In January, 1905, the young working class of Russia flexed its muscles for the first time. A mass demonstration to the Tsar's palace in St Petersburg. demanding the right to strike and the 8-hour day, was brutally attacked by the army in the infamous Bloody Sunday' massacre.
Yet by the end of the year that same working class had progressed from a naive demonstration for basic trade union rights to the highest form of workers' organisation seen since the Paris Commune, 34 years before-the St Petersburg Soviet. Tsardom totter ed, and from that time, though lemporarily victorious, waited only for the final push which came in 1917 with the October Revolution. The young Leon Trotsky was a leading figure in the Soviet and evoked the experience and lessons of those fifty memorably tumultuous days in this book, which he wrote two years later in cxile, He points out the single most important lesson of 1905: that the struggle for very basic demands, if organised through organs of workers" power, can grow over into a struggle for State power; indeed, that it must begin to do so if it is not tobe hamstrung by its own ellectiveness.
STRIKE The butchery of Bloody Sunday triggered off a wave of uncoordinand reorganisation of the inexperlenced Kussian working class during the spring and summer, The days of intimidation were numerco, in car October a wave of strikes started in the printing-industry in St.Petersburg across the country, particularly the railway and telegraph services, In St Petersburg, the workers in several industries set up a General Council to coordinate their strugsles. This was to rapidly grow into the Soviet of Workers" Deputies, which embraced the masses of the whol city and served as the model of onganisation for other towns and cities in Rissia, From October, the strike spread across the country, adopting the demands for an 8-hour day, civil liberties, amnesty for all political prisoners and the recall of the Constituent Assembly (Parliament) with universal Tranchise.
In the next few wceks, even though the sinke was suspended for some time, the St Petersburg Soviet grew in size and influence, is the working class organ of struggle in the city: If consisted of an assembly which was permanently in session-deciding the course of the strike, the demands to be adopted, the tactics of the workers in struggle and the overall organdeputies at any moment. Through its members-deputies directly elected by the workers-the Soviet exercises direct lesderdio over all social mant festations of the proletariat as a whole and of its indiridual groups, organises its actions and provides them with a slowan and a banner.
The representation of the workers in struggle was based primarily on the factories, because they were the main links which hound the working class together with a common interest -a working class which in any other terms was very inadequately organised. The strike committees, and what workers organisations that there were, looked - to the Soviet for leadership.
isation and functioning of the working-class community. When a factory went on strike it was immedlately entitled to clect a representative (Deputy) to sit in the Sovict to decide working class policy. As Trotsky says:
*The representative hody of the proletariat assumed the role of the Irst embryonic oruan of revolution ary power. With the Soviet we have the first appearance of democratc power in modern Russian history. The Soviet is the organised power of the mass stitutes authentic democracy, without a lower and an upper chamber, with out a professional bureaucracy, but with the wuters' right to recall their
(Penguin, 75p) by CARL GARDNER However such parties had freedom members who sat as deputies. Revolutionary situations are the soil in which real revolutionarics bloom and thrive-the acid-test of their claims to lead the class is their and secondly, those organs must be able to execute the policies decided on. This is the role of the Soviet. PART ONE of a two-part review of Trotsky's great classic, 1905 of debate in the Soviet, through their BOSCELETU response to such situations. Workers will readily follow the correct political line if it can be shown to work in practice. But first one must have those orRans of proletarian democracy where workers policy can be thrashed out, might of a strong, centralised, and sophisticated capitalist State machine, Trofsky clearly outlines the tasks which this posed to the workers"
ORGAN OF STRUGGLE One delegate to the Soviet was clected for roughly every 500 workers, though smaller factories often had one ated strikes and widespread discussion deputy for less. At the height of its influence, the Soviet had 562 deputies, representing 147 factories and plants, including workers from Political parties alone could never have done the job of the Soviet. The and rapidly spread to ofher industries, creation of a non-party organ was essential to give representation to the broadest masses, even those who would never think of joining a party, capitalist politicians as the pinnacle of democracy, are not even pale flecting shadows of such ergans of direct workers' democracy. In Trotsky's worls:
to give unity to the revolutionary for political polemics and mutual mained an organ of struggle.' strike confronted the workers with a whole number of problems. The day class struggle. For example, the workers here, as in all situations of mass upsurge, were faced with the Petersburg workers setting up a makeshift barricade in 1905. As Trotsky pointed out: The power still has to be strike only creates the necessary preconditions; it is quite inadequate for achieving the task itself
Bounceois parliaments, so praised by The Soviet's task was not to transform itself into a parody of parlinment, not to organise equal representation of th interests of different social groups, hut struggle of the proletariat.. the Soviet could not transform ibell into a club indoctrination. It had to be and reFUNDAMENTAL TASK From the beginning the mass general Soviet, by broadening its responsibilities, undertonk to tackle these severe problems and carry the strike forward. It was born, and grew, out of the actual needs of the workers, thrown up by the course of events in the day to dant.
*The telegraph and the railways are, without any question, powerful weapons in the hands of the modeen centralised State. But they are double-edged weapons.._As soon as the rails and ment apparatus is Fragmented into parts withoutany means of transport or communication between themAdvantage to the workers. However:
The class which, by simultaneous cessation of work, paralyses the pro duction apparados and wich at the centralised apparatus of power, lolating parts of the country from one another and sowing general confus ion, must itself he sufficiently organ ised not to become the fust victim of the anarchy it has created, The more completely the strike renders the State organisation obsolete, the more the organisation of the strike itacl is obliged to assume state functions.' The main problem still exists:
The power still has to be snatched from the hands of the old rulers and handed over to the revolution. That is the fuadamental task. A genoral strike only creates the necessary pre conditions; it is quite integ unte for achieving the task itself.
To meet the needs of the workers in the midst of the strike, the Soviet was forced to lake over the functions of the State which it had so thoroughly disrupted, if it was not to perish at its own hand, The strike threatened to starve itself, to cut off all its communication with other centres of struggle, and render itselt detenceless in the absence of bourgeois law and order. At the same time as the Soviet took on the task of solving these basic problems, it was nurturing the clements of workers" State power and rendering the okl State power redun
snatched from the hands of the old rulers and handed over to the revolution. That is the fundamental task. A general