WI Kamenev-led all-socialist government in revolutionary Russia?

I'm currently reading Tony Brenton's Was Revolution Inevitable, a series of essays on possible counterfactuals around the Russian Revolution. In it, Orlando Figes speculates about the Congress of Soviets (October 25, 1917) leading to an all-socialist coalition government, something David T has written about as well. Figes suggests as a POD, Lenin being arrested on the way to Tauride Palace. IRL, he was stopped by government police officers but was mistaken for a drunk and let pass, where he wound up rallying the Bolsheviks to seize power in advance of the Congress meeting. Figes suggests that had the Bolshevik coup not occurred, the likely result would have been the Congress of Soviets endorsing an all-socialist coalition led by Lev Kamanev with a Bolshevik plurality. He suspects there would still have been a short civil war at least against Kerensky and the forces of the provisional government but ultimately Figes doesn't speculate much beyond the thought that this would have led to a less ruinous outcome for Russia.

So what do people think would have happened? Might such a government still have devolved into a Leninist-Bolshevik dictatorship anyway? Or might Lenin have split with the Bolsheviks given SR and Menshevik participation? If it remained in power, what might a Kamenev-led government have done regarding the war? Would it have agreed to a quick peace that ceded the Germans Poland, Lithuania, and the Courland? How would it have handled the Constituent Assembly? And is there any possibility here of a democratic system emerging? Or perhaps a left-wing dictatorship but a nominally pluralist one?
 
The case that is usually made against a coalition government of the socialist parties in Russia after October is that such a government could not get Russia out of the war. This is true: it was hard enough for Lenin to get even the Bolsheviks to accept Brest-Litovsk, let alone convince a coalition government containing people like Martov and Chernov.

And yet it can be argued that a refusal to agree to Brest-Litovsk would not be fatal to a socialist coalition government, for a simple reason-- the Germans in 1918 even if they encountered no resistance whatever were in no condition to occupy all of Russia. (In OTL, "General Max Hoffmann, the German commander on the Eastern Front, noted bitterly in his diary that despite the fact that his forces faced no opposition whatever, he would have to call an end to their advance. 'I should have no objection', he wrote, 'to pushing farther and farther eastwards. I should like to get to India except that the distances grow more immense, and our army does not.'" http://web.archive.org/web/20030310182535/http://scottreid.com/lenin.htm#anchor244115) Their first priority, after all, had to be, not the occupation of Russia, but taking Paris before the American troops arrived en masse. So they might take Petrograd, maybe even Moscow (though I doubt it) but the socialist government can retreat eastward. Any puppet government the Germans set up in European Russia will most likely collapse after the Germans lose the war.
 
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So what do people think would have happened? Might such a government still have devolved into a Leninist-Bolshevik dictatorship anyway? Or might Lenin have split with the Bolsheviks given SR and Menshevik participation? If it remained in power, what might a Kamenev-led government have done regarding the war? Would it have agreed to a quick peace that ceded the Germans Poland, Lithuania, and the Courland? How would it have handled the Constituent Assembly? And is there any possibility here of a democratic system emerging? Or perhaps a left-wing dictatorship but a nominally pluralist one?

I don't think it would have necessarily ended up as a Leninist dictatorship. Some other sort of socialist dictatorship is a real risk.

The first risk is if they can survive WW1 to its end without being overthrown or giving too much power to a dictator. The second risk is the Great Depression, which I expect would cause some dramatic ideological and political shifts.

fasquardon
 
With an all-socialist government that doesn't sign Brest-Litovsk, the military situation continues to worsen. The Bolsheviks continue their agitation and become the dominant force in the streets. The other parties take measures to undermine Bolshevik power, leading to a split in the government.

Two major possibilities:

1. The Bolsheviks seize power under different circumstances, somewhat later, putting the country on a parallel course of events to OTL. Perhaps you get a Lenin dictatorship into the late 20s or 30s. He was sometimes sickly even without Kaplan's wound.
2. The democratic left succeeds in keeping Bolshevik power under control, but a right wing coup occurs as the military collapse continues. Right wing dictatorship, or civil war ending in right wing dictatorship or Bolshevik dictatorship.
 
I don't see a bourgeois parliament beating the workplace councils in dual power.

I don't see the geographic councils beating the workplace councils without a bonapartist dictatorship taking over the departments while abolishing the Duma.

I don't see the Bolshevik maximalists riding any horse other than the geographic and workplace councils.

The question is who wins in the councils. And which councils win.

Yours,
Sam R.
 
The first risk is if they can survive WW1 to its end without being overthrown or giving too much power to a dictator. The second risk is the Great Depression, which I expect would cause some dramatic ideological and political shifts.
The soviet union was relatively unaffected by the great depression because of their economic isolation. I don't think the capitalist countries in Europe would be willing to trade with them even if they were much more moderate.
 
Other capitalist powers traded with the Soviet Union through the 20s and 30s. GAZ was ford. Where do you think grain exports went?
 
IMO the issue of "Constituent Assembly vs. Soviets" did not have to lead to civil war and dictatorship--and would not have, if people like Kamenev and Zinoviev had led the Bolshevik Party.

First of all, it is not true that the "Right SR's" got a majority of votes in the Constituent Assembly elections. Leaving aside the fact that some of the "Right SRs" like Chernov would more appropriately be regarded as Center SR's or even Center-Left SR's, the fact is that the Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries did not get a majority of the vote. In a post a few years ago, https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/wi-lenin-dies-circa-august-1917.342336/#post-10253193 I explain why this is a myth:

"Sviatitsky claimed about 400 deputies for the Populist camp (leaving aside the Left SRs) but of these he actually only claimed 299 for his own party, the SRs. The remainder of the 400 were *Ukrainian* Socialist Revolutionaries (81) or smaller SR national groups (19--Moslem, Chuvash, Moldavian, and Buryat).

"It is a great mistake to assume that these one hundred deputies would necessarily vote with the (Russian) PSR. Moslem SRs, like other Moslems, did not share the Russian Populist intellectuals' enthusiasm for the war and the Allies. (One Moslem SR from Ufa province not only supported the Soviet government's peace initiative but criticized it for not moving even faster in that direction.) And the Ukrainian SR party was not only organizationally separate from the PSR but had its own agenda, which, while it did not yet call for outright separation of Ukraine from Russia, nevertheless carried self-determination and devolution to a point much further than the PSR would be likely to accept."

Second, the Assembly which actually met was almost a rump Assembly: "The Assembly was supposed to have over 800 members, yet only 703 or 707 were elected. Part of the explanation is that in twelve electoral districts, mostly in Central Asia, the election never came off. This accounts for either 81 or 86 of the vacancies. The bulk of them would have gone to Moslem nationalists, who would hardly be likely to agree with the SRs' enthusiasm for England and France (nations which Russian Moslems saw as oppressors of Moslems in Asia and Africa) or for the Armenians--or for the strong SR antagonism toward Turkey and Turkey's German allies..."

Even among the deputies who were actually elected, many were not present:

"Another point is the large number of deputies absent on January 5. (Of course, one cannot blame some of the deputies for fearing that going to Petrograd would be a ticket to jail or worse. The Bolsheviks had already outlawed the Kadets, for example.) Radkey gives three different sources' estimates of the number of deputies present: one gives 427, another 402, still another "around 500." (In his essay "The Constituent Assembly" in Edward Acton, Vladimir Iu. Cherniaev, and William P. Rosenberg, eds, *Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution*, Nikolai N. Smirnov writes that "at least 410 deputies took their seats." p. 331) Since there were supposed to be slightly more than 800 deputies, it seems likely that almost half the membership was absent, either through failure to get there or failure to be elected. Note, for example, that Chernov was elected chairman by 244 votes in his favor to 151 against; Spiridonova's candidacy got 153 affirmative and 244 negative votes. In other words, this
crucial test of strength did not involve even half the membership of the Assembly.

"Most notably the Ukrainian SRs were not at the Tauride Palace; their party's Central Committee had decided that the deputies were needed in Ukraine, where the Rada had called its own (Ukrainian) Constituent Assembly. A few Ukrainian SR deputies did go to Petrograd to announce to the All-Russian Assembly that they would not participate in it, but reserved the right to do so in the future! (As Radkey puts it, "In other words, if the assembly were a failure, they did not wish to be involved, but if it succeeded, and came to wield authority, they would take their seats." p. 389)…

Radkey's conclusion: "In dissolving the Constituent Assembly, Lenin was putting an end to a body that would likely have fallen of its own weight. But he was scarcely destroying a nest of counterrevolution, as he and his comrades have so often proclaimed. He had hastened to strike down the specter of right SR control arising out of the half assembly of January, 1918, without waiting for the full assembly to convene. In such an assembly, with all members elected and present, there would have been a majority for peace and one for recasting the conquered empire of the tsars along lines of broad national autonomy. There would have been no majority for restoring the discredited Provisional Government. The right SR's with their contraband Kadetism would not have ruled this assembly, grossly overrepresented as they were. With all of its imperfections, chief among them this Trojan horse of counterrevolution in SR trappings, the Constituent Assembly was nevertheless an authentic expression of the hopes and hatreds of the populations residing within the Russian Empire..." *The Sickle Under the Hammer: The Russian Socialist Revolutionaries in the Early Months of the Soviet Rule*, p. 463.
 

Hnau

Banned
I think their peace delegation would have been significantly more successful than the Bolsheviks. They wouldn’t have lost Ukraine, no way. The Bolsheviks will use the threat of coup d’etat to their advantage in the Assembly, I think they’d pressure the Right-SRs to enact a radical economic program after winning peace. Though there will still be a civil war, it’ll be much less brutal with the other republicans accepted into the legitimate government. Mostly just tsarists and Cossacks will be rebelling, perhaps Central Asians and Caucasian countries as well down the road. Recovery from the war would be much faster than IOTL, the Russians may even be in a place to contribute to the continental recovery. I have a hard time believing they wouldn’t be cautiously invited to the Paris Peace Conference.
 
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