Trotsky Makes Bail

 

One hundred years ago today, plus three, political considerations compelled Kerensky’s Directory to permit Trotsky, imprisoned since the July Days, to post bail, which the trade unions had promptly raised. Meanwhile the day before, Lenin, still in exile, published a proposal to reject coalition with the bourgeois Cadets. The Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks would instead run the government on behalf of the soviets. This compromise got nowhere; it was effectively the last the Bolsheviks were to propose.

 

Read about it here. Or read the whole chapter on the Democratic Conference here. Or read the whole story from the beginning by following this link.

 

The July Days

One hundred years ago today, plus three, the bourgeois-liberal Cadet ministers having resigned their posts in the Coalition Government the day before, the remaining right socialist ministers found the problems caused by the resignations compounded by demonstrations in the capital, Petrograd. Worse still, some of the demonstrators were soldiers of the garrison.

Read about it here. Or read the first chapter on the July Days here. Or read the whole story from the beginning by following this link.

Pravda Calls for Protest

One hundred years ago today, plus three, Pravda, the Bolshevik party newspaper, marked the party’s place to the left of the other socialist parties by calling for demonstrations against the Coalition Government, in which those other parties happened to be participating.

See what success the Bolsheviks had here. Or read the whole chapter on the June Demonstration here. Or read the whole story from the beginning by following this link.

Lenin’s April Theses

One hundred years ago today, plus three, Lenin read out his April Theses to dumbstruck audiences at party headquarters. Even the Bolsheviks were dumbstruck at the steps Lenin proposed to turn the bourgeois February Revolution into a socialist one.

Read about it here. Or read the whole chapter on the April Theses here. Or read the story from the beginning by following this link.

The Menshevik Tseretilli

One hundred years ago today, plus three, a week after Stalin, the Menshevik Irakli Tseretilli arrived in Petrograd out of exile. He was to become influential in both the Soviet and the Provisional Government.

Read about it here. Or read the whole chapter on the Dual Power here. Or read the whole story from the beginning by following this link.

June Demonstration

June 14 – June 1, 1917: Bolshevik Majorities. Workers at a Moscow factory elect a majority Bolshevik factory committee. The party won a plurality of seats on the Moscow Soviet during this time as well, and a large majority at a June conference of factory and shop committees in Petrograd were Bolshevik.

However, elections to the local dumas continued to favor moderate socialists. For example, a June election to the Moscow duma gave 60% of the delegates to the Social Revolutionaries. This reflected the large turnout of petit bourgeoisie in elections such as these.

June 16 – June 3, 1917: Congress of Soviets. The First All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies convenes in Petrograd; it continues until July 7 – June 24. Whether a particular soviet could send a delegate, and whether the delegate had a vote, depended on the size of the soviet’s membership. The Bolsheviks had about a fifth of the 777 delegates.

June 17 – June 4, 1917: Lenin Addresses the Congress. Lenin’s speech explains and defends the Bolshevik positions on participation in the Coalition ministry in particular, and the anti-revolutionary tendencies of the dual government in general. Follow the link to read the text.

Lenin also at one point advised the Congress to arrest the big bourgeoisie and keep them in close confinement until they should reveal their secret deals. Kerensky spoke against the motion and it did not pass.

A resolution against the Kronstadt sailors, who had arrested their officers, expelled the governor appointed by the Provisional Government, and put the local soviet in charge of the local government (May 26 – May 13), carried the Congress. Trotsky subsequently drafted, and the sailors agreed to, a declaration that avoided open conflict. Thereafter some of the sailors became well-traveled apostles of Bolshevism, a phenomenon Trotsky terms the “Kronstadt Miracle.”

June 20 – June 7, 1917: The Vyborg Gardens. The Vyborg workers had appropriated a tsarist minister’s suburban gardens and manor as a sort of community center and children’s playground. Responding to rumors in the press that criminals had established themselves there, the Executive Committee ordered an investigation, which of course did not find anything amiss.

So far a mere incident; but it has a sequel.

June 21 – June 8, 1917: Call for a Demonstration. A conference between the Bolsheviks and representatives of the Petrograd workers unions votes to call for a demonstration.

June 22 – June 9, 1917: Pravda Publishes the Call. Pravda publishes the call for a demonstration decided upon the previous day. Trotsky persuaded the Central Council of Factory and Shop Committees to endorse the call.

The slogans were to be an old one: “All Power to the Soviets!” and a new one: “Down with the Ten Minister-Capitalists!” (that is, the ten ministers of the Coalition Government who did not belong to one of the socialist parties). The Bolsheviks began to paste up posters in favor of the demonstration and its slogans. It had also happened that Vyborg elected a Bolshevik majority to its local duma during that time.

But the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries opposed the action. The Coalition Government did nothing to stop it, but the Congress of Soviets, with its Menshevik/Social Revolutionary super-majority, voted a resolution forbidding demonstrations for three days.

Meanwhile, the debates at the Congress of Soviets continued, as described in a separate entry. And Vyborg elected a Bolshevik majority to its local duma.

June 22 – June 9, 1917: Separate Peace? The Coalition Government having decided to continue participation in the war with a new offensive, Lenin again addresses the Congress of Soviets, this time on the Bolshevik war policy and position on a separate peace. The Bolshevik policy, he said, is premised on the imperialist character of the war. Russia’s allies, Britain, France, and now the United States, have imperialist aims; therefore Russia’s armies, in which the vast majority of the soldiers came from the peasantry, are fighting not to defend the revolution against Germany, but to support the capitalist ruling classes at home and abroad.

The Bolsheviks were being accused in the bourgeois press of seeking a separate peace. The party’s answer was peace through revolution – world revolution. (See the entry for May 10 – April 27, and the text of the party resolution here.) But Lenin did not try to explain the contingency of world revolution in this speech. Instead he demanded, “No peace with the German capitalists,” and “No alliance with the British and French” capitalists, at the same time reminding the Congress of the Provisional Government’s complicity in imperialist policies for the annexation of Armenia, Finland, and Ukraine.

Despite Lenin’s urgings, the Congress of Soviets voted to support the new offensive. The separately proposed Bolshevik resolution on the war was not even put to a vote.

June 23 – June 10, 1917: The Demonstration is Put Off. Overnight, Bolshevik influence helps develop a consensus among the demonstration’s supporters to postpone it.

The matter was debated in the Congress of Soviets that day and the next. A conspiracy theory developed claiming that the reactionaries planned to use the demonstration as a pretext for overthrowing the revolutionary government and dissolving the soviets.

Meanwhile, in Kiev, the Rada (parliament) declared the independence of the Ukraine.

June 24 – June 11, 1917: Conspiracy Theories. In a special, limited session of the Congress and Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, the Menshevik Tseretilli argues the conspiracy theory that the reactionaries intended to use the demonstration as a pretext for overthrowing the revolution. With Tseretilli, this became another pretext, for an attack on the Bolsheviks. He called for disarming the party, lest it conspire against the revolution from the left. Bolshevism was to be excised from the revolutionary body.

Trotsky says, “The hall was stunned into silence.” Kamenev offered to be arrested, so he could defend himself and his party against Tseretilli’s charge. The Bolsheviks walked out of the meeting.

June 25 – June 12, 1917: Compromise on the Left. Despite the Menshevik Tseretilli’s inflammatory speech, and another by his colleague Dan suggesting the Bolsheviks had connections with German agents, the Congress of Soviets as a whole is not ready to expel the Bolsheviks from the revolution’s ranks. A compromise developed in which the Bolsheviks gave up the call for a demonstration, and the other left parties in the soviets gave up the call to disarm the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks were subjected to what Trotsky calls an “exceptional law,” but the law had no teeth: no arrests, proscriptions, impeachments, etc.

Trotsky denies it was the policy of the party to arm itself. It happened that workers who identified with the party kept arms to defend themselves from the police, and that soldiers who bore arms in the line of duty might also consider themselves Bolsheviks. These elements were, in fact, the main protection of the movement during the February Revolution.

Another line of criticism then offered proved difficult for the Bolsheviks to lay to rest. It held that the Bolsheviks were the party of the workers, but not of the peasants. But the revolution was the revolution of the workers and the peasants. This overlooked the fact that the party’s agrarian policy was one of Lenin’s April Theses, and had been fully articulated in his speech to the Conference of Peasant Deputies. The Bolsheviks were actively agitating among the peasantry in favor of this policy. 

Finally at this session of the Congress, a Menshevik offered a resolution calling for a demonstration the following Sunday, June 18 (July 1, new style), to show unity against the German enemy. This passed, as did a resolution to abolish the State Duma and convene the Constituent Assembly on September 30 (October 13, new style). The Congress also agreed to reconvene every three months.

June 29 – June 16, 1917: Offensive Ordered. War Minister Kerensky orders the summer offensive, calling for “an immediate and decisive blow” by the Russian armies. The general staff, on the contrary, believed the offensive was hopeless.

June 30 – June 17, 1917: Tseretilli’s Challenge. Pravda had immediately declared the Bolsheviks ready to march on June 18 (July 1, new style) in their “struggle for those aims for which we had intended to demonstrate on the 10^th.” The day before the march, the Menshevik Tseretilli issues a challenge to the Bolsheviks, saying the march would be a referendum revealing “whom the majority is following,” the Bolsheviks or their right-socialist rivals in the soviets.

July 1 – June 18, 1917: Summer Offensive Begins. War Minister Kerensky announces the beginning of the Russian summer offensive, as promised to her allies in the Entente and to the interests who were bankrolling the Russian war effort. But the announcement was something of an exaggeration. Only on the Southwestern Front, facing Galicia in southern Poland, did the command have the troops ready to attack. On three other fronts, as we’ll see, things weren’t ready for another three weeks. Thus, even though the Southwestern Front would advance some 20 miles in the days to come, the military advantages of a coordinated attack were lost.

The beginning of the offensive coincided with another event, the June Demonstration, described in a separate entry.

July 1 – June 18, 1917: June Demonstration. The demonstration called for by the Congress of Soviets the previous week takes place on Sunday the 18^th, but without the result expected by Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries.

The demonstrators assembled with their banners in the Mars Field and followed generally the line of march (April 7 – March 25, 1917) taken to mark the funerals of those killed in the February Revolution. But there were fewer marchers in June than there had been to commemorate the funerals. Trotsky says the workers and soldiers marched, but (as this was a march sponsored by the Congress of Soviets) the bourgeoisie and intelligentsia did not.

It soon became clear to observers from the Congress that the great majority of the 400,000 marchers supported the Bolshevik program. Banners bearing Bolshevik slogans – “Down with the Ten Minister-Capitalists!” “Down with the Offensive!” “All Power to the Soviets!” – predominated.

Few banners or placards displayed slogans favoring the official program of the Soviet or the party programs of the Mensheviks or Social Revolutionaries. Fewer still supported the Provisional Government. Jewish intellectuals and supporters of Plekhanov, an early Russian Marxist but an enemy of Leninism, lowered such placards when the rest of the crowd shouted them down; Cossacks resisted until their banners were torn away and destroyed.

The meaning of the demonstration was unmistakable: no support either for the offensive or for the Coalition Government. Even the marchers themselves, whether Bolshevik or not, could perceive the influence of the Bolshevik line. Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries from the provinces could only argue that Petrograd did not speak for the whole country.

The June Demonstration is still considered the turning point from the bourgeois February Revolution to the proletarian October Revolution.

Meanwhile anarchists took advantage of the distraction to break into a number of prisons and liberate the tenants, most of them criminal, and not political, prisoners. Trotsky suspects the authorities winked at the enterprise, which went off without much interference from them. The Minister of Justice later ordered a raid on the Vyborg Gardens (see the entry for June 20 – June 7, 1917) on the pretext that the escapees and anarchists were hiding there. In the result, the mansion was ruined. The Vyborg workers responded by closing some of the factories.

July 2 – June 19, 1917: Counter-Demonstration. The bourgeois Cadet party stages a counter-demonstration on the Nevsky Prospect. Unlike the counter-demonstrations during the April Days, this one provoked no clashes and caused no casualties.

Yet tension was building. The revolutionary workers and soldiers, Lenin had said, were to the left of the Bolsheviks; the Bolshevik press was urging restraint. But the Coalition Government and its allies in the right-socialist parties of the Soviet hesitated or were powerless to act.

July Days: The Manifestation

July 3 – June 20, 1917: Greetings to the Armies. By a vote of 472 to 271, with 39 abstentions, the Petrograd Soviet sends greetings to the Russian armies, some of which were then engaged in the summer offensive. Though the vote may not seem very close to us, Trotsky sees it as the sign of a shift favorable to the Bolsheviks and their allies on the left.

July 4 – June 21, 1917: Mood of the Garrison. A machine gun regiment in Petrograd resolves not to go to the front unless “the war shall have a revolutionary character.” When threatened with disbandment, they offered to disband the Provisional Government instead. Another sign of a leftward shift among the masses.

On the same day, the skilled workers at the large Putilov factory (36,000 workers in all) struck. In Pravda, Lenin urged restraint on the part of the soldiers and workers: “…an immediate attack would be inexpedient.” The Bolshevik’s Military Organization also warned their Red Guards against faked summonses to armed demonstration during this time.

July 5 – June 22, 1917: Bolshevik Counsels. Representatives of 70 Petrograd factories meet with left Bolsheviks, who, in spite of a worsening economy, continue to urge restraint. The Bolsheviks believed the Coalition Government would only become weaker as the summer offensive collapsed.

A number of ills plagued the economy in Petrograd and throughout Russia: inflation, factory closings, food shortages exacerbated by the disrepair of the railroads’ rolling stock, and a destabilized ruble. The Coalition Government had been completely unable to do anything, even to decide what to do. Counter-revolutionary activity by the Cadet party, army officers, and Cossack organizations was in evidence, probably aided by the banks and agents of Russia’s allies in the Entente.

These were the concrete conditions – less food, less work, rising prices – giving rise to the revolutionary mood that was, in a matter of weeks, to produce the July Days.

An incident occurred that reveals this mood. The Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet sent a car bearing a placard with the slogan “Forward with Kerensky!” into the Vyborg workers’ district. It was seized by the Moscow regiment, who tore up the placard and gave the car to the Machine Gun regiment.

July 6 – June 23, 1917: High Point of the Offensive. The capital receives reports that elements of the Second Russian Army had captured the first lines of German trenches in their front. Patriots in the capital were delighted, but the troops had already stopped where they were and begun deserting instead of continuing the advance.

Meanwhile elections in the Baranovsky factory sent three Bolsheviks to the Petrograd Soviet, replacing Social Revolutionaries. And Kronstadt anarchists demanded the release of prisoners being held in the Peter and Paul Fortress.

July 7 – June 24, 1917: Factory Closings. Izvestia, the official organ of the Petrograd Soviet, reports a plan for more factory closings.

On the same day, the Vyborg Soviet adopted a resolution condemning the summer offensive as an “adventure of the Provisional Government” on behalf of “old robber treaties” with Russia’s partners in the Entente. The soviet held the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries equally responsible.

Meanwhile the Congress of Soviets adjourned without taking any further action against the Bolsheviks, or, for that matter, against the Coalition Government. At some point during the Congress, the delegates named a Central Executive Committee and gave it formal authority over all the other soviets created after the February Revolution. Up to then, the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet had exercised this authority informally.

July 9 – June 26, 1917: Protest from the Front. The Grenadier Guards regiment at the front sends a delegation to the Petrograd garrison to denounce the summer offensive and warn the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets about joining with the bourgeoisie. Other units, including sailors of the Helsinki fleet, the 2^nd Machine Gun regiment, and the 3^rd Infantry regiment also took steps in support of the revolution during this time.

July 11 – June 28, 1917: Lenin in Finland. Trotsky says Lenin is ill and recovering in Finland on this day. It’s my impression that, given his prescience about the mood of the revolution (and the coming July Days), Lenin may possibly have been ill, but he was certainly in Finland. He editorialized daily, sometimes twice daily, in Pravda during this time.

July 13 – June 30, 1917: Zemsky Nachalniks. The Coalition Government dismisses the zemsky nachalniks, officials over the agricultural villages drawn from petit bourgeois landowners. Since Alexander III had created the office in the late 19^th century, they had exercised administrative and judicial powers over the peasantry to the exclusion of local councils and even the aristocracy.

The zemsky nachalniks were feared and despised by the peasantry. But Trotsky views the government’s action as a “belated partial reform”; it was certainly no substitute for a genuine agrarian policy.

July 14 – July 1, 1917: Mensheviks Heckled. At a meeting of the Grenadier Guards regiment, the soldiers heckle Menshevik speakers and arrest the president of the regimental committee.

Meanwhile the All-Russian Congress of Landed Proprietors convened in Moscow, signaling renewed resistance among aristocratic and other large landowners to the Coalition Government’s (feeble) attempts at land reform, and to attempts by the peasantry to take matters into their own hands.

July 15 – July 2, 1917: Cadets Resign Their Ministries. The four ministers representing the Constitutional Democrats (Cadets) in the Coalition Government resign en masse. The Cadets had been the voice of the bourgeoisie in the government, led by former Minister of War Miliukov, whom Kerensky replaced in May.

The resignations became the signal for the July Days. Trotsky analyzes the Cadet political strategy as follows. The pretext for the resignations was an agreement the Coalition Government struck with the Ukraine; it did not accommodate the imperial ambitions of the bourgeoisie sufficiently well. The timing coincided with the failure of the summer offensive, known to the well-informed in the capital if not to the public generally. Thus the right-socialists remaining in the government would have to face the fallout of the failure, including the protests of the revolutionary masses, alone. If the government (a “coalition” now of only right-socialist parties) had to put down the anticipated demonstrations by force, an opening might develop for weakening the Soviet side of the dual government. So Miliukov may have thought. And things did start to work out along these lines.

Meanwhile, Trotsky and Lunacharsky addressed the Machine Gun regiment on the occasion of the departure of one of their companies to the front as replacements. This was the regiment that, after the June Demonstration, had resolved not to send out replacements unless the war “…shall have a revolutionary character.” They now declared this company the “last” replacement company they would agree to send. The regiment proved to be an open flame amid the combustibles of the July Days.

Also on this day, on the occasion of a conference of the Trotskyites, Pravda printed a statement on their behalf, saying that there were “no differences either in principle or tactics” between them and the Bolsheviks.

July 16 – July 3, 1917: July Days: The Vanguard. The Machine Gun regiment meets and sacks the leadership of its soldiers’ committee. The soldiers wanted the question of demonstrations immediately put before the meeting. An anarchist spoke, urging them to take to the streets of Petrograd in arms. The new committee chairman, a Bolshevik, wanted to ask the advice of the Bolshevik Military Organization

The head of that organization, Nevsky, was responsible for Bolshevik ties to party elements in the garrison, as well as armed Red Guards units among the workers. Dispatched at length to the meeting, Nevsky preached the party line: restraint – wait until the summer offensive collapses as expected.

But by 3:00 p.m., the regiment had voted for armed demonstrations. They began sending envoys to the workers and to other military formations, including the Kronstadt naval fortress, seeking support.

The Machine Gun regiment was truly the vanguard of the revolutionary soldiery, in ideology, in agitation for the July Days, and as it proved, in the coming march.

Additional posts follow, focusing on different organizations and institutions, to show their actions, reactions, and role in the events of the day. They’re arranged so the end of the day appears last.

Also on this day, but not in connection with these events, the Provisional Government reached a preliminary agreement with the Ukrainian Rada (parliament) on the question of national independence. But the agreement fell apart within a month.

July 16 – July 3, 1917: July Days: The Central Committee. When the envoys of the Machine Gun regiment arrived at Bolshevik headquarters in the former palace of the ballerina Kshesinskaia that afternoon, the Central Committee could not immediately decide whether the regiment’s armed manifestation was a threat or an opportunity. The party had been calling for restraint, saying that the press of events would offer a better time for action of this kind. The reaction would be weaker if the government were weaker.

On the other hand was the opportunity. Tomsky expounded what Lenin, who was absent in Finland, might have thought, “It is impossible to talk of a manifestation at this moment unless we want a new revolution.” That is, a proletarian revolution to overthrow the bourgeois-liberal Provisional Government. But the risks of premature action appeared too great. Volodarsky told the regimental envoys that the machine gunners “must submit to the decisions of the party”; they were sent back to the regiment. An appeal for restraint was prepared for front page of Pravda the next morning.

The meeting broke up at about 4:00 p.m. and those attending dispersed to the workers’ neighborhoods and the factories with the same message. Stalin was dispatched to the headquarters of the Petrograd Soviet with the news. He remained the party’s liaison with the Executive Committee throughout the July Days.

July 16 – July 3, 1917: July Days: The Factories. Envoys of the Machine Gun regiment arrived that afternoon at the Putilov factory, one of Petrograd’s largest, bearing the message of the armed manifestation. They told the workers that the regiment had decided not to send anyone to the front, but to take to the streets instead. The secretary of the factory committee was a Bolshevik, but he was unable to persuade the assembled workers, some 10,000, to send to the Central Committee for guidance. Representatives of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets had no better success.

At about 6:00 p.m., the meeting got word that the Vyborg workers were already on the march to the headquarters of the Soviet in the Tauride Palace. This decided the matter. In fact, the same result was reached virtually everywhere. The Renaud factory, for example, provided trucks to the machine gunners at their request. The Red Guards contingents in the factories took up arms.

July 16 – July 3, 1917: July Days: The Manifestation. By 7:00 p.m., the main street on the Vyborg side of the river was packed with demonstrators. The Machine Gun regiment took the lead, followed by the workers, with the Moscow regiment bringing up the rear. As these marchers were the militants, not the mere sympathizers, Trotsky says, they did not reach the numbers of the June Demonstration. But as many as 500,000 workers and soldiers may have participated, including all or part of seven other regiments of the garrison.

The Bolshevik headquarters was the first stop. There Nevsky and others again urged the soldiers and Red Guards to go home, again without success. Seeing the policy of restraints had been a failure, party leaders on the scene, including members of the Central Committee, decided instead to, Trotsky says, “guide the developing movement” along peaceful and politically advantageous lines.

Hearing the decision, the marchers sang the Marseillaise. The party prepared a list of demands for submission to the Petrograd Soviet at the Tauride Palace, next and final stop on the march. Some of the machine gunners crossed the canal to the Peter and Paul fortress, in the river opposite Bolshevik headquarters, intending to bring the garrison and its artillery over to the side of the demonstrators.

The principal demand adopted by the marchers and now articulated by the Bolsheviks was for the Central Executive Committee to end the dual government by taking power into its own hands: All Power to the Soviets! The sequel proved ironic.

July 16 – July 3, 1917: July Days: The Central Executive Committee. As the banners of the marchers in Nevsky Prospect approach the Tauride Palace, meetings of the two sections of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets are already in session.

The committee had had news of the Machine Gun regiment’s plans earlier in the day. Kamenev and the other Bolsheviks present offered to go to the regiment and ask for restraint. But the Executive Committee preferred to issue a proclamation declaring demonstrations to be treachery to the revolution. Meanwhile Tseretilli gave the joint session his ideas for addressing the cabinet crisis brought on by the resignation of the Cadet ministers the day before.

Realizing a proclamation might not be enough to stop the what they were calling the “insurrection,” the Compromisers (i.e., Trotsky’s name for those in the Soviet who sought accommodation with the Provisional Government and by extension the bourgeoisie) cast about for the armed protection of troops. Not finding any of the garrison who were then willing to take their side, they sent to the Fifth Army, nearest Petrograd at the front. By evening, scarcely a hundred had been found by the Menshevik assigned this task. Trotsky remarks more than once on the irony of this effort: The Soviet answering the demonstrators’ demand that it seize the power, by recruiting troops to suppress the demonstrators rather than the Provisional Government.

The workers’ and soldiers’ section of the Central Executive had gone back into session. Recent elections had given the Bolsheviks a majority in that section, or so the right-socialists feared. Zinoviev was giving a speech against the Compromisers when the marchers reached the palace. In response, Kamenev proposed selecting a commission of 25 members to lead the demonstration; Trotsky seconded. Seeing the tendency of the debate that followed, the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries walked out of the meeting. The Bolsheviks and Trotskyites who remained passed a resolution calling on the Central Executive to take power, and named fifteen members to the leadership committee, leaving ten places open in case the right-socialists should have second thoughts.

Meanwhile, Cheidze, Menshevik president of the Soviet, confronted the crowd outside the palace. When he faltered, Voitinsky took his place, but was also met with silence. Trotsky fared better when his turn came, but he stopped short of advocating insurrection (as his enemies were later to claim).

Events did not stop unfolding at midnight.

Overnight, July 16-17 – July 3-4, 1917: The Putilov Factory Marches. The march of the Putilov workers, their wives and children, begins before midnight.

But by then, after shouting, pushing and shoving, and struggles over the banners of the soldiers and workers, gunfire had broken out on Nevsky Prospect. We know the demonstrators were armed; so were their enemies in that bourgeois neighborhood. The Grenadier Guards regiment returned a volley when shots were fired at them, possibly by right-wing Cavaliers of St. George or officers crippled in the war, possibly by provocateurs. Panic ensued; dead and wounded lay in the street.

Meanwhile the Petrograd Soviet reconvened in joint session. The Menshevik Dan offered a resolution inviting anyone who would not be able to support the decision of the committee to leave the meeting beforehand. It was dropped when the Bolsheviks appeared. The delegation from the demonstrators demanded to be heard, but was ignored. Little was accomplished except the airing of accusations. A member of the Jewish Bund accused the Bolsheviks of conspiracy; Tseretilli accused the demonstrators of aiding the counter-revolution. The meeting adjourned at 5:00 a.m., needless to say without taking any concrete action on any of the demonstrators’ demands, much less to seize the state power.

The Bolsheviks and Trotskyites also met late into the night, debating again the question whether to hold back the demonstration or lead it, and deciding for the latter. Then Zinoviev was called to the telephone. News from Kronstadt came that the sailors would march to the aid of the demonstrators that morning. Social Revolutionaries among the sailors, and even the commissar appointed by the Provisional Government, had voted to join the march when they’d learned the Bolsheviks were leading it.

By 3:00 a.m., after first encountering obstruction and gunfire, the Putilov workers and family members, joined on the march by workers of other factories and now some 80,000 strong, reached the Tauride Palace. The Central Executive agreed to receive their representatives, while the wearied marchers lay on the grounds of the palace, wondering about the next day, sure only that they would be too tired to go to work.

July 17 – July 4, 1917: The Manifestation Continues. Despite the appearance of Prava the next morning with a blank sheet for a front page, the manifestation of the July Days continues, now bearing every sign of Bolshevik guidance and organization. In fact, that is the reason for the problem with Pravda: an article composed the previous afternoon calling for restraint had to be withdrawn when the Bolsheviks, confronted with a fait accompli, decided to lead the demonstrations instead. A separate leaflet announced the latter.

The second day of the manifestation belonged more to the workers than the soldiers. Since the February Revolution, communications between the factory committees, the workers’ districts, and the militant units in the garrison had improved. This was in evidence in the run-up to the day’s march. At the direction of the Bolshevik Military Organization, armored cars were dispatched to cover the bridges and principal street crossings. The Machine Gun regiment still manned the Peter and Paul fortress in the river.

The demonstrators began to assemble at about 11:00 a.m., workers at the head of the march. Factories struck and held meetings instead of working. Those whose workers had held back on the first day, even if their factory committees were dominated by Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries, joined the march. Trotsky says the second day of the manifestation was “more impressive and organized” under “the guiding hand of the party.”

Neighboring garrisons also sent troops to join or protect the march as necessary – significantly, the Kronstadt sailors. Even the Social Revolutionaries in their ranks, and the commissar or the Provisional government himself, had voted to join the march. Ten thousand sailors disembarked on the banks of the Neva River at about noon, and presently appeared at Bolshevik headquarters in the palace formerly of the ballerina. There, addressed by Lunacharsky, they shouted for a speech from Lenin. “By the way,” Trotsky says, Lenin happened to be in town, returned from his sickbed in Finland. Apparently still not quite well, but well enough to speak briefly, he reminded the marchers of the meaning of the slogans on their banners.

The leadership of the left contingent of the Social Revolutionaries who’d joined the march objected to the prominence of a banner bearing the standard of the Bolshevik Central Committee. The rank and file not sharing the objection, the march continued with the banner in place.

State Conference in Moscow

Week Before August 25 – August 12, 1917: Plans for a General Strike. To forestall a Bolshevik plan to denounce the State Conference as counter-revolutionary and then walk out, the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets passes a resolution effectively limiting the party’s access to the floor. So the Bolsheviks turned in their credentials.

Then the Moscow Soviet voted, pretty narrowly, against a calling a general strike to welcome the conference delegates. The Bolsheviks took counsel with Menshevik and Social Revolutionary workers in the soviet who had voted for the strike, and with leaders of the trade unions. Together they decided upon a one-day protest strike, in preference to a demonstration that might have made targets of the marchers as during the July Days in Petrograd.

Another secret committee consisting of two Bolsheviks, two Mensheviks, and two Social Revolutionaries made arrangements to prevent the Cavaliers of St. George, with their allies among officers and junkers, from forming a cordon along the line of Kornilov’s expected procession through the city.

Meanwhile, Kornilov sent four divisions of cavalry towards Petrograd, possibly at Kerensky’s request, and a regiment of Cossacks to Moscow. This was a stratagem of counter-revolution rather than of war against Germany.

August 25 – August 12, 1917: State Conference in Moscow. Stage managed by Prime Minister Kerensky, the State Conference opens in Moscow. Delegates had a little trouble getting there: a protest strike called by the Bolsheviks and their left-socialist allies shut down the railroad stations and tramways. Even the waiters in the restaurants joined the strike, and the city lights went out too. Some 400,000 workers were on strike; one-day strikes took place in Kiev, Kostreva, and Tsaritizn as well.  

Poised at the center of the uneasy compromise between the left and right elements invited to the conference, Kerensky made the first speech at about 4:00 p.m. He warned the left (meaning the Bolsheviks, not in attendance) against insurrection, and he warned the right (explicitly naming Kornilov) against counter-revolution. As self-described “supreme head” of the state, he, Kerensky, would know how to deal with any such threats.

Kerensky defended his war policy without attempting to explain the failure of the June offensive. When he invited the delegates to rise and salute the ambassadors of the Entente, only the Menshevik Martov and a few others remained seated, despite catcalls from the officers’ loge.

Miliukov writes in his history of the revolution that despite Kerensky’s efforts to project the power of the office he held, “he evoked only a feeling of pity.”

Other ministers of the Provisional Government then spoke. Among them, the Minister of Industry asked the capitalists to restrain themselves in the matter of profit; the Minister of Finance spoke of his plan to decrease the direct tax on the possessing classes by increasing other indirect taxes. This drew loud cheers from the right. Chernov, the Social Revolutionary Minister of Agriculture, was not permitted to speak. Of course, the Provisional Government had no agrarian policy to talk about.

The dramatic pattern devised by Kerensky for the conference was anticipated by the alternation of left and right speakers who held ministries in the Provisional Government. 

August 26 – August 13, 1917: State Conference in Recess. Apparently, August 13 fell on a Sunday in the old style calendar for 1917 in Russia. So the State Conference went into recess for the day.

Kornilov took a few moments to confide in Miliukov that he felt the (expected) fall of Riga to the Germans would be too great an “opportunity” to pass up. As we will see, he’d already set the date for his insurrection. He let Miliukov know about that too.

August 27 – August 14, 1917: State Conference Concludes. As the second and final session of the State Conference in Moscow begins, the left applauds Prime Minister Kerensky when he enters, and the right applauds General Kornilov. Then Kerensky proposed an ovation for the army, and everyone joined in.

When Kornilov was invited to speak, the delegates rose in thunderous applause. All, that is, except the delegates of the soldiery. A shouting match ensued; Kerensky called for order. Kornilov’s speech blamed the legislation of the Provisional Government for reducing the army to a “crazy mob.” He warned the conference that if Riga (in Latvia, then threatened by the Germans) were taken, was the “road to Petrograd is open.” The Bolshevik paper in Moscow commented that as defeat at Tarnopol “made Kornilov commander-in-chief, the surrender of Riga might make him dictator.”

After a speech by an archbishop of the Church Council condemning the government for unbelief, General Kaledin, representing the Cossack armies, spoke. He endorsed Kornilov’s policies for prosecution of the war: militarizing the railroads and factories, permitting death penalty in the rear, and putting the Petrograd garrison under Kornilov’s command. And he added another one: abolish the soldiers’ committees formed at the company and regimental levels after the February Revolution. The right liked this a lot better than the left.

The left spoke next, in the person of Cheidze, president of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets. He defended the soldiers’ committees and the soviets, but spoke against forcible expropriation of lands by the peasantry. Neither did the next speaker, representing the Executive Committee of the peasants’ soviet, make any contribution to the resolution of the agrarian question. Now the contradictions between left and right had become palpable, and it was becoming possible to perceive the paralysis of the Provisional Government in which these irreconcilable differences were joined.

Proving that the device of putting people in the audience to serve as objects of rhetoric and applause is not new, the prisoners of Schlusselburg were announced. These survivors of the 1905 revolution were thus honored by, among others, their formerly tsarist jailors, now turned bourgeois liberal: Generals Alexiev, Kornilov, Kaledin; the archbishop; Rodzianko and Guchov, next to speak.

Guchov, the Provisional Government’s first war minister, had to admit the government was “the shadow of a power.” Rodzianko, president of the bourgeois-dominated State Duma, recommended that body, on account of its constitutional legitimacy, as a guide to the Provisional Government. This drew laughter from the left, as the legitimacy of the Duma had evaporated when its creator, the tsar, had been deposed.

Then Kerensky read a telegram from President Wilson, who preferred the result of the February Revolution to tsarism, saying the American and Russian governments “are pursuing no selfish aims” in the war.

The agenda swung back towards the left. Tseretilli defended the role of the soviets and the soldiers’ committees in the revolution.

Then back to the right. Miliukov recounted what he considered the “mistakes of the revolutionary democracy,” all of which, it just so happens, had led to the resignations of Cadet ministers. Among the “capitulations” he described were allowing the solders’ committees to be formed, and failing to suppress seizures of land by the peasants. This latter comment was directed at the Minister of Agriculture, Chernov.

The Menshevik Tseretilli spoke again, promising even harsher measures against the Bolsheviks.

After that the pendulum swung right to left and back ceaselessly. General Alexiev, formerly the tsar’s commander-in-chief, called for discipline in the army. He was answered by left-leaning officers who defended Kerensky. Officers crippled by the war speak for the right; crippled enlisted men for the left. The head of the railroad workers’ union spoke against the counter-revolution, and was answered by a magnate of the industry and a bank economist. Trotsky lists many more such pairings.

The conference was reaching the bottom of Kerensky’s agenda. An anarchist, oddly, received the applause of the right. Plekhanov, the oldest of the first Russian Marxists still living, was applauded from both sides. He mentioned, a little prematurely, the “unhappy memory of Lenin.”

That evening a representative of the Union of Horse Breeders (all large landowners, of course) spoke against land reform and in favor of the war. Then, to clamorous applause, Tseretilli shook hands with a railroad magnate. Even Miliukov thought this was insincere, but necessary.

As the end approached, a young Cossack officer pointed out that “the working Cossacks were not with Kaledin,” the Cossack general who had spoken earlier in the day. The right did not like this; an officer called out, “German marks!” This caused an explosion, nearly a fight. But it showed that the split in Russian society so plain at the conference extended even to the Cossack armies.

At last, Kerensky took the floor again. As the man in the middle between left and right, he urged “better understanding” and “better respect.” Then he relapsed into a self-absorbed melodrama reminiscent of Hitler’s maxim, the strong man is strongest when alone, but without the strength. A passage from Miliukov quoted by Trotsky describes the speech; it left “the hall…stupefied, and this time both halves of it.”

August 29 – August 16, 1917: Leftward Movement. A conference of the Social Revolutionary party demands that the League of Officers be expelled from Kornilov’s military headquarters at Moghiliev.

The damage the State Conference caused to Kerensky’s government, by revealing deep differences in Russian society that it was too paralyzed even to patch over, was becoming evident. The masses, Trotsky says, were instead moving to the left.

Democratic Conference

September 14 – September 1, 1917: The Bolshevik Resolution in Petrograd. The Petrograd Soviet passes a Bolshevik resolution calling for a government of workers and peasants. The margin was so great that the praesidium felt compelled to resign.

On the following day, a joint session of the Russian soviets of Finland passed a resolution demanding a government of soviets.

September 16 – September 3, 1917: “On Compromises”. In Rabochy Put (Worker’s Way), a successor to the shuttered Pravda, Lenin writes of an opening for the proletarian revolution created by the defeat of Kornilov’s insurrection. He argued in “On Compromises” that if the Soviet were to reject proposals for coalition with the Cadets in the government, the way would be open for an all-socialist government incorporating the system of soviets.

He described the compromise this way: “The compromise on our part is our return to the pre-July demand of all power to the Soviets and a government of [Social Revolutionaries] and Mensheviks responsible to the Soviets.” And in return: “The Mensheviks and S.R.s, being the government bloc, would then agree … to form a government wholly and exclusively responsible to the Soviets, the latter taking over all power locally as well.”

Of course, as we’ll see, the right-socialists never opened this window.

September 17 – September 4, 1917: Trotsky Released. Having placed the former War Minister, Guchov, under arrest on suspicion of complicity in Kornilov’s plot, and then released him, the Directory is compelled to address the situation of Bolsheviks arrested after the July Days. Not wanting simply to release them, the Directory instead set bail. Trotsky was released on a “modest” 3,000 rubles bail raised by the trade unions. Other imprisoned Bolsheviks were also freed.

Also on this day, Kerensky ordered the Military Committee set up to oppose Kornilov to halt its activities. This much the compromisist committee might be willing to do, but it nevertheless refused to dissolve itself. It continued “to work with its former energy and restraint.” Kerensky would have to be satisfied with this.

September 18 – September 5, 1917: The Bolshevik Resolution in Moscow. The Moscow Soviet votes in favor of a Bolshevik resolution of no confidence in the Provisional Government. The resolution also condemned the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets for its policy favoring coalition with the Cadets in the government. In Moscow, as before in Petrograd, the praesidium of the Soviet therefore resigned.

Bolshevik resolutions of similar import were also passed by regional conferences of soviets in Siberia on this day and in Kiev a few days later. The Baltic Fleet did the same.

September 21 – September 8, 1917: Peasant Revolt. The Provisional Government not having addressed the agrarian question, peasants of Tombov province burn landlord manors – a sign that their revolt was escalating. It’s not possible to give a chronological account of these widespread, often spontaneous actions. This particular action, however, went beyond the usual takings of harvests, firewood, farm animals, and implements. Others like it, not excluding murders, continued to occur as the October Revolution approached.

Meanwhile in Petrograd, the soldiers’ section of the soviet adopted a resolution demanding the return of the garrison units that had been transferred after the July Days.

September 22 – September 9, 1917: Rising Tide in the Petrograd Soviet. The Petrograd Soviet convenes to reconsider the resolution voted on September 1 (September 14, new style). Each party’s whips made sure all their members attended; at stake was the substitution of the Bolshevik party line for that of the Compromisers.

The Bolsheviks moved to make representation on the praesidium proportional to the party’s share of the vote in the Soviet. This tactic was not favored by Lenin – still proscribed and therefore not present – but in the event Tseretilli would not entertain the motion.

So the Soviet was asked to declare that the resolution of September 1 did not accord with the Soviet’s line (i.e., that of the Compromisers) and that the Soviet still had confidence in its praesidium (consisting mostly of Compromisers). Note that the Bolshevik resolution precluded coalition government with the representatives of the bourgeoisie.

Trotsky, just released from prison, made an observation: Kerensky was missing from the praesidium. He asked whether the prime minister was still a member. The praesidium, seeing where Trotsky was going with this, reluctantly answered that he was. Trotsky answered that this was not what the Bolsheviks expected. “We were mistaken. The ghost of Kerensky now sits between Dan and Cheidze.” Then he reminded the Soviet that a vote for the policies of the resolution was also a vote for the policies of Kerensky, then among those subject to the Soviet’s investigation for complicity in the plot of Kornilov and the bourgeoisie.

The atmosphere was so tense that it was decided to take the vote by absence or presence. Those against the resolution were to signify opposition by leaving the hall.

It took over an hour, as workers’ and soldiers’ deputies drifted towards the exits amid whispers and shouts. The Bolsheviks thought they would be about 100 votes short of a majority. But when the praesidium made the count, it was 414 for the resolution, 519 against, with 67 abstentions…! Tseretilli offered a parting shot as he left the platform with the rest of the praesidium: After six months, the banner of the revolution had passed into the hands of the Bolsheviks; “We can only express the wish that you may be able to hold it in the same way for half as long!” Taking the chair, Trotsky offered and passed a special resolution denouncing those responsible for the slander against the Bolsheviks of conspiring with the Germans.

Trotsky says, “The Bolsheviks now entered on their inheritance.” But the inheritance did not include the organization’s infrastructure: printing presses, funds, transportation, even the typewriters and inkwells, had all been appropriated to other uses by the former occupants of the praesidium.

This vote was the culmination of increasing Bolshevik strength in the soviets, as well as on the factory committees, in the trade unions, and on the soldiers committees. The party had recovered all it had lost after the July Days and the slander of conspiracy – and more besides. Trotsky devotes two chapters, with much anecdotal evidence, to this account; I have given several of the more prominent examples in separate entries.

September 24 – September 11, 1917: Against Coalition. The Menshevik Dan speaks in the Petrograd Soviet in favor of coalition government, Trotsky for government of the soviets. Dan’s motion garnered only 10 votes from the hundreds of deputies present.

A resolution against repression of the Bolshevik party passed the Moscow Soviet unanimously on the same day.

September 27 – September 14, 1917: Democratic Conference Convenes. Given their failures in the Soviet, the Compromisers cast about for a means to recover lost ground. After the Kornilov insurrection was defeated, they settled on a “Democratic Conference,” which was to be packed in such a way as to prevent the Bolsheviks from carrying their program.

For this purpose, a new constituency was heard from: the Cooperators. Ostensibly representing the peasantry, they in fact petit bourgeois administrators of agriculture who happened to live in the same villages as the peasants. The Compromisers credentialed some 150 of them.

Lenin and Zinoviev were also credentialed, but the Compromisers did not give them safe-conducts. All Kerensky would promise was that he would not arrest them in the hall where the conference was being held. He’d arrest them at the entrance. Safe-conduct or not, Lenin did not plan to attend; he opposed Bolshevik participation altogether.

The conference convened on September 14 (September 27, new style) in a Petrograd theater. Kerensky decided to attend. When he greeted the praesidium, the Bolsheviks on it refused to shake hands. So did the Kornilovists. Kerensky seems to have pretended they did.

Then Kerensky spoke extemporaneously, knowing he would have to address his role in the Kornilov conspiracy. “I knew what they wanted,” he said incautiously. “Before they went to Kornilov they came to me and suggested I take the same course.” The left of course wondered who “they” were, and what they had “suggested,” but Kerensky shifted topics rather than answer their shouted questions.

Kerensky committed another verbal blunder in response to another shouted question, this one about the death penalty. Both the Petrograd Soviet and the Menshevik party had passed resolutions against restoration of the death penalty in the military. Kerensky responded that he hadn’t ordered any executions, and when he did, “then I will permit you to curse me.” Of course this admitted that the death penalty was not necessary; nor did it make sense to restore the death penalty based on Kerensky’s unspoken promise not to use it. In a later speech, Trotsky pointed this out to anyone who might have missed it.

What the Bolsheviks would do was on everybody’s mind, including Kerensky’s. He expected “the forces of the democracy” to support him in case of an insurrection, warning, “Do not think that I am hanging in the air,” and claiming that he could stop the railroads and the telegraphs. The Bolsheviks in the hall just laughed: what an odd expression, “hanging in the air,” for a dictator to use of himself!

Tseretilli said he thought the government, meaning in particular Kerensky, was getting “a little dizzy” on the heights.

At one point, after a number of speeches by individuals who were part of the government, Trotsky observed, “I have not heard a single speaker here who would...[defend] the directory or its president.” Nor could any of these speakers articulate the policies of the government; nothing was being done to revive the economy, to end the war, or anything else.

The Bolsheviks called on Trotsky to read their declaration of the policy of the party and Central Committee. Tseretilli had framed the issue in one of his speeches: instead of putting the Soviet forward, why don’t the Bolsheviks take the power themselves? This challenge was whispered on the praesidium and repeated in the lobbies. Ten days before, the Cadet paper printed an editorial theorizing that maybe the Bolsheviks could best be got rid of if they were given the power. They would fail and fade to insignificance.

The Bolshevik declaration was neither evasive nor misleading. The party would not seize power “against the organized will of the majority of the toiling masses of the country.” This meant that if the soviets, in many of which the Bolsheviks were now the majority, willed it, the party would seize the power. The declaration also refused to recognize any decision of the Democratic Conference that was not subsequently ratified by the next All-Russian Congress of Soviets.

When they heard the declaration’s call for arming the workers, members of the centrist majority cried in alarm, “What for?” Trotsky replied they would be the revolutionary country’s best defense against both imperialism and counter-revolution.

The Bolshevik attitude towards the future of the Russian state being known, the conference proceeded to debate which policy it would endorse.

Meanwhile it had fallen to Stalin, as liaison between the party and Lenin, to bring Lenin’s letters from Finland to Petrograd. Lenin had taken a position against participation in the conference. His first letter on insurrection, addressed to the Bolshevik Central Committee and the committees of Petrograd and Moscow, took the party by surprise. It was just a sketch of points he would continue to make in the weeks to come. But the Central Committee, on Kamenev’s motion but over Stalin’s objections, decided to burn it anyway. (One copy was kept for posterity.)

In another letter, written at about the same time, Lenin begins to add detail to his plan of insurrection, and grounds it in Marxist theory. Trotsky expresses part of the plan this way: “To leave the Alexandrinsky Theater [scene of the Democratic Conference] with an ultimatum and return there at the head of the armed masses.”

September 28-October 3 – September 15-September 20, 1917: Resolutions of the Conference. The Democratic Conference debates several alternatives to Kerensky’s Directory over the next few days.

The Compromisers had drawn back from earlier statements, of the kind that inspired an offer of a deal from Lenin, that the Cadets might be excluded from a new formulation of the Coalition Government. At the conference, Trotsky argued against their inclusion because, as a party, they had not unambiguously denounced the Kornilov insurrection while it was taking place. The response was that, if it was a mistake to blame the whole Bolshevik party for the actions of a few during the July Days, it was also a mistake to blame the whole Cadet party for the actions of those members who abetted Kornilov. Trotsky answered by making a distinction: it is not a question of inviting individual Cadets “into the jails,” but of inviting the party as a whole “into the ministry.” The conference should do the former, but because the bourgeois press either “openly welcomed” Kornilov or “kept mum,” it should not do the latter.

A sailor from the Baltic Fleet spoke even more directly to this point, saying, “Against the creation of a Coalition Ministry the sailors have raised their battle flag!”

Trotsky expresses the alternatives before the conference this way: the centrists wanted a coalition, but without the Cadets; delegates on the right favored Kerensky and wanted to bring the Cadets into the government; the left, including the Bolsheviks, called for a government of the soviets, or at any rate a ministry of socialists – to the exclusion of the Cadets. These positions, of which that of the centrists was the most unstable, governed the formulation of the resolutions placed before the conference.

A centrist resolution in favor of a coalition passed, 766 to 688, but then a left amendment for excluding the Cadets also passed, 595 to 493. When the question was on the resolution as amended, the right and left joined in voting against it with 813 votes, leaving only 133 centrist votes in favor.

The organizers of the conference were at a loss. They convened a rump committee of party leaders, but their vote was also disappointing: 50 for coalition, 60 against. The committee was able to agree, unanimously, that whatever government should happen to be formed, should be responsible to the Democratic Conference. It then resolved that the conference should become a permanent body. Finally it voted to add members of the bourgeois parties to that body, 56 to 48.

Then Kerensky turned up again and told the conference he would not take part in a government of only one party or group of parties. Note that this involves admitting that he would not be able to sustain his Directory if the conference should prefer a new coalition.

October 1 – September 18, 1917: Centroflot Dissolved – Not! President of the Directory Kerensky issues an order dissolving the central committee of the Baltic Fleet. Centroflot replied that the order was unlawful and demanded that it be withdrawn. A few days later the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets arranged a pretext under which Kerensky could do so.

October 3 – September 20, 1917: Bolshevik Boycott? The leadership committee of the Democratic Conference having agreed to assemble a permanent body (which would be known as the Pre-Parliament) from its numbers, the Bolsheviks meet to decide whether they will participate. The Central Committee, the Petrograd Committee, and the Bolshevik delegates to the Democratic Conference attended.

Lenin had written that, if a parliamentary body reflects the actual correlation of forces during a revolution, it is possible for the revolutionary party, by participating, to advance its cause. But this was not the case, Trotsky argued, with the Pre-Parliament, in which the bourgeoisie would be over-represented, and the masses under-represented. In essence, the proletarian revolution would be subjecting itself to forms prescribed by the recently discredited (i.e., by Kornilov’s counter-revolution) bourgeoisie.

Trotsky moved and spoke for the boycott; Rykov, who would become Commissar for the Interior after the October Revolution, against. The motion failed by a vote of 77 to 50. Trotsky observes that this was not just tactics; it was a strategic issue of the first magnitude, like the ones the party faced when it adopted Lenin’s April Theses, and the ones it would face when it decided on the October Revolution.

From his hiding place in Finland, Lenin gave Trotsky a “Bravo!”

October 4 – September 21, 1917: Democratic Conference Adjourns. Before it adjourns, the Democratic Conference completes the two remaining items on its agenda. The first was to pass a resolution, any resolution, to influence the configuration of the next government. The second was to populate the conference’s permanent version, to be called the Council of the Republic, “Pre-Parliament” for short.

To the first end, Tseretilli offered a resolution that appeared not to endorse a coalition in the government with the Cadets, but in fact made exactly this possible. It called on the Pre-Parliament to “cooperate in the creation of a government,” for the existing government to sanction the Pre-Parliament for that purpose, and for the Pre-Parliament to sanction the government thus created. The resolution passed, 829 to 106.

But, Trotsky says, Tseretilli’s resolution was a “disguised capitulation.” For one thing, it left Kerensky in the driver’s seat; the conference had not voted itself any leverage over him. For another, the composition of the government would depend on the composition of the Pre-Parliament, that is, on the second item on the agenda. The conference, in which a majority in favor of including the Cadets in a coalition government could not be had, was to name 350 of its delegates, about 15%, to the Pre-Parliament. They would be joined by 120 delegates to represent the bourgeoisie, and the government would name 20 Cossacks. A body so constituted might be able to form a consensus for naming some Cadet ministers. Thus “disguised capitulation.”

The Pre-Parliament was to convene about two weeks later. Trotsky observes that as an attempt by the Compromisers to recover lost power and prestige, the Democratic Conference was the functional equivalent of Kerensky’s State Conference in Moscow. It was also about equally successful.

Meanwhile, on Trotsky’s motion, the Petrograd Soviet demanded that the All Russian Congress of Soviets be convened. It had been agreed at the first congress, in June, to reconvene every three months. Now, the resolution said, the Congress was necessary for “self-defense” of the soviets against renewed efforts by the counter-revolution. Moreover it would give the Bolsheviks a position of strength vis a vis the Pre-Parliament. The resolution also called on the soviets to retain the official, governmental, and managerial functions they had up to then acquired and were exercising.

October 4 – September 21, 1917: At the Winter Palace. Despite what the Democratic Conference could try to do or say it would do, matters concerning the make-up of the new government are being discussed and settled at the Winter Palace. Kerensky had offered ministries to two Cadets: the industrialist Konovalov was to be Vice President and Minister of Trade and Industry, and Kishkin was to be Minister of Public Welfare. The Cadet central committee thought they should accept, because, they said, the proposal had originated with the British ambassador, Buchanan. A coalition acceptable to the Entente was very important to the big bourgeoisie who did business with them.

The Congress of Soviets

November 8 – October 26, 1917: A New Day. The morning papers draw a blank on the events of the previous thirty-six hours. They reported the taking of the Winter Palace and arrest of the ministry, but weren’t sure what that meant or what kind of difference it would make. By orders from Smolny, the streets, tramcars, shops, and restaurants opened and functioned normally. So people went out or went to work and shared the rumors they’d heard or speculations they’d made up. Trotsky says “…the seismograph of the Stock Exchange describes a convulsive curve.” Apparently he means stocks fell – at least they could still make trades.

The American journalist Reed picked up whatever papers he could find through the course of the day. Reed’s clippings from the compromisist papers predicted the failure of the Bolshevik revolution, denounced the party program – peace, land, and bread – as lies and false promises, and condemned the Congress of Soviets as illegal and without authority. Trotsky says some of the bourgeois and compromisist press were reviving the old slander of the German connection. Reed observes that the few Cadet papers to be found took a “detached, ironical” attitude. A few of the more destructive papers were suppressed.

So not everything was new that day. But the Bolshevik paper, lately published under title of Rabochy Put, now reappeared as Pravda.

November 8 – October 26, 1917: The Central Committee Forms a State. All that day, the Military Revolutionary Committee is still issuing orders from Smolny. Word came that Kornilov had escaped his “prison” in Bykhov. He and Kerensky were to be arrested; assisting Kerensky will be considered a state crime. Agitators and organizers were being recruited and sent to the front and to the provinces. Units at the front were invited to elect new soldiers committees. Measures were initiated to deal with recalcitrant railway, telegraph, and postal unions.

These were among, Trotsky says, “thousands and myriads of orders” issued “by word of mouth, by pencil, by typewriter, by wire….” It was not just another day’s work.

While the city duma met and issued proclamations in the name of the Committee of Salvation, the Bolshevik Central Committee met to decide the structure and contents of the new government. There were two issues: whether to form the government in coalition with the other socialist parties, and what to call the departmental executives. The latter was easy to solve. “Ministers” had a bad smell to it. So they would be “commissars” of the Soviet of Peoples Commissars.

As to the first issue, the left Social Revolutionaries were the only faction of any size that had stayed in the Congress of Soviets with the Bolsheviks the night before. They caucused and negotiated, but found they could not agree to a Bolshevik program that had hardly changed since Lenin’s April Theses, and was the foundation of the October Revolution. Lenin and Trotsky would not compromise the program, says the American journalist Reed, even though Kamenev and Riazanov, among others, urged accommodation in order to give the government a broader base. By about 7:00 p.m. that evening, the left Social Revolutionaries decided they would not join the government on the Bolsheviks’ terms, but would nevertheless remain on the Military Revolutionary Committee. It turned out they did not want, by joining the government, to leave behind their fellow Social Revolutionaries on the right entirely. The result was an all-Bolshevik government.

The Central Committee had a visitor that afternoon. The Menshevik Martov interceded on behalf of the imprisoned socialist ministers. The committee, seemingly via Kamenev, confirmed Trotsky’s offer of house arrest. Trotsky cannot be sure whether the ministers accepted the offer, or preferred to remain imprisoned in solidarity with their bourgeois colleagues.

Meanwhile, representatives of the railway, telegraphers, and postal unions adhered to the Committee of Salvation, creating practical if not political obstacles to the progress of the government of soviets. Even the stenographers, employees of the old Central Executive Committee, would absent themselves from the Congress of Soviets, and so the record of the proceedings is scant. Trotsky calls this the first act in a “campaign of sabotage” by the ex-Compromisers.

Overnight November 8-9 – October 26-27, 1917: Decree on Peace. At about 8:40 p.m., Lenin enters the hall where the Congress of Soviets has assembled; the delegates greet him, Reed says, with a “thundering wave of cheers.” The agenda is still peace, land, and a government of the soviets. Kamenev read the report of the praesidium’s actions of the day: abolish the death penalty at the front, freedom of agitation there, release for soldiers and land committee members held as political prisoners, orders to arrest Kerensky, Kornilov, and their abettors. All were ratified by the Congress.

Sukhanov was in the galleries, this time as a spectator. A couple of right-socialist speakers argued uselessly against the incoming tide. Then a coal miner from the Don basin urged the Congress to take measures against Kaledin and his Cossacks lest they interrupt supplies of coal and grain. Trotsky has to admit that such measures were then beyond the revolution’s powers.

Now Lenin rose to speak. The American journalist Reed says the welcoming ovation “lasted several minutes. When it finished, he said simply, ‘We shall now proceed to construct the socialist order.’” Again “that overwhelming human roar.”

With little in the way of preliminaries, and nothing in flourishes, Lenin read the party’s proclamation on peace:

·         Immediate negotiations between the belligerent peoples and governments

·         Peace without annexations or indemnities

·         Neither conquered territories nor smaller, weaker states or nationalities to be annexed

·         No secret treaties; existing treaties to be published; provisions for the benefit of imperialist capital to be annulled

·         Immediate armistice for three months

The “offer of peace” is addressed to the belligerent governments and peoples, but in particular to the proletariat of England, France, and Germany, where Marx and Engels had spent virtually all their working lives, and where socialist political consciousness was then most advanced.

Note that, by calling for immediate armistice and negotiations, the proclamation addresses the first concern of the peasant soldiery. The provision on annexation addresses the nationalities question directly and comprehensively, but by its terms also rules out imperialist colonialism. And by calling on the workers of England, France, and Germany, the proclamation emphasizes the international character of the proletarian revolution. In brief comments, Lenin pointed out that, in order for negotiations to begin immediately, governments would have to be consulted – but not to the exclusion of the peoples. Further that the proclamation was not an ultimatum; even exceptions to the policies on annexations and indemnities would be considered. But “’Consider does not mean we will accept it.’” Finally, Lenin asserted that if Russia had thrown off the “’government of the bankers,’” so could the other peoples of Europe. And this would be the basis of lasting peace.

Find the whole text here.

The left Social Revolutionaries were joined by speakers for other, smaller factions in voicing support, sometimes qualified, for the proclamation. Lenin strongly rejected the argument made by a fellow Bolshevik, that, rather than a proclamation, the Congress should issue an ultimatum. The governments, Lenin argued, would spin an ultimatum, hiding from their peoples the real meaning of the Soviet’s offer of peace.

And so Kamenev, in the chair, at 10:35 p.m. according to Reed, put the matter to a vote. He called on the delegates in favor to raise their credentials. This they all did. One who lifted his hand against was shamed, and brought it back down.

This was an historic moment. Not in the way our politicians toss the word around. It was the act of a whole people, manifesting their power to themselves and to the world. Like the Declaration of Independence. Or the Emancipation Proclamation. But not quite. The people, the masses, were all present there in Smolny through delegates they themselves elected in the soviets. The delegates had grasped the power they were given and used it for the people and the world. With that realization, everyone began to sing the Internationale. From the praesidium to the back rows, eyes that were not weeping were shining.

Afterwards someone called out – Long live Lenin! Cheers! Caps flung in the air! Then, remembering the war and the struggle for the revolutions, they sang the Russian Funeral March for their dead. Trotsky and Reed were both there; both capture the living scene in their books. Sukhanov, the Menshevik and Compromiser, was there too, but he couldn’t sing along.

Word went out to the front and to the provinces….

Find the lyrics to the Internationale here, and the sheet music here. Many versions, in many languages, can be found on Wikipedia.

Overnight November 8-9 – October 26-27, 1917: Decree on Land. Lenin again takes the stand at the Congress of Soviets, bringing another proclamation, this one for resolving the long-festering agrarian question. The Social Revolutionaries had dominated the peasants soviets since the February Revolution. When they were drawn into the coalition governments with the bourgeois parties representing, among others, large landowners, they found it impossible to implement the policies their peasant constituency wanted. So they, and in particular Kerensky and his Ministers of Agriculture, had no answer to the agrarian question.

The Bolsheviks now gave the answer – essentially the same one given in Lenin’s April Theses. Lenin held the only draft; it had not been possible to reproduce it for distribution. It was also apparently written in another hand. He stumbled as he read it, and had to stop for a moment. Someone on the dais, maybe the person who wrote it, offered to help and read the proclamation through.

The proclamation, Trotsky says, “smashes the Gordian knot with a hammer”:

·         Landlord property, including that of the crown, the churches, and the monasteries, annulled without compensation

·         Confiscated lands, including livestock and implements, to be held as national property

·         This property to be administered, and the use of it distributed, by the local peasants soviets and land committees

·         The lands of the small peasants and Cossacks serving in the army not subject to confiscation

The Social Revolutionaries had managed to draft and publish, in the peasants’ Izvestia on August 19 (September 1, new style), a set of guidelines for the redistribution of land. It remained a dead letter until now, when the Bolsheviks appended it to the proclamation as instructions for carrying the latter out. Find the text of the Decree on Land here.

Note that the proclamation recognizes private property in the lands of small holders, and permits the soviets and land committees to redistribute confiscated land roughly equally into private parcels. Rosa Luxemburg had remarked that this is not socialism. But Lenin in the war on capital, like Lincoln in the war against slavery, knew when to take a step and how far the step ought to go. The peasants were already in revolt. The Decree on Land bound them to the workers just as the Decree on Peace had bound the soldiers.

Lenin then made a few points in support of the proclamation. Before the applause died down, a right Social Revolutionary representing the Executive Committee of the Peasants Soviets pushed forward and angrily renewed the demand for the release of the socialist ministers – including, a little ironically, the Minister of Agriculture.

Trotsky answered that the compomisist Central Executive Committee had already furnished a precedent for house arrest: when Kollontai was released from prison under doctor’s orders, her house was guarded by police formerly employed under the tsar. A peasant delegate from Tver, “with long hair and a big sheepskin coat,” says Trotsky, got up from his seat, made his bows, and invited the praesidium to arrest the Executive Committee of the Peasants Soviets instead. “’Those are not peasants’ deputies, but Cadets…. Their place is in prison.’” This met with vocal approval from the Congress, and the first speaker beat his retreat.

Some of the left Social Revolutionaries wanted to caucus before giving their votes. One of the furthest left of them called for an immediate vote instead. Lenin, wanting the proclamation to make the morning papers, nevertheless permitted a short intermission: “’No filibustering!” he said.

After this interim, which lasted two and half hours, until 1:00 a.m. October 26 (November 8, new style) instead of the allotted thirty minutes, the Congress received reports of the adherence to the Military Revolutionary Committee of units from Macedonia to the outskirts of Petrograd – another bicycle battalion sent there by the government. They heard, Reed says, announcements asking for agitators to go to the front. They passed, “unanimously and without debate,” a resolution advising the local soviets, on their honor, to prevent pogroms against the Jews or any other national or ethnic group.

Now, at about 2:00 a.m., Kamenev called the vote: the whole Congress, less one vote and eight abstentions, supported the decree, and, says Trotsky, ”…therewith the revolution of the proletariat acquires a mighty basis.”

Reed says a soldier-delegate rose to make a special plea: land for deserters? This was ruled out by the Social Revolutionaries’ guidelines. But was it fair? Over shouted objections, the speaker won the ears of the Congress. Some deserters were shirkers or cowards, others were brutalized, starved, and in despair. Kamenev, having one final item on his agenda, proposed to reserve the matter to the government for decision.

Early Morning November 9 – October 27, 1917: A New Government. The Bolsheviks do not propose a constitution to the Congress of Soviets; that is a matter for the Constituent Assembly, then set to meet in December. Instead they put forward a brief statement or abstract of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government for the consideration of the Congress.

Kamenev took the floor and read the draft. Under this proposal, the functions of government were allocated to departments, and the departments were placed under committees. The soviets, local and provincial, of workers, soldiers, and peasants, would closely advise and work with the committees. The heads of the committees would be commissars, and have seats in the Soviet of People’s Commissars.

So far, the American journalist Reed says, silence. Now Kamenev read the names of the commissars. I’ll only provide the names with which the readers of these posts will be familiar; visit Wikipedia for the whole list. The names on it are all given names, not the well-known noms de guerre:

·         Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin), as head of government, without portfolio

·         Antonov, Dybenko, and Krylenko, as a triumvirate for the military and navy

·         A.V. Lunacharsky, as commissar for Education

·         L.D. Bronstein (Trotsky), as commissar for Foreign Affairs

·         I.V. Djugashvili (Stalin), as commissar for Nationalities

Fifteen commissars in all were named. Applause greeted the new commissars, especially Lenin and Trotsky, but also Lunacharsky, a well-known agitator. Kamenev became president of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets, and Zinoviev was made publisher of the official organ of the government.

Avilov, one of the right socialists who’d stayed behind when the others left, renewed his role as a gadfly. The new government must face all the old questions. Bread is hard to find; peace may be even harder. It was a lengthy speech, at first met with hostility, finally raising doubts. Both Avilov and the left Social Revolutionary who spoke next called for a government of the “entire democracy,” including the parties and persons who had walked out of the Congress the day before. Avilov even advocated joining with the city duma in its Committee on Public Safety.

Trotsky, a superb debater, again gave the answer for his party. First of all, the insurrection was a success; it was virtually bloodless. The Bolsheviks alone had judged the correlation of forces realistically and correctly. Moreover, and now especially with the Decrees on Peace and Land, the party represented the meeting point of all the revolutionary masses, workers, soldiers, and peasants. So the party already has a coalition. Is Avilov proposing a “’coalition of newspapers’” instead? Further, bread doesn’t come from coalitions; the right socialist walkouts offer nothing more for the solution of that problem.

The insurrection destroyed the Provisional Government, Trotsky continued, and handed the power to the Congress of Soviets. No thanks to the walkouts! They refused the gift. “’They are traitors to the revolution with whom we will never unite!’”

Neither would a coalition do anything for peace. The diplomats of the Entente laughed the Menshevik Skobelev out of court when he presented them the Pre-Parliament’s peace proposals. The Decree on Peace is not all that different, but it is addressed to the peoples as well as the governments. “’We rest all our hope on the possibility that our revolution will unleash the European revolution.’” For otherwise, ‘”…the capitalists of all countries will crush our revolution.’” The party is not an isolated Russian faction, but a champion of the oppressed everywhere. The Congress, says Reed, accepted Trotsky’s speech in that spirit.

Before a vote to confirm the Soviet of Peoples’ Commissars could be taken, the praesidium acceded to the demand of another gadfly to speak. This was a representative of the railroad workers union, called the Vikzhel. The union had already adhered to the Committee of Public Safety; now it wanted to threaten the Bolsheviks and the Congress. The union did not recognize the authority of the Congress. Unless the Congress includes the walkout socialists in the government, the union will not transport troops of the Military Revolutionary Committee. If the government tries to repress the union, it will not transport food into the capital either.

This troubled the praesidium for a moment. But really the Vikzhel overestimated their influence; the tail was wagging the dog. Delegates to the Congress who were themselves railway workers pointed out that the Vikzehl represented clerks, not workers. The workers had already endorsed the transfer of power to the Congress, as well as the actions the Congress had taken and was about to take. In the end, Kamenev dismissed the claims as out of order: “’There can be no questioning the legal rights of this congress.’”

Now the vote could be taken. The Congress elected the slate of Bolshevik commissars by a large majority, but by no means unanimously. Sukhanov estimates Avilov’s resolution calling for a coalition with the walkout socialists got 150 votes; Trotsky thinks this is too many. On the other hand, the new Central Executive Committee of 62 Bolsheviks and 29 left Social Revolutionaries was confirmed without dissent.

The agenda was complete. Kamenev closed the Congress at 5:15 a.m. Now the October Revolution must be spread to the cities and provinces of Russia and announced to the world….