The Correlation of Forces

October 25 – October 12, 1917: Regulations for Insurrection. After Trotsky spins them a little, the regulations drafted by Lazimir and his Military Revolutionary Committee come before the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet for approval. Despite Trotsky’s spin, the Mensheviks clearly perceived how useful the regulations would be to an insurrection. But the powers they gave the Soviet had ample precedent in the powers previously shared with the Provisional Government under the dual power scheme.

Another proposal, for the formation of a Garrison Conference, moved forward at this time. The conference would represent the soldiers of the Petrograd garrison in the way the factory committees represented the workers of the factories. It incidentally also enabled the Bolshevik leadership in the Soviet to better understand the purely military problems facing an insurrection.

Meanwhile, Kerensky sent a long letter to his fellow head of state Lloyd George of Great Britain. He promised that the Provisional Government would continue the war, hoping and begging for the financial credits necessary to do so.

October 25-26 – October 12-13, 1917: Northern Regional Conference Concludes. As the conference closes, the Central Committee advises the delegates to remain in Petrograd and await the Congress of Soviets. A handful returned to the provinces to further preparations for the insurrection.

October 26 – October 13, 1917: The Soldiers Section Approves. Dybenko, “a black-bearded giant” and president of the Central Committee of the Baltic Fleet, addresses the soldiers section of the Petrograd Soviet on the question of the regulations of the Military Revolutionary Committee. He opened by telling the meeting that, when an admiral asked whether they would obey orders in the anticipated action in Moon Sound, the sailors replied that they would, but, “…if we see that the fleet is threatened with destruction, the commanding staff will be the first to hang from the mast head.”

This kind of talk played unexpectedly well in a section of the soviet hitherto dominated by the compromisist parties. Then Dybenko spoke of the transfer of units in the garrison to the front: “We will defend Reval ourselves. Stay here and defend the interests of the revolution.” The Military Committee’s regulations passed with nearly 300 in favor, one against, and a couple dozen abstaining. This consolidated the Committee’s control of the garrison as against headquarters and the government.

Meanwhile, Trotsky’s Executive Committee announced the renewed mobilization of the Red Guard. The special department then created would soon come under the Military Committee, integrating the military preparations of the workers with those of the soldiers.

This brought the problem of arming the workers to the fore. The attempt to disarm the workers after the July Days uncovered some of their weapons, “old rubbish,” Trotsky says, but “the very valuable weapons were carefully concealed.”

But they were not nearly enough. At about this time, some of the workers came to Trotsky asking for rifles. When he told them they party didn’t have control of the arsenals, they told him they’d just been to the factory and the factory would be happy to fill an order from the Soviet. The Soviet placed the order and the workers had 5,000 rifles by the end of the day.

Also on this day, Tseretilli having gone home to Georgia, the Menshevik Dan took it upon himself to ask in the Executive Committee whether the Bolsheviks intended to “come out.” The old Marxist Riazanov replied, inferably, “Yes.”

October 27 – October 14, 1917: Kerensky Takes Alarm. The cabinet of the Provisional Government ratifies headquarters plans and preparations to meet the possibility of insurrection. The district commander for Petrograd, General Polkovnikov, told the press, “In any case we are ready.”

The Central Executive Committee was also taking alarm. The Menshevik Martov warned them on this day, “We cannot expect the Bolsheviks to listen to us.” By “Bolsheviks,” Martov meant the mass following of the party, not the party members themselves.

October 28 – October 15, 1917: Support for the Congress. The Kiev Soviet joins its comrades of the Northern Regional Conference in declaring the coming Congress of Soviets “the sovereign organ of power.” On the following day, a regional conference of soviets in Minsk demanded that the Congress not be postponed. The Urals soviets did the same a few days after that.

On the other hand, Kalinin, though in favor of insurrection, spoke in the Petrograd Soviet as if it could and should be delayed indefinitely. Many party leaders in Moscow and elsewhere shared this attitude. Yet the party rank and file largely remained to the left of these leaders, supporting Lenin’s summons to insurrection.

October 28 – October 15, 1917: Reed’s Interviews at Smolny. The American journalist Reed interviews Kamenev and Volodarsky in the halls of Smolny Institute. They answered questions about the coming Congress of Soviets. Both of them spoke conditionally; neither was sure the Congress would actually take place.

Kamenev said that if it took place, the Congress would certainly represent the will of the masses, and probably have a Bolshevik majority. Of course, this was his preferred path for the transfer of power to the soviets.

Volodarsky said that the Compromisers were trying to see that the Congress did not come off. So the Bolsheviks “’were realists enough not to depend on that!’” But apparently he didn’t say, or Reed didn’t ask, what the Bolsheviks would do in such a case.

October 29 – October 16, 1917: The Garrison and the Executive Committee. Trotsky’s Executive Committee puts approval of the regulations of the Military Revolutionary Committee on the agenda of the Petrograd Soviet. Asked by the Mensheviks whether the Bolsheviks were preparing for a seizure of power, Trotsky said, “We make no secret of that.” The regulations were approved by a large majority. More and more left Social Revolutionaries were coming over to the Bolshevik program.

Yet the majority of the Bolshevik Military Organization was not confident in its operational readiness for insurrection, as Ensign Krylenko reported on this day. Another member of the organization, Lashevich, expressed similar doubts a couple of days later; Podvoisky joined in this opinion. Yet Uritsky, a member of the Central Committee and former Trotskyite, estimated the armed strength of the workers at 40,000 rifles. Lenin soon met with these leaders to stiffen their backs. 

That same day, General Polkovnikov again (and still quite incorrectly) reported that the garrison largely remained loyal to the government….

The Executive Committee also named representatives to the meeting General Cheremissov wanted. When they subsequently arrived at Pskov, they rebuffed the claim of the general and his staff that transfers from the garrison to the front were a strategic necessity. So much for another effort orchestrated by Kerensky to weaken the forces of the insurrection. 

October 29 – October 16, 1917: Why the Delay? Lenin, alarmed at the delay in launching the insurrection and, in isolation, not fully aware of the steps that were being taken, insists on a new meeting of the Bolshevik Central Committee. The meeting, held in a suburb of Petrograd, included leaders of other organizations involved in preparations. Trotsky could not be present, as he was engaged in the business described in the previous entry.

Doubts and hesitation, to Lenin’s dismay, having been expressed, Ensign Krylenko took the lead in explaining the situation. He said, “the water is boiling hard enough,” so hard in fact that in essence the insurrection had already begun; there was no need to set a date for it.

Lenin did not respond. Kamenev claimed, “We have no machine of insurrection.” To this Lenin replied that the political decision had been made; the party must continue to build the operational basis for it. Only then could the people, led by the party, take the reins. Joffe, who sat on the Military Revolutionary Committee, emphasized that, for the last step, political work still remained to be done.

Lenin’s new resolution called for “an all-sided and vigorous preparation of armed insurrection.” It passed 20 to 2, with 3 abstentions and only Kamenev and Zinoviev against. But the real balance of opinion on the committee was revealed by the vote on Zinoviev’s resolution ruling out any action until the Congress of Soviets convened and the committee could meet with the Bolshevik caucus. It failed 15 votes to 6, with 3 abstentions. So even though the committee was moving to the left, Lenin’s line could only command some two-thirds of the votes.

The committee also received a report, on the whole favorable, on the attitude of the garrisons surrounding Petrograd.

Meanwhile, the American journalist Reed heard Foreign Minister Tereshechenko’s speech to the Pre-Parliament in the Mariinsky Palace. Apparently the instructions the Pre-Parliament gave Skobelev for presentation to the allied conference in Paris had caused some embarrassment. Reed says “Nobody was satisfied” with the speech, not even the Cadets.

October 30 – October 17, 1917: Congress Postponed. Today, three days before the Congress of Soviets is to convene, the Central Executive Committee puts it off by five days, until the 25^th (November 7, new style). The compromisist parties stepped up their efforts to recruit and elect delegates to the workers’ and soldiers’ soviets, and prepared to summon a congress of peasants’ soviets as a counterweight. But they were well not positioned to benefit from the delay.

The Bolsheviks instead gained the advantage. For example, the Semenovsky Regiment had the blood of revolutionary workers in 1905 on its hands. It hung back from the rest of the Petrograd garrison when they were declaring for the Bolshevik program. Yet at a regimental meeting during this time, Trotsky was permitted to speak; the representative of the Central Executive Committee, Skobelev, was not. In the result, the regiment joined with the bulk of the garrison in alignment with the Bolsheviks.

A rumor that the Bolsheviks would “come out” that day proved to be untrue. So the rumor was put off for a few days too.

Meanwhile, Kamenev published a letter in Gorky’s paper declaring insurrection “an inadmissible step.” Trotsky characterizes his reasoning as opportunism. The action was also another breach of party discipline by Kamenev. Hearing of this, Lenin composed a lengthy Letter to Comrades, refuting the arguments Kamenev and others were using against insurrection. The letter appeared in Rabochi Put the following day.

October 30 – October 17, 1917: Reed’s Interviews. Three journalists, including the American Reed, interview Kerensky – his last meeting with the press while still head of the Russian state. The man from the Associated Press wanted to know why the Russians had stopped fighting. In a bitter response, Kerensky blamed the tsarists for ruining the army, the British for not sending their fleet to fight the Germans in the Gulf of Riga, and the Allies generally, with whom, in their state of economic prostration, the people are “disillusioned.” The dispatch on this interview, returned by the U.S. State Department, had to be emended – over Kerensky’s objections – by the foreign ministry.

Reed says Kerensky had also “suspended capital punishment in the army” that day. That evening, Reed went to a meeting of the Petrograd Soviet; he records some lively observations of what workers and soldiers had to tell the committee.

On the same day Reed also interviewed Trotsky, if interview it was. After a few questions, Trotsky “talked rapidly for more than an hour.” He spoke of the feebleness of the Provisional Government, that the Compromisers were giving the bourgeoisie cover for what control they did have. To obtain real control the bourgeoisie would have to adopt the Kornilov method. But the army was with the revolution and the soviets.

The soviets would prevail in their fight with the Cadet counter-revolution, Trotsky continued. But he went further than that. He explained Lenin’s vision for world proletarian revolution. When the soviets came to power, they would make peace on the basis of solidarity with proletarians and their organizations in all the belligerent powers. They would create a European republic – a “United States of Europe” – on that basis. So Trotsky chose to express himself to an impressionable, left-leaning American journalist.

October 31 – October 18, 1917: Deadlocks in the Pre-Parliament and in the Baltic. After three days of debate, neither the right-socialist Compomisers nor the bourgeois Cadets can pass a resolution on reforming the army and continuing the war. The votes were symptomatic of general paralysis in the Pre-Parliament on every issue it attempted to address. The American journalist Reed heard the Cadet Miliukov give a speech denouncing Skobelov’s instructions. But this decision had already been taken over Cadet objections.

At about this time, Kerensky renewed his dispute with the Baltic Fleet and the soviets of Finland. The sailors sent a delegation to the Central Executive Committee demanding removal of “a person who is disgracing…the revolution with his shameless political chantage.” By this they meant Kerensky. The Regional Committee of the Finnish Soviets, taking sovereign powers, held up some of the government’s freight. Kerensky’s response, threats of arrest, left the soviets unimpressed.

Trotsky observes that the fleet and Finnish soviets were already in a state of insurrection; they had assumed state functions and administered them independently of the Provisional Government. In another connection Trotsky observes that the Finnish garrison and Baltic Fleet had become a dependable reserve for an insurrection of workers and soldiers in Petrograd.

Meanwhile, the Petrograd Soviet held elections for its delegates to the Congress of Soviets. The Bolshevik slate – Trotsky, Kamenev, Volodarsky, Yurenev, and Lashevich – received well over 400 votes. Just over 200 votes were cast for candidates from the compromisist parties.