With the decision
of the Central Committee in favor of insurrection, but awaiting a favorable
opportunity, the Bolsheviks redouble their agitation in the capital. Trotsky
lists some of the principal speakers:
·
Sverdlov
·
Volodarsky
·
Lashevich
·
Kollontai
·
Chudnovsky
·
Lunacharsky
·
“scores of agitators of lesser caliber”
Lenin was
regrettably missing from the list, still waiting in Finland. Zinoviev and
Kamenev were missing too – but they had voted against the insurrection in the
Central Committee, and worked against it since then. Neither does Trotsky find
any evidence Stalin ever spoke at mass meetings during this time.
Of course Trotsky
himself was the leading figure. Somewhat modestly referring to himself as
“president of the Petrograd Soviet” instead of by name, Trotsky somewhat
immodestly reproduces a passage from Sukhanov’s history saying that his
influence “was overwhelming,” and that “every [Petrograd] worker and soldier
knew him and heard him personally.” Returning to modesty, Trotsky points out that
the person-to-person “molecular agitation” of the workers and soldiers was
“incomparably more effective.”
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