Tony Cliff

Lenin 2


Chapter 14
The July Days


The Storm Rising in Petrograd

The regime based on dual power was one of permanent and deepening crisis. When the thunder of revolution had awakened millions, procrastination became intolerable. In a revolutionary period, more than at any other time, the masses cannot tolerate a cleavage between words and action. Aroused at last, after centuries, the people would not wait patiently and passively for the compromising leaders to satisfy their hunger for bread, land, peace, and freedom for the nationally oppressed.

On June 18, Kerensky launched a military offensive against Germany and Austria. The bourgeoisie and the general staff looked to it as a way of unifying the deeply divided people behind a national purpose. As we have already seen, Kerensky announced the offensive on June 16, with a great fanfare, before the participating troops. On June 18, units of the Seventh and Eleventh Russian Armies on the southwestern front moved forward into attack in the direction of Austrian-held Lvov.

The offensive was officially announced in Petrograd on June 19. The next day, several garrison regiments of the capital received orders to be ready to move to the front. The First Machine Gun regiment was given seven days to furnish five hundred machine guns, and on June 21 was presented with a “reorganization plan,” according to which about two-thirds of its personnel were to be sent to the front. This enraged the soldiers who well remembered the provisional government’s promise that units participating in the February Revolution would not be disarmed or removed from Petrograd. The machine gunners later made it clear that they had decided “to go not to the German front, against the German proletariat, but against their own capitalist ministers.”

On June 30, the regiment received a further order for a particularly large transfer of men and machine guns, and there were rumors that this was a prelude to the complete disbanding of the regiment. The unit initiated a massive demonstration on July 2.

The leaders of the Bolshevik Military Organization were apparently instrumental in fanning the flames of revolt.

On July 3, at a meeting of the regiment,

the soldiers I.M. Golovin, I. Kazakov, K.N. Romanov, and I. Ilinsky (all members of the Bolshevik Military Organization collective) spoke out in favor of an immediate coup d’état. Ilinsky promised that as a member of the Military Organization, he would take upon himself responsibility for the mobilization of the rest of the garrison ... First Machine Gunners carrying mandates signed by Golovin and in many cases by members of the unit’s Military Organization fanned out across the city and its environs. As nearly as can be determined, delegations were sent to, among others, the Moskovsky, Grenadier, First Infantry, 180th Infantry, Pavlovsky, Izmailovsky, Finliandsky, and Petrogradsky Reserve regiments and to the Sixth Engineer battalion and the Armored Car division, to such Vyborg district factories as Novyi Parviainen, Novyi Lessner, Russkii Reno, Erikson and Baranovsky, and to the Putilov works in the Narva district. Additional delegations were sent to the military installations in Kronstadt, Oranienbaum, Strelna, and Peter-hoff. The machine gunners generally arrived in trucks mounted with machine guns between 3 and 5 p.m. and hurriedly organized mass meetings either on their own or through regimental and factory committees ... By mid-evening the Moskovsky, 180th Reserve Infantry, Finliandsky, Grenadier and Pavlovsky regiments, as well as the Sixth Engineer battalion, could probably be counted as having joined the insurrection. On the Vyborg side, factories stopped operating as soon as trucks bearing the machine gunners appeared, and workers in many of them scurried for their weapons almost immediately. Something like ten thousand armed sailors in Kronstadt and thirty thousand workers in the Putilov factory were soon to follow suit. [1]

None of this was to Lenin’s liking. [2]
 

Lenin Warns Against Impatience and Adventurism

While rank-and-file Bolsheviks in the First Machine Gun regiment and other army units, and in the factories, as well as leaders of the Bolshevik Military Organization, were pressing for armed demonstrations and even talking about overthrowing the provisional government, Lenin warned again and again that what was necessary was to continue patiently to win workers, soldiers, and peasants to Bolshevism. On June 13 he wrote:

The socialist proletariat and our party must be as cool and collected as possible, must show the greatest staunchness and vigilance. Let the future Cavaignacs begin first ... The workers of Petrograd will bide their time, gathering their forces and preparing for resistance when those gentlemen decide to turn from words to action. [3]

On June 21 he repeated:

This general and basic fact, the trust of the majority in the petty-bourgeois policy of the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries which is dependent on the capitalists, determines our party’s stand and conduct.

We shall keep up our efforts to expose government policy, resolutely warning the workers and soldiers, as in the past, against pinning their hopes on uncoordinated and disorganized actions. It is a question of a phase in the people’s revolution ... a phase of petty-bourgeois illusions and petty-bourgeois phrases, which serve to disguise the same old cynical imperialism.

This phase must be brought to an end. Let us help to end it as speedily and as painlessly as possible. This will rid the people of the last petty-bourgeois illusions and bring about the transfer of power to the revolutionary class. [4]

But his calls for patience were less and less heeded by many hotheaded Bolshevik cadres. At a Bolshevik military conference on June 20, one participant recalled

the spirit prevailing in some party circles to the effect that there was no point in waiting, that it was now time to seize power. Lenin came out hotly and sharply against such views. For a large part of the conference his views were received with disappointment or even dissatisfaction. [5]

Another described Lenin’s speech as a “cold shower” for the “hotheads.” Here is the passage in it which was directed against the growing movement toward an immediate uprising:

We must be especially attentive and careful, so as not to be drawn into a provocation ... One wrong move on our part can wreck everything ... If we were now able to seize power, it is naive to think that having taken it we would be able to hold it ...

What is the exact weight of our fraction in the Soviet? Even in the Soviets of both capitals, not to speak now of the others, we are an insignificant minority. And what does this fact show? It cannot be brushed aside. It shows that the majority of the masses are wavering but still believe the SRs and Mensheviks ...

... [I]n order to gain power seriously (not by Blanquist methods), the proletarian party must fight for influence inside the Soviet, patiently, unswervingly, explaining to the masses from day to day the error of their petty-bourgeois illusions ...

Events should not be anticipated. Time is on our side. [6]
 

The Petersburg Committee Impatient on Lenin’s Left

On June 20, the Petersburg Committee met in an emergency session to review the situation. The discussion showed clearly that only a minority of the committee agreed with Lenin. First there was an extremist group that was for an immediate overthrow of the government. One of its members, I.K. Naumov, severely criticized the party for “an absence of leadership” and urged that the Bolsheviks present the soviet with an ultimatum: either take power or the Bolsheviks will be duty-bound to take command of the developing movement. “We will testify to our own political bankruptcy if we avoid taking political action ... The temporizing policy of the Central Committee,” claimed Naumov, “cannot withstand criticism.” Other members of the extreme left group were M.Ia. Latsis, I.N. Stukov, P.A. Zalutsky and A. Dylle.

There was also a significant middle group, which suggested that decisive action against the provisional government should be postponed for a few days until the inevitable breakdown of the government’s offensive. The leaders of this group were M.P. Tomsky and V.V. Volodarsky. [7]
 

The Military Organization Straining at the Leash

On June 22, an unofficial meeting of some members of the Central Committee, the Petersburg Committee and the Military Organization took place. All the Petrograd Military Organization unit leaders were impatient with the Central Committee line of restraint. Most interesting are the statements of Semashko of the First Machine Gun regiment and Sakharov of the First Reserve Infantry regiment.

Semashko, de facto commander of over fifteen thousand machine gunners, evidently spoke for the majority when he said that the Petersburg and Central Committees lacked “a clear understanding” of the party’s strength. He declared, “Almost the whole garrison is with us.” “In general,” observed Sakharov, “the speeches of the soldiers boil down to the fact that they all demand active operations and are against limiting themselves to resolutions. The soldiers say these lead nowhere.” Among Military Organization unit representatives only M.M. Lashevich, an old Bolshevik and non-commissioned officer in the First Machine Gun regiment who was a member of the Petrograd Soviet, spoke in support of the Central Committee position. “We must now be especially careful and restrained in our tactics,” he argued, “but in the speeches of the last few days this is precisely what is missing. Frequently,” said Lashevich, not without sarcasm, “it is impossible to make out where the Bolshevik ends and the Anarchist begins.” [8]
 

Pravda and Soldatskaia pravda

Pravda was the daily paper of the Central Committee, then under the direct control of Lenin. Soldatskaia pravda was the daily of the Bolshevik Military Organization, which enjoyed virtual autonomy. In the last days of June and the first few days of July, the two papers diverged radically.

While Pravda was very cautious in its approach in the days after the offensive was launched, Soldatskaia pravda had a very sharp and unrestrained tone. Nowhere did it refer to the fact that the Bolsheviks had still to win the majority of the proletariat. Instead it called for direct action immediately. Thus, on the very eve of the July Days (indeed, after organization of the movement had already begun), at a time when Pravda was focusing attention on the campaign to win control of the Petrograd Soviet, Soldatskaia pravda published an inflammatory front-page article by L. Chubunov, which concluded:

Comrades! Enough of sacrificing ourselves for the welfare of the bourgeoisie. The time has come not to sleep but to act. Comrades! Chase the bourgeoisie from power and since they cry “war to complete victory,” away to the front with the whole damn lot of them. All of us are worn out by this awful war which has already taken away the lives of millions, which has made millions cripples, and which has brought with it unheard-of poverty, destruction, and hunger.

Wake up, whoever is asleep. The SRs and the Mensheviks want to fool you – I appeal to you to be ready at any minute to repulse the counter-revolution. It stalks Nevskii Prospect led by Plekhanov and Rodzianko. Soon the “Black Hundreds” will come out, but you, comrades, with all your strength protect the freedom that has been won. All power must pass into the hands of the workers, soldiers, and peasants. Remove from power the bourgeoisie and all its sympathizers.

Hail all power to the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies! [9]
 

Indiscipline Among Party Members

According to the Stalinist legend, the Bolsheviks, with a very few insignificant exceptions, always followed the will of Lenin; the party was practically a monolith. But nothing was further from the truth. Again and again, Lenin had to fight to win over his party members. Whereas in April his main problem was to overcome the conservatism of the top leadership of the party, at the end of June and the beginning of July he had to contend with the revolutionary impatience of rank-and-file leaders and members.

In many cases party members acted against the spirit of Central Committee instructions without openly challenging party discipline. At a meeting of the Petersburg Committee on August 27, for instance, M.I. Kalinin suggested that at the beginning of July, Bolshevik agitators, while appearing to be restraining the masses, had actually been urging them to act. [10]

Similarly Nevsky, leader of the Military Organization, in a memorial article many years after the event, could write:

Some comrades at the present time ask the question: who initiated the July events – the Central Committee or the Military Organization – or did the movement erupt spontaneously? ... [T]here is no need now to hide the fact that we, the responsible leaders of the Military Organization, i.e., especially Podvoisky, myself, Mekhonoshin, Beliakov, and other active workers, through our agitation, propaganda, and enormous influence and authority in the military units, promoted the spirit that aroused the demonstration ... thus when the Military Organization, having learned (on 1 July) of the machine gunners’ demonstration, sent me as the more or less most popular Military Organization orator to talk the masses into not going out, I talked to them, but in such a way that only a fool could come to the conclusion that he should not demonstrate. [11]
 

Lenin in the July Days

On July 4, as many as half a million soldiers and workers went out into the streets carrying banners with slogans like, “Down with the provisional government,” “Down with the ten capitalist ministers,” “All power to the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.” The Central Committee summoned Lenin to Petrograd from the place in Finland where he was resting, and on the morning of July 4, he came straight to Kshesinskaia Mansion, the headquarters of the Bolsheviks.

When a mass of Kronstadt sailors came and called on Lenin to speak, he did so, though very briefly. He started by apologizing for confining himself to a few words because of illness. He sent “greetings” to the revolutionary people of Kronstadt, on behalf of the Petrograd workers. Finally, he expressed his “confidence that our slogan ‘All power to the Soviets’ must and will win despite all the zigzags of history,” then appealed for “firmness, steadfastness, and vigilance.” [12] The audience was disappointed.

A Kronstadt Bolshevik recalls that for many of the sailors, Lenin’s emphasis on the necessity for a peaceful demonstration at that time was unexpected. He writes that not only the anarchists but some of the Bolsheviks could not see how a column of armed men, craving to rush into battle, could limit itself to an armed demonstration! [13]
 

The Paradox of the July Demonstration

The demonstration could easily have overthrown the provisional government, which at the time had no reliable troops in the capital at all. But if the Bolsheviks had taken power, could they have retained it?

When in October they did take power, they found that the greatest difficulties occurred after the insurrection. The masses needed to be profoundly convinced that there was no alternative to Bolshevik power. In July even the Petrograd proletariat was not ready for such a trial. While able to seize power, they still offered it to the Executive Committee of the Soviets. It was not until August 31 that the Bolsheviks became a majority in the Soviet of Petrograd. Even the party had no clear idea of the route by which it was possible to reach power. Lenin wrote:

The real mistake of our party on 3-4 July, as events now reveal, was ... that the party still considered a peaceful development of political changes possible through an alteration in the Soviets’ policies, whereas in reality the Mensheviks and SRs had become so much entangled and bound by compromising with the bourgeoisie, and the bourgeoisie had become so counter-revolutionary, that peaceful development was no longer possible. [14]

If the proletariat was not sure and steadfast, the troops were even less so. On July 5, when the government’s slander of Lenin as being a German spy was disseminated, the troops from Petrograd kept their distance from the Bolsheviks. The situation was even worse in the active army, where the “Bolshevism” of many soldiers was spontaneous – agreeing with the Bolsheviks’ slogan of “Land, peace, and bread,” but in no way identifying themselves with the party.

The provinces lagged very much behind Petrograd, as even Moscow did. Thus, during the July Days,

In the session of the Moscow committee of the Bolsheviks, stormy debates arose. Individuals belonging to the extreme left wing of the party – such as, for example, Bubnov – proposed that they occupy the post office, the telegraph, and telephone stations, the editorial offices of Russkoe Slovo – that is, that they take the road of insurrection. The committee, very moderate in its general spirit, decisively rejected these proposals, considering that the Moscow masses were not in the least ready for such action. It was nevertheless decided to hold a demonstration in spite of the veto of the Soviet. A considerable crowd of workers marched to Skobelevsky Square with the same slogans as in Petrograd, but with far from the same enthusiasm. The garrison reacted by no means unanimously; individual units joined the procession, but only one of them came fully armed. [15]

The majority of workers and soldiers did not respond to the Bolshevik summons to demonstrate.

By far the greatest paradox of the July Days lay in the contradictory consciousness of the masses supporting the Bolsheviks in Petrograd itself: calling for soviet power and nursing illusions about the possibility of the SR and Menshevik Soviet leaders taking power, which was precisely what they refused to do. This paradox expressed itself in the cry of a fist-shaking worker to Victor Chernov: “Take power, you son-of-a-bitch, when it is given to you.” [16]

Running into this armed resistance from the very institution to which they wished to turn over the power [Trotsky writes] the workers and soldiers lost a clear sense of their goal. From their mighty mass movement the political axis had been torn out. [17]

Lenin was absolutely right in refusing to seize power in the July Days, as he could easily have done. As he wrote in retrospect, two months after the events:

It would have been wrong if the Bolsheviks had aimed to seize power on 3-4 July, since neither the majority of the people nor even the majority of the workers at that time had yet actually experienced the counter-revolutionary policies of the generals in the army, of the landowners in the countryside, and of the capitalists in the town. [18]

Reaction goaded revolution. The workers needed the experience of Kornilov’s counter-revolutionary coup to steel them for the seizure of power.
 

Lenin Teaches How to Retreat

Believing that the armed demonstration should not end in an insurrection, Lenin argued that it was necessary to call it off, once the masses had learned from their own experience that it could not end in decisive victory. No one could force the Menshevik and SR soviet leaders to take power if they were mortally afraid of the workers and soldiers and of the responsibility of power. Therefore on July 5, the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party issued a leaflet calling for an end to the demonstration.

Comrades! On Monday you came out on the streets. On Tuesday you decided to continue the demonstration. We called you to a peaceful demonstration yesterday. The object of this demonstration was to show to all the toiling and exploited masses the strength of our slogans, their weight, their significance, and their necessity for the liberation of the peoples from war, hunger, and ruin.

The object of the demonstration was achieved. The slogans of the vanguard of the working class and of the army were imposingly and worthily proclaimed. The scattered firing of the counter-revolutionaries on the demonstrators could not disturb the general character of the demonstration.

Comrades! For the present political crisis, our aim has been accomplished. We have therefore decided to end the demonstration. Let each and every one peacefully and in an organized manner bring the strike and the demonstration to a close.

Let us await the further development of the crisis. Let us continue to prepare our forces. Life is with us, the course of events shows the correctness of our slogans. [19]

However, not all the Bolshevik leaders accepted the necessity of retreat. Among those who did not was Latsis, who the same evening, at a meeting of several members of the Petersburg Committee, advocated in the name of the Vyborg District Committee that the party should rejuvenate the uprising by means of a general strike.

When members of the Executive Commission of the Petersburg Committee met Lenin at the watchmen’s hut of the Reno factory where he had temporarily taken refuge, he was vehement in his opposition to the declaration of a general strike. Treating the Executive Commission like a group of ill-behaved schoolboys, he wrote the following categorical back-to-work appeal in its name:

The Executive Commission of the Petersburg Committee RSDLP, in compliance with the Central Committee’s decision published in the 6 July Listok pravdy (a decision also signed by the Petersburg Committee), calls on workers to resume work beginning tomorrow, that is, beginning on the morning of 7 July. [20]
 

Could the Bolsheviks Have Remained Aloof From the July Demonstration?

Once the mass of the soldiers and workers had held an armed demonstration, against the wish of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, should the party have stood aside? Lenin had no doubt that it could not abstain, could not stand apart from the masses.

Had our party refused to support the 3-4 July mass movement, which burst out spontaneously despite our attempts to prevent it, we should have actually and completely betrayed the proletariat, since the people were moved to action by their well founded and just anger at the protraction of the imperialist war, which is a predatory war conducted in the interests of the capitalists, and at the inaction of the government and the Soviets in regard to the bourgeoisie, who are intensifying and aggravating economic disruption and famine. [21]

Two years after the July Days Lenin wrote:

Mistakes are inevitable when the masses are fighting, but the communists remain with the masses, see these mistakes, explain them to the masses, try to get them rectified, and strive perseveringly for the victory of class-consciousness over spontaneity. [22]

The Bolshevik Party could not wash its hands of responsibility for the actions of the workers and soldiers. It would rather suffer defeat with them than leave them without leadership, to be slaughtered by the counter-revolutionaries. Thanks to the Bolshevik Party’s taking its place at the head of the movement, the blow struck at the masses by reaction during the July Days and after, although considerable, was not mortal. The victims were counted in tens and not tens of thousands. The working class emerged from the struggle more experienced, more mature, more sober.
 

The Lessons of the July Days

With clarity and incisiveness, and without wavering, Lenin summarized the lessons of the July Days shortly afterwards. In an article written on July 7 and entitled Three Crises, he started by comparing the three political crises, April 20 and 21, June 10 and 18, and July 3-4. “What is common to all three is a mass dissatisfaction overflowing all bounds, a mass resentment with the bourgeoisie and their government.”

But this mass dissatisfaction expressed itself differently on each occasion. The first crisis of April “was stormy and spontaneous and completely unorganized.” In the June crisis, “the demonstration was called by the Bolsheviks, and was cancelled after a stern ultimatum and direct ban by the Congress of Soviets; then, on June 18, came a general demonstration in which the Bolshevik slogans clearly predominated.” “The third crisis broke out spontaneously on July 3 despite the Bolsheviks’ efforts on July 2 to check it. Reaching its climax on July 4, it led to a furious outburst of counter-revolution on July 5 and 6.” Lastly,

perhaps the most instructive conclusion to be drawn from considering the events in their interconnection is that all three crises manifested some form of demonstration that is new in the history of our revolution, a demonstration of a more complicated type in which the movement proceeds in waves, a sudden drop following a rapid rise, revolution and counter-revolution becoming more acute, and the middle elements being eliminated for a more or less extensive period. In all three crises, the movement took the form of a demonstration. An anti-government demonstration – that would be the most exact, formal description of events. But the fact of the matter is that it was not an ordinary demonstration; it was something considerably more than a demonstration, but less than a revolution. It was an outburst of revolution and counter-revolution together, a sharp, sometimes almost sudden elimination of the middle elements, while the proletarian and bourgeois elements made a stormy appearance. [23]

Lenin drew another important lesson from the July Days: the tactics and the slogans must now be quickly changed, in accordance with the general change in the objective situation.

Too often has it happened that, when history has taken a sharp turn, even progressive parties have for some time been unable to adapt themselves to the new situation and have repeated slogans which had formerly been correct but had now lost all meaning – lost it as “suddenly” as the sharp turn in history was “sudden” ...

Unless this is understood, it is impossible to understand anything of the urgent questions of the day. Every particular slogan must be deduced from the totality of specific features of a definite political situation. And the political situation in Russia now, after 4 July, differs radically from the situation between 27 February and 4 July. [24]

Above all, the possibility of a peaceful transfer of power to the working class no longer existed.

The movement on 3 and 4 July was the last attempt by means of a demonstration to induce the Soviets to take power. That was when the Soviets, i.e., the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks controlling them, virtually handed over power to the counter-revolution by summoning counter-revolutionary troops to Petrograd, disarming and disbanding revolutionary regiments and the workers, approving and tolerating acts of tyranny and violence against the Bolsheviks, the introduction of the death penalty at the front, etc. [25]

All hopes for a peaceful development of the Russian revolution have vanished for good. This is the objective situation: either complete victory for the military dictatorship, or victory for the workers’ armed uprising; the latter victory is only possible when the insurrection coincides with a deep, mass upheaval against the government and the bourgeoisie caused by economic disruption and the prolongation of the war.

The slogan “All power to the Soviets!” was a slogan for peaceful development of the revolution which was possible in April, May, June, and up to 5-9 July, i.e., up to the time when actual power passed into the hands of the military dictatorship. This slogan is no longer correct. [26]

... [P]ower can no longer be taken peacefully. It can be obtained only by winning a decisive struggle against those actually in power at the moment, namely, the military gang, the Cavaignacs, who are relying for support on the reactionary troops brought to Petrograd and on the Cadets and monarchists.

The Soviets no longer had any power, Lenin said. They were mere “figureheads, puppets.” [27]

The present Soviets have failed, have suffered complete defeat, because they are dominated by the Socialist Revolutionary and Menshevik parties. At the moment, these Soviets are like sheep brought to the slaughterhouse and bleating pitifully under the knife. The Soviets at present are powerless and helpless against the triumphant and triumphing counter-revolution. The slogan calling for the transfer of power to the Soviets might be construed as a “simple” appeal for the transfer of power to the present Soviets, and to say that, to appeal for it, would now mean deceiving the people. Nothing is more dangerous than deceit. [28]
 

Bending the Stick

Lenin’s description of the change in the position of the Soviets after the July Days was correct. His realistic grasp of the altered situation was in this case magnificently demonstrated. The evidence collected years later proved how far the Soviets did deteriorate after the July Days.

“The entire work of our Soviet, running in the Menshevik and Social Revolutionary channel,” writes the Saratov Bolshevik, Antonov, “lost all meaning ... At a meeting of the Executive Committee we would yawn from boredom till it became indecent. The Social Revolutionary-Menshevik talking-mill was empty and trivial.”

The sickly Soviets were becoming less and less able to serve as a support to their Petrograd center. The correspondence between Smolny and the localities was going into a decline: there was nothing to write about, nothing to propose; no prospects remained, and no tasks. [29]

The soviet, being basically an organization for the struggle for power, could not survive without this struggle.

However, Lenin bent the stick too far. The soviet did not die after the July Days. And the assumption subsequently made at the Sixth Congress of the party, that the Soviets were completely powerless, that dual power had ended, proved wrong. If they did nothing else, the Kornilov days showed that the Soviets were still full of life.

After months of emphasizing slow, patient propaganda, Lenin now, after the July Days, in the difficult conditions resulting from the semi-legality of the party, and knowing that a new turn towards direct struggle would be needed for the seizure of state power, had to “bend the stick” to straighten the party out, to put the emphasis on the key issue of the day.

To minimize the significance of the changes after the July Days would have been much more dangerous for Bolshevism than exaggerating them. And so Lenin turned to his old method of stick bending ...

Above all, he learned a very important lesson from the July Days: for the first time he concluded that it was necessary for the Bolsheviks to seize power directly, and in the not too distant future.

The new turn Lenin suggested was first considered at an expanded Central Committee meeting of July 13-14, where it was rejected. [30] But he got his way at the Sixth Party Congress in July-August. [31]

However, as we shall see, this was not a complete victory. To accept the principle of insurrection is one thing; to be ready to dare to actually seize power is another thing altogether. Every revolutionary situation is an equation with many unknowns; this is especially true of an act of insurrection. Conservatism and timidity are at a great advantage under such circumstances. But we are jumping ahead of the story.

 

 

Notes

1. Rabinowitch, pp.146-48.

2. The whole fascinating story of the conflicts between Lenin, on the one hand, and on the other, the Bolshevik Military Organization, some leading members of the Petersburg Committee, and some leading Bolsheviks in the barracks and in the factories is told very graphically in Alexander Rabinowitch’s book.

3. Lenin, Collected Works, vol.25, p.83.

4. Lenin, Collected Works, vol.25, pp.113-14.

5. Rabinowitch, p.121.

6. Rabinowitch, pp.121-22.

7. Kudelli, pp.185-99.

8. Kudelli, pp.200-05; Rabinowitch, p.129.

9. Rabinowitch, pp.131-34.

10. Kudelli, pp.244-45.

11. Rabinowitch, pp.137-38.

12. Lenin, Collected Works, vol.25, p.210.

13. Rabinowitch, p.184.

14. Lenin, Collected Works, vol.25, p.313.

15. Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, pp.581-82.

16. P.N. Miliukov, Istoriia vtoroi russkoi revoliutsii, Sofia 1921, vol.1, p.244.

17. Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, p.576.

18. Lenin, Collected Works, vol.25. p.312.

19. Browder and Kerensky, vol.3, pp.1354-55.

20. Rabinowitch, pp.215-16.

21. Lenin, Collected Works, vol.25, p.312.

22. Lenin, Collected Works, vol.29, p.396.

23. Lenin, Collected Works, vol.25, pp.170-71.

24. Lenin, Collected Works, vol.25, p.183.

25. Lenin, Collected Works, vol.25, p.215.

26. Lenin, Collected Works, vol.25, p.177.

27. Lenin, Collected Works, vol.25, pp.186-87.

28. Lenin, Collected Works, vol.25, pp.189-90.

29. Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, p.800.

30. A.M. Sovokin, Enlarged Meeting of the Central Committee of the RSDLP(b) 13-14 July 1917, Voprosy istorii KPSS, no.4, 1959.

31. Shestoi sezd, pp.110-146.

 


Last updated on 25.10.2007