The Menshevik Tseretilli

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

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

June Demonstration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

July Days: The Manifestation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Events did not stop unfolding at midnight.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

State Conference in Moscow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

October 4 – September 21, 1917: Democratic Conference Adjourns

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

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

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

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

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