L. "Science". 1969. 396 p. The print run is 2,400. Price 1 rub. 92 kopecks.
A few years ago, it was stated that there was no major generalizing work devoted to the period of the triumphal march of the Soviet government, and its creation was put forward as a priority task. 1 But the appearance of such a study is hardly realistic without the development of certain important problems of this period, the only known outcome of which it can be. This is exactly the direction in which work has been carried out in recent years .2 The book under consideration by A. L. Freiman, Doctor of Historical Sciences, also serves to solve this problem. It covers the revolutionary history of Petrograd during the triumphal march of Soviet power.
The author has worked on the history of Petrograd in 1917-1918 before 3 . From the pages of his new book, the reader sees revolutionary Petrograd in the turbulent post-October months - its proletariat and the Red Guard, the largest Bolshevik party organization, hardened in the struggle; the forces that opposed the revolution are also shown. The author collected a lot of information scattered in various publications, used the documents of, perhaps, all the main archives - central and Leningrad, which contain materials on this topic. But he is far from thinking that the problems of studying the revolutionary history of Petrograd during the first months of Soviet power are fully solved in the book, and considers his work only as an attempt to take a definite step towards creating a generalizing work. His monograph is in line with the trend in the study of the history of the October Revolution and the Civil War, which is characterized by the rejection of selective use of known facts and documents in order to support general, sometimes speculative statements, and which consistently lays an increasingly solid factual foundation for new achievements in covering the complex and glorious revolutionary era.
At the same time, the material available in the book in some cases needs to be clarified. Let's focus on two points.
Referring to N. I. Zlozhdeev's pamphlet "The Red Guard" (Moscow, 1957), A. L. Freiman writes (p.68) that the total number of revolutionary troops that participated in repelling the Kerensky-Krasnov march on Petrograd reached 50 thousand people. In the brochure itself, the source of these data is not specified and they are not justified in any way. Meanwhile, other works give different figures. Thus, N. Mamai, based on the order of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee of October 29 on the release of food from the district quartermaster's office, believes that on that day there were 8 thousand soldiers at the front, and by October 30, due to the arrival of reinforcements, their number increased to 10-12 thousand people .4 The same data (also without reference) appear in the second volume of the History of the Civil War in the USSR (Moscow, 1942, p. 208). Referring to it, A. L. Freiman reports that approximately 10 thousand Red Guards, soldiers and sailors were concentrated in the main position, in the area of the Pulkovo Heights (p.68). Thus, both indicators-50 and 10 thousand-are taken from works that do not contain their justification. Explaining the difference between these data, the author writes that a significant part of the revolutionary troops (approximately 40 thousand people) "was located in adjacent areas and in the nearest rear areas," and this statement is not based on any calculations. In another place (p. 63), the author points out that 9-10 or 12,000 Red Guard workers (not counting, consequently, soldiers and sailors) directly participated in the repulse of the Kerensky-Krasnov troops. The existence of such contradictions indicates the need for further study of the question of the number of revolutionary troops.
1 See S. S. Hesin. On some questions of studying the triumphal procession of the Socialist revolutions. Voprosy Istorii, 1963, No. 4, p. 205.
2 See, for example: E. N. Gorodetsky. The birth of the Soviet State. M. 1965; E. V. Klopov. V. I. Lenin in Smolny. M. 1965; M. P. Iroshnikov. Creation of the Soviet Central State Apparatus, L. 1967; I. S. Lutovinov, Liquidation of the Kerensky - Krasnov mutiny, M. 1965, et al.
3 See A. L. Freiman. Revolutionary defense of Petrograd in February-March 1918. Moscow - L. 1964; his. Revolyutsionnye traditsii piterskikh rabochikh [Revolutionary Traditions of St. Petersburg Workers]. The revolution is fighting back. October-November 1917, L. 1967, et al.
4 See "Military-historical journal", 1968, N 4, pp. 12-13.
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Some publications report that the chief of staff of the troops acting against Krasnov was Colonel Walden, but even his initials are unknown, not to mention that at least some characteristic of this person is given. He mentions Walden and A. L. Freiman (p. 67), without going further than his predecessors. Meanwhile, archival documents give an idea of Walden 5 .
The point, however, is not only in the accuracy of the facts, but also in understanding them on the basis of Lenin's concept of the history of the triumphal march of the Soviet government. Of course, A. L. Freiman makes extensive use of Lenin's statements. They run through the entire book from the beginning, where the assessment of the triumphal march of the revolution is given, which V. I. Lenin formulated in the article "The Main Task of our days" 6, to the final pages. However, using the works of V. I. Lenin, the author often takes his statements as if autonomous from the entire Leninist concept of the history of the triumphal march of Soviet power.
The October political revolution marked the boundary that separated the two forms of class struggle of the proletariat and of all working people in general against their age-old oppressors. "Class struggle... it has reached its final form, when the exploited class takes all the means of power into its own hands in order to finally destroy its class enemy... " 7. Developing this idea, V. I. Lenin pointed out that in history it has never yet happened that the state power waged war against its own bourgeoisie and against the united bourgeoisie of all countries. 8 In the light of these propositions, the analysis of the correlation of class and political forces given in the book is felt to be insufficient and incomplete (pp. 24-47). The author lists the parties and organizations that stood on both sides of the front of the class struggle, they are characterized according to their political positions, but when assessing the balance of forces, the crucial importance of the fact that the proletariat had state power, while the exploiting classes were deprived of it, politically disorganized, and could not overcome this disorganization even by creating a " Committee save the motherland and the Revolution" or the "Committee of Public Safety", or the pathetic attempts of the Petrograd City Duma to extend its power to the whole country.
The counter-revolution sought to deal the main blow to Soviet power in Petrograd, not only because the polarization of class forces was most pronounced here and bourgeois-landowner elements and the bureaucratic-bureaucratic apparatus were concentrated, as the author explains (pp. 31-32), but primarily because Petrograd became the center of the new state power - the dictatorships of the proletariat, and it was here that the counter-revolution hoped to regain such a powerful lever of class struggle as state power, which had fallen from its hands.
"In some regions, as will be shown below, the counter-revolution succeeded in unleashing a civil war," writes A. L. Freiman (p. 24), and then mentions the civil war unleashed by the counter-revolution in the Don, Ukraine, and Urals (p.253, 284). Thus, the concept of civil war during this period is excluded from the acts of armed struggle that took place in Petrograd (the Junker mutiny), near Petrograd (the Kerensky - Krasnov mutiny), and in Moscow, although they are recognized in the book as the decisive events of the first days of the triumphal march of Soviet power (p.77). But V. I. Lenin considered all these events as a manifestation of the civil war .9 Moreover, he considered the military suppression of-
5 Colonel Pavel Borisovich Walden, born in 1887, who was concussed in the head and twice wounded on the Russian-German front, in 1917 commanded the 2nd Tsarskoye Selo Guards Reserve Regiment, in the battles of Tsarskoye Selo, Gatchina, Pavlovsk and Pulkovo - a detachment of troops of the Petrograd Military District and the Red Guard. After the demobilization of the regiment, Walden was subject to dismissal from service due to illness: he lost his left leg, the medical commission also found him to have pronounced neurasthenia and heart neurosis. But P. B. Walden did not retire and for more than ten years taught rifle and machine gun work in educational institutions of the Red Army, invariably certified as a "very valuable employee", "excellent teacher", deserving of further promotion (TSGVIA, service record N 149-160; TSGASA, service card of P. B. Walden).
6 There is a typo in the book: The article is dated March 1, 1918. V. I. Lenin wrote it on March 11 in a carriage on the way from Petrograd to Moscow; Izvestiya VTSIK published it the next day.
7 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 35, pp. 266-267.
8 See V. I. Lenin, PSS. Vol. 44, p. 164.
9 See V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 35, pp. 141, 393. For such an interpretation of these events in the case of-
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The main, central task of the party and the Soviet government, which was in the foreground from the end of October 1917 until approximately February 1918, was to defeat the resistance of the exploiters .10 And it was precisely the assessment of the dynamics of the armed struggle that V. I. Lenin put into the name of the period itself. The civil War, he said, was a complete triumph of the Soviet power, 11 the war with the compromising elements and the White Guard turned into a triumphant march of the revolution, as it was in St. Petersburg, on the Gatchina front, in Moscow, Orenburg, and in the Ukraine .12
In Petrograd, which from the very first days of Soviet power had been at the center of political struggle and civil war, the main task facing the proletarian state at that time began to be fulfilled - the task of militarily suppressing the resistance of the deposed exploiting classes. He played a leading role in solving this problem, primarily because of the concentration of central state power in Petrograd, throughout the entire period of the triumphal march of Soviet power. In A. L. Freiman's monograph, the role of Petrograd as an outpost of the socialist revolution is determined almost exclusively by the fact that it was a huge city with a developed industry and an advanced working class, with the largest party organization, and hence it was possible to help the country establish Soviet power and fight the counter-revolution. The combat or military task that was in the foreground during these months affected the entire social life of the city and the activities of the Petrograd proletariat in a way that could not be reflected in any other industrial center of Russia. Meanwhile, the task of civil war is considered and evaluated in this work on an equal basis with all other tasks (the creation of the Soviet state apparatus, the organization of revolutionary order, the establishment of economic life, overcoming food difficulties, cultural and educational work, etc.) without organic connection and their dependence on the main task mentioned above. This does not always allow us to evaluate facts from various areas of political and economic life in Petrograd in accordance with their actual place and significance in the complex revolutionary process.
The Soviet government could not at once liquidate all the old organs of economic management and replace them with new ones, if only because their organization required a certain amount of time, the availability of cadres of specialists, etc. And the program of the socialist revolution did not intend to break up that part of the old apparatus that performed accounting and registration work; it was a question of subordinating Lenin pointed out in 1921 that at first the dictatorship of the proletariat made an attempt to carry out the transition to new social and economic relations with the greatest possible adaptation to the existing relations, as gradually as possible and without any special breakage.
The history of the decree of the Council of People's Commissars is extremely characteristic in this regard. on the introduction of a state monopoly on advertisements, published on November 8, 1917. The decree "assumed" that private business newspapers remain as a general phenomenon, that an economic policy that requires private ads remains, and that the order of private property remains - a whole series of private institutions that need ads, ads " 15 . But, as V. I. Lenin pointed out, the capitalist class responded to this decree of state power by denying all this state power completely, by continuing the struggle and bringing it to the highest tension, raising the question of the existence of Soviet power. 16 This decree was not carried out at that time, but remained, as V. I. Lenin said, "a blank piece of paper,"17 because the resistance of the bourgeoisie forced the Soviet government to shift the struggle to a completely different plane, pushed it to a merciless struggle, "forced it to fight without mercy."-
A. L. Freiman also did this in one of his earlier works (see " Soviet Historiography of the Class Struggle and the Revolutionary Movement in Russia." Collection of articles, vol. II, l. 1967, p. 105). Unfortunately, it was not reflected in the work under consideration.
10 See V. I. Leni, n. PSS. Vol. 36, pp. 127-129, 172-173.
11 See ibid., p. 95.
12 See ibid., pp. 5, -9.
13 See V. I. Leni, PSS. vol. 34, p. 307.
14 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 44, pp. 200, 202.
15 Ibid., p. 200.
16 See ibid., p. 201.
17 Ibid., p. 202.
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which led us to an immeasurably greater breakdown of the old relationship than we anticipated. " 18 Without taking this into account, A. L. Freiman considers the above-mentioned decree only from the point of view of establishing a new order in the field of the press, writes about its implementation in November 1917 (pp. 173-174), although it was possible to start implementing it only in June 1918, and the political significance and consequences of this, especially in essence, but does not disclose a specific episode for that time.
V. I. Lenin emphasized the huge role of capitals (and in general the largest commercial and industrial centers) in deciding the political fate of the people. In October 1917, and during the triumphal march of Soviet power, this role of Petrograd was fully revealed. The counter-revolution did not succeed in isolating Petrograd, although it made every effort to do so. In explaining the stability of this outpost of Soviet power, A. L. Freiman did not limit himself to showing the revolutionary potential of Petrograd; he painted a picture of popular support for the proletarian capital and gave a convincing interpretation of this support as an expression of the deep revolutionary processes that took place throughout the country.
The possibilities for further and deeper understanding of the revolutionary history of Petrograd in such a rich period of content are very wide. To a large extent, they are revealed thanks to the work done by A. L. Freiman. The history of the triumphal march of the Soviet government has not yet been sufficiently developed scientifically, but it has a promising perspective, and this work is undoubtedly an indicator of this.
18 Ibid.
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