Fall of Riga

One hundred years ago today, plus three, while the commander-in-chief General Kornilov was busy arranging his forces to pose a threat to the coalition government – and revolution – in Petrograd, a German counterattack took Riga, the capital of Latvia.

 Actually this suited the general perfectly well. Read about it here. Or read the whole chapter on Kornilov’s Insurrection here. Or read the whole story from the beginning by following this link.

 

Kornilov Makes a Move

One hundred years ago today, plus three, General Lavr Kornilov, recently made commander-in-chief of the Russian armed forces facing the Germans and Austrians, ordered movements apparently unconnected with the conduct of that war. He put Cossack cavalry nearer to Petrograd on the north and south; the southern force was joined by a division of mountain troops from the Caucasus.

 

Read about it here. Or read the whole chapter on Kornilov’s Insurrection here. Or read the whole story from the beginning by following this link.

 

Summer Offensive?

One hundred years ago today, plus three, the Second Russian Army had captured the German lines in their immediate front. But that was about as far as they were willing to go. And the other Russian armies hadn’t even got started yet

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.

June Demonstration

One hundred years ago today, plus three, it was still June in Russia, as they were on the old-style calendar. The Congress of Soviets had called for a demonstration, but the Bolsheviks managed to turn it into a protest of Kerensky’s summer offensive, slated to start that day.

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

Kerensky Orders an Offensive

One hundred years ago today, plus three, Alexander Kerensky, Social Revolutionary and Minister of War in the Coalition Government, ordered the Russian Army, whose private soldiers were largely conscripted peasants, to undertake an offensive all along the front against the armies of Germany and Austria-Hungary. He and his bourgeois friends in the cabinet were about the only people who thought this was a good idea.

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

The Root Mission

One hundred years ago today, plus three, the United States having added itself to the line-up of countries involved in the clash of imperialists on the previous April 7, the mission of Elihu Root from President Woodrow Wilson to the Provisional Government of Russia was in Petrograd. Root promised American loans, but only if Russia stayed in the fight against Germany and Austria-Hungary.

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

June Demonstration, Summer Offensive

One hundred years ago today, plus two, it was still June in Petrograd (Russia was on the old Julian calendar, which was by then 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar), and the workers and soldiers took to the streets to protest, among other things, plans for a summer offensive against Germany and her allies. Read about it here, and about the Russian summer offensive 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 Reaction

July 17 – July 4, 1917: The Reaction Takes Shape. War Minister Kerensky being at the front, it falls to Prime Minister Prince Lvov, with help from the Menshevik Tseretilli and two of Kerensky’s War Ministry assistants, to organize countermeasures to the manifestation. The only loyal forces immediately at hand were a few hundred Cossacks; the regiments of the garrison that had not joined the demonstration remained neutral. Nevertheless General Polotsev, commanding the government forces, announced that morning that he would “cleanse” the city of demonstrators; to that end, he ordered, citizens loyal to the government should remain indoors.

But what the General’s forces could actually do was proportional to their relative strength. They could not confront the militant soldiers and sailors frontally, so contented themselves with ambushing and disarming small detachments.

Some of the ambushes offered gunfire. The first attack struck at the rear of the column of marchers. Others soon followed. In one incident, reported by Izvestia, a church bell tolled, to signal fire from the neighboring rooftops. The march was disrupted, marchers wounded; return fire was disorganized, as the targets were uncertain; order was with difficulty restored. The march resumed, in a much grimmer mood.

Trotsky is not sure who the gunners were; the marchers themselves could hardly be sure. Some of them might have been government troops, others former officers who had organized into right-wing clubs. The Compromisers in the Petrograd Soviet later alleged German agents were involved. Bolsheviks on the scene found evidence suggesting agents provocateur had fired at the Cossacks to induce them to attack the demonstrators.

For at about 8:00 p.m., two squadrons of Cossacks rode up drawing artillery behind them. On General Polotsev’s orders, they were to defend the Tauride Palace. The Cossacks began by seizing armored cars and disarming whomever they could. At the Liteiny Bridge they came up against a barricade, behind which the resistance was well-organized. Both sides opened fire. The Cossacks retreated. Their cannon fired three volleys, but was also dispersed by long-range rifle fire.

The battle, which Trotsky says was the “biggest military episode of the July Days,” left about a dozen killed and forty wounded in all, about equally divided between the two sides. The demonstrators were now in control of the grounds of the Tauride Palace.

July 17 – July 4, 1917: At the Tauride Palace Again. As on the evening before, revolutionary workers and soldiers again stood before the headquarters of the Petrograd Soviet in the Tauride Palace. This time, their demands having already been presented, they demanded an answer. The Central Executive Committee of the Soviets had been in joint session since about 6:00 p.m. Someone brought Chernov, a Social Revolutionary on the committee and also Minister of Agriculture in the Provisional Government, outside to speak. At that moment the Kronstadt sailors arrived. Apparently the sailors did not like the tendency of Chernov’s speech; they detained him. So informed, the Central Executive sent Bolsheviks and Trotskyites, including Trotsky himself, to right the situation. Trotsky says he saw agents of the tsarist secret police by the doorway, trying to get in.

Chernov had been ordered into an automobile. Trotsky’s first impulse was to ride away with him in it. But Midshipman Raskolnikov, a leader of the Kronstadters, excitedly told him that would give the wrong impression. So Trotsky stood on the car and gave a short speech, asking for a show of hands by those opposed to releasing the minister. No-one raised his hand; Chernov returned to the palace without further hindrance.

General Polotsev was hoping more Cossacks would arrive. Instead the 176^th regiment came up from Krasnoe Selo, rain-soaked and bearing full battle kit. The Soviet assumed these were “loyal” troops; the Menshevik Dan asked their commander to post sentries at the entrances to the palace. In fact the 176^th had come to join their militant brethren in the demonstration. Consulted by an aide, Trotsky advised the regiment to comply with the request, a duty they were only too happy to perform. Trotsky notes that, if it had been a Bolshevik insurrection, they could easily have arrested the entire Central Executive then and there.

The Soviet invited the demonstrators to speak. They chose 90 representatives and five orators, representing 54 factories. The speakers began by denying the claim in the Soviet’s manifesto of the previous day that the demonstrations were counter-revolutionary; the banners they carried were anything but. Tseretilli answered that the program of peace, nationalization of industry and land, and power to the soviets lay could not then be carried out, at least not in “the present circumstances…in the Petrograd atmosphere.” He proposed adjourning the Soviet and reconvening it in Moscow two weeks hence.

The Putilov workers were next to impose themselves on the Central Executive. In a mass of 30,000, they demanded that Tseretilli be brought before them. This could easily have gone wrong; even the Bolsheviks did not want something untoward to happen. So they sent Zinoviev, the Bolshevik upon whom Lenin relied as an orator, instead. Zinoviev began, “In place of Tseretilli, it is I who have come out to you,” and was greeted by laughter. He gave a long speech and ended by appealing to the demonstrators to depart in peaceful and orderly fashion.

This the demonstrators prepared to do, but while Zinoviev had been speaking, armed Putilov workers broke into the palace. One of them took the podium and accused the Soviet of “making bargains with the bourgeoisie and landlords.” Cheidze, presiding over the meeting, had a rifle under his nose. But he calmly handed the worker a printed manifesto and asked him to read it. It said the workers ought to go home, otherwise they would be traitors to the revolution.

Be that as it may. The Bolshevik Central Committee circulated a resolution for ending the demonstration. So the demonstration, for the most part, broke up, and the streets around the Tauride Palace emptied. But the Central Executive remained in session.

Overnight, July 17-18 – July 4-5, 1917: Reinforcements for the Soviet. Isolated, individual actions with no particular political agenda take place through the night. Some of the well-to-do were leaving town. Scattered gunfire could be heard. Militants searched houses and roofs for the weapons fired at them during the day, and the shooters. Looting took place. Merchants in a bourgeois neighborhood beat up workers, soldiers, sailors that happened to pass by on the way home or to the barracks.

The Central Executive Committee of the Soviets was still in session; the delegates of the workers were still with them in the Tauride Palace, waiting for an answer to their demands. At about 4:00 a.m., the Menshevik Dan rose to make an announcement: troops loyal to the Soviet had arrived! Now the right-socialists felt like singing the Marseillaise. But Martov, also a Menshevik but not a Compromiser, observed, ”A classic picture of the beginning of a counter-revolution.”

At first the Compromisers seem to have thought the troops had come from the front. They had been telephoning War Minister Kerensky, who was there, since the marchers first assembled two days before.

But agents of the Provisional Government (thought to be from the Department of Justice or the Intelligence Service) were playing another angle. They’d sent agitators to the neutral regiments of the garrison, which had not joined the demonstration, with “proof” that Lenin was a German spy. The slander worked; at dawn, after an exchange of messages, it was these regiments that marched to the palace to defend the Soviet from the Bolsheviks.

July 18 – July 5, 1917: Demonstrations Suppressed. At dawn, Bolsheviks pass through empty streets distributing a leaflet calling for an end to the demonstrations. The workers’ districts were quiet but “vigilant,” Trotsky says.

But the city streets had already gone over to the reaction. Trotsky does not make it entirely clear which troops carried out the arrests and destruction that followed. But he refers to them as “Cossacks” or “junkers,” terms normally reserved for reactionary units serving the Provisional Government under the command of General Polotsev. At any rate, Trotsky does not directly accuse the regiments that had gone over to the Soviet that morning, and the troops from the front, sent by Kerensky, did not arrive until later in the day.

So, at 6:00 a.m., a car “loaded with junkers” drove up to the offices of Pravda. When they left, everything, including the printing presses, was a wreck. On the streets of the bourgeois neighborhoods, troops were arresting workers, soldiers, sailors, and anybody who had anything favorable to say about Lenin or the Bolsheviks. Some of the Red Guards joined the Kronstadt sailors in the Peter and Paul fortress, now surrounded by streets under the control of government troops.

That afternoon, members of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets went to Bolshevik headquarters for a conference. Agreement was reached that the Bolsheviks would induce the Kronstadters to turn over the Peter and Paul to the government, and the government would not purge or suppress the Bolshevik party, and would release those already under arrest unless the arrest was for criminal activity.

Some hours later, the mood in the Soviet, in the streets, and among the garrison was changing. Agitation accusing the Bolsheviks of funding the demonstrations with German money took hold. Then troops from the front began to arrive. The Provisional Government held all the cards; indeed, the Bolsheviks had already laid down their hand that morning. Violent speeches filled the Tauride Palace; Now that the “correlation of forces…has changed,” the Bolsheviks had become the common enemy. Kamenev rose to remind the Central Executive of the agreement reached earlier that afternoon.

Kamenev’s reminder was too late. Prime Minister Prince Lvov had already given General Polotsev orders to clear out the palace of the ballerina Kshesinskaia and arrest any Bolsheviks found inside. Trotsky believes the right-socialist ministers in the Provisional Government knew of and consented to the order.

The Bolskeviks took countermeasures. The Military Organization put the Kronstadt midshipman Raskolnikov in command at the palace. This was at about 5:00 p.m. Raskolnikov sent for a warship from Kronstadt, but reconsidering this rash measure, rescinded the request. Cossacks, armored cars, and machine guns took position all around.

Thus the situation stood for the balance of the day.

July 18 – July 5, 1917: The Delegates of the Centrobalt. The workers of Helsinki, the soldiers of the Helsinki garrison, and the sailors of the Baltic Fleet stationed there are not far behind the Kronstadt sailors in militancy. When they heard of the July Days manifestation, they passed a resolution against the Provisional Government. Sentiment was so strong that even the Social Revolutionaries were compelled to support the resolution.

What they should do about it was more problematic. If the fleet were to move on Petrograd, Helsinki would be exposed to action by the German fleet. But then the Central Committee of the Baltic Fleet (Centrobalt) became aware of secret orders transmitted from the Provisional Government’s Assistant Navy Minister to the commanding admiral of the fleet. The admiral was to send destroyers to prevent the landing of the Kronstadt sailors, and deploy submarines to prevent the sailors of the fleet from sending ships to join the Kronstadters. The crews of the submarines and destroyers were thought to be less politically advanced than those of the new, modern battleships.

This made a decision more difficult, but the Centrobalt lost no time in making one. They passed a resolution to send a destroyer to Petrograd to find out what was going on there and to arrest the Assistant Navy Minister.

The destroyer Orpheus thus arrived at the mouth of the Neva River on July 18 (July 5, old style), some 24 hours after the Kronstadters had landed. By the time the Centrobalt delegation arrived at the Tauride Palace, the vehement mood there had deepened because of the initial success of the suppression. When the sailors read out their resolution, members of the Central Executive Committee denounced them as traitors and counter-revolutionaries.

Their mission to arrest the assistant minister having failed, the sailors themselves were arrested the following day. Then the president of the Centrobalt was arrested, and the admiral of the Baltic Fleet summoned to Petrograd to explain his part in the matter.

July 18 – July 5, 1917: Lenin Slandered. The Soviet hears the slander against Lenin but nobody, except relative newcomers to revolutionary work, believes it. Tseretilli and Cheidze, leaders of the Central Executive Committee and the Menshevik party, rejected the story out of hand, and asked the papers not to print it. But a publication known for yellow journalism did. The Minister of Justice, one of the socialist ministers in the Coalition Government, resigned on this account.

The slander had its origins in the circumstance that Lenin passed through Germany when he travelled to Petrograd in April. A former police spy and prisoner of war, one Ermolenko, made up the rest: Lenin had contacts with the German General Staff and was acting as their agent; German money was propping up the Bolshevik party with a view to destabilizing the dual government.

A discredited journalist and operative of the Intelligence Service, one Alexinsky, became the spokesman for the slander. He had passed Ermolenko’s fabricated report to the papers. The Menshevik Dan had already denounced him in Izvestia. Now Zinoviev demanded that the Central Executive conduct an immediate investigation with a view to exonerating Lenin and neutralizing the slander, but this gained little traction.

Trotsky records that Lenin then asked him, “Aren’t they getting ready to shoot us all?” So Lenin went back into hiding, at first in a Petrograd worker’s apartment. Zinoviev and others went underground too.

July 19 – July 6, 1917: Bolsheviks Evicted. At 3:00 a.m., elements of the Petrograd garrison loyal to the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets take up positions around Bolshevik headquarters. (In an interesting digression, Trotsky explains how the palace of the ballerina Kshesinskaia came to be their headquarters, and how this circumstance became an element of propaganda against the party.) A Social Revolutionary spokesman for the Soviet ordered the occupants to leave. Obligingly, a hundred or more Kronstadt sailors dashed out and made it over the Neva River to the Peter and Paul fortress.

When the troops entered the palace, they found no-one there but a few of the party’s employees. That left the Peter and Paul, and its garrison of soldiers of the Machine Gun regiment, Kronstadters, and Red Guards from Vyborg to be dealt with. The Central Committee sent Stalin to conduct this negotiation; he and his Menshevik comrade were successful. This episode marked the end of the July Days.

Except in the provinces. The spirit of the July Days caught on in Moscow, where, though moderate Bolsheviks carried a vote against insurrection, there were demonstrations on July 19 (July 6, old style). The Riga Soviet adopted the slogan, “All power to the soviets!” on that day, and Ekaterinburg a few days later. There was also a work stoppage in Ivanovo-Voznesensk. Clashes occurred then and in the days that followed in Riga, Nizhni-Novogorod, Kiev, and even Krasnoyarsk in Siberia. But it was not enough to make a proletarian revolution possible that summer.

Meanwhile in Petrograd, the workers went back to the factories. The only people demonstrating in the streets were the soldiers Kerensky had sent from the front. Gunfire and looting continued. Trotsky again states that machine gun fire from “experienced provocateurs” was aimed at the newly arrived troops in an effort to stir them up against the workers. On this occasion, unlike on similar occasions during the February Revolution, officers stood between the soldiers and the workers, who were not permitted to explain that they had not fired the guns.

July 19 – July 6, 1917: German Counterattack. A German counterattack opens an eight-mile breach in the Russian lines on the Southwestern Front at Tarnopol in Galicia (now part of the Ukraine). The German army recovered all the ground won by the Russian summer offensive and more besides.

Overnight July 19-20 – July 6-7, 1917: Kerensky Returns. That evening, War Minister Kerensky returns from army headquarters to Petrograd demanding that the Provisional Government take “decisive measures” against the Bolsheviks. By 2:00 a.m., the cabinet resolved to arrest and try the leaders of the “armed insurrection” supposed to have taken place a few days before. They were referring to the July Days.

The armed detachment sent to Lenin’s house did not find him there. He and Zinoviev were already in hiding.

Kerensky’s Government

July 20 – July 7, 1917: Kerensky Prime Minister. The Provisional Government takes steps to resolve the cabinet crisis precipitated by the resignation of the bourgeois-liberal Cadet ministers on July 15 – July 2. Some of the ministries that had belonged to the Cadets were given to right-socialist members of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets. The Menshevik Tseretilli, for example, was made Minister of the Interior; this put him in charge of what to do about the Bolsheviks.

Kerensky was rewarded, for his efforts if not his results, by being made Prime Minister. He also retained the Ministries of War and the Marine. The reshuffled cabinet (Trotsky designates it a “transitional government”) launched two lines of policy: the right-socialist Compromisers, in the absence of the Cadets, wanted to enact whatever parts of the program of the recent Soviet Congress they could; Kerensky sought to gratify his friends further to the right by breaking up centers of Bolshevik influence.

Meanwhile, a decree subjecting Lenin to arrest had already been issued. Likewise Zinoviev. According to Deutscher, Stalin’s biographer, Stalin took the leading role in the ensuing intrigue. Lenin, says Deutscher, thought perhaps he should turn himself in, to do otherwise would be considered an admission of guilt. Stalin pointed out to him the risks of putting himself in the hands of the Provisional Government. Stalin brought the matter to the Executive Committee, but found they were unable to guarantee Lenin’s safety. Instead Lenin took refuge in the home of the workman Alliluyev for a few days. There Stalin served as barber, removing Lenin’s characteristic beard and moustache. A few days later Alliluyev and Stalin guided Lenin to a suburban train station, whence he travelled undercover to suburban villages and eventually to Finland. Alliluyev later became Stalin’s father in law.

Trotsky omits this, saying instead that from his hiding place, Lenin sent to the Inquiry Commission of the Soviet to ask for a meeting. Lenin and Zinoviev waited all day at the agreed place, but the Soviet’s representatives never appeared.

July 20-21 – July 7-8, 1917: War News from Tarnopol. News of the successful German counterattack at Tarnopol comes to Petrograd. Beginning the next day, the right-wing “patriotic” press printed everything it could find out about the attack, including the designations and positions of the Russian units involved – a serious breach of military secrecy. Not satisfied with this, the press began to exaggerate the disaster, the better to shift the blame from the Provisional Government to the Bolsheviks.

On July 20 – July 7, the summer offensive on the Western Front began, too late to save the Southwestern Front. On July 21 – July 8, the summer offensive on the Northern Front began, without changing that result. That same day, General Kornilov, commander of the Southwestern Front, gave orders to fire at retreating troops.

Beginning July 21 – July 8, 1917: Transitional Government in Action. Once formed, the transitional government pursue two lines of action. As Trotsky does not give dates for some of their actions, I’ve simply made the lists that follow.

Actions to suppress Bolshevik influence:

·         Breaking up the militant formations of the Petrograd garrison, including the Machine Gun regiment. It seemed like a good idea, but many among the tens of thousands of troops sent to the front as replacements were Bolsheviks advanced in party discipline and theory. They proved to be influential.

·         Outlawing processions in the streets and disarming the workers

·         Ordering the Kronstadt garrison to turn over Midshipman Raskolnikov and other leaders of the July Days

·         Arresting Bolshevik and left-Social Revolutionary leaders in the Baltic Fleet

Actions to realize the program of the Soviet Congress:

·         On July 21 – July 8, issuing a declaration concerning, as Trotsky says, “a collection of democratic commonplaces”

July 22 – July 9, 1917: The Government of Salvation. The Menshevik Dan, citing fears of a counter-revolutionary military dictatorship, offers a three-part resolution in the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets:

·         That the revolution is in danger.

·         That the Provisional Government is the “Salvation of the Revolution.”

·         That therefore this government should have “unlimited powers.”

It passed the Central Executive unanimously with only the Bolsheviks abstaining.

On this day, the summer offensive on the Rumanian Front began. Rumanian troops supported the Russian 4^th Army in the attack, which had to be thrown back by a force of mixed nationalities commanded by the German General Mackensen. Meanwhile, the German counterattack on the Southwestern Front was already a “catastrophe” for the Russian 11^th Army, according to its commissars. Its commander, General Kornilov, gave orders to shoot retreating troops.

July 23 – July 10, 1917: A Visit from the Junkers. The offices of the Menshevik party receive the same treatment (from the same people) that the Bolsheviks suffered a few days before.

July 24 – July 11, 1917: Lenin Spirited Away. Lenin, shorn of his beard and moustache, is escorted by Stalin and the workman Allilulev to a suburban train station, whence he eventually makes his way to Finland.

It became Stalin’s job to maintain liaison with Lenin while he was in hiding.

July 25 – July 12, 1917: Decrees of the Provisional Government. The right- and left-leaning factions in the Provisional Government both gain legislative victories on this day. To please his generals, Kerensky put through a decree restoring the death penalty at the front. The left, still fumbling to formulate an agrarian policy, managed to put through a half-hearted measure limiting the sales of land. It pleased no-one.

Kerensky also removed General Polotsev from command of the Petrograd garrison at about this time, giving one explanation to the left in the Provisional Government and another to his friends on the right.

July 26 – July 13, 1917: Bolsheviks Unseated. The Menshevik Dan carries a resolution in the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets providing, “Any person indicted by the courts is deprived of membership in the Executive Committee until sentence is pronounced.” This of course would apply only to Bolsheviks, and specifically to Lenin and Zinoviev. Kerensky took this opportunity to shut down the Bolshevik press, which had resurfaced after the smashing of Pravda’s printing presses at the end of the July Days.

The Bolshevik press no longer existing, Trotsky prevailed on the author Maxim Gorky’s paper to print an open letter to the government. He said the decree under which Lenin and others were subject to arrest applied with equal force to himself. We’ll see the result in the sequel.

Week of July 26 – July 13, 1917: The State Duma is Heard From. At about this time, the Provisional Committee of the State Duma passes a resolution denouncing the “Government of Salvation.” The State Duma was an institutional relic of tsarism; though it had been democratically elected, it had no official role in the dual government. Nevertheless the resolution was enough to bring the cabinet down. All the ministers handed in their portfolios to Kerensky, who now became the sole focal point of the government.

Kerensky apparently suffered the ministers to continue in their posts for the time being, but took advantage of the situation to negotiate with the Cadets for the formation of a new governing coalition. The Cadets, guided by Miliukov, laid down four conditions in their opening position:

·         Ministers responsible only “to their own conscience”

·         Unity with the Entente

·         Discipline in the armies

·         Social reforms to be decided by the Constituent Assembly, that is, only after it had been convened

While this was going on, the right-socialist Ministers Tseretilli, of Interior, and Peshekhonov, of Food Supply, took action, or at any rate made pronouncements, designed to protect landlords from the peasants who wanted their lands. Chernov, the Social Revolutionary Minister of Agriculture, resigned when accusations of German contacts shifted to him.

July 29 – July 16, 1917: Kerensky to the Front. Kerensky, now Prime Minister as well as War Minister, returns to the front to confer with his generals. Commander-in-Chief General Brussilov reported the “complete failure” of the offensive. On the bright side, some 90,000 replacements were expected at the front once the militant formations of the Petrograd garrison were disbanded.

Former Commander-in-Chief Alexiev wanted to abolish the soldiers’ committees elected by enlisted troops (to the exclusion of officers) at the company and regimental levels. These committees had made important contributions representing the peasants (most enlisted men in the Russian armies came from the peasantry) in the soviets. In this connection, Brussilov, oddly, claimed that officers are “real proletarians.”

General Kornilov, a Cossack by birth, was not present, as the German advance against his command on the Southwestern Front continued. But before returning to Petrograd, Prime Minister Kerensky sacked General Brussilov and appointed General Kornilov commander-in-chief. Kornilov put conditions on his acceptance of the appointment:

·         Responsibility only to “his own conscience and the people”

·         Power to appoint senior commanders

·         Restoration of the death penalty in the rear. It had already been restored “at the front,” over soldiers in direct contact with the enemy.

The condition about responsibility troubled Kerensky; it made no mention of responsibility to the government. Finding he couldn’t fire Kornilov, Kerensky extracted an oral statement to the effect that by “the people,” the general meant the “Provisional Government.”

July 31 – July 18, 1917: Cadet Demands. Prime Minister Kerensky accedes to the conditions the Cadets imposed on their participation in a new coalition government. But then the Cadets made a new one: The government’s declaration of July 21 – July 8 (“democratic commonplaces” according to Trotsky) was unacceptable to them, and they walked away from the negotiation.

Also on this day, the socialist-majority Provisional Government issued a decree dissolving the Finnish Seim (i.e., their parliament), in which left-socialists dominated. They also issued a threat to punish railroad workers for irregularities in the operation of the railroads. Further, to commemorate the third anniversary of the start of the war, the ministers sent a nice note to Russia’s allies in the Entente, mentioning how the government had just put down an insurrection caused by German intrigues. All these actions revealed the weakness of the right-socialist Compromisers in the government during a time when the counter-revolution was gaining strength.

August 3 – July 21, 1917: Kerensky Resigns. Aware that he occupied an “indispensable” position between the right-socialist Compromisers and the bourgeois-liberal Cadets, but impatient with the negotiations, Kerensky resigns as Prime Minister and leaves Petrograd. For the second time, the right-socialist ministers remaining in the government turned in their portfolios. They hoped Kerensky would agree, if given unlimited discretion, to return as Prime Minister. The Cadets felt they needed Kerensky too, and proved to be agreeable to this solution.

August 6 – July 24, 1917: Second Coalition Formed. After an all-night debate, the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets agrees to give Kerensky “unconditional and unlimited” powers. For their part, the Cadets agreed they too would join the government. Kerensky used the powers thus granted to appoint a ministry, the Second Coalition Government, to suit himself alone and without further negotiation.

Though the majority of ministers were Menshevik or Social Revolutionary, the ministry was dominated by Kerensky and his bourgeois friends. Chernov, the Social Revolutionary who had resigned a few days earlier after being accused of contacts with the Germans, was reappointed Minister of Agriculture.

One of Kerensky’s first acts was to arrest Trotsky and Lunacharsky. Trotsky had publicly declared this was the logical thing for the Provisional Government to do (with respect to himself), as he was as “implacable an enemy” to the government as Lenin or the other Bolsheviks who had been indicted after the July Days.

August 8 – July 26, 1917: Sixth Congress of the Bolshevik Party Convenes. The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party assembles its Sixth Congress in Petrograd “semi-legally,” as Trotsky says. The Central Committee elected by this Congress later voted for the armed insurrection now known as the October Revolution.

About the first thing the Congress did was pass unanimously a resolution that Lenin and the other Bolsheviks who had been indicted should not turn themselves in. Stalin had argued they should, but only “If, however, power is wielded by an authority which can safeguard our comrades against violence and is fair-dealing at least to some extent ....” But no-one believed these conditions would ever be met. Lenin himself was still in hiding, so the Congress named him “honorary” chairman instead.

The report on party organization revealed membership had tripled, to 240,000, in the previous three months.

The main business of the Congress was to rethink the party’s program in light of the July Days and other recent events. For example, since the Compromisers had led the Petrograd Soviet into complicity with the counter-revolutionary tendencies of the Kerensky ministry, the Bolsheviks dropped the slogan “All Power to the Soviets!” The Congress also adopted a resolution identifying the conditions under which an insurrection would be the correct response. Lenin’s underground writings, and communications through a secret liaison, usually Stalin, contributed to the result.

The Inter-District Organization of United Social-Democrats or Mezhraiontsy (sometimes translated “Interdistrictites,” though I have been calling them “Trotskyites” after their most prominent member) joined the Bolshevik party while the Congress sat. The Mezhraiontsy had at last dropped their project of union between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks; the latter were now deeply involved with the Compromisers. Among the prominent social democrats who then became Bolsheviks were (the links lead to Wikipedia) Leon Trotsky, Adolf Joffe, Anatoly Lunacharsky, Moisei Uritsky, David Riazanov, V. Volodarsky, Lev Karakhan, Dmitry Manuilsky, and Sergey Ezhov (Tsederbaum).

Early August (old style) also saw the convocation of the bourgeois-aligned Congress and Trade and Industry and Congress of Provincial Commissars. The latter consisted mainly of Cadets, while the opening speaker at the former happened indiscreetly to mention the “bony hand of hunger” in a tirade against taxes on commerce. As this was a not very thinly veiled threat of factory lock-outs, Trotsky says, the phrase “entered...into the political dictionary of the revolution,” and eventually “cost the capitalists dear.”

August 9 – July 27, 1917: Bolshevik Influence. Volodarsky reports to the Bolshevik Congress that the party has “colossal…unlimited influence” in the factories. As the power of the Central Executive Committee atrophied under the Compromisers, this was to become a valuable resource in the October Revolution.

Early August – End of July, 1917: State Conference Hatched. At about the end of July (old style), the Provisional Government announces it will hold a State Conference in Moscow some two weeks hence. As we’ll see, the event was managed to suit Kerensky’s theatrical sense of politics and his role in it.

Mid-August – Early August, 1917: The State and Revolution. Lenin drafts the preface to The State and Revolution while in exile in Finland. It seems as though someone sent him the manuscript – he had left it behind in Switzerland the previous March – via Stockholm. When he got it in July, he wrote Kamenev: “Entre nous. If they bump me off, I ask you to publish my little note-book….” It was not published until after the October Revolution.

Proscription and exile gave him a chance to substantially complete the book. It was meant to help the proletariat understand its coming role in the revolutionary state, leading to the withering away of the state entirely.

August 16 – August 3, 1917. The Congress Elects the Central Committee. Last on the agenda of the Sixth Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. is the election of the party’s Central Committee. Lenin was made chairman; Stalin, Kamenev, and Zinoviev were members. Two former Mezhraiontsys also sat on the committee, Trotsky for foreign affairs and Uritsky for interior affairs.

Only one vote out of 134 was cast against Lenin. This (seemingly the same) individual was joined by one or two others in voting against Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Trotsky.

August 17 – August 4, 1917: The Narrow Composition. The “narrow composition” selected by the Bolshevik Central Committee takes office. It was apparently an executive committee that included only those members of the Central Committee who were not in hiding (Lenin, Zinoviev) or in prison (Trotsky). It was dissolved October 23 -October 10 before the October Revolution began.

August 19 – August 6, 1917: The Counter-Revolution Mobilizes. The Union of the Twelve Cossack Armies passes a resolution against removing Kornilov from command. The League of Cavaliers of St. George passed a similar resolution during this time, one that included the threat of union with the Cossacks.

On the same day a letter appeared in the party paper of the Social Revolutionaries detailing the insults and abuses, including arbitrary executions, of the junkers (army officers drawn from the rural aristocracy and military preparatory academies) at and behind the front. All three incidents reflect the mobilization of the military forces of the counter-revolution.

Meanwhile the narrow composition of the Bolshevik Central Committee selected the party’s Secretariat from its membership. And before the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets, Kamenev advocated attendance at the Stockholm Conference. But the previous April, considering it an instrument of imperialism and not internationalism, the Bolshevik party conference had voted against participation. Though Kamenev stated he was speaking only for himself, this was nevertheless considered a breach of party discipline. Lenin’s response came from exile in Finland about ten days later, strongly insisting that Kamenev had no right to speak for himself and in contradiction to the party’s democratically determined position.

August 20 – August 7, 1917: Black Hundreds Freed. The Provisional Government frees members of the Black Hundreds, right-wing nationalist and tsarist (not to mention anti-Semitic) organizations outlawed by the February Revolution. These organizations, established during the Revolution of 1905 for the support of the tsar, had since been in decline. Releasing them constituted another step towards mobilizing the forces of the counter-revolution.

At about this time, the government postponed the convocation of the promised Constituent Assembly – again – this time to November 28 (old style). They also sent the tsar and his family to Tobolsk in the Urals, well out of the way of a tsarist counter-revolution.

Lenin’s Insurrection

October 5 – September 22, 1917: Bolsheviks Will Attend. Riazanov, a Marxist of long standing, announces that the Bolsheviks will attend the Pre-Parliament in order to “expose all attempts at a new coalition with the bourgeoisie.”

Meanwhile, delegates of the disbanded Democratic Convention brought the question of convening the Congress of Soviets before the Central Executive Committee. The Bolsheviks demanded that it convene within two weeks, otherwise they would call their own congress of delegates from the Moscow and Petrograd soviets, where they had majorities. The Central Executive agreed to call the All Russian Congress on October 20 (November 2, new style).

October 6 – September 23, 1917: Bolsheviks Will Not Attend. In a letter, Lenin argues forcefully in favor of a Bolshevik boycott of the Pre-Parliament. Not only would participation send a mixed message to the party’s adherents about the goals of the party, it would mean working in the wrong direction. The party should be working where it has strength, in the soviets, factory committees, trade unions, soldiers committees; not in a forum got up by the Compromisers and bourgeoisie to cover up their weakness.

This view of the matter gained acceptance within the party as the meeting of the Pre-Parliament approached.

October 7 – September 24, 1917: Railroad Strike. The frustration of railroad workers over a long-awaited raise boils over into a strike. Nothing had been done about the raise since the February Revolution. With numerous railroad lines paralyzed, the government offered concessions a few days later.

The strike was symptomatic of increasing difficulty with industrial production and in the food supply. The overall effect was to shift the railroad workers to the left. 

Meanwhile the Bolshevik Central Committee appointed Sverdlov to monitor the Central Executive Committee’s attitude towards the Congress of Soviets and to administer the party’s campaign for the selection of delegates.

October 8 – September 25, 1917: The Last Coalition and the New Soviet. Kerensky announces a new coalition government, destined to be the last one and consisting in large measure of substantial capitalists. The Cadet Konovalov was made Kerensky’s second in command, and given the portfolio for Commerce and Industry. Kerensky also recruited the president of the Moscow stock exchange and the president of the Moscow Military Industrial Committee to the cabinet. Tereshchenko, who drew his wealth from the sugar trade, remained as Foreign Minister. Several Mensheviks held portfolios, but none of them had been of any importance in the Petrograd Soviet. A Social Revolutionary was made Minister of Agriculture.

Kerensky also mended fences with the Entente, keeping their preferred ambassador to London and naming a new one, a Cadet, to Paris.

On the same day, the Petrograd Soviet elected Trotsky as its President. Then it named a new Executive Committee consisting of thirteen Bolsheviks, six Social Revolutionaries, and three Mensheviks. Trotsky introduced and passed a resolution calling on the coalition to resign: the soon to be convened All-Russian Congress of Soviets would “create a genuinely revolutionary government.”

Thus the Bolsheviks continued to be quite open about their claims on the state power. The step missing from Trotsky’s resolution, of course, is armed insurrection.

Trotsky also adduces evidence about the deterioration of Kerensky’s mental condition during this time. Miliukov, for example, called it “psychic neurasthenia.” He later wrote that Kerensky’s friends had observed him pass from “extreme failure of energy” to “extreme excitement under the influence of drugs” during the course of a day. Kerensky was under the treatment of his own Minister of Public Welfare, Kishkin, professionally a psychiatrist, politically a Cadet.

October 9 – September 26, 1917: Second Thoughts. The Central Executive Committee of the Soviets discovers it would be impolitic to hold the Congress of Soviets as early as two weeks thence. The compromisist parties saw they could not campaign effectively for the Constituent Assembly if they had to be campaigning for the Congress of Soviets as well.

The Menshevik Dan moved for a delay. Trotsky responded for the Bolsheviks that if the Central Executive would not call the Congress under its constitution, the Bosheviks would call it on behalf of the revolution. The motion carried, for a delay until October 20 (November 2, new style); the result will be seen in the sequel.

October 9-10 – September 26-27, 1917: September Theses. Lenin publishes “Tasks of the Revolution,“ a kind of September version of the April Theses, in Rabochy Put. There are seven tasks; though some of them address issues already addressed in the April Theses, they all take account of developments in the interim.

The first two tasks lead to forming the new revolutionary state: all power must pass to the workers, soldiers and peasants through their representatives in the soviets; no compromise with the bourgeoisie or their political apparatus is possible.

The third reiterates the party’s war policy against indemnities, annexation, and defensism. Lenin lays out specific actions against contingencies during the lead up to, and after, the insurrection.

The agrarian policy of the Bolsheviks does not change, but acquires new force in light of the inaction of the Compromisers and the peasant revolt.

The fifth task recognizes that the progress of the revolution and the soviets has given the workers more ability to control the means of production. Therefore this, not as in April just the development of the soviets, becomes the task.

The last two tasks offer measures for combating the counter-revolution, something that had already been done successfully once with the defeat of Kornilov.

On the 10^th (September 27, new style), Lenin, still anxious about putting off the insurrection until the Congress of Soviets could be convened some two weeks thence, wrote to Smilga, the President of the Finnish Regional Committee and a member of the Central Committee. Lenin let Smilga know that the revolutionary troops in Finland and the Baltic Fleet might be called upon to advance on Petrograd. He asked Smilga do to a number of other things, both in the political open and underground. One, interestingly, was to prepare identification papers for him in the name of Konstantin Petrovich Ivanov. That’s how he signed the letter.

October 10 – September 27, 1917: Resolution in Reval. The soviets of Reval (now Tallinn), the capital of Estonia and the next line of defense if the Germans should decide to march on Petrograd, demand that the Pre-Parliament disband and that a congress of soviets be called to form the government. This was one of a number of similar resolutions in a battle of resolutions between the Bolsheviks and the Compromisers on the Central Executive Committee.

On another front, the resolution also demanded that the soviets must agree to troop transfers. This policy would prevent, for example, the government from transferring troops loyal to the revolution out of the Petrograd garrison. It was to become an issue as the Bolsheviks prepared for insurrection. In theory, Trotsky observes, the maintenance and deployment of armed forces is a fundamental right of the state. But the policy the resolution advocates had been a feature of the dual government since the February Revolution. Now it would become a feature of preparation for insurrection.

After October 10 – September 27, 1917: Northern Regional Conference of Soviets. In another “well calculated blow” (according to Trotsky) in the battle over the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, the Bolsheviks arrange for a conference of soviets of the northern region. This was a region of Bolshevik strength; the soviets of Petrograd, its suburbs, Moscow, Kronstadt, Helsinki, and Reval would send delegates, to arrive on October 13 (October 26, new style), a week before the declared date for the Congress of Soviets.

October 12-October 20 – September 29-October 7, 1917: Operation Albion. Germany launches an amphibious operation to secure the West Estonian Archipelago. These islands lay at the entrance to the Gulf of Riga; they were a stepping stone from Riga (taken on August 21, old style) to Petrograd. Russian resistance ended shortly after the naval Battle of Moon Sound.

Wikipedia has details on the operation, including a map.

October 14 – October 1, 1917: Lenin on the State Power. Lenin’s pamphlet “Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?” is published. This detailed argument starts by quoting statements in the bourgeois and compromisist press to the effect that the Bolsheviks could not hold the power, even that the best way to get rid of them would be to let them try and see them fail. Lenin disputes the claims made to support these conclusions.

For example, to the claim the proletariat "will not be able technically to lay hold of the state apparatus," Lenin replies, first, why bother? The existing state apparatus, that of the Provisional Government, is broken and useless and deserves rather to be smashed up altogether. And second, what do you suppose the soviets are for? They are the new state apparatus, closer to the people and more democratic. They were already at work, and, I might add, the only difference between the existing power of the soviets and “All Power to the Soviets!” was one of degree.

Knowing that after an insurrection the Bolsheviks would be faced by the question of state power, Lenin took some of the time of his enforced exile to continue his work on The State and Revolution, an analysis of Marxist texts on the evolution of the state through and after a revolution. When he wrote the pamphlet, he said the book would hopefully be available soon, but it was not published until after the October Revolution. 

October 16 – October 3, 1917: A Moscow Resolution. The Bolshevik Central Committee learns of a resolution of the Moscow Regional Bureau condemning them for irresolution on the question of insurrection. Trotsky says that “beyond a doubt” Lenin was behind the resolution and its “bitter” tone.

The committee left the matter on the table for a time; the result will be seen in the sequel.

October 17 – October 4, 1917: Battle of Moon Sound. When they observe German minesweepers attempting to clear the minefields protecting the passage into the Gulf of Riga, the Baltic Fleet attacks, hoping to forestall the German amphibious assault on Moon Island. German battleships exchanged fire with the Russian battleship Slava, which was so badly damaged it had to be scuttled. Though seven German minesweepers were sunk, the German fleet gained control of the sound. This led to the final success of Operation Albion, and put another scare into Petrograd.

Wikipedia has details on the battle, including the timetable of engagements and a list of ships damaged or sunk.

The American journalist Reed says this was also the day the first number of Rabochy i Soldat (Worker and Soldier) was published.

October 18 – October 5, 1917: Change of Plans. The Bolshevik Central Committee votes, with only Kamenev dissenting, to reverse the decision of October 3 (September 20, old style) in favor of sending its delegates to the Pre-Parliament.

Beginning October 19 – October 6, 1917: Evacuate Petrograd? After the success of the German amphibious operation against the archipelago at the entrance to the Gulf of Riga, the government floats the idea of evacuating itself to Moscow. Naturally the forces responsible for the defense of Petrograd objected. On October 19^th (October 6, old style), the soldiers section of the Petrograd Soviet adopted Trotsky’s resolution calling on the government, if it could not defend the capital, either to make peace or step aside.

Neither did the government’s proposal gain any traction with the Compromisers on the Central Executive Committee, who were told that in the event of a move they would have to fend for themselves. For their part, the workers considered Petrograd their fortress.

Within a week’s time, and after a subsequent demand by the delegates of the Pre-Parliament, the government decided to stay in the Winter Palace and convene the Constituent Assembly in the Tauride Palace.

October 20 – October 7, 1917: Pre-Parliament Meets. As the delegates to the Council of the Republic, or Pre-Parliament, prepare to assemble, its President, the Social Revolutionary Avksentiev, visits with Trotsky to ask what is going to happen. (Rumors had been circulating about the Bolsheviks withdrawing.) Trotsky says he answered, “A mere nothing, a little shot from a pistol.”

Problems for the Pre-Parliament had appeared on the horizon. Kerensky said long before that the Provisional Government would determine its organization and staff in its own discretion. The new Coalition Government was now a fait accompli. So much for the resolution of the Democratic Conference reserving to its permanent body the sanction of those choices. Moreover, if they had their way, the Cadets would not give the Pre-Parliament legislative powers either. But they feared the powers of a constituent assembly even more, such was their standing among the mass of voters. Note that, at this point, both the Bolsheviks and the Cadets still supported, at least verbally, holding elections for a constituent assembly, an organization that would normally have powers to form a constitution.

The delegates expected at the Mariinsky Palace were aligned by party as follows:

·         120 Social Revolutionaries

·         60 Mensheviks

·         66 Bolsheviks

·         156 from the bourgeois parties, half of them Cadets.

Some of them may have noticed that the Bolshevik seat on the five-member praesidium went unoccupied.

Kerensky gave the opening speech. Though the government, he said, possessed “the fulness of power,” he was nevertheless willing to listen to “any genuinely valuable suggestion.” This was, of course, more polite than it was democratic.

Under rules of order adopted from the now-defunct State Duma, the Bolsheviks were accorded ten minutes to address the council. Trotsky began by questioning the purpose and composition of the Pre-Parliament. He accused the bourgeoisie of plotting to “quash the Constituent Assembly.”

Pleased with the response to this, Trotsky continued with his prepared text. He denounced the policies of the Provisional Government as effectively “compelling the masses to insurrection,” and the government’s proposal to abandon Petrograd to the Germans as a step in a “counter-revolutionary conspiracy.”

This got an even bigger reaction. Finally Trotsky announced the withdrawal of the Bolsheviks from the Pre-Parliament. In his peroration he warned, “Petrograd is in danger! The revolution is in danger! The people are in danger! …We address ourselves to the people. All power to the soviets!” And he and the other Bolsheviks left the hall, leaving behind only a few as observers.

Foreign Minister Tereshchenko telegraphed the embassies of the Entente that the withdrawal of the Bolsheviks was “a mere scandal.” In his history of the revolution, the Cadet Miliukov more insightfully writes that the Bolsheviks spoke and acted “like people feeling a power behind them.”

There followed in the Pre-Parliament three days of discussion on the war. The American journalist Reed says he heard Martov speak in favor of at least raising the “question of peace,” but the debate ended lamely with a request that the Pre-Parliament be included in the delegation to the coming Paris Conference of the Entente. They planned to send the Menshevik Skobelev with instructions: no indemnities, no annexations, no secret diplomacy; neutralization of canals and straights, including those of Panama and Suez; gradual disarmament. Believing Skobelev would be ignored, the Cadets made no objection to these instructions.

This was also the day that General Cheremissov, the commander of the Northern Front, summoned representatives of the Petrograd Soviet to a meeting at Pskov. At lot was to happen before the meeting could take place. Meanwhile Cheremissov was in nominal command of the Petrograd garrison.

October 20 – October 7, 1917: “The Crisis is Ripe” Lenin publishes “The Crisis Is Ripe” in Rabochy Put on this day. Lenin’s articles had been anticipating the vote of the Central Committee on insurrection for some weeks. This particular article, among other things, draws a connection between the call for insurrection and both the agrarian and nationalities questions.

The Bolshevik policy on the agrarian question dated back to Lenin’s April Theses. As against the failure of either the Provisional Government or the Compromisers to act, he argued, it remains the correct policy for joining the workers’ insurrection to the on-going peasant revolt.

The importance of the nationalities question to the timing of the insurrection, Lenin also argued, is illustrated by the vote of their delegates in the Democratic Conference. The nationalities were second only to the labor unions in voting against coalition at the conference.

But these questions were secondary in Lenin’s mind to the question of the “world working-class revolution.” Trotsky says this had always been Lenin’s point of departure. Even though capitalism in Russia lagged behind Europe and America, the crisis had come in Russia first. The ripeness of the crisis meant precisely that the Russian insurrection should not be held back, lest the opportunity pass forever and for workers everywhere.

In Lenin’s opinion this meant not waiting for the Congress of Soviets, still two weeks off. He thought the forces in Finland, where the soviets and the Baltic Fleet were already in a state equivalent to insurrection, would be a sufficient reinforcement for those already in Petrograd and Moscow. Moreover, his doubts about parliamentary struggle and the ability of such institutions to bring about world proletarian revolution applied not only to the Pre-Parliament, but to the Congress of Soviets as well.

And then, to emphasize his point (in a portion of the letter not intended for publication), Lenin resigned from the Central Committee. Trotsky believes he can explain this action. Bolshevik party discipline called for members to accept and support the democratically decided line of the party. As a member of the Central Committee, Lenin was already approaching the limit set by this rule. If he resigned, perhaps, he would be freer to advocate what he thought was the correct line on insurrection. It was another instance of the masses being to the left of the party.

But the resignation was not accepted and nothing more came of it. Meanwhile Lenin’s wife, Krupskaya, travelled to the party’s district meetings and read this and his other letters to the rank and file.

October 21 – October 8, 1917: Lenin Agitates. In an address to the Bolshevik delegates of the Northern Regional Conference of Soviets, Lenin argues for the line he took in “The Crisis Is Ripe.” He did not want to put off the insurrection until the Congress of Soviets, still almost two weeks away. He wanted the revolutionary soldiers and sailors based in Finland to make “an immediate move on Petrograd.”

Once again, Trotsky says, as in April with his theses, Lenin had placed himself in isolation, ahead and to the left of the party and its leading organ, the Central Committee.

October 22 – October 9, 1917: Military Revolutionary Committee. Reacting to the German occupation of the Western Estonian Archipelago, the Compromisers in the Petrograd Soviet move for the creation of a Committee of Revolutionary Defense in the capital. The initial responsibility of the committee would be to decide questions about transfers from the Petrograd garrison to the front, now nearer to the capital than at any previous time in the war.

This solved a political problem for the Bolsheviks. How could the Soviet, which they controlled, refuse reinforcements from the garrison without appearing to have betrayed the soldiers at the front? The motion by the Compromisers put the onus of the decision on them.

The Compromisers were nevertheless a little surprised when the Bolsheviks supported the motion. A bit more parliamentary work would be required before the committee became a reality. In the end, it became a formidable tool, Trotsky says the “chief lever,” of the October Revolution.

At the same meeting Trotsky gave his report on the withdrawal of the Bolsheviks from the Pre-Parliament. He concluded, pretty unambiguously, “Long live the direct and open struggle for revolutionary power!”

October 23 – October 10, 1917: Northern Regional Conference. The Northern Regional Conference of Soviets opens in Petrograd under the presidency of Ensign Krylenko. Antonov had organized the meeting for the Bolshevik Central Committee – not coincidentally, as he was also working on the Military Revolutionary Committee.

Trotsky read the political report. The main issue had become the government’s renewed efforts to transfer revolutionary troops from the Petrograd garrison. But this question was connected to the question of power. By their votes, “the people are trusting us and authorizing us to seize the power.” The question of power had therefore become something for the whole body of soviets to decide. The conference adopted a resolution to this effect unanimously, with only three abstentions.

The military resources available to the Bolsheviks made themselves heard. A representative of the Latvian sharpshooters promised 40,000 rifles for the defense of the Congress of Soviets. The powerful radios of battleships in the Baltic Fleet broadcast appeals to “overcome all obstacles” to the convocation of the Congress. Smolny was openly the center of efforts to procure weapons wherever possible.

October 23 – October 10, 1917: The Vote for Insurrection. At the apartment of the Menshevik Sukhanov, his wife, a Bolshevik, receives a quorum of her party’s Central Committee. Twelve of the twenty-one members attended, including Lenin, disguised with a wig and spectacles, and shorn of his characteristic beard. The meeting lasted ten hours; Sukhanov’s wife served her guests bread, sausage, and tea “for reinforcement,” Trotsky says.

Sukhanov’s wife had encouraged him not to tire himself by the trip home from Smolny that evening. But one wonders if he missed the sausages or the household funds required to procure them.

Sverdlov opened the meeting in the usual way with a report on organization. He focused, apparently by previous arrangement with Lenin, on suspicious activities at the front, including an effort to surround the revolutionary garrison at Minsk with Cossack cavalry, and communication between the headquarters of the Minsk garrison and the general staff.

With that Lenin began to marshal his arguments. He spoke earnestly and extemporaneously; it was time to put an end to the waverings on the committee. The question came to a vote sooner than Lenin might have expected: ten to two in favor of insurrection. For the balance of the ten-hour meeting, one after another, the members favoring insurrection tried unsuccessfully to persuade the dissenters, Kamenev and Zinoviev, to change their minds. 

The resolution itself summarizes, somewhat elliptically, the arguments Lenin used and the committee accepted. Lenin wrote it out, Trotsky says, with the “gnawed end of a pencil” on a child’s notebook paper. The reasons given for immediate action begin, in Lenin’s preferred order of precedence, with the international situation:

·         Perceived progress in the “world-wide socialist revolution” combined with imperialist threats to its leading edge, the Russian Revolution

·         Kerensky’s machinations to abandon the military stronghold of the revolution, Petrograd, to the Germans

·         The scale and intensity of the peasant revolt

·         Bolshevik majorities in elections to the soviets, etc.

·         Counter-revolutionary preparations, including renewed efforts to break up the Petrograd garrison

Lenin might have added another argument he’d used before, that the people might lose confidence in the Bolsheviks just as they had in the Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, and sink back into indifference and despair. At any rate, the resolution says, “…all this places the armed insurrection on the order of the day.” Note that the resolution did not set a specific date for the insurrection. Trotsky recalled that Lenin wanted Kerensky to be deposed before the Congress of Soviets was to assemble, and so October 15^th (October 28, new style) was discussed and tentatively set.

The resolution concludes by putting the onus of action on the party, specifically for organizing the Northern Regional Conference of Soviets and for resisting the break-up of the Petrograd garrison.

Reed recounts a different story about how the vote was taken, one that has verisimilitude but not verity. He says the vote was taken twice, at first going against insurrection. Then a “rough workman” arose and warned the committee not to allow the destruction of the soviets. If they did, “we’re through with you!” Then another vote favorable to insurrection supposedly took place. Of course the public were not invited to this secret session of the Central Committee. But the rumor Reed picked up epitomizes the ripeness of the crisis, and the risk that the people were growing, again in the words of the committee, “tired of words and resolutions.”

The seven-member political bureau selected by the committee at this meeting, because it included Zinoviev and Kamenev and because they immediately tried to stir up opposition to the resolution, was still-born – it never met.

The Bolsheviks also took a decision to publish a paper, Beydnoth, addressed to the peasantry. Though the Social Revolutionaries were the strongest vote getters in rural areas, Lenin saw an opportunity to bring the peasants over to the party once the workers’ insurrection caught up with the peasant revolt.

Besides this, Trotsky gave a speech to a conference of Petrograd factory committees that day, calling for the workers to “break through [the] wall” between them and the peasants. On Trotsky’s motion, the conference created the “Worker to Peasant” program, under which workers would fabricate farm implements from the waste and scrap metal of the factories and distribute them in the provinces. But this was not the real solution to the peasants’ problem; the effort was primarily a form of agitation. The problem could only be addressed directly when the workers controlled the means of production.

Meanwhile, now that the harvest was passing, the peasant revolt was growing.

October 24 – October 11, 1917: Zinoviev and Kamenev State Their Views. Evidence that the party was not unanimously behind the resolution of the Bolshevik Central Committee for insurrection is not long to appear. Naturally Zinoviev and Kamenev spoke up first. Other members of the Central Committee who were not at the meeting of the 10^th (October 23, new style) joined in their reservations. Volodarsky also did.

On this day. Zinoviev and Kamenev circulated a lengthy pamphlet calling insurrection an unjustified gamble; the Bolsheviks, relying on their strength in the soviets, ought to work as an opposition party in the Constituent Assembly instead. They argued that the “mood” of the masses did not match that of the July Days, and that Bolshevik strength in the electorate would continue to grow.

But Lenin was not trying to win an election; he was trying to win a revolution. He and the members of the committee who had voted for insurrection did not want to re-establish the dual government in a new parliamentary body, and there carry on the debate until the people lost interest and gave up. On the contrary he thought “[t]he success of the Russian and world revolution depends upon a two or three days’ struggle.” This was his understanding of the mood of the people and the corresponding consequences of delay. And, as to the Russian Revolution at least, Lenin was right.

Meanwhile, the commander of the Northern Front, General Cheremissov, demanded a reinforcement of troops from the Petrograd garrison. In response, the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet named the Military Revolutionary Committee and charged it with deciding questions of this kind. A left Social Revolutionary, Lazimir, headed the committee. His instructions were such that the regulations he was to draft would serve armed insurrection and the defense of the capital equally well.