On February 27, the revolutionary leaders formed a “Provisional Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies,” summoning the workers to elect delegates to this Executive Committee. The Soviet Executive Committee immediately began to function as a government, emitting orders to occupy the state bank, the treasury, the mint, and the printing press with a revolutionary guard (Trotksy 2008:115-16).
The formation of soviets represented the initial step in the formation of a structure of government that is an alternative to the feudal monarchy or the bourgeois democratic parliament. The soviets were workers’ and soldiers’ councils, composed of workers’ and soldiers’ delegates elected in the factories, shops, and garrisons. The need for the formation of soviets as an alternative structure of power had been ingrained in workers’ consciousness since the earlier formation of soviets during the Russian Revolution of 1905. And the Russian soviets were following the example of the Paris Commune of 1871, which, as described by Marx, consisted of municipal councils elected by universal suffrage in the various districts of the city (Trotsky 2008:10, 115-16; Lenin 1997:64).
However, the Soviet Executive Committee surrendered power to the bourgeoisie, rather than proceeding to govern the country with the power that it held in its hands. In a March 1 meeting, representatives of the Executive Committee of the Soviet met with representatives of a Provisional Committee of the Duma (or Parliament) that had been formed on February 27. It was agreed that a government should be formed by the Provisional Committee of the Duma; and a Provisional Government, consisting of ministers who were members of the bourgeoisie and the landowning class, was formed (Trotsky 2008:116-20, 125-26, 132-33, 138-41).
The leaders who turned power over to the bourgeoisie were from two socialist parties: the Social Revolutionary Party, a party led by urban intellectuals with a social base among peasants, which advocated the redistribution of the land and the formation of peasant cooperatives; and the Menshevik party, an urban based party supported by the left wing of the bourgeois intelligentsia and the middle class and by the moderate upper strata of workers. They were driven toward accommodation with the bourgeoisie because they believed that the February Revolution was a bourgeois revolution and that the time of the proletarian revolution had not yet come (Trotsky 2008:160-67).
In spite of the surrender of power by the Soviet Executive Committee, workers, soldiers, and soon peasants, continued to identify with and place their hopes in the alternative soviet structure of power. Soviet structures spread rapidly among workers, soldiers, and peasants. Soviets were formed in the principal cities and towns in early March, throughout the country in the next few weeks, and in the villages and towns in April and May. Layers of soviets were developed, as neighborhood soviets in large cities elected delegates to a city-wide soviet; localities, towns, and cities elected delegates to provincial soviets; and a central soviet representing the workers, soldiers, and peasants from many regions of the country was elected. This formation of a system of soviets by workers, soldiers, and peasants established a situation of dual power: soviet structures of popular democracy alongside bourgeois government (Trotsky 2008:116-18,159).
The leaders of the Bolshevik Party had been in exile, and they began to arrive in Petrograd in March. Most supported the cooperative relation of the Social Revolutionary-Menshevik bloc with the bourgeoisie. But when Lenin, the principal leader of the Bolshevik Party and a symbol of the revolution in the minds of many workers, arrived on April 3, he took the party and the revolution in a different direction (Trotsky 2008:163, 206-17).
Lenin, V.I. 1997. El Estado y La Revolución. Madrid: Fundación Federico Engels.
Trotsky, Leon. 2008. History of the Russian Revolution. Translated by Max Eastman. Chicago: Haymarket Books.
Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Russian Revolution, February Revolution, Lenin, Trotsky