isaac-deutscher-the-prophet-armed-trotsky-1879-1921

THE PROPHET ARMED
debated these proposals for the first time. Kamenev came out in
categorical opposition and asked the Committee to warn all
organizations against any move of an insurrectionist character.
The Committee did not accept Kamenev's advice, nor did it
accept Lenin's proposals.'
In the meantime Trotsky was approaching the problem from
his new point of vantage as President of the Petrograd Soviet.
He agreed with Lenin on the chances and the urgency of insurrection.
But he disagreed with him over method, especially
over the idea that the party should stage the insurrection in its
own name and on its own responsibility. He took less seriously
than Lenin the threat of an immediate counter-revolution. 2
Unlike Lenin, he was confident that the pressure of the BolshcYik
majority in the Soviets would not allow the old Central
Executive to delay much longer the All-Russian Congress. He
reasoned that since the Bolsheviks had conducted their whole
agitation under the slogan 'all power to the Soviets', they should
stage the rising in such a manner that it would appear to everyone
as the direct conclusion of this agitation. The rising should
therefore be timed to coincide with, or slightly precede, the
Congress of the Soviets, in whose hands the insurgents should
then lay the power seized. Furthermore, he wanted the insurrection
to be conducted in the name of the Petrograd Soviet and
through its machinery, all the components of which were in
Bolshevik hands, and of the whole of which he was in personal
command. The rising would then appear to the world not as
the business of one party only but as a much broader undcrtaking.3
It would be a mistake to read into this difference any deeper
conflict over principles, and to deduce from it that, while
Trotsky wished to seize power for the Soviets, Lenin aimed at
placing power in the hands of his party alone. Both were in a
sense Soviet constitutionalists. Lenin, too, envisagPd that the
insurgents would convene an All-Russian Congress of the
Soviets and place power in its hands. He refused to let insurrection
wait until the Congress convened, because he was convinced
that the Menshevik Executive would delay the Congress to
' Protokoly Tsen. Kom., p. 65.
' This difference can be traced back to the July days. Raskolnikov, op. cit.,
p. t 71 ; Trotsky, History, vol. ii, pp. 3 t 5- 19. ' I bid. vol. iii, chapters v and vi.