Compromisers (Soglashateli)

History

The label emerged out of the April crisis of 1917, which produced the first coalition Provisional Government with Socialist Revolutionary and Menshevik participation, the collaboration the Bolsheviks later branded as compromising. The First All-Russian Congress of Soviets, held from 3 June to 7 July 1917, was dominated by those parties: of 777 delegates declaring a party affiliation, 285 were SRs, 248 Mensheviks and 105 Bolsheviks, and the Bolsheviks were 13.5 percent of declared delegates. The 320-member All-Russian Central Executive Committee it elected was likewise Menshevik and SR (123 Mensheviks, 119 SRs, 58 Bolsheviks) and was chaired by the Menshevik Nikolai Chkheidze.

At the congress the Menshevik and SR majority rejected the Bolshevik resolutions on ending the war and transferring all power to the soviets, which is why Lenin named them compromisers. In the same month the congress, at the demand of the compromisers, banned the Bolshevik demonstration planned for 10 (23) June, and the Bolshevik Central Committee submitted to the congress decision. Fearing the loss of popular trust, the SR and Menshevik leaders then agreed to a demonstration on 18 June (1 July) under the sign of confidence in the Provisional Government, but contrary to the compromisers' expectations about 500,000 people marched under Bolshevik slogans: All power to the soviets, and Down with the ten capitalist ministers.

After the July Days the SRs and Mensheviks supported punitive measures against the insurgents, and the attack on the Bolsheviks included the false charge that Lenin was a German spy. The 1923 Populyarny politichesky slovar still explained the word as a living category of revolutionary vocabulary: the compromisers supported the coalition Provisional Government, organised the June front offensive at the demand of Anglo-French capitalists, and in October fought alongside capitalists against the insurgent workers and peasants. The same dictionary adds that in the West they helped the bourgeoisie crush the German and Hungarian revolutions.

Distinctions

The term is not equivalent to compromise in general. In On Compromises of 1 to 3 (14 to 16) September 1917 Lenin defined compromise as the surrender of part of one's demands by agreement with another party, denied that revolutionaries can refuse compromises in principle, cited Engels against the Blanquist no-compromises position, and distinguished a compromise forced by circumstances, such as participation in the Third and Fourth Dumas, from the voluntary compromise he now proposed. That voluntary compromise was offered only by way of exception, and not to the main class enemy but to the nearest adversaries, the SR and Menshevik bloc.

Even that offer was not capitulation. Lenin insisted that Bolshevik participation in such a government was impossible unless a dictatorship of the proletariat and the poor peasants had been realised, and he made complete freedom of propaganda and the convocation of the Constituent Assembly conditions of the deal.

The scope of the label is also bounded. It belongs to inter-party struggle against the Mensheviks and SRs: when Kamenev and Zinoviev opposed the armed uprising in October 1917, Lenin attacked them with the charge of strike-breaking (shtraikbrekherstvo), and no source reviewed applies the word compromisers to them.

Examples

Examples given by the 1923 dictionary are support for the coalition Provisional Government, the organisation of the June front offensive at the demand of Anglo-French capitalists, armed struggle alongside capitalists in October against the insurgent workers and peasants, and aid to the bourgeoisie in crushing the German and Hungarian revolutions. For 1917 the cases include the ban on the planned Bolshevik demonstration of 10 June and the officially sponsored demonstration of 18 June under the sign of confidence in the Provisional Government, which about 500,000 people turned into a march under Bolshevik slogans, confounding the compromisers' expectations.