Military Revolutionary Committee

Creation and structure

The idea of making the Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC) the combat organ of the armed uprising came from Lenin. In his September 1917 letter "Marxism and Insurrection" to the Central Committee he wrote that to treat insurrection as an art one must "organize a staff of insurgent detachments". The Petrograd Soviet created the MRC in October 1917 by a resolution proposed by its chairman, Trotsky. The resolution invoked the defence of the revolution against an "openly preparing attack of military and civilian Kornilovists". At the same time, at the meeting of the Soviet's executive committee, Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionists pointed out that forming a military staff alongside the Government's meant dual authority and a serious menace to the defence of the city. The resolution adopted authorized the Executive Committee, together with the presidium of the soldiers' section and representatives of the Petrograd garrison, to organize a committee of revolutionary defence. (Izvestiia, 23 October 1917)

Besides the presidiums of the Soviet and its soldiers' section, the committee included representatives of the Baltic Fleet, the railway union, factory committees, trade unions, party military organizations represented in the Soviet, the Red Guard and others. The bureau elected on 21 October (3 November) comprised Bolsheviks Podvoisky, Antonov-Ovseenko and Sadovsky and Left SRs Lazimir and Sukharkov. The exact personal composition has not been established: studies name from 30 to 104 individuals. On Trotsky's proposal the Left SR Lazimir was elected chairman, but the effective leader was Soviet chairman Trotsky.

The October insurrection

From that day the committee began sending its commissars to military units, weapons and ammunition depots and the Peter and Paul Fortress. By 24 October (6 November) MRC commissars were appointed to all the main strategic objects of the capital, and without their permission orders of the Provisional Government and of the Petrograd Military District staff were not carried out. On the night of 22 October it demanded that the district staff recognize its commissars' powers, and on 23 October an agreement was reached on a consultative body at the staff.

By the morning of 25 October (7 November) almost the whole city was under MRC control. That day, in the appeal "To the Citizens of Russia!" written by Lenin, the committee announced that the Provisional Government had been deposed and state power had passed into its hands, and an MRC field staff carried out the operation to occupy the Winter Palace and arrest the Provisional Government on the night of 26 October (8 November). Stalin's 1924 report "Trotskyism or Leninism" exaggerated the role of the party-level Military Revolutionary Centre. Researchers (Shramko, Lipitsky, Volkogonov) argue that it took no independent decisions or actions in preparing and leading the uprising. The same source records that at the VI Congress of the RSDLP(b) in August 1917, which adopted the concept of the armed seizure of power, Stalin delivered two main reports; these assessments are presented as competing.

Nationwide spread

Even before the victory of the uprising over 40 MRCs were active in the country, engaged in military-technical preparation. On 29 October the Petrograd MRC was renamed the MRC under the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, placing its apparatus at the disposal of the Sovnarkom. In the weeks after the insurrection, MRCs based on the Petrograd model were set up in other soviets and helped cement Bolshevik control. By the end of October 1917 representatives from the Petrograd MRC were on assignment in at least 44 cities and 113 military units throughout Russia, Turkestan and the Caucasus. During the "Triumphant advance of Soviet power" MRCs were mass-established, many on the initiative of arriving delegates of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets. From late October to early December 1917 the Petrograd MRC performed the functions of an extraordinary organ of central state power, helped establish Soviet power in Moscow and other regions, and sent about a thousand commissars and emissaries and several hundred agitators to the localities to create local MRCs. In Petrograd it fought anti-Bolshevik actions and official sabotage and handled fuel, raw material and electricity accounting, distribution and food supply.

The committees also functioned as repressive organs. By 10 November 1917 the Petrograd MRC had appointed 184 commissars to civilian institutions, 85 to military units and 72 to the provinces, and engaged in dismissals of boycotting officials, arrests of opponents, closure of anti-Bolshevik newspapers and organization of new local MRCs and revkoms. In mid-November the Left SRs demanded equal representation with the Bolsheviks, and at a Sovnarkom session on 15 November an opinion was voiced in favour of abolishing the MRC; the Left SRs attacked its violence against political opponents and the restriction of their civil rights. On 26 November the Naval MRC was dissolved, and on 5 (18) December the Petrograd MRC announced its self-dissolution, transferring its remaining functions to the newly created Cheka, whose first task was combating the continued boycott by state employees.

The committees served as temporary extraordinary organs of proletarian power until March 1918. On 25-27 October 40 MRCs were operating in Russia, and in total about 220 local MRCs were formed. During November the Petrograd MRC sent 650 agitators, 250 commissars and hundreds of instructors to the localities.

Distinctions

There were gubernia, city, uyezd, district and volost MRCs, while in the army MRCs were divided into front, army, corps, division and regiment levels; in some cases the functions of MRCs were performed by Revolutionary Committees (revkoms). Revkoms were Bolshevik-led organizations in Soviet Russia and other Soviet republics serving as provisional governments and temporary Soviet administrations in territories under Red Army control in 1918-1920, during the Civil War and foreign intervention; the forms of their work were inherited from the MRCs of 1917 and the name was borrowed from the French Revolution. Per the decree "On Revolutionary Committees" of 24 October 1919 there were three major types of revkoms: in areas taken over by the Red Army, in front areas and in rear areas. In most territories all lower-level revkoms were abolished by January 1920; the Siberian Revkom existed until 1925.

The MRC must also be distinguished from the party-level Military Revolutionary Centre (VRTs): on the night of 15-16 October the Central Committee formed the VRTs from CC members Bubnov, Dzerzhinsky, Sverdlov, Stalin and Uritsky; this body joined the MRC, but its further role remains disputed. Further distinct institutions are the Revolutionary Military Council (RVSR), the Cheka created in December 1917 which took over the Petrograd MRC's remaining counterrevolution and sabotage functions on 1-5 December 1917, and the South Korean Supreme Council for National Reconstruction established immediately after the May 16 coup, with which the MRC is not to be confused.

Notable examples

The most notable MRCs were those of the Petrograd Soviet, the Moscow Soviet and at Stavka. The creation date of the Petrograd MRC is disputed across sources. English Wikipedia both dates it 29 October [O.S. 16 October] 1917 and, in its "Creation" section, states it was created by the Petrograd Soviet on October 25, 1917, while the Russian Wikipedia and the Great Soviet Encyclopedia date it 12 (25) October 1917; the unresolved discrepancy is stated rather than flattened. Creation dates and heads are given somewhat differently across sources. Petrograd MRC: Pavel Lazimir (with Bubnov, Uritsky, Sverdlov, Dzerzhinsky, Stalin). 12th Army MRC: Jānis Čarin (Karl Gailis, Jānis Krūmiņš-Pilāts), 31 October, existing illegally in Cēsis until 8 November. Estonia MRC: Ivan Rabchinsky (with Jaan Anvelt, Viktor Kingissepp), 4 November. Pskov MRC: Vasili Panyushkin, name changed to Northern Front from 8 November. Moscow MRC: Georgy Oppokov (with Grigory Usievich, Nikolay Muralov, Jānis Pieče, Aleksandr Arosev, Vladimir Smirnov), 7 November. Ryazan MRC: Arkady Syromyatnikov, 8 November. Minsk MRC: Aleksandr Myasnikyan (with Moisei Kalmanovich, Vilhelms Knoriņš, Kārlis Landers), 9 November, renamed Western Front and Northwestern Region. Others include Samara MRC under Kuybyshev, Tula revkom under Kaminsky, Tomsk MRC under Belenets (10 November), Kiev MRC under Leonid Pyatakov (11 November, recreated as Kiev revkom on 28 January 1918), Smolensk revkom under Ioffe, Dagestan MRC under Buinaksky (21 November), Orenburg MRC under Tsvilling (27 November), Southwestern Front MRC under Razzhivin (1 December), Romanian Front MRC under Baranov (15 December), Barnaul MRC under Tsaplin (20 December), Kharkov MRC under Artyom, Simferopol MRC under Miller (23 December), Sevastopol revkom under Gaven (29 December) and Don MRC under Podtyolkov (23 January).