The Peculiar Dual Power and Its Class Significance
Своеобразное двоевластие и его классовое значение
Date: 1917-03
Source: ru:PSS/v31
Translated by: AI (Claude)

5. The most important peculiarity of our revolution, a peculiarity which most urgently demands thoughtful consideration, is the dual power created in the very first days after the victory of the revolution.

This dual power manifests itself in the existence of two governments: the main, real, actual government of the bourgeoisie, the "Provisional Government" of Lvov and Co., which holds in its hands all the organs of power, and an additional, subsidiary, "controlling" government in the person of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, which does not hold in its hands the organs of state power, but rests directly on the obviously unconditional majority of the people, on the armed workers and soldiers.

The class source of this dual power and its class significance consists in the fact that the Russian revolution of March 1917 not only swept away the entire tsarist monarchy, not only transferred all power to the bourgeoisie, but also came right up to the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry. Precisely such a dictatorship (i.e., power based not on law but on the direct force of armed masses of the population) and precisely of the indicated classes are the Petrograd and other local Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies.

6. The next, extremely important peculiarity of the Russian revolution is that the Petrograd Soviet of Soldiers' and Workers' Deputies, enjoying, judging by everything, the confidence of the majority of local Soviets, voluntarily transfers state power to the bourgeoisie and its Provisional Government, voluntarily yields primacy to it, having concluded an agreement with it on support of it, confining itself to the role of observer, controller over the convening of the Constituent Assembly (the deadline for the convening of which the Provisional Government has not yet even published).

This extremely peculiar, unprecedented in such form in history, circumstance created an interweaving together, as one, of two dictatorships: the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie (for the government of Lvov and Co. is a dictatorship, i.e., power based not on law and not on the preliminary expression of the people's will, but on seizure by force, and this seizure is carried out by a definite class, namely: the bourgeoisie) and the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry (the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies).

There is not the slightest doubt that such an "interweaving" is incapable of lasting long. Two powers cannot exist in a state. One of them must fade away, and the entire Russian bourgeoisie is already working with all its might, in every possible way everywhere to eliminate and weaken, to reduce to nothing the Soviets of Soldiers' and Workers' Deputies, to create the sole power of the bourgeoisie.

The dual power expresses only a transitional moment in the development of the revolution, when it has gone further than the ordinary bourgeois-democratic revolution, but has not yet reached the "pure" dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.

The class significance (and class explanation) of this transitional unstable position consists in the following: like any revolution, our revolution required the greatest heroism, self-sacrifice of the masses for the struggle with tsarism, and also immediately drew into the movement an unprecedentedly enormous quantity of philistines.

One of the main, scientific and practical-political signs of any real revolution consists in the extraordinarily rapid, steep, sharp increase in the number of "philistines" moving to active, independent, effective participation in political life, in the organization of the state.

So it is with Russia. Russia is now seething. Millions and tens of millions, politically asleep for ten years, politically beaten down by the terrible oppression of tsarism and by serf labor for landlords and factory owners, have awakened and reached out to politics. And who are these millions and tens of millions? For the most part petty proprietors, petty bourgeoisie, people standing in the middle between capitalists and wage workers. Russia is the most petty-bourgeois country of all European countries.

A gigantic petty-bourgeois wave has engulfed everything, suppressed the conscious proletariat not only by its numbers, but also ideologically, i.e., infected, captured very wide circles of workers with petty-bourgeois views on politics.

The petty bourgeoisie in life depends on the bourgeoisie, living itself as a proprietor and not as a proletarian (in the sense of place in social production), and in its way of thinking it follows the bourgeoisie.

A trusting-unconscious attitude toward the capitalists, the worst enemies of peace and socialism—that is what characterizes the current politics of the masses in Russia, that is what grew with revolutionary rapidity on the socio-economic soil of the most petty-bourgeois of all European countries. That is the class basis of the "agreement" (I emphasize that I have in mind not so much the formal agreement as the actual support, the silent agreement, the trusting-unconscious yielding of power) between the Provisional Government and the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies—an agreement which gave Guchkov a fat piece, real power, and to the Soviet—promises, honor (for the time being), flattery, phrases, assurances, Kerensky's bows and scrapes.

The insufficient numbers of the proletariat in Russia, the insufficient consciousness and organization of it—that is the other side of the same coin.

All the Narodnik parties, up to the Socialist-Revolutionaries, have always been petty-bourgeois, the OK party (Chkheidze, Tsereteli, etc.) too; non-party revolutionaries (Steklov and others) have equally succumbed to the wave or have not overcome, have not yet overcome the wave.