On the Brink of Red October

 

One hundred years ago this week, plus three, it was still October in Russia, because they were still using the old-style Julian calendar. Today there will be one entry for the whole eventful week that led up to Red October.

The Week beginning October 31 – October 18, 1917: “Vigorous Preparations.” With intensified Bolshevik agitation, led by Trotsky, in the background, forces aligned with that party vigorously gathered the political and physical resources that would be necessary for a successful insurrection, the date of which had not and could not yet be fixed. When Trotsky refused to answer a question in the Petrograd Soviet (where rumors were flying) about the date, Kamenev’s comment made it seem like the Bolsheviks thought an insurrection might not even be necessary. But this of course was not the case; it was Kamenev’s opinion. Kamenev well knew how the votes in the Bolshevik Central Committee had gone. Read about it here and here.

November 2 – October 20, 1917: Kamenev Resigns. Hearing of this, Lenin denounced it as a ”trick.” Accordingly Kamenev offered to resign from the Bolshevik Central Committee. The offer was accepted, and Kamenev was further admonished to remain silent on the issue. Under the pressure of events, cracks were appearing in the wall of party solidarity! Read about it here.

November 3 – October 21, 1917: Resolution of the Garrison Conference. The Garrison Conference accepted three proposals made by Trotsky: that the garrison would support the Military Revolutionary Committee, that the garrison would take part in the review of forces planned for the following day, and that the Congress of Soviets should “take the power in its hands.” Even the Cossack regiments agreed. These proposals were of course consistent with and essential to the overall plan of insurrection. Read about it here. 

November 4 – October 22, 1917: The Day of the Petrograd Soviet. As the delegates to the Congress of Soviets began to assemble, the Petrograd Soviet held a review of its revolutionary forces, now to include those of garrison who had agreed to take part the day before. There were meetings in the public halls and squares. One audience would assemble, listen to the speeches, then depart. Then another audience would file in. Read about it here.

November 5 – October 23, 1917: The Peter and Paul Comes Over. The Garrison Conference having definitely broken the chain of command that led back to the Coalition Government, the Bolsheviks began to appoint commissars who sought to fill the power vacuum thus created. When the commissar sent to the Peter and Paul fortress and prison in the middle of the Neva River was resisted by the officer in command, Trotsky went over to talk to the soldiers themselves. In the result, the fortress, its artillery, and 100,000 rifles for the Red Guards came over to the insurrection. Read about it here.

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

 

Last Coalition vs. September Theses

 

One hundred years ago today, plus three, on the day after Kerensky announced another coalition government, destined to be his last, Lenin published the “Tasks of the Revolution,“ a kind of September version of the April Theses, in Rabochy Put. So while Kerensky was assigning ministries to bourgeois-liberal Cadets and right-socialists, that is, moving to the right, Lenin was reassessing Bolshevik strategy and tactics in light of recent developments, especially in the Petrograd Soviet, of which Trotsky had just been named president, and moving the revolution to the left.

 

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

Trotsky Makes Bail

 

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

 

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

 

Bolsheviks Convene

One hundred years ago today, plus three, the Bolsheviks convened a party congress at a time when the party itself was barely legal. They passed a resolution to say Lenin, then in hiding, ought not to turn himself in; and welcomed the Trotskyites, up to then a separate party, into the Bolshevik fold. Meanwhile Kerensky, apparently satisfied that both the right socialists and the bourgeois Cadets considered him “indispensable,” had agreed two days before to form as prime minister the government that became the Second Coalition.

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

  

Trotsky Arrives

One hundred years ago today, plus three, after a sea voyage of about three weeks from Canada, Leon Trotsky arrived in Petrograd and raised his voice against socialist participation in the provisional government. Ironically, the former Foreign Minister Miliukov had requested his release from British detention, losing his post as the new government formed.

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

Bolsheviks convene under a cloud

One hundred years ago today, plus two, even though Lenin was in hiding and Trotsky was in prison, the 6^th Congress of the Bolshevik Party convened. What they did put the party on the path to recovery after the reverses it had suffered subsequent to the July Days. Read about it here.

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

Trotsky Arrives in Petrograd

One hundred years ago today, plus two, Trotsky returned to Petrograd and immediately spoke out against socialist participation in the Provisional Government then being formed. Read about it here.

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

Coalition Government

May 9 – April 26, 1917: Coalition Government? Prince Lvov – in effect – invites members of the Petrograd Soviet to join the Provisional Government. The actual words of the announcement invite “those active, creative forces of the country” who weren’t already in the government to join it. As we’ll see, the proposal was soon to be acted upon.

May 10 – April 27, 1917: Resolution on the War. Satisfied with revisions to the original draft, Lenin speaks in favor of the party’s resolution on the war. Denouncing the war as imperialist, the resolution declared against annexations and indemnities, against “revolutionary defensism,” and, ironically, against a separate peace. Of course, the “democratic peace” the resolution called for could only occur if proletarians in all the belligerent countries held the state power and so agreed. To this end, fraternization with enemy soldiers at the front, already taking place, was encouraged.

Pravda published the resolution on May 12 – April 29.

May 12 – April 29, 1917: All Russia Bolshevik Party Conference Ends. Besides the resolutions described in prior entries, the conference considers reports and resolutions on the party’s attitude toward the provincial soviets, revisions to its program, the agrarian and nationalist questions, and the current situation of the international proletarian revolution.

The party’s agrarian policy sought to align the peasants in the countryside with the workers in the cities under the Bolshevik banners. It called for confiscation of the landed estates of the nobility, church, and crown, nationalization of the lands, and transfer of the lands to the peasantry under leasehold. The party also undertook to organize the peasants in an independent arm, and support their efforts in existing peasant soviets and land committees.

A new Central Committee was also elected; Lenin, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Stalin, and Sverdlov were among those given seats.

After the April Days, the votes in elections to the soviets begin to shift, favorably to the Bolsheviks.

May 13 – April 30, 1917: Miliukov Resigns. Unable to resist backlash for the handling of his policy on the war and annexation (i.e., the Dardanelles), Miliukov resigns his post as Foreign Minister. Guchov, the Minister of War, having refused to sign the Declaration of the Rights of the Soldiers, also resigned his post.

This left some portfolios open for distribution to the socialists who had been invited to join the Provisional Government. Already some of the provincial soviets, including that of Moscow, had declared against participation. On the other hand, some of the soldiers seemed to prefer having a socialist in charge of the war.

May 17 – May 4, 1917: Trotsky Arrives. Released from a British prisoner of war camp in Canada some weeks before, Trotsky arrives in Petrograd. Among his first acts was speaking against participation in the Provisional Government.

Meanwhile, the First All-Russian Conference of Peasants’ Deputies convened.

May 18 – May 5, 1917: Coalition Government! Prince Lvov’s proposal offers six of the fifteen ministerial portfolios to the socialists. The Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet voted to accept it, Bolsheviks only voting against.

Lvov was to remain as premier. Kerensky, a Social Revolutionary who was already in the government, took the war ministry; the foreign ministry stayed with the Cadets in the person of Tereshchenko. Socialists got the ministries of labor and of trade and industry, and the Menshevik Tseretilli became minister of posts. No Bolshevik joined the government.

Russia’s allies in the Entente seem to have been pleased. A broader government embracing leaders of the socialist revolution might be better able to keep Russia in the war. This was certainly Kerensky’s intention.

May 24 – May 11, 1917: Kerensky to the Front. War Minister Kerensky travels to the front to agitate for an offensive.

May 25 – May 12, 1917: Crimes of the Peasantry. Prince Lvov, Premier of the Coalition Government, finds it necessary to denounce the crimes of the peasants. The “crimes” had been going on, increasingly, since April, in part because the government had done little or nothing about land reform except to form land committees in rural districts. The committees were permitted to discuss the matter but not given official power to do anything about it.

So some peasants had been taking matters into their own hands, confiscating the lands and weapons of the rural nobility, seizing animals and equipment, etc. They even disrupted land surveys in order to prevent sales of land by the owning classes. In many cases, revolutionized peasant-soldiers on leave led these efforts.

May 26 – May 13, 1917: The Kronstadt Soviet and Sailors. This episode begins when the Kronstadt soviet removes the Cadet governor who had been appointed by the Provisional Government, and assumes control of the island and its fortress itself. The island and fortress lie at the mouth of the Neva River, not far from Petrograd. The episode has a sequel.

May 27 – May 14, 1917: Kerensky Issues Orders. War Minister Kerensky issues orders telling the troops to “go where your leaders conduct you,” gratuitously adding they would “carry on the points of [their] bayonets – peace.”

During this time the Coalition Government convened a “special conference” to discuss calling a Constituent Assembly. Nothing came of it; the term “Constituent Assembly” continued to be a mask for the bourgeois government’s inaction on the revolutionary programs and policies demanded by the soviets.

May 29 – May, 16, 1917: Resolutions of the Soviet. The Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet adopts a number of resolutions that Lenin considered to be on the way to the proletarian state. They called for state-run monopolies and trusts, regulated distribution of goods and commodities, price fixing, and oversight of credit. The next day the Minister of Trade and Industry resigned; other than that, the Coalition Government did nothing.

June, 1917: Root Mission. President Wilson sends former Secretary of War Elihu Root to Petrograd with messages on the United States war aims and conditions for securing US loans for the further prosecution of the war. He summed up the US attitude, as Wikipedia says, very trenchantly: "No fight, no loans."

Thus, the US offered credits of up to $75 million, contingent on Russia undertaking the summer offensive. The Romanovs expressed a desire to subscribe, contingent on the state treasury’s support for the tsar’s family. But the Russian big bourgeoisie refused to subscribe.

June 4 – May 22, 1917: The Agrarian Question. Lenin addresses the All-Russian Conference of Peasants’ Deputies on agrarian policy. He made it clear that nationalization of the lands was the Bolshevik policy, as opposed to transfer of ownership to individual peasants as private property.

Under nationalization, the state would own the land, and rent it back to farmers, “free labor on free soil,” on terms “equal for all.” The party considered this the best way to protect the livelihood of poor peasants as against the richer, petit bourgeois class of peasants. Model farms were to be established on larger tracts confiscated from the nobility, church, and crown.

You can read Lenin’s address to the conference by following the link.

At the front, the Chief of Staff reported disaffection among the troops and continuing fraternization with enemy troops. On the Rumanian front, he said, “…the infantry does not want to advance.” Trotsky provides plenty of specific examples of disaffection.

June 5 – May 23, 1917: Changes in Command. War Minister Kerensky replaces General Alexeiev with General Brussilov as commander-in-chief of the Russian armies. Brussilov was thought to be more enterprising, thus more amenable to carrying out the desired offensive.

This set off a series of dismissals by Kerensky and Brussilov, including that of Brussilov himself. Some generals were dismissed for “indulgence” to the regimental soldiers’ committees (from which officers were excluded). Others were dismissed for the opposite reason, “resisting democratization” of the army. For “excessive indulgence” to the committees, Brussilov was eventually replaced with Kornilov. But Kornilov himself had been dismissed from command in Petrograd because he’d proven unable to get along with democratic elements in the government.

June 6 – May 24, 1917: Upheaval in Kronstadt. At the urging of the Petrograd Bolsheviks, the Kronstadt Soviet places itself under the Provisional Government. But it reversed the decision the next day. The sailors had put some 80 officers of the fleet under arrest.

Two days later (June 8 – May 27), the Petrograd Soviet put the sailors on trial in absentia. Trotsky served, unsuccessfully as the sequel shows, as their defense counsel.

June 10 – May 28, 1917: Conference of Peasants’ Deputies Adjourns. The Conference, caught between opposition to the Provisional Government’s land policy (or lack of one) and its distaste for the Bolshevik solution (i.e., nationalization), selects a Social Revolutionary executive committee and president.

In the meantime, the district land committees passed increasingly under the control of the peasantry, and were increasingly able to exercise control over the use of the land. This happened mostly peacefully, accompanied by a shift in the countryside to alignment with the Bolsheviks.

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.

Democratic Conference

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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