On the morning of October 26 (November 8 A.D.), 1917, the second day of the Great October Socialist Revolution, a damp autumn wind gusted through the streets of Petrograd, and in some places bonfires were still burning right on the pavements. Their ragged light picked out men with cartridge belts - pickets of Red Guard workers, sailors, and soldiers. Even the day before, on the first day of the proletarian revolution, one could read on the billboards and walls of houses the text of the appeal of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee, written by Lenin: "The cause for which the people fought: the immediate proposal of a democratic peace, the abolition of landowner ownership of land, workers' control over production, the creation of the Soviet government, this"1 . The armed insurrection of the masses of the people was accomplished. The Winter Palace, the last stronghold of the Provisional Government, was taken.
In the evening of the same day in Smolny, at a meeting of the II All-Russian Congress of Soviets, historical decrees on peace, on land, on the creation of the Soviet government were adopted, which became the personification of the events that took place at that time, which shocked the whole world. Representatives of more than 400 Soviets of the country - envoys of revolutionary workers from 80 provinces and regions, 200 cities and localities, including national districts, from different parts of Russia - the Center, the Urals, Siberia, the Far East, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic States, the Caucasus, Central Asia, who arrived from the front lines-gathered in the Smolny white-column Assembly Hall delegates of the Active Army 2 . The congress was attended by numerous delegations of factories and factories, revolutionary units of the Petrograd garrison and warships of the Baltic Fleet, as well as journalists. A vivid description of Smolny in those historic days was left by the American publicist John Reed, who was in Petrograd as a correspondent for The New York Call newspaper and was present at the congress meetings: "The space between the columns is lined with rows of chairs, there are about a thousand of them in total. Most of the delegates are in the uniform of ordinary soldiers. The others are wearing simple black shirts of Russian workers and a few colorful peasant shirts... Everywhere, between the pillars, on the windowsills, on every step leading up to the stage, and even at the edge of the stage itself, there is an audience, also consisting of ordinary workers, ordinary peasants and ordinary soldiers. Bayonets bristle here and there in the audience. Exhausted Red Guards, girded with cartridge belts, sit on the floor near the columns. " 3
The Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets reflected the general process of Bolshevization of the masses of the people in Russia, convincingly confirmed the correctness of the Leninist course of the Bolshevik Party towards a socialist revolution, and clearly demonstrated the political bankruptcy of the Mensheviks and right SRS. Of the 649 delegates registered for the opening of the congress, 390 were Bolsheviks4 . Together with the Socialist-Revolutionaries who supported them (mainly Leftists), who had 160 mandates, the Bolsheviks supported them.-
1 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 35, p. 1.
2 T. D. Ionkin. All-Russian Congresses of Soviets in the first years of the Proletarian Dictatorship, Moscow, 1974, p. 33.
3 J. Reed. The second day. Izvestia, 3. XI. 1964.
4 T. D. Ionkin. Op. ed., p. 23.
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They represented a decisive majority of delegates, which determined both the entire course of the congress's work and the nature of its decisions. 5
The first decree of the Second All - Russian Congress of Soviets was devoted to the question of power, the main question of the socialist revolution: an appeal to "Workers, soldiers and peasants." It was adopted at six o'clock on the morning of October 26, at the end of the first session of the Congress, shortly after receiving the news of the capture of the Winter Palace and the arrest of the ministers of the Provisional Government, which, as the capital newspaper Novaya Zhizn wrote on October 26, "fell as quickly as a burnt match turns to ashes." The address written by V. I. Lenin was read out to the delegates of the Congress by A. V. Lunacharsky. "Relying on the will of the vast majority of the workers, soldiers and peasants," the words of the address rang out in the tense silence of the silent hall, " relying on the victorious uprising of the workers and the garrison that has taken place in Petrograd, the congress takes power into its own hands... The Congress decides that all power in the localities shall pass to the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers 'and Peasants' Deputies. " 6 The Congress also defined in this decree the immediate urgent tasks that the new government had to solve: "The Soviet government will offer an immediate democratic peace to all peoples and an immediate armistice on all fronts. It will ensure the gratuitous transfer of the landlords', appanages 'and monastic lands to the peasant committees, defend the rights of the soldier, carry out a complete democratization of the army, establish workers' control over production, and ensure that all the nations inhabiting Russia have a genuine right to self-determination. " 7
On the evening of October 26, at its second and last session, the Congress set about the practical implementation of the program it had proclaimed. An immediate conclusion of peace was the most urgent demand of the war-weary working masses. And it was precisely to the question of peace that the leader of the victorious Proletarian Revolution devoted his first report at the Congress. "When Lenin appeared on the podium," recalled A. A. Andreev, a delegate to the congress, " the whole hall rose and moved to the podium where Lenin was standing. He couldn't start his speech for a long time because of the incessant applause and cheers: "Long live Lenin!" ...Hats, caps, and capless sailors ' caps flew into the air, and rifles flashed in the air. Thus, standing up, the Congress listened to Lenin's report on peace. " 8 Vladimir Ilyich called the question of peace the most burning and painful issue of our time. And everyone in the audience knew that this was true. Lenin then read out a draft of the Peace Decree that he had written and that the Bolshevik Party had submitted to the Congress. John Reed wrote in his notebook: "The air is bluish with tobacco smoke and breath. Through this blue veil, hundreds of faces look out at the stage, where red banners with gold inscriptions are gathered in the depths. Open and determined faces, blackened in the trenches from the cold, wide-set eyes, large beards or sometimes thin hawklike faces of Caucasians or Asians from Turkestan. " 9 The Congress listened intently as Lenin read the Peace Decree. Soviet Russia proclaimed a principled refusal to participate in an imperialist war, and at the same time formulated in the lines of Lenin's decree the principles of foreign policy and diplomacy of a new, socialist type of state: resolute condemnation of war as a means of resolving disputed issues, genuine peacefulness and striving for friendly relations with all states, full equality of all peoples, large and small, respect for sovereignty and non-interference in internal affairs of other states. The decree also proclaimed the right of every nation, regardless of its size, degree of economic and cultural development, to self-determination, up to secession and the creation of an independent State.
The decree not only laid out the principles of the Soviet State's foreign policy, but was also the first practical step towards achieving peace. It clearly and clearly proposed "to all warring nations and their governments."-
5 "Istoriya Kommunisticheskoi partii Sovetskogo Soyuza" (History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union), vol. 3, book 1, Moscow, 1967, p. 331.
6 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 35, p. 11.
7 Ibid.
8 A. A. Andreev. About Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Moscow, 1965, pp. 23-24.
9 J. Reed. Edict op.
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governments should immediately begin negotiations for a just, democratic peace." Having declared its determination to conclude an armistice at once for a period of not less than three months, during which time it would be possible to begin peace negotiations and sign peace terms equally just for all belligerent States, the Soviet government expressed its readiness to conduct such negotiations either by telegraph, or between representatives of different countries or at a joint conference of interested parties. parties. At the same time, the decree emphasized that the proposed conditions were not of an ultimatum nature and the workers 'and peasants' authorities agreed to consider any other proposals put forward by any of the belligerent states. The only thing the Soviet Government insisted on was that negotiations should be open to all peoples and based "on the absolute exclusion of any ambiguity or secrecy". The Soviet government proclaimed the abolition of secret diplomacy and declared its intention to make known to all peoples the secret agreements concluded by the tsarist and Provisional Governments prior to October 25, 1917, by immediately starting to publish secret diplomatic documents.
The most important feature of the Peace Decree was that it was also a declaration addressed not only to the Governments, but also to all the peoples, and especially to the workers of the belligerent countries. "We cannot ignore the governments," V. I. Lenin explained when he reported the draft decree to the Congress delegates, " because then the possibility of concluding peace is delayed, but we have no right not to appeal to the peoples at the same time. Everywhere, governments and peoples are at odds with each other, and therefore we must help the peoples to intervene in matters of war and peace."10 In conclusion, the decree expressed deep conviction in the unshakeable international unity of the international labor movement, the belief that the class-conscious workers of the countries participating in the First World War, and above all the workers of the three largest belligerent states - England, France, and Germany-would help the Russian proletariat "successfully complete the cause of peace"by their comprehensive and resolute support.
After Lenin's report, a debate ensued, which resulted in a vivid demonstration of universal approval of the Bolshevik Party's position on the question of peace, as set out in the decree. In their speeches, Vladimir Ilyich was supported by F. E. Dzerzhinsky, P. I. Kulinichenko, V. S. Mickevicius-Kapsukas, P. I. Stucka and other delegates of the Congress. "The decree is enthusiastically adopted by the social democrats of Poland and Lithuania," Dzerzhinsky said in particular. "We know that the only force that can liberate the world is the proletariat, which is fighting for socialism." Representative of the Rovno Council Y. S. Bazarny stressed: "My Council instructed me to seek a truce on all fronts and a just democratic peace. All the soldiers who are sitting in the trenches, who are sitting in the rear - all the soldiers not only in Russia, but also in all other belligerent countries - will vote for this proposal, just as I will vote. " 11 At the same time, some delegates expressed their support for giving the proposals set out in the decree an ultimatum. Thus, the Menshevik internationalist A.D. Yeremeyev declared his intention to vote for the decree "on one condition: if the words are thrown out that we will consider all conditions of peace. It should not be, because they may think that we are weak, that we are afraid. Our demand for peace without annexations and indemnities must be an ultimatum. " 12
In his closing remarks on the draft Decree on Peace, Vladimir Ilyich specifically focused on Yeremeyev's statement and explained in detail that such a pseudo-revolutionary and obviously unrealistic approach to the question of ways to achieve peace is extremely erroneous and dangerous for the cause of the proletarian revolution. Lenin emphatically stressed: "We cannot demand that any slight deviation from our demands should enable the imperialist governments to say that it was impossible to enter into peace negotiations because of our intransigence... We don't
10 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 35, p. 16.
11 "The Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers 'and Soldiers 'Deputies", Moscow, 1928, pp. 17-18, 21.
12 Ibid., p. 65.
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we dare not allow governments to hide behind our intransigence and hide from the nations why they are being sent to the slaughter. " 13
The congress delegates voted unanimously for the Peace Decree. "After the vote, the enthusiasm of the assembly manifested itself in loud and prolonged applause, after which the assembly sang "Internationale"in harmony. Then a standing ovation was given to Comrade. Lenin, at the suggestion of a member of the assembly, as the author of the address and a staunch fighter and leader of the workers 'and peasants' victorious revolution. Then a funeral march was sung in memory of the victims of the massacre. " 14 "So it's done," American journalist Albert Rhys Williams, who was present at the meeting, testified....People smiled, their eyes shone, their heads lifted proudly. You should have seen it! A government that has not yet been truly formed... it appealed to the entire planet with its peace proposals... A tall soldier stood up beside me and, with tears in his eyes, embraced the worker, who also stood up and applauded furiously. A small, wiry sailor was tossing a cap cap into the air... A Vyborg Red guardsman with eyes inflamed from insomnia and a haggard, unshaven face looked around, crossed himself, and said in a low voice: "Let there be an end to the war" 15 . "The Soviet government has shown all the peoples of the earth the only correct way out of the bloody chaos of wars into which the exploitative system plunged them. The first state act of the newly established government was Lenin's Decree on Peace, which proclaimed a clear and precise program for the struggle for a just, democratic, and universal peace. " 16
The adoption of this historic document defined the general foreign policy of the Soviet state, which since its inception has been aimed at ensuring peace and security of peoples, at developing and strengthening good-neighborly and friendly relations between the countries. The text of the decree expressed Lenin's idea of the possibility of peaceful coexistence of states with different social systems. "We reject all points about looting and violence," V. I. Lenin pointed out, justifying this most important foreign policy principle to the Congress delegates, "but we will cordially accept all points where good-neighborly conditions and economic agreements are concluded, and we cannot reject them." 17 The Peace Decree exposed to the working people of all countries the essence of imperialist wars and was the first law in history to strongly condemn aggressive war and declare it the greatest crime against humanity. Not without reason, shortly after the adoption of the decree, the Norwegian Social Democratic Party submitted a proposal to the Nobel Prize Committee to award the Peace Prize for 1917. Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR. "Up to the present time," it was said in the justification of this proposal, "Lenin has done most for the triumph of the idea of peace, who not only promotes peace with all his might, but also takes concrete measures to achieve it." 18
On the night of October 26-27, the Congress also resolved another most important question of the proletarian revolution - the question of land, an age-old and most pressing question for the Russian peasantry, that is, for the overwhelming majority of the Russian population. This is what a peasant looked like in a pre-revolutionary drawing: a peasant in bast shoes stands on the ground with only one foot, the other hanging helplessly over the vast landowners ' land surrounding his plot. Indeed, 30 thousand landowner families owned 70 million dessiatines of land. And approximately the same amount of land was owned by 10 million peasant households .19 When, after the February Revolution, the peasants tried to take the land from the landlords, occupying it without permission, the Provisional Government sent punitive detachments to the village. In the very first days of its existence, the Soviet government fulfilled the revolutionary will of the vast peasant masses of Russia and gave them land.
13 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 35, pp. 19, 20.
14 Pravda, 10. XI. 1917.
16 A. R. Williams. New Russia through the eyes of Americans. "Foreign literature", 1967, N 5, p. 35.
1e "On the 60th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution". Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU of January 31, 1977, Moscow, 1977, p. 4.
17 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 35, p. 20.
18 " Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Biographical chronicle", vol. 5, Moscow, 1974, p. 68.
19 See V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 21, p. 307,
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Lenin also made a report on the land at the congress. He "went up to the podium again," William recalled, "The seething hall subsided, and the provincial delegates rose from their seats with serious faces, leaning forward: the question of land was being decided." 20 The draft Land Decree consisted of two parts. The first part of it, written by Lenin, set out the main position of the Bolshevik Party's agrarian program in the October Revolution-the demand for the immediate abolition of landowner ownership of land and its transfer to the peasantry. This demand was, as is well known, formulated by Lenin as early as in the April Theses, on the basis of which the Seventh (April) All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP(b) adopted a resolution on the agrarian question, and also in Lenin's famous speech on May 22, 1917, at the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Peasant Deputies .21 The second part of the decree was made up of peasant wishes on how to resolve the agrarian question.
Back in August 1917, in the article " From the diary of a publicist. Peasants and Workers "Lenin drew attention to the" Approximate Order " written on the basis of 242 orders received from the field at the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Peasant Deputies in May 191722 . Hiding from the bloodhounds of the Provisional Government during the preparation for the October armed uprising in Petrograd in his last safe house on the Vyborg side, Lenin, in particular, specifically instructed the owner of the apartment, an active participant in the revolutionary movement, M. V. Fofanova, to find him the 88th issue of Izvestia of the All-Russian Council of Peasant Deputies with the text of the peasant order. When the newspaper was in Lenin's hands, Fofanova recalled, he exclaimed: "No, just look at what the peasants want: confiscation of all the landlords' land with living and dead equipment without ransom! And we will do this: we will put their order in the basis of the land decree. " 23 This is yet another proof of the amazing revolutionary flexibility of Lenin's political thought. After all, the consolidated peasant order was compiled by the Socialist-Revolutionary newspaper 24 . However, when the leaders of the Social Revolutionaries joined the Provisional Government, they did essentially nothing for the practical implementation of the demands of the peasant masses.
After carefully analyzing the peasants ' demands on the question of land, summarized in the paragraphs of section II of the "Model Mandate", Lenin came to the conclusion that it was necessary to use this important document in drafting the revolutionary law on land in order to strengthen the alliance of the working class and the working peasantry and ensure the success of the socialist revolution. Addressing the peasants, Lenin emphasized that "only in close alliance with the workers can you begin to put into practice the program of 242 instructions." 25 Later, after the victory of the October Armed Insurrection in Petrograd, speaking at a conference of regimental representatives of the Petrograd garrison on October 29 (November 11), 1917, Lenin again noted that "on the land question, our program is taken entirely from peasant instructions."26
Intense creative work on the creation of the fundamental legislative act of the proletarian government in the field of land relations was completed in the days of the October armed uprising in Petrograd. On the night of October 26, Lenin finished drafting the Land Decree. "If only we could announce it and publish it widely," V. D. Bonch - Bruevich recalled of Lenin's words that morning. "Then let them try to take it back!" No,
20 A. R. Williams. Op. ed., p. 36.
21 See V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 32, p. 165; "CPSU in resolutions and decisions of congresses, conferences and plenums of the Central Committee". Ed. 8-e. Vol. 1, pp. 442-444.
22 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 34, pp. 108-116.
23 M. V. Fofanova. How the decree "On Land" was born:>. "Novy mir", 1960, N 4, p. 145.
24 The " Approximate order "was, in Lenin's words, a" summary of orders "compiled by the editorial board of the Socialist-Revolutionary newspaper Izvestiya of the All-Russian Soviet of Peasant Deputies, and was placed in its issues No. 88 and No. 89. Sections I - III of the order were published in No. 88 (I. General political provisions; II. About the earth; III. Measures of transition time), in the 89th issue-sections IV-VIII (IV. V. Land committees; VI. Economic measures; VII. Food business; VIII. About the war). See "Proceedings of the All-Russian Soviet of Peasant Deputies", 19 and 20. VIII. 1917.
25 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 34, p. 116.
26 V. I. Lenin, PSS Vol. 35, p. 36.
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You see, no government would be able to take this decree away from the peasants and return the land to the landlords. This is the most important achievement of our October Revolution. The agrarian revolution will be accomplished and consolidated today. " 27
The decree on land formed the basis of fundamental agrarian transformations in the country. He immediately and without any ransom abolished the landlords ' ownership of land. The landlords', appanages', monastic and ecclesiastical lands, with all their living and dead implements and buildings, were placed at the disposal of the volost land committees and the uyezd Soviets of peasant deputies. They were also charged with the duty to ensure that the strictest revolutionary order was observed when confiscating landlords ' estates. In accordance with the decree, the peasants received 150 million hectares of land for free use. Their debt to the Peasant Land Bank, which amounted to almost 1.5 billion rubles, was canceled. The peasants were also exempted from the annual rent paid to landlords and capitalists and from the cost of purchasing new land in the amount of 700 million rubles in gold, and they were given landlords ' agricultural implements with a total value of about 300 million rubles .28
The decree specifically stipulated that the land of ordinary peasants and ordinary Cossacks should not be confiscated. An extremely interesting fact is connected with this point. On the afternoon of October 26, Lenin's draft decree was discussed in advance at a meeting of the Bolshevik faction of the Congress. And one of the amendments (insert the word "rank-and-file" in the above paragraph of the decree), proposed by the Bolshevik delegate to the Congress from Rzhev, Tver province, I. Kh.Bodyakshin, was taken into account by Lenin in the final editing of the draft decree. Both this amendment and the very personality of Ivan Kharitonovich Bodyakshin are remarkable. The son of a small-scale peasant in the village of Persheevo, Lukoyanovsky Uyezd, Nizhny Novgorod province, he was a primary school teacher. Wounded at the front, Bodyakshin graduated from military school, served as an ensign in the 70th reserve infantry regiment in Rzhev, where he was caught by the February Revolution. There, in March 1917, he joined the Bolshevik Party and became one of the leaders of the Bolshevik organization of the garrison and the city. Together with other delegates, Bodyakshin was sent by the workers of Rzhev to the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets. Making amendments to the text of the Decree on Land is one of the evidences of V. I.'s skill. Listen to the voice of the masses, take into account the opinions and suggestions not only of the leaders, but also of ordinary participants in the revolution .29
The peasant order on land was fully and without any changes included by Lenin in the text of the decree. According to the decree, the right to use land was granted to all citizens who wanted to cultivate it by their own labor or in a partnership on the basis of equalized land use, that is, the distribution of land among workers, depending on local conditions - according to the labor or consumer norm. As is well known, the Bolsheviks did not support the petty-bourgeois idea of equalizing the land contained in the Socialist-Revolutionary program of "socialization". But since the broad masses of the Russian peasantry at that time saw the most just way to resolve the agrarian question precisely in equalizing land use, the Bolshevik Party advocated its legislative formalization. The very practice of revolutionary reconstruction of the countryside should have convinced the peasants of the imperfection of equalized land use and the need to switch to social forms of farming. As early as August 1917 Lenin wrote: "The peasants want to keep small-scale farming, equalize it, and periodically equalize it again... Let. Because of this, no reasonable socialist will disagree with the peasant poor. If the land is confiscated, then the rule of the banks is undermined; if the inventory is confiscated, then the rule of capital is undermined - then under the rule of the proletariat in the center, under the transition
27 V. D. Bonch-Bruevich. At combat posts of the February and October Revolutions, Moscow, 1931, p. 119.
28 "History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union", vol. 3, book 1, p. 478.
29 See I. H. Bodyakshin. At the II All-Russian Congress of Soviets. "Memoirs of V. I. Lenin", Vol. 3, Moscow, 1969, p. 4. 16. For more information, see M. P. Iroshnikov. Creation of the Soviet Central state Apparatus, L. 1967, pp. 278-290.
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the rest will be applied to the proletariat by itself, will result from the "power of example", and will be suggested by practice itself. " 30
In addition to the clause on equalization of land use, the peasant mandate also contained another, more important provision from the Bolshevik point of view: the right of private ownership of land was abolished forever, the sale of land and any other methods of alienation were prohibited, and all land was turned into the national property, that is, state property. In fact, this meant the nationalization of land in the country, and the implementation of this most important requirement of the Bolshevik agrarian program, with political power in the hands of the proletariat, created in Russia, as V. I. Lenin emphasized, "the land system that is most flexible in the sense of transition to socialism."31
The absolute majority of the congress participants voted for the adoption of the Land Decree. In response to the suggestion of some delegates to suspend the session of the Congress for a while, Lenin, as recorded in his reporter's notebook by John Reed, said: "There is no time to lose. Events that are most important for the whole of Russia should be in the newspapers tomorrow morning, No delay (land!)"32 . With loud applause, the congress supported the agitated speech of an old peasant from Tver province, K. G. Zhegunov, who declared that he "brought a low bow and greetings to the real assembly" and, on behalf of his peasant electors, conveyed "greetings and thanks to Comrade Lenin, as the most staunch defender of the peasant poor." 33
The land Decree was of exceptional importance for the final transition of the Russian peasantry to the side of the rebellious working class and for consolidating the victory of the socialist revolution. "In this way," Lenin later wrote," the Russian proletariat won back the peasantry from the Socialist-Revolutionaries..."; in the Decree on Land, the proletariat"completely and immediately, with revolutionary speed, energy and selflessness, fulfilled all the most pressing economic needs of the majority of the peasants, expropriated the landlords completely and without redemption." 34 The adoption of this historic document played a decisive role in consolidating the revolutionary alliance between the working class and the working peasantry, and became one of the most important prerequisites for the successful implementation by the Communist Party of Lenin's cooperative plan for the transformation of agriculture and the construction of socialism. Thus, "the experience of our country has convincingly demonstrated the truth of Lenin's fundamental thesis that only the working class, led by the Communist Party, is able to lead the entire mass of the working and exploited in the struggle to overthrow the yoke of capital, in the course of the overthrow itself, in the struggle to maintain and consolidate victory, in the creation of a new social system"35 .
The first step towards building a proletarian state in Russia was to form a Soviet Government. The question of organizing a new government in Russia, which was first raised practically as a result of the victory of the October armed Uprising in Petrograd, was repeatedly considered by the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b). From the minutes of its meetings, it is clear that on October 21, even before the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets began, the Central Committee, having thoroughly discussed the question of preparations for the congress, with the preparation of the theses of reports on the war and on the land, he instructed Lenin to prepare theses on the question of power as well .36 Vladimir Ilyich then wrote well-known notes on the name, program, and structure of the Soviet government .37 In the following days, the work of the Central Committee of the RSDLP(b) to prepare for the creation of a new government became even more active. On October 24, the Central Committee of the party found it necessary to enter a political con-
30 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 34, p. 115.
31 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 37, p. 326.
32 A. Startsev. Russian notebooks of John Reed, Moscow, 1968, p. 277.
33 " The Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets...", p. 74.
34 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 40, p. 13.
35 "On the 60th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution", p. 5.
36 "Minutes of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b). August 1917-February 1918", Moscow, 1958, p. 118..
37 See Lenin's Collection XXI, pp. 91-92.
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tact with the left Social Revolutionaries on their entry into the government. The organization of the new government was also discussed at the next two meetings of the Central Committee.
On the night of October 24-25, an emergency meeting of the Central Committee of the party was held in Smolny, in a small room located next to the Assembly Hall, where the Bolshevik faction was then located. It was held under the chairmanship of Lenin and lasted with interruptions almost all night. There were still revolutionary battles going on in Petrograd, but, as one of the participants in the meeting wrote in his diary, "the balance of forces was quite determined - the advantage was on our side." 38 By the morning of October 25, the Provisional Government was isolated and effectively lost power. This predetermined the adoption by the Central Committee of the RSDLP(b) of the most responsible decision on the need for the Bolsheviks to form a new Soviet government at the Second Congress of Soviets - the Council of People's Commissars. At the same time, its preliminary composition was planned. "We chose the leaders of a renewed Russia," Lunacharsky recalled. - It seemed to me that the choice was often too random, I was always afraid of too big a discrepancy between the gigantic tasks and the chosen people, whom I knew well and who seemed to me not yet prepared for this or that specialty. Lenin waved me off in annoyance and at the same time said with a smile: "In the meantime, we'll see - we need responsible people for all the posts; if they turn out to be unfit , we'll be able to change them. How right he was!.. Lenin, with an amazing poise of mind, looked at the gigantic tasks and took them up with his hands, as an experienced pilot takes up the steering wheel of an ocean giant steamer. " 39
Given the socio-economic conditions of Russia and the predominance of the rural population in the country, the Bolsheviks considered it possible and even desirable for representatives of petty-bourgeois parties, who enjoyed the support of various strata of the working people, especially the working peasantry, to participate in the Soviet Government together with the Party of the working class. The only condition for such cooperation was the recognition by these parties of the accomplished Proletarian revolution and the decrees of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets. According to P. V. Bukhartsev, secretary of the Socialist-Revolutionary faction of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the First and Second convocations, who participated on October 25 in negotiations with the leaders of the Bolshevik Party on the issue of joint work and organization of power, "in order to cooperate with the Socialist-revolutionaries, the Bolsheviks put forward the socialization of the land, and also promised all the socialist parties that everywhere, in accordance with proportional representation at the congress. " 40 However, the Mensheviks and right srs defiantly left the Congress on October 25. "It is not our fault that the Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks have left," said Lenin, speaking at a conference of regimental representatives of the Petrograd garrison. - We invited everyone to participate in the government... Everyone here knows that the Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks left because they remained in the minority. The Petrograd garrison knows this. He knows that we wanted a Soviet coalition government. We didn't exclude anyone from the Council. If they didn't want to work together, so much the worse for them. " 41
Allowing for the possibility of an agreement on the composition of the government with other parties on the basis of the platform and decisions of the Second All - Russian Congress of Soviets, the Central Committee of the RSDLP(b), with Lenin's direct participation, proposed on October 26 that three prominent members of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary leadership-B. D. Kamkov, V. B. Spiro, and V. A. Karelin-be included in "The atmosphere of this meeting remained in my memory," N. K. Krupskaya later recalled. "Some room in Smolny with soft dark red sofas. Spiridonova is sitting on one of the sofas, and Ilyich is standing next to her, gently and passionately convincing her of something."42 But the left Social Revolutionaries continued to persist in insisting on the creation of a "homogeneous socialist government" consisting of representatives of "the entire Socialist revolution".
38 V. P. Milyutin. About Lenin, Moscow, 1924, p. 5.
39 "Memoirs of V. I. Lenin". Vol. 2. Moscow, 1969, pp. 467-468.
40 For more information, see "History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union". T, 3, book 1, pp. 338, 442-444.
41 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 35, pp. 36-37.
42 N. K. Krupskaya. Memoirs of V. I. Lenin, Moscow, 1968, p. 337.
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democrats", including Mensheviks and right SRS who left the session of the Congress of Soviets. "In the list of members of the new government announced here," Karelin, one of the left - Socialist-Revolutionary leaders, admitted at the evening session of the Congress on October 26, " there could be several left-wing social-revolutionaries. But our task is to reconcile all parts of democracy. " 43 Thus, the left Social Revolutionaries wanted, as Krupskaya aptly defined it, "to harness a swan, a crab and a pike to the Soviet cart, to create a government that is unable to unite, to move from its place." As is well known, agreements with the left srs were not reached at that time, 44 and at Lenin's suggestion the Central Committee of the RSDLP(b) decided to submit to the Congress of Soviets a "purely Bolshevik list of People's commissars" .45
A meeting of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) and members of the Bolshevik faction of the Second Congress of Soviets on October 26 clarified the composition of the future Soviet government and approved the draft resolution proposed by Lenin on the formation of a Workers 'and Peasants' government. At the same time, an important question about its structure was resolved. The text of the resolution adopted on this subject, which was a detailed embodiment of one of Lenin's notes ("Immediate creation of commissions of People's commissars..."), expressed Lenin's persistent search for new forms of organizing government power, his desire to create a central administrative apparatus that, when combined with the principles of collegiality and unity of command, would be inextricably linked with "mass organizations". organizations of workers, working women, sailors, soldiers, peasants and employees " 46 . In full accordance with Lenin's project, the management of "certain branches of state life" was entrusted to commissions that were supposed to ensure the implementation of the program of socialist construction proclaimed by the Congress. The leaders of these commissions, the People's Commissars, formed the Council of People's Commissars. The word "Soviet" indicated that the government was born out of the revolutionary creativity of the working people of Russia. The new name " commissars "was contrasted with the old one - "ministers", then inextricably linked with the bourgeois-landowner state machine of violence and exploitation. Finally, the word "narodny" reflected the character and direction of the new proletarian government, the government of the workers and peasants.
On October 26, in response to questions from a correspondent of the Menshevik Rabochaya Gazeta, the leader of the Proletarian Revolution said that what had been achieved was now being consolidated, and satisfactory reports were being received from the front. The organization of the new government, Lenin further emphasized, depends on the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which will probably have its say on this question even today. 47 Late in the evening of the same day, the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets approved at the end of its session the decree on the formation of the Council of People's Commissars and the list of persons nominated to its membership. The Council of People's Commissars headed by Lenin, which according to this decree was entrusted with the exercise of government power in the country under the control of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets and its Central Executive Committee, was formed from the chairmen of 12 commissions: people's commissars for internal affairs, agriculture, labor, trade and industry, public education, finance, justice, foreign affairs, food, posts and telegraphs, national affairs and railway affairs, as well as three members of the committee for military and naval affairs. "A new government is being proclaimed ..." is written in John Reed's reporter's notebook. - The composition of the Board of Directors is announced from the rostrum at the Meeting.-
43 " The Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets...", p. 26.
44 For the history of the Bolshevik government bloc with the Left SRS at the end of 1917-1918, see K. V. Gusev. The Collapse of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party, Moscow, 1963. The Socialist-Revolutionary Party: from Petty-bourgeois Revolutionism to Counter-Revolution, Moscow, 1975; K. V. Gusev, Kh. A. Eripyan. From compromise to Counterrevolution, Moscow, 1968; L. M. Spirin. Classes and Parties in the Civil War in Russia (1917-1920). Moscow, 1968; P. A. Golub. On the Bolshevik bloc with the Left srs during the preparation and victory of October. Voprosy istorii CPSU, 1971, No. 9, et al.
45 " Minutes of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b)...", p. 13.
45 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 35, p. 28; see also " Source Studies. Teoreticheskie i metodicheskie problemy [Theoretical and methodological Problems]. Moscow, 1969, p. 367.
47 " Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Biographical chronicle", vol. 5, p. 4.
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native Commissars, and each name is greeted with applause, depending on the revolutionary merits of its owner." Lenin's name, Reed notes, causes "an incessant storm of applause." 48 The Bolsheviks were promoted to the posts of People's commissars, who were to ensure the implementation of the program established by the Congress in close unity with the mass organizations of the working people. As it was pointed out in Izvestia on October 28, 1917, the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets created "a new type of government, truly national, connected with the people's organizations, working together with them and through them, and thus established the government of the people by the people themselves."
The Workers 'and Peasants' Government elected by the Congress was radically different from the governments of pre-October Russia, not only in the way it was created, but also in its composition. For its characterization, some results of studying the composition of the Lenin Council of People's Commissars in 1917-191849 are of great interest in this aspect . The Bolshevik Party and its Central Committee nominated its greatest organizers and publicists, ardent tribunes of the revolution, to the Council of People's Commissars. More than half of the statesmen active in the Council of People's Commissars and its staff (51 out of 92) joined the party before 1904; 20 between 1904 and 1908; and 19 between 1908 and October 1917. Thus, 71 people (over 76%) actively participated in the preparation and conduct of the first Russian Revolution in one form or another. A large majority of them started their revolutionary activities in the mid-1890s or at the turn of two centuries. Thus, before 1903, 66 people, or 72%, had joined the social-democratic movement. Many members of the first Soviet government (V. I. Lenin, F. E. Dzerzhinsky, A. M. Kollontai, G. I. Oppokov-Lomov, I. V. Stalin, etc.) were simultaneously members or candidates for membership in the Central Committee of the party; other People's commissars and responsible Soviet leaders (G. I. Petrovsky, P. I. Stuchka, etc.) They were then elected to the Central Committee of the RCP(b) at the Seventh Party Congress.
By social origin, the overwhelming majority of members of the Council of People's Commissars came from workers, peasants, democratic intellectuals, broad circles of employees or military personnel (64 people, or almost 70%)- the Soviet government was a model of a truly international union of the best representatives of working people of large and small nations and nationalities in their struggle against exploitation and oppression. It united Russians and Ukrainians, Belarusians and Jews, Poles and Latvians, Armenians and Georgians. 51 people, or 55.5% of SNK members, had higher or incomplete higher education (due to participation in the revolutionary movement); 18 people, or 19.6%, had secondary or special education; 10 people received primary education, continued in the "revolutionary universities" of tsarist prisons, exiles and emigration (in relation to 13 people could not be identified with information about their education). The party nominated lawyers and doctors, journalists and economists, chemists and mathematicians, biologists and statisticians, military personnel and engineers to the posts of People's Commissars and other responsible posts in the Soviet state apparatus, many of whom were excellent speakers and publicists. "The First Council of People's Commissars," wrote the head of the US Red Cross mission to Russia in 1917, R. Robins,"was superior in culture and education to any cabinet of ministers in the world, based on the number of books written by its members and the languages they spoke." 50 Indeed, "never and nowhere in history has there been a government so educated, so uneducated, but so truly enlightened, that placed the interests of the broadest masses of the people above all else." 51
And, as is well known, the Soviet government, composed of representatives of the Leninist Party, has honorably justified the confidence of the working people of Russia, from the first days of its independence.
48 Izvestia, 3. XI. 1964.
49 See M. P. Iroshnikov. Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars V. Ulyanov (Lenin). Ocherki gosudarstvennoi deyatel'nosti v 1917-1918 gg. l. 1974, pp. 45-48.
50 See Novy Mir, 1967, No. 5, p. 260.
51 "Novoe Vremya", 1968, N 45, p. 4.
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by carrying out "the program approved by the entire All-Russian Second Congress of Soviets and consisting in gradual but firm and unswerving steps towards socialism" 52 . The RSDLP (b) was the first Marxist party in history to take power. From being illegal, persecuted and persecuted under the conditions of tsardom, the Bolshevik Party became the ruling party, the leading and guiding force of a vast country. "Under the leadership of the Communist Party, the working people of our country successfully coped with the most important and most difficult task of the socialist revolution - the creative one. Lenin's plan for the construction of socialism, covering all the main spheres of society's life, was implemented."53 The main reason for the emergence of a one-party political system in our country was the position of the petty-bourgeois parties themselves, who rejected cooperation with the Bolsheviks on the basis of the socialist program of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which expressed the fundamental interests of the absolute majority of the revolutionary working people of Russia, and took the path of struggle against the dictatorship of the proletariat .54
The decree on the formation of the Council of People's Commissars was the most important, but not the only act of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets connected with the establishment of a new, workers 'and peasants' power in Russia. In addition to this decree, which secured the transfer of central State power in the country to the hands of the proletariat, the Congress also approved special resolutions on the creation and organization of Soviet power in the field and in the army. The first of them, addressed to all provincial and uyezd Soviets, established the transfer of all local power to the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers 'and Peasants' Deputies. Commissars of the former Provisional Government were suspended. The chairmen of the Soviets were instructed to communicate directly with the revolutionary Government. Another resolution, addressed to the front, proposed that all armies should establish temporary revolutionary committees, which were responsible for maintaining revolutionary order and whose orders the commanders were obliged to obey. 55
The formation of the Soviet Government, the transfer of all local power to the Soviets, and finally the creation of revolutionary organs of Soviet power in the army - all this meant the legislative implementation of the Bolshevik slogan "All power to the Soviets!" From the embryo of revolutionary power, which, according to Lenin's definition, was the Soviets in 1905, and from the organs of the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry in the February Revolution after October 25, 1917, the Soviets became the only organs of a new, truly popular power in the country. As Lenin later pointed out, speaking at the Seventh Emergency Congress of the RCP (b), "a new form of political power was ready, and we had only a few decrees to transform the power of the Soviets from the embryonic state in which it was in the first months of the revolution into a form legally recognized and established in the Russian state - the Russian Soviet Republic"56 .
Along with decrees on central issues - peace, land, and power-the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets also approved a number of other important legislative acts. These included the decree abolishing the death penalty at the front (restored by the Kerensky Government after the July events) and the immediate release of all soldiers and officers arrested for revolutionary activities; the decree on combating counter-revolutionary actions, which proposed that all local Soviets should follow the example of the Petrograd workers and soldiers in ensuring complete revolutionary order; the decree on the immediate arrest of Kerensky and its delivery to Petrograd 57 . The total number of documents adopted by the II All-Russian Congress of Soviets during the two days of its work is 11. The significance of all of them is truly enormous. They were constituent acts that established the foundations of the Soviet state system. In many of them, they were first formulated and openly proclaimed before
52 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 35, p. 76.
53 "On the 60th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution", p. 5.
54 See History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, vol. 3, book 1, p. 438.
55 "Decrees of the Soviet Government", vol. 1, Moscow, 1957, pp. 11, 21.
56 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 36, p. 6.
57 See "Decrees of the Soviet Government", vol. 1, p. 9 - 11, 16 - 17, 21 - 22.
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Fundamental principles of the domestic and foreign policy of the state of a qualitatively new, socialist type are adopted by all the peoples and governments of the world. Starting with the decrees on peace and land, which V. I. Lenin rightly called laws of world importance, 58 each of these historical documents immediately showed the working class and the working peasantry of Russia that Soviet power is a power that really, in fact, and not in words expresses the fundamental interests of the working and exploited masses, the absolute majority population of the country.
Lenin's decrees of October were not only legislative acts aimed at meeting the fundamental, urgent needs of the working people. Each of them was an appeal to the masses, calling on them to participate most widely and resolutely in the proletarian revolution, in the implementation of new, revolutionary laws. Expressing the policy of the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet government, they were aimed at gaining confidence and evoking "lively creativity of the masses", which, as V. I. Lenin pointed out, was "the main factor of the new public" 59 . "Six decades ago," says the CPSU Central Committee Resolution on the 60th anniversary of the Great October Revolution, " the heroic proletariat of Russia, under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, rose up to a decisive assault on the bourgeois-landlord system and crushed it. For the first time in history, the struggle of the working people against exploitation, social and national oppression has ended in their complete victory."60 . Lenin's decrees of October, born of the socialist revolution, reflected the beginning of a new era in the history of Russia and all mankind.
58 See V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 35, p. 56.
59 Ibid., p. 57.
60 "On the 60th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution", p. 3.
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