After Great October
Conflict began to appear within the relationship between Pavel Dybenko and Vladimir Lenin.
Developing gradually, the conflict did not begin with a single clash or eventful disagreement.
The Bolshevik authorities moved cautiously. Demanding discipline. Yet, every attempt to subordinate the fleet to the central (Bolshevik) government challenged the autonomy the sailors believed they had won.
Every effort to replace elected authority with appointed authority raised the issue of whether the Revolution had actually transferred power to the people--or merely transferred power from one ruling institution to another.
Pavel Dybenko stood between these competing visions.
Lenin envisioned the survival of the Revolution in terms of centralized political power.
Dybenko's experience had taught him to see revolutionary authority from below--from the sailors, soldiers, workers, and other elected organizations that had shattered the old order.
The separate visons could align while the Soviets were fighting for power.
They became much harder reconcile once the Bolsheviks had attained power.
This is where the story of Pavel Dybenko becomes more than a biography of a revolutionary sailor.
It becomes a story about the Revolution's transformation from a movement against authority into a government exercising authority.
The man who had helped bring the sailors into the Revolution now faced a new question:
What happens when the Revolution begins demanding obedience from the very people who made it possible?
The answer would be written first in the struggle over the Navy--and ultimately Dybenko's removal from political authority.
Continuing...
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