Conference of RSDLP Military Organizations on the War Front and Home

held in Petrograd on June 16–23 (June 29-July 6), 1917. The conference was called by the Organization Bureau of the Military Organization under the Central Committee of the RSDLP (Bolshevik). It was attended by 167 delegates representing 43 war front and 17 home front military party organizations, a total of 26,000 party members.

The agenda of the conference covered ten items: (1) reports from the localities; (2) the attitude toward the resolutions of the Seventh (April) All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP(B), reported by G. E. Zinoviev; (3) the current situation—organization of power and the soviets of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies, reported by Lenin; (4) the war, peace, and offensive, reported by N. V. Krylenko and E. F. Rozmirovich; (5) the nationality movement and national regiments, reported by J. V. Stalin; (6) the democratization of the army, reported by N. V. Krylenko; (7) the goals, missions, and form of the Military Organization, reported by N. I. Podvoiskii, V. I. Nevskii, and S. A. Cherepanov; (8) the agrarian question, reported by Lenin; (9) an all-Russian soldiers’ and peasants’ newspaper, reported by V. I. Nevskii; (10) universal arming of the people, reported by P. V. Dashkevich.

Lenin’s first report defined the Bolsheviks’ tasks in the preparation of the proletariat and the army for the transfer of power to the soviets. In the resolution on this question the conference stressed the need to continue agitation against the imperialist war, to foil the attempts of the counterrevolutionary forces to disarm the revolutionary workers, and to prepare the forces of the proletariat and the army for the new, socialist phase of the revolution. On the agrarian question the conference adopted the resolution of the April Conference of the RSDLP(B). The conference noted the antipopular nature of the nationality policy of the bourgeois Provisional Government and reaffirmed the need to recognize the right to self-determination of all the peoples of Russia.

The chief tasks of the Military Organization of the RSDLP(B), the conference stated, were revolutionary propaganda and agitation among the soldiers and elucidation of the Bolshevik views on the question of war and peace. The conference placed a high priority on the tasks of forming and arming a Red Guard composed of workers, forming people’s army detachments in rural areas, and replacing the police with a militia controlled by the people. It was decided that the newspaper Soldatskaia pravda should become the central organ of the Military Organization of the RSDLP(B), and drafted regulations for the Military Organization were confirmed. The All-Russian Central Bureau of the Military Organization under the Central Committee of the RSDLP(B) was elected. The bureau included V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko, A. la. Arosev, P. V. Dashkevich, M. S. Kedrov, N. V. Krylenko, K. A. Mekhonoshin, V. I. Nevskii, N. I. Podvoiskii, and E. F. Rozmirovich.