Revolutions
I've been catching up on the Revolutions Podcast by Mike Duncan as it goes through the history of the Russian Revolution. I've learned many new details. I didn't realize Lenin was not involved in issuing Petrograd Soviet Order #1, nor did I realize that the order was improvised and only intended for the soldiers in Petrograd. I didn't realize that Lenin had almost no pull in the Soviet until months after those events. These are all interesting factoids as Duncan focuses on the personalities in the Soviet and how their opinions and tactics evolved over time.
But I still think the most interesting question, for an American in the 21st century, is why the Soviet had any legitimacy at all, in the first place.
Czar Nicholas had abdicated in favor of his brother.
His brother said he would only accept the crown if offered to him by a constituent assembly that would soon be called by the Provisional Government. The Provisional Government came from the legislature at the time, the Fourth Duma. In broad strokes, the selection of the Provisional Government was not that different from what happened when the English Parliament appointed the Council of State to replace Charles I as the executive in England and Scotland in 1649, or when the French Legislative Assembly suspended Louis XVI's authority and appointed new ministers in 1791. But neither of these revolutionary changes produced a competing body like the Petrograd Soviet.
The reason is the Fourth Duma was not much more legitimate than the Czar. The Fourth Duma was elected based on nearly universal male suffrage, but not equally. In 1907, the voters had been divided into classes based on their wealth and location, and seats in the Duma were set aside for each class, with massively more given to the classes that the Czar considered the most loyal. The rural land-holding nobles got the most seats per vote, and the landless city workers got the least. And no one forgot about this over the next ten years. The Duma knew they didn't really represent the people, and the people knew it. This is why the workers and soldiers organized the Petrograd Soviet almost immediately when the February Revolution started. This is why the Provisional Government invited the Petrograd Soviet to meet in the same building. Neither body had a mandate from the people, but together, for a time, they had the closest thing to legitimacy in Russia. Unfortunately, both bodies were derelict in calling for real free and fair elections to give a new Russian government both legitimacy and a mandate from the people.
And this is the lesson I think needs to get long and thoughtful consideration in America today. As we look at the gerrymandered allocation of seats in the House of Representatives, the intentional disproportion in the Senate, and the not-infrequent election of Presidents who lose the popular vote, are we in a small way inviting the fate of the Fourth Russian Duma - if a revolutionary storm comes and takes down some portion of our government, will the remaining pieces have the legitimacy they need to rein in the chaos?