The July Days

A hundred years ago today, plus one, the bourgeois Cadets having resigned their ministries in the coalition government, soldiers and workers, against the advice of the Bolsheviks, marched in the streets in what was called a “manifestation” of revolutionary demands. Read about it here.  

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.

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.

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 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 restraint 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 Central Executive Committee of the Soviets 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 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 Central Executive 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.