned a demonstration June 10 under the theme "all power to the soviets".

In response, the Congress of Soviets deployed itself to stop the march. More than half the congress delegates spent the night of June 9 going to factories and regiments arguing for the ban on protests. They received a cool reception, and came back to the Congress demoralized and pessimistic. Ultimately, it was the Bolsheviks’ decision to call off the demonstration that stopped it.

No sooner was the soviet leadership off the hot seat, then they decided to call their own demonstration to show the unity of ‘democratic forces’. It turned into a humiliating event for the Mensheviks and SRs, when the vast majority of the 400,000 who showed up on June 18 marched behind the slogans "all power to the soviets" and "down with the ten capitalist ministers".

The decision by Kerensky, Minister of War at the time, to launch a new military offensive postponed this developing crisis. But it resurfaced July 3, when in protest at a government order for sections of the Petrograd garrison to go to the front, the First Machine Gun Regiment decided to hold an armed demonstration, calling out workers and soldiers in their support. The Bolsheviks feared this would erupt into civil war, and attempted, as one Bolshevik put it, to play the role of ‘firemen’ and quell the flames. Petrograd workers were champing at the bit, as was the garrison. But the danger of Petrograd being isolated was great.

Adding to the difficulties, the movement’s demands at this point were confused. The demonstrators wanted all power to the Soviets, but the Soviets had to agree to take it. In one incident Chernov, leader of the SRs, was confronted by a worker who shook his fist at him and said, "Take the power you s.o.b. when it’s given to you!" Trotsky writes:

Half a million people came out in the streets. The Bolsheviks were once again compelled to take the lead or be condemned to irrelevance. The armed demonstrations became an opportunity for the reactionary forces to take their revenge on isolated Petrograd. No doubt it would have been far worse if the Bolsheviks had not intervened to hold back the masses.

The wrath of the Menshevik and SR leaders was swift. They outlawed the Bolshevik Party, and invited right wing officers to take command of the streets. At the same time, a huge campaign of slander grew, accusing Lenin of being a "German agent". The Bolshevik press was shut down, the death penalty and court martials were reinstated at the front, the peasants were repressed. Mass arrests captured Bolshevik leaders and Lenin was forced to go underground. The combination of the slander and the Bolsheviks holding back the struggle inflicted a harsh, if short lived, punishment on the party.

The soviet leaders now took over running the Provisional government by taking a majority of the seats in a new coalition. At its head stood Kerensky, who made General Kornilov commander-in-chief of the army. Kerensky prepared the evacuation of revolutionary Petrograd. With Kornilov’s consent, he moved counterrevolutionary troops towards the capital, and promised the Allies a new offensive at the front. At the same time as the compromising Soviet leadership took up more and more of the Provisional Government’s work, the dual power was reconstructed. There was a regeneration of the soviet as many Menshevik-SR leaders were recalled and new elections held. If the Bolsheviks suffered the sting of workers’ and soldiers’ anger in the short term, the Menshevik-SR leaders were punished for their welcoming of the Tsar’s generals back into the capital.

A further powerful current of renewal of the Petrograd Soviet came about from the unsuccessful right wing coup of General Kornilov during August 27-30, when he planned to occupy Petrograd and smash the revolution. When news of this reached Petrograd, the Mensheviks and SRs found that to save their own skins they had to call on the initiative of the masses – an initiative they had tried to quash just weeks before.

This episode was an opportunity for the Bolsheviks to strike back against the extreme right and expose the weakness of Kerensky and the Menshevik-SR leaders of the soviet and the Provisional Government. The Soviet Executive ceded its authority to the ‘Soviet Committee of Struggle against the Counter-Revolution’, in which the Bolsheviks played the major role. (This committee later became the Military Revolutionary Committee, which would be instrumental in the October insurrection.)

The status of the Bolshevik Party at this time was semi-legal. It was persecuted by Kerensky’s government, with the backing of the Mensheviks and SRs. But the Bolsheviks did not hesitate to make a practical alliance against Kornilov with their own jailers – Kerensky, Tseretelli, Dan and others. Lenin describes the shift in Bolshevik tactics in the face of the Kornilov coup:

As Trotsky writes:

They demanded that workers be armed. They organized mass meetings in all the barracks. They mobilized factory committees and Red Guards. How did workers respond?

The coup was defeated in four days. This success, however, did not arise from nowhere. For months, the Bolsheviks asked hundreds of times for the Mensheviks to join them in a common fight against the counter-revolution. After the crushing of Kornilov, when the Bolsheviks offered to form a united front against the bourgeoisie, the Mensheviks and SRs rejected this compromise. This rejection, with all that it demonstrated about the ‘compromisers’, became a powerful weapon in preparing for the armed uprising which within seven weeks swept away the Mensheviks and the SRs.

In the meantime, the compromisers continued to support the Provisional government. The policy of the Kerensky government was as reactionary as ever. Kerensky sought to disband the Defence committees which had defeated Kornilov. This only hastened the disintegration of the army. Despite its best efforts, the Provisional government lost ground as did the compromisers in the soviet. On August 31, the Bolsheviks won a majority in the Petrograd soviet and Trotsky was elected its president. On September 5, the Moscow soviet won a Bolshevik majority. A vote of no confidence in the Provisional government was passed 335 to 254. Kiev followed, as did Kazan, Baku and Nicolaev.

From the end of the Kornilov episode to October 25, the growing crisis, economic sabotage and the fall of the town of Riga to the Germans pointed to one thing: the need for soviet power. It has been said that at certain points in history, everything is balanced like a ball on the top of a pyramid. Which side the ball will come down on depends on a string of decisions that shape future possibilities. The moment had arrived for workers to take control of the situation. Soviet power was necessary, but it would not happen spontaneously. It would require an insurrection. A debate ensued in the Bolshevik Party about whether or not it was time for the insurrection, and if so, in whose name should it be carried out.

The Military Revolutionary Committee of the Soviet organized the technical aspect of the insurrection. The Russian Menshevik Nikolai Sukhanov described the October 25 events:

On October 26, at the opening of the soviet congress, the insurrectionists handed over power. Ten people had died, compared to 1,314 in the February revolution – and compared to 56,000 in the war from June 18 to July 6, 1917. The October revolution demonstrated the importance of the soviet system of government – and its limitations. As Trotsky explains:

Having determined that the only way forward was for workers, through the soviets, to take the reins of society, throughout this period the Bolsheviks exerted every effort towards winning the majority on which this power must rest to the project of self-emancipation. This required a keen sense of the actual condition of the class at each given moment. It required working in the soviets alongside thousands of delegates who were not yet won to the political conclusions to which the Bolsheviks had come. This work was based on a deep understanding of how the dynamics of the struggle would peel broader layers of support away from the compromisers as the ugly face of reaction showed itself.

The method of the united front was key, where the Bolsheviks maintained their independence at all times, but called over and over again on the Mensheviks and SRs, including their leadership, to conduct joint action to stop the counter-revolution. This method, that was put so fiercely to the test during the Kornilov episode, convinced the majority that only the Bolsheviks offered a realistic way forward.

In March 1917 the Bolsheviks had 23,600 members. By August they had 250,000 members. The cadre of the party could not have moved as quickly as they did had they not been steeped in this method. Without this method, the Kornilov coup might have opened the gates to a bloody counter-revolution, instead of the first successful workers’ revolution. Fascism, as Trotsky put it, would have been a Russian word.

For revolutionaries building today’s anti-war movement, these lessons are invaluable. By simultaneously building the movement and a revolutionary network at its heart, we build the forces that can challenge the warmongers and their imperialist adventures, and ultimately prepare the ground for the revolutionary transformation of society.