Leon Trotsky, The Lessons of October - Platypus

Leon Trotsky 51gains organizationally. And, in addition, we succeeded, far more than weexpected, in luring our enemies, the conciliationists, into the trap of sovietlegality. Resorting to trickery in politics, all the more so in revolution, isalways dangerous. You will most likely fail to dupe the enemy, but themasses who follow you may be duped instead. Our ”trickery proved 100percent successful — not because it was an artful scheme devised by wilystrategists seeking to avoid a civil war, but because it derived naturallyfrom the disintegration of the conciliationist regime with its glaring contradictions.The Provisional Government wanted to get rid of the garrison.The soldiers did not want to go to the front. We invested this natural unwillingnesswith a political expression; we gave it a revolutionary goal anda ”legal” cover. Thereby we secured unprecedented unanimity within thegarrison, and bound it up closely with the Petrograd workers. Our opponents,on the contrary, because of their hopeless position and their muddleheadedness,were inclined to accept the soviet cover at its face value. Theyyearned to be deceived and we provided them with ample opportunity togratify their desire.Between the conciliationists and ourselves, there was a struggle for sovietlegality. In the minds of the masses, the soviets were the source of all power.Out of the soviets came Kerensky, Tseretelli, and Skobelev. But we ourselveswere closely bound up with the soviets through our basic slogan,”All power to the soviets!” The bourgeoisie derived their succession topower from the state Duma. The conciliationists derived their successionfrom the soviets; and so did we. But the conciliationists sought to reducethe soviets to nothing; while we were striving to transfer power to the soviets.The conciliationists could not break as yet with the Soviet heritage,and were in haste to create a bridge from the latter to parliamentarism.With this in mind they convened the Democratic Conference and createdthe Pre-Parliament. The participation of the soviets in the Pre-Parliamentgave a semblance of sanction to this procedure. The conciliationists soughtto catch the revolution with the bait of soviet legality and, after hooking it,to drag it into the channel of bourgeois parliamentarism.But we were also interested in making use of soviet legality. At the conclusionof the Democratic Conference we extracted from the conciliationistsa promise to convene the Second Soviet Congress. This congress placedthem in an extremely embarrassing position. On the one hand, they couldnot oppose convening it without breaking with soviet legality; on the otherhand, they could not help seeing that the congress — because of its composition— boded them little good. In consequence, all the more insistentlydid we appeal to the Second Congress as the real master of the country;and all the more did we adapt our entire preparatory work to the supportand defense of the Congress of Soviets against the inevitable attacks of thecounterrevolution. If the conciliationists attempted to hook us with soviet