Red October Approaches

 

One hundred years ago this week, plus three, the pace of events leading up to the October Revolution picked up, so much so that I will post weekly instead of day-by-day during this time.

October 25 – October 12, 1917: Regulations for Insurrection. Draft regulations from the newly formed Military Revolutionary Committee, useful for an insurrection but with ample precedents since the February Revolution, were approved by the Petrograd Soviet. Read  about it here.

October 28 – October 15, 1917: Reed’s Interviews at Smolny. The American journalist John Reed, author of Ten Days That Shook the World, interviewed Kamenev and Volodarsky, members of the Bolshevik Central Committee, among other things about the coming Congress of Soviets. They did discuss the transfer of state power to the soviets, but not, of course, the manner in which it actually was to come about. Read about it here.

October 29 – October 16, 1917: Why the Delay? Lenin, in exile and therefore not fully informed about the state of things in the capital, called a meeting of the Bolshevik Central Committee and ventured into the suburbs of Petrograd to attend it. Having received assurances that things were moving with such speed and force that the insurrection could hardly be stopped, he moved a resolution of “vigorous preparations.” It prevailed, again, with only Kamenev and Zinoviev dissenting. Read about it here.

October 30 – October 17, 1917: Congress Postponed. Right-socialists on the Central Executive Committee of the soviets put off the planned national Congress of Soviets by five days, hoping to increase their share of the vote during the interim. The tactic backfired: the Bolsheviks were the gainers by it. Read about it here.

October 31 – October 18, 1917: The Garrison Conference. In a development that would prove to be decisive, the units of the Petrograd garrison nearly unanimously adopted the policy that orders not countersigned by the Petrograd Soviet would not be obeyed. This of course left the right-socialists of the Central Executive Committee of the soviets out of the loop. For the Petrograd Soviet was dominated by the Bolsheviks. Read about it here.

You can read the whole chapter on the Correlation of Forces here, and the chapter on the Day of the Petrograd Soviet here. Or read the whole story from the beginning by following this link.

Democratic Conference of the Soviets

One hundred years ago yesterday, plus three, the right-socialists who had associated themselves with Prime Minister Kerensky’s directory convened a national “Democratic Conference” of the soviets. They hoped to recover what they were losing in the local Petrograd Soviet, which earlier that week had voted to confirm the Bolshevik resolution calling for a government of the soviets, that is, not of Kerensky, the bourgeois-liberal Cadets, and the right-socialist compromisers.

 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.

 

Bolsheviks Unseated

One hundred years ago today, plus three, the post-July Days reaction against the Bolsheviks got the length of booting party members off the Executive Committee of the Soviets.

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

The July Days

One hundred years ago, plus two (as of Tuesday the 16th), demonstrations that would lead both to a new government and prime minister and to an attempt to suppress the Bolshevik party began in Petrograd. Read about it here.

Or read the whole story from the beginning by following this link.

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.

Kornilov’s Insurrection

August 30 – August 17, 1917: Kornilov’s Demands. Prime Minister Kerensky orders Commissar Savinkov to draft a law for putting General Kornilov’s demands into effect. The demands were already on the record of the State Conference in Moscow:

·         Militarizing the railroads and factories

·         Permitting the death penalty in the rear

·         Putting the Petrograd garrison under Kornilov’s command

·         Abolishing the soldiers’ committees

August 31 – August 18, 1917: Against the Death Penalty. The Petrograd Soviet demands abolition of the death penalty by a vote of 900 to 4. The four voting against the resolution were among the right-socialists most closely tied to the Compromisers and the Provisional Government: Tseretilli, Cheidze, Dan, and Lieber.

September 1 – August 19, 1917: Breach in the Front. The Germans take the offensive, breaching the Russian lines of the Northern Front at Ikskul. (This must have been on the road to Riga, the capital of Latvia, but it appears the place no longer exists.)

Kornilov took this occasion to again demand personal control of the Petrograd garrison.

September 2 – August 20, 1917: Kornilov Orders Movements. A corps of cavalry Kornilov had positioned on the railroad net south of Petrograd before the State Conference edges nearer the capital. A formation of mountaineers from the Caucasus, called the Savage Division because, it was said, they didn’t care whom they killed, had joined them.

Another cavalry division, of Cossacks, was in place north of Petrograd, near the Finnish frontier.

An election to the city Duma of Petrograd took place on this day. The Social Revolutionaries polled 200,000 votes, some 375,000 fewer than in the previous election. The Cadets won 50,000 votes and the Mensheviks 23,000. In a sign of increasing strength, the Bolsheviks matched the 200,000 vote total of the Social Revolutionaries.

Meanwhile Zinoviev wrote in Pravda against insurrection, citing the example of the Paris Commune of 1871. Stalin, editor of Pravda, printed the article without comment or emendation. Lenin responded two weeks later, explaining the mistakes of the Commune and what the Russian Revolution would have to do differently.

September 3 – August 21, 1917: Riga Falls. German troops march into Riga, having pushed aside the mostly unprepared 12^th Army. The army’s commander defended the performance of his troops, saying the “most thoroughly propagandized” formations fought the hardest. These included a brigade of Latvian sharpshooters who counterattacked under red banners, and the marines of the Baltic Fleet. Bolshevik influence predominated in these formations; moreover, they were fighting to defend their national capital and home port.

But if the 12^th Army was as a whole unprepared, this suited General Kornilov’s plans perfectly well. Trotsky observes that the generals of the Northern Front in Latvia were in on Kornilov’s plot, but didn’t have to do anything affirmative, like ordering withdrawals or conspiring with the Germans, to ensure that Riga would fall. They could just await the expected result.

Nevertheless the bourgeois papers blamed the peasant infantry.

Meanwhile Kornilov assembled the high command at headquarters in Moghiliev and let some of them in on his plot. Among other measures then taken, the cavalry were given grenades, thought to be an effective weapon against urban crowds and buildings.

On the same day, the Provisional Government placed two Romanov grand dukes under house arrest. They needn’t have bothered, Trotsky says, as the counter-revolution had no interest in restoring the monarchy, and the Bolsheviks were not fooled by the gesture.

September 4 – August 22, 1917: Kerensky’s Plotter. Prime Minister Kerensky sends the adventurer Savinkov to General Kornilov’s headquarters at Moghiliev to demand that cavalry be placed at the government’s disposal. Of course a corps was already stationed on the railroad net south of Petrograd.

But there was now a quid pro quo for the demand: the proposed law acceding to Kornilov’s political demands for the conduct of the war. (Savinkov had been tasked with drafting it.) This in turn was part of the rationale for the request for troops: the law was among a number of provocations the plotters thought would bring the Bolsheviks into the streets. Then the cavalry would come in, impose martial law, and, for good measure, do away with the soviets.

Trotsky marshals the evidence against Kerensky (including minutes of the headquarters meetings with Savinkov kept by the general staff), and chronicles Kerensky’s actions as the insurrection approached. In fact, Kerensky expected that he, not Kornilov, would be made dictator when the insurrection had finished off the soviets, and Kerensky’s own Provisional Government along with them.

Meanwhile Kornilov took action to discredit the soldiery, issuing orders to shoot “deserters” and requiring commanders to submit lists of Bolshevik officers in their commands.

The soldiers and the officers of the Rumanian Front and Black Sea Fleet protested these kinds of imputations. Izvestia defended the soldiers, and editorialized about the counter-revolutionary clique in the army. A Menshevik conference, without debate, called for abolition of the death penalty. Even Tseretilli felt compelled to hold his silence.

September 5 – August 23, 1917: Kerensky Chimes In. Kerensky offers his contribution to the controversy over the fall of Riga, saying the soldiers were “concealing their cowardice under idealistic slogans.” It might have seemed odd for Kerensky to so harshly criticize troops that might have to defend his government against an insurrection by counter-revolutionary elements in the army, but then again, he was already part of Kornilov’s plot.

The Russian ambassador telegraphed that French President Poincare and his Foreign Minister had many questions about Kornilov at a recent Paris reception. So word of the plot was apparently getting out.

September 6 – August 24, 1917: Demand for Democracy. Central Executive Committee of the Soviets calls for an end to “counter-revolutionary methods” and a transition to democracy. Though details on both steps seem to have been lacking, Trotsky observes, “This was a new language.” It put pressure on Kerensky from the left.

September 7 – August 25, 1917: The Plot is Hatched. Commissar Savinkov returns to Petrograd with news of his success. The agreed plan was to publish the law as Kornilov demanded, await the immediately expected Bolshevik demonstration, and then send in the cavalry to put down the demonstrators and establish martial law. Under martial law, of course, anything could happen, including an emergency dictatorship under (one of) the plotters.

Of course, the Social Revolutionary resolution calling for headquarters to expel members of the League of Officers was ignored. The League was part of the plot; on the appointed day, they were to raise an armed fifth column in the streets of Petrograd.

The date was set for August 27 (September 9, new style), the six-month anniversary of the February Revolution.

In another provocation, the Bolshevik paper Proletarian was suppressed.

Sometime between September 7-8 – August 25-26, 1917: Double-Crossings. Commissar Savinkov returns to headquarters to clear up a few details. General Kornilov listened, and maybe he seemed to agree, but in the end he did as he wished. Against Kerensky’s orders, he put General Krymov in command of the advance on Petrograd and the Savage Division in the vanguard.

Kerensky had also ordered an adjustment to Kornilov’s demand for military control of Petrograd. Kornilov could have command of the military district in which Petrograd was located, but the government would retain control of the garrison in the city itself. Since he figured the balance of forces would still be in his favor when his cavalry got there, this did not bother Kornilov much.

Meanwhile Lvov, a church official (not the former Prime Minister), had also been shuttling between Kornilov’s headquarters and those of Kerensky at the Winter Palace. Lvov began to realize that two plots, not just one, had been hatched. Kerensky’s did not match up with Kornilov’s, particularly on the very important point of who the dictator would be. So Kerensky sent Lvov back to Moghiliev with the proposal that the two camps would together work out a “transformation” of the government. He arrived there after Savinkov had already left the second time.

Kornilov’s camp took the message Lvov delivered as a sign of weakness. Kornilov told Lvov that once the (expected) Bolshevik insurrection had been suppressed, the plotters should seek “the immediate transfer of power by the Provisional Government into the hands of the supreme commander-in-chief,” adding “whoever he may be.” Then he politely suggested that Kerensky and Savinkov seek refuge with him at Moghiliev, to be safe from the Bolsheviks.

When Lvov delivered this proposal, Kerensky immediately telegraphed Kornilov, asking him to confirm it. Then Kerensky replied as though he would be arriving at headquarters the following day. But of course he didn’t. Another Kornilov proposal, that Kerensky become Minister of Justice in a cabinet headed by…someone else, made Kerensky so angry be put the messenger, Lvov, under arrest at the Winter Palace. Trotsky says Lvov spent the evening listening to Kerensky sing opera in the next room.

Back at headquarters, on the same evening (August 26^th, September 8, new style), Kornilov’s camp thought the success of their plot was at hand.

September 8 – August 26, 1917: The Price of Grain. The Provisional Government doubles the price of grain. This served the bourgeois landowners better than it served the workers. The Petrograd Soviet protested, but the provocation did not, as the plotters of the insurrection must have hoped, bring the Bolshevik masses into the streets. Instead the Central Committee warned against “provocational agitation,” and the Bolsheviks, with their allies in the labor unions and factory committees, all announced that they were not calling for a demonstration.

The Cadet ministers took this opportunity to resign the Provisional Government, as Miliukov says, “without prejudicing…their future participation.” Knowing what was afoot, they preferred to await events. Not knowing, but very suspicious, the Compromiser ministers also sat on the sidelines for the day. The government thus effectively ceased to exist, leaving Kerensky with whatever powers it formerly possessed.

Kerensky later told the story that Savinkov came to him on the night of the 26^th (September 8, new style) and offered to submit himself to arrest for his role in the Kornilov conspiracy. Whether that part of the story is true or not, Kerensky did make him governor-general of Petersburg instead. Thus, Trotsky observes, Kerensky and Savinkov were jointly responsible both for carrying out and for preventing the conspiracy.

Kerensky did not promulgate the decree acceding to Kornilov’s demands, neither on this day, as originally planned, nor afterwards.

September 9 – August 27, 1917: Kornilov’s Insurrection. On the day set for the movement on Petrograd to begin, Prime Minister Kerensky telegraphs General Kornilov, ordering him to present himself at the capital. Instead Kornilov issued a manifesto declaring that “the Provisional Government, under pressure from the Bolshevik majority in the Soviets, is acting in full accord with the plans of the German general staff,” which, he added, included an advance up the coastline from Riga. So he, Kornilov, was going to do something to save the Provisional Government from itself. At least he was acting consistently with the plans of the conspiracy – though of course the “Bolshevik majority” did not exist and though, even on the six-month anniversary of the February Revolution, the streets of Petrograd were quiet.

Next Kerensky ordered Kornilov to hold up the movements by rail of the Savage Division and cavalry corps towards Petrograd, but Kornilov refused. Kerensky removed him from command. This likewise had no effect on the tendency of events. Next Kerensky issued an order to the Petrograd garrison, saying Kornilov had treacherously removed troops from the front and sent them against the capital. Kornilov answered by saying the traitors were already there, in Petrograd.

There had been nothing about Kornilov’s movements in the morning papers, but word of his manifesto and break with Kerensky spread through the capital. By evening, the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets had formed its Committee of Struggle Against the Counter-Revolution. The committee drew its membership from all three socialist parties including the Bolsheviks, from trade unions, and from the Petrograd soviets generally.

The Mensheviks now began to advocate a program considerably to the left of where they stood before: for declaring a republic, for dissolving the State Duma, and for agrarian reform. The Committee also agreed the cabinet of the Provisional Government should continue, with socialists replacing the resigned Cadets.

The Bolsheviks declared themselves and the Red Guards ready to resist Kornilov’s attempt. Through their Military Organization, they had already issued instructions for the revolutionary troops of the garrison to remain at arms, but not to demonstrate.

On the other side, only the command of the Southwestern Front supported Kornilov. Accordingly, they smashed the printing presses of organizations thought to be loyal to the government.

Overnight, September 9-10 – August 27-28, 1917: A Proposal from the Soviet. The joint Central Executive Committee of the Soviets debates its response to the situation created by General Kornilov’s insurrection well into the morning hours. After midnight, the Soviet got word that Kerensky would not agree to democratic reforms. He insisted on the notion of a directory, that is, a reconcentration of power in a smaller cabinet with himself at the head.

Tseretilli nevertheless went from the Smolny Institute to the Winter Palace to submit the Soviet’s proposal. When Kerensky refused it, he returned to Smolny, arriving at about 7:30 a.m. on the 28^th (September 10, new style). Wearied, the Soviet was ready to concede Kerensky’s plan for a directory.

Kornilov’s Defeat

September 10 – August 28, 1917: Kornilov Advances. Petrograd receives news about the movement in its direction of General Kornilov’s forces. Reportedly: at 12:30 p.m., General Krymov reached Luga, 87 miles from the capital; at 2:30 p.m., trains loaded with Kornilov’s troops were passing through Oredezh station; at 3:00 p.m., Luga’s garrison surrendered; at 6:00 p.m., troops were advancing past Narva and approaching Gatchina, 28 miles from the capital.

The stock markets actually went up!

Little did the bourgeoisie know, this is what was really happening: Railroad workers were tearing up the tracks on the insurrection’s line of march. They isolated Moghiliev, Kornilov’s headquarters, from the rest of the railroad net. They put the railroad bridges under guard. Rail dispatchers and engineers were sending parts of Kornilov’s units one way, other parts another way, so that troops got separated from commanders and staff, from their own weapons and supplies, and from each other. Telegraph operators were not only holding up messages, but retransmitting them to the Committee of Defense. Other workers dug trenches – in hours instead of days.

And in Petrograd itself, workers eager to join the Red Guard were arming themselves with 40,000 stand of rifles. The workers of the Putilov factory turned out 100 cannon for defense of the city. The chauffeurs union provided transportation and delivered messages for the Soviet’s Committee of Defense. Clerks of the metal workers union prepared and distributed the necessary paperwork. The printers union decided, favorably to the interests of the Soviet, what would go into print. Counter-revolutionary elements were put under arrest.

Governor-general Savinkov had little or nothing to do with the organization of the defense.

Significantly, the Menshevik Dan, on behalf of the Petrograd Soviet, decreed that units of the Petrograd garrison should not carry out any movements unless orders were countersigned by the Committee of Defense. This was the same tactic the Soviet had employed during the April Days. It effectively deprived Kerensky of command over the city’s troops. Not only did he not control resistance to Kornilov on behalf of the Provisional Government, he did not have forces to support his own ambitions as against both Kornilov and the Provisional Government.

I might observe, without revealing too much too soon, that this was all good practice for the October Revolution.

September 10 – August 28, 1917: Kerensky Negotiates. Kerensky summons Commissar Savinkov to the Winter Palace. When he arrived at about 4:00 a.m., General Alexiev and Foreign Minister Tereshchenko were already there. They began talking as if there had been some kind of misunderstanding between Kerensky and Kornilov, thinking to deceive the public with this explanation. Kerensky asked the press not to print anything about his rift with Kornilov, but it was already too late.

The cruiser Aurora sailed to the Winter Palace from Kronstadt that day at about noon. The revolutionary sailors were thus on guard, whether over or for Kerensky was still to be determined.

Towards evening, Miliukov arrived at the palace and offered to mediate between Kerensky and Kornilov. Kerensky seems to have welcomed this, accepting Miliukov’s argument that the balance of power then lay with Kornilov. Miliukov did not disclose that he and his friends on the bourgeois right had Alexiev in mind to succeed Kerensky.

Later still, word came to the palace that Russia’s allies in the Entente were willing, “in the interests of humanity,” to bridge the difficulties between Kornilov and Kerensky. British Ambassador Buchanan had given Foreign Minister Tereshchenko a note to this effect.

Kerensky called the “retired” Cadet ministers to the palace. But before they could reach any decisions, alarming (but false) news that the enemy was nearing the capital was received. So they began to talk again about forming a directory with Alexiev in it. Miliukov’s plan was about to bear fruit.

Then there came a knock at the door. It was Tseretilli, returned from the Soviet to announce its demands. There would be no negotiations with Kornilov; instead the Committee of Defense would continue the struggle. 

Kerensky and his cohorts had no answer for this, no means of compelling the Soviet to abandon its decision. The meeting broke up, the Cadet ministers having resigned the cabinet for good this time. After everyone took his leave, Kerensky spent the night in nearly “complete solitude,” no longer, presumably, singing opera.

Meanwhile Krymov was actually withdrawing from Luga on the evening of the 28^th (September 10, new style). The Committee of Defense took control of the Southwestern Front through the soldiers committees. The Rumanian, Western, and Caucasian Fronts telegraphed the Winter Palace in support of the revolution and against Kornilov. The Northern Front, which Kornilov had suborned, got a new commander who later volunteered for the Red Army.

Kaledin, the Cossack general and political leader, was in the Don steppes, riding around the countryside and testing the mood of the people. Effectively neutral, he was emphatically not forming another front against the Provisional Government. Likewise, the fifth column in Petrograd promised by the League of Officers never showed itself. The provocateurs who were supposed to have drawn the Bolsheviks into the streets left for Finland, taking their allotment of money – what they hadn’t already spent on parties – with them.

Overnight, September 10-11 – August 28-29, 1917: The Savage Division Stalls. The Savage Division enters the battle unprepared. Some of its arms were still well down the railroad line, supposedly expected at Pskov. Overnight, the division came to a halt.

Two days later, the tracks leading to Pskov had been cut. In the result, the division never engaged troops supporting the Provisional Government at all.

September 11 – August, 29, 1917: Kornilov’s Insurrection Stalls. From headquarters in Moghiliev, General Kornilov orders General Krymov, in command of the advance on Petrograd, to concentrate his troops. But this was impossible; Krymov didn’t know where his troops were. The railroad workers had sent them hither and yon on eight different rail lines. Meanwhile, Kerensky telegraphed Krymov telling him Petrograd was quiet, his troops were not needed.

The capital received reports of a battle at Antropshio Station. Maybe this was in fact a reconnaissance in force that Krymov had actually ordered; it retired without engaging revolutionary troops.

The revolutionary Kronstadt sailors docked at Petrograd that morning, adding their numbers to those of the garrison and the armed workers. The sailors had replaced Kornilovist officers with men of their own choosing. Their representatives visited Trotsky in prison, but did not free him. Even though Kerensky had been refusing continuous requests of the Central Executive Committee to free the political prisoners taken after the July Days, Trotsky advised the sailors not to arrest the members of the Provisional Government – yet.

In Vyborg (the city near the Finnish frontier, not the workers’ district near Petrograd), the commanding officer had withheld news of the insurrection from his troops. When they found out, they shot him. Bolshevik-leaning units from the Vyborg garrison were also on the march to Petrograd. In the Baltic Fleet, they shot a number of officers who refused to take oaths of allegiance to the revolution. At Helsinki, the Soviet and fleet brought over the Cossacks of the garrison to the defense of the revolution.

When the railroad workers refused to move the trains at Luga, the garrison there, loyal to the revolution (and not having surrendered, as reported in Petrograd the day before), began to fraternize with Kornilov’s troops stranded there. Here too, even the Cossacks came under the influence of the Bolshevik agitators among the revolutionary soldiery.

Neither was the Savage Division immune. Their officers wanted to arrest the delegation of Moslems the Bolsheviks sent to negotiate, but the soldiers refused this order as lacking hospitality to their co-religionists. In the result, the soldiers set up a red banner bearing the words “Land and Freedom” over a staff car.

Kornilov’s troop concentration near Pskov had also evaporated.

September 12 – August 30, 1917: The Insurrection Collapses. The Central Executive Committee of the Soviets announces the “complete demoralization” of the forces in Kornilov’s insurrection. General Krymov presented himself to Kerensky at the Winter Palace and was treated to a theatrical speech. He shot himself dead on the way back to the War Ministery.

General Krasnov, the commander of Kornilov’s cavalry advance, saw the same thing other Kornilovist officers had been seeing: animated agitators among his troops. These particular troops began to arrest their officers and put themselves under soldiers committees they themselves had elected. Going further, they formed a soviet and sent a delegation to the Provisional Government.

The Kronstadt sailors were also making their views felt. They sent a delegation to the Central Executive demanding representation there, but had to be satisfied with four non-voting seats.

The Bolsheviks in Finland went even further, assuming governmental functions that, Trotsky says, anticipated the October Revolution itself.

Meanwhile Kerensky dismissed Governor-general Savinkov and replaced him with another individual, who himself was dismissed three days later.

September 13 – August 31, 1917: Change in Command, etc. Prime Minister Kerensky appoints himself commander-in-chief in preference to General Kornilov. General Alexiev was made chief of staff. Kornilov asked for terms; meanwhile, said Kerensky, his orders as against the Germans should be obeyed.

Alexiev was sent to headquarters at Moghiliev. The Compromisers in the Soviet wanted Kornilov’s head; the Moscow Church Council was against it as not Christian. Kerensky placed Kornilov and a few other headquarters conspirators under house arrest instead.

Meanwhile Alexiev was trying to persuade the big bourgeoisie to supply stipends for the conspirators, under the explicit threat that Kornilov was in a position to reveal their conspiratorial roles. For essentially the same reason, Miliukov dropped out of sight; his party, the Cadets, officially explained that he had “gone to the Crimea for a rest.”

On the same day, Kerensky assembled the Directory he had been planning. He kept Tereshchenko as Foreign Minister, and added a general (who had to be promoted from colonel), an admiral, and a Menshevik.

November 4 – October 22, 1917: The Day of the Petrograd Soviet

The Bolshevik press sums up the declarations of revolutionary organizations throughout the country: 56 such organizations are demanding the transfer of power to the soviets.

Meanwhile, the Menshevik Dan reported on behalf of the Central Executive Committee that only 50 out of over 900 soviets had thus far made the decision to send delegates to the Congress of Soviets. Trotsky speculates that this number indicated low morale in the compromisist parties rather than lack of interest across the country as a whole. Those soviets that were attending for the most part did not bother to tell the Central Executive.

This was the day for the review of the revolutionary forces of the Petrograd Soviet. It did not take the form of mass demonstration in the streets. Instead there were meetings in the public halls and squares. One audience would assemble, listen to the speeches, then depart. Then another audience would file in.

All the speakers were Bolsheviks, bolstered by the left Social Revolutionaries who were now joining them. Trotsky addressed the crowd at the House of the People. He read out the resolution and called for their assent. Sukhanov wrote, “Thousands and thousands raised their hands as one man.” They held them up, eyes burning, as Trotsky made the resolution an oath. “They took the oath”: Loyalty to the Soviet, immediate answer to its summons.

Trotsky says, “Each side was satisfied with the other. The leaders were convinced: We can postpone no longer! The masses said to themselves: This time the thing will be done!”

On the request of General Polkovnikov, the “religious” procession of counter-revolutionists did not come off. But the bourgeois press, like the boy who cried wolf, again predicted a bloody demonstration. Miliukov writes in his history that “the frightened population” stayed home. By “population” he meant the bourgeoisie.

As for the refusal of the Garrison Conference to accept orders, Kerensky reportedly said, “I think we can easily handle this.” Later he was asking whether the government ought to arrest the Military Revolutionary Committee. Not necessary, General Polkovnikov thought, given the forces he had in hand. The Compromisers on the Central Executive thought they could deal with the committee’s commissars.

Meanwhile, the American journalist Reed was keeping count of arrivals to the Congress of Soviets:

·         November 2, 15 delegates

·         November 3, 100

·         November 4, 175, “of whom one hundred and three were Bolsheviki!”

November 1 – October 19, 1917: “Lawful” Garrison Conference

Dismayed by the decision of the Garrison Conference the day before, the Central Executive Committee assembles its own meeting of the representatives of the Petrograd garrison. Several units not represented at the previous meeting sent delegates to this one. Two of them, the garrison of the Peter and Paul fortress and an armored car division, declared allegiance to the Central Executive.

The military importance of this development lay in the position of the Peter and Paul on an island in the Neva River. Though of course it could not maneuver, the fortress not only dominated a number of bridges in the middle of the city, but it also blocked the direct route to the Winter Palace, seat of the Provisional Government. There was also a substantial arsenal, coveted by the Red Guards, on the island.

Then the Central Executive asked the assembly to pass a cautiously worded resolution. The soldiers refused both the resolution and the notion that an assembly called by the Central Executive rather than the Petrograd Soviet would have authority to take any such decision. After this failure, the Central Executive, with the cooperation of headquarters, tried to appoint a commissar over the Petrograd military district. This the Petrograd Soviet in turn rejected. General Polkovnikov, in his turn, issued general orders for the suppression of demonstrations. Reed reproduces them in his book; Polkovnikov’s lack of urgency is remarkable.

Meanwhile, hearing of agitation for the convocation of a constituent assembly in and for the Ukraine, Kerensky summons its General Secretary to Petrograd for an explanation. This did not create much of a ripple in the Ukraine. The American journalist Reed says Kerensky also told the Pre-Parliament that the government would be able to handle any Bolshevik insurrection, even though he himself was “a doomed man.”

October 31 – October 18, 1917: The Garrison Conference

In a decisive development, the Garrison Conference renews the policy of the Soviet from the April Days: orders that have not been countersigned by a representative of the soldiers section of the Soviet are not to be obeyed. The Central Executive Committee tried to suppress the announcement of the meeting for this purpose, but it was successfully sent to all the units of the city garrison via a technology called a “telephonogram.” Apparently the device made a phonographic recording of the message, which could then be sent over the telephone as often as necessary.

The Conference consisted not of Bolshevik politicians, but of representatives from the units of the garrison itself. It took a muster-roll of these units on the question of coming out in case of an insurrection. Only one cavalry regiment and a military school were against it. A few other smaller units declared neutrality or obedience to the Central Executive Committee. The rest, including all the infantry regiments, would come out, as Trotsky says, “at a word from the Petrograd Soviet.”

The Central Executive, denied the opportunity to speak, walked out in frustration. The garrison had formerly been a source of strength for them. Now the president put the main question on the table: by adopting the countersign policy, the garrison placed itself effectively under the Petrograd Soviet’s control.

October 30 – October 17, 1917: Congress Postponed

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

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

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

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

October 27 – October 14, 1917: Kerensky Takes Alarm

The cabinet of the Provisional Government ratifies headquarters plans and preparations to meet the possibility of insurrection. The district commander for Petrograd, General Polkovnikov, told the press, “In any case we are ready.”

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

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.

This is a supplementary post. Follow the link to the next one in chronological order.

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 was becoming a feature of preparation for insurrection.

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 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 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 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.

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.

A supplementary post follows this one in the chronological order.

September 12 – August 30, 1917: The Insurrection Collapses

The Central Executive Committee of the Soviets announces the “complete demoralization” of the forces in Kornilov’s insurrection. General Krymov presented himself to Kerensky at the Winter Palace and was treated to a theatrical speech. He shot himself dead on the way back to the war office.

General Krasnov, the commander of Kornilov’s cavalry advance, saw the same thing other Kornilovist officers had been seeing: animated agitators among his troops. These particular troops began to arrest their officers and put themselves under soldiers committees they themselves had elected. Going further, they formed a soviet and sent a delegation to the Provisional Government.

The Kronstadt sailors were also making their views felt. They sent a delegation to the Central Executive demanding representation there, but had to be satisfied with four non-voting seats.

The Bolsheviks in Finland went even further, assuming governmental functions that, Trotsky says, anticipated the October Revolution itself.

Meanwhile Kerensky dismissed Governor-general Savinkov and replaced him with another individual, who himself was dismissed three days later.