Eighth Congress of the RCPB | |
Auhtor: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin | |
| Language: english Published: 1914 Genres:political, revolutionary, social historyDownloads: 431 eBook size: 347Kb Review by Joanna Daneman, July 2005 Rating: (***) Copyright: Public Domain in the U.S. Please check the copyright status in your country. | |
Summary of the Book 'Eighth Congress of the RCPB':
On 8th July 1917 Alexander Kerensky became the new leader of the Provisional Government. Kerensky was still the most popular man in the government because of his political past. In the Duma he had been leader of the moderate socialists and had been seen as the champion of the working-class. However Kerensky like George Lvov was unwilling to end the war. In fact soon after taking office he announced a new summer offensive.
Soldiers on the Eastern Front were dismayed at the news and regiments began to refuse to move to the front line. There was a rapid increase in the number of men deserting and by the autumn of 1917 an estimated 2 million men had unofficially left the army.
On 19th July Kerensky gave orders for the arrest of leading Bolsheviks who were campaigning against the war. This included Vladimir Lenin Gregory Zinoviev Lev Kamenev Anatoli Lunacharsky and Alexandra Kollontai. The Bolshevik headquarters at the Kshesinsky Palace was also occupied by government troops.
Lenin now returned to Petrograd but remained in hiding. On 25th September Kerensky attempted to recover his left-wing support by forming a new coalition that included more Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries. However with the Bolsheviks controlling the Soviets and now able to call on 25000 armed militia Kerenskys authority had been undermined.
The Bolsheviks set up their headquarters in the Smolny Institute. The former girls convent school also housed the Petrograd Soviet. Under pressure from the nobility and industrialists Alexander Kerensky was persuaded to take decisive action. On 22nd October he ordered the arrest of the Military Revolutionary Committee. The next day he closed down the Bolshevik newspapers and cut off the telephones to the Smolny Institute.
Leon Trotsky now urged the overthrow of the Provisional Government. Lenin agreed and on the evening of 24th October 1917 orders were given for the Bolsheviks began to occupy the railway stations the telephone exchange and the State Bank. The following day the Red Guards surrounded the Winter Palace. Inside was most of the countrys Cabinet although Kerensky had managed to escape from the city.
The Winter Palace was defended by Cossacks some junior army officers and the Womans Battalion. At 9 p.m. the Aurora and the Peter and Paul Fortress began to open fire on the palace. Little damage was done but the action persuaded most of those defending the building to surrender. The Red Guards led by Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko now entered the Winter Palace and arrested the Cabinet ministers.
Excerpts from the Book 'Eighth Congress of the RCPB':
... have confronting us a vast, real and well armed military force - all the strongest powers of the world. Nevertheless, we can confidently say to ...
... the Brest peace was decided on, the Soviet system and even Party development were still in the initial stages. You know that at that time our Party ...
... it is inconceivable for the Soviet Republic to exist alongside of the imperialist states for any length of time. One or the other must triumph in the ...
... declarations. We have not yet solved the problem that faces our Party of creating the necessary forms of organisation of the rural ...
... was never a strong point with the Russians in general, nor with the Bolsheviks in particular nevertheless the chief problem of the proletarian ...
... that you will not succeed. Comrade Bukharin made one such attempt in the commission, and himself gave it up. I am absolutely convinced that if anybody ...
... the given nation develops, until the differentiation of the proletariat from the bourgeois elements, which is inevitable, has taken place. ...
... Germany. That is of course ridiculous, nonsensical. But the bourgeoisie have their own interests and their own press, which is shouting this to ...
... in an environment of comradely collaboration, of worker commissars and of communist nuclei they must be so placed that they cannot break out but ...
... in the fight against bureaucracy. The apparatus which was a thoroughly bureaucratic and bourgeois apparatus of oppression, and which remains such even ...
... unnecessary. I think the debate that unfolded here revealed primarily one thing - the absence of any definite and formulated counter-proposal. Many speakers ...
... they would, in the course of a month, draw up a better and more integral programme. But to demand that this should be done in a day or two, as ...
... because the Great Russians are more cultured and have utilised their culture to rob the Bashkirs. That is why the term Great Russian is synonymous ...
... in any of Marx's works that is not devoted to this. You might say that all over the world the socialists of the Second International have vowed ...
... must be armed against agitation of this kind. And I am certain that they will be armed - provided we succeed now in having this question treated from ...
... abuses. In places careerists and adventurers have attached themselves to us like leeches, people who call themselves Communists and are deceiving ...
... us for bringing him these products, these implements and this culture from the towns. They will be brought to him not by exploiters, not by landowners, ...
... to raise efficiency in agriculture and ensure improvement of the peasants' working and living conditions. If the present economic ...
... democratic and compromising bourgeoisie realised that at a moment of extreme crisis, when a new war is menacing a country already exhausted by war, ...
... governments of Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan and the U.S.A. consenting to start negotiations immediately and pointing out that it was prepared ...