The Russian Revolution

11

The October Coup

It is the law of nature that predators must be more intelligent than the animals on which they prey.

—Manual of Natural History

It was only from that quarter [the right] that we faced any real danger at that time.

—Alexander Kerensky¹

In September 1917, with Lenin in his hideaway, the command of Bolshevik forces passed to Trotsky, who had joined the party two months earlier. Defying Lenin’s pressures for an immediate power seizure, Trotsky adopted a more circumspect strategy, disguising Bolshevik designs as an effort to transfer power to the soviets. With supreme mastery of the technique of the modern coup d’état, of which he was arguably the inventor, he led the Bolsheviks to victory.

Trotsky was an ideal complement to Lenin. Brighter and more flamboyant, a much better speaker and writer, he could galvanize crowds: Lenin’s charisma was limited to his followers. But Trotsky was unpopular with the Bolshevik cadres, in part because he had joined their party late, after years of acerbic attacks on it, and in part because he was unbearably arrogant. In any event, being Jewish, Trotsky could hardly aspire to national leadership in a country in which, Revolution or no, Jews were regarded as outsiders. During the Revolution and Civil War he was Lenin’s alter ego, an indispensable companion in arms: after victory had been won, he became an embarrassment.

The event which made it possible for the Bolsheviks to recover from the July debacle was one of the more bizarre episodes in the Russian Revolution, known as the Kornilov Affair.*

57. Leon Trotsky.

General Lavr Kornilov was born in 1870 into a family of Siberian Cossacks. His father was a peasant and soldier; his mother, a housekeeper. Kornilov’s plebeian background contrasted with that of Kerensky and Lenin, whose fathers belonged to the uppermost strata of the service nobility. He had spent his early years among the Kazakh-Kirghiz and retained a lifelong affection for Asia and Asians. Upon graduating from military school, he enrolled in the General Staff Academy, which he completed with honors. He began active service in Turkestan, leading expeditions into Afghanistan and Persia. Kornilov, who mastered the Turkic dialects of Central Asia and became an expert on Russia’s Asiatic frontier, liked to surround himself with a bodyguard of Tekke Turkomans, dressed in red robes, with whom he spoke in their native language and to whom he was known as “Ulu Boiar,” or “Great Boyar.” He took part in the war with Japan, following which he was posted to China as military attaché. In April 1915, while in command of a division, he suffered serious wounds and was taken prisoner by the Austrians, but escaped and made his way back to Russia. In March 1917, the Provisional Committee of the Duma asked Nicholas II to appoint Kornilov commander of the Petrograd Military District. This post he held until the Bolshevik riots in April, when he resigned and left for the front.

Unlike most Russian generals, who were first and foremost politicians, Kornilov was a fighting man, a field officer of legendary courage. He had a reputation for obtuseness: Alekseev is reputed to have said that he had “a lion’s heart and a sheep’s brain,” but this is not a fair assessment. Kornilov had a great deal of practical intelligence and common sense, although like other soldiers of this type he was scornful of politics or politicians. He was said to hold “progressive” opinions, and there is no reason to doubt him that he despised the tsarist regime.²

Early in his military career Kornilov displayed a tendency to insubordination, which became more pronounced after February 1917 as he observed the disintegration of Russia’s armed forces and the impotence of the Provisional Government. His opponents later would accuse him of dictatorial ambitions. The charge can be made only with qualifications. Kornilov was a patriot, ready to serve any government that advanced Russia’s national interests, especially in time of war, by maintaining internal order and doing whatever was necessary to win victory. In the late summer of 1917 he concluded that the Provisional Government was no longer a free agent but a captive of socialist internationalists and enemy agents ensconced in the Soviet. It is this belief that made him receptive to suggestions that he assume dictatorial powers.

Kerensky turned to Kornilov after the July putsch in the hope that he would restore discipline in the armed forces and stop the German counter-offensive. On the night of July 7–8 he put him in charge of the Southwestern Front, which bore the brunt of the fighting, and three days later, on the advice of his aide, Boris Savinkov, offered him the post of Commander in Chief. Kornilov was in no hurry to accept. He thought it pointless to assume responsibility for the conduct of military operations until and unless the government tackled in earnest the problems hampering Russia’s entire war effort. These were of two kinds: narrowly military and more broadly political and economic. Having consulted other generals, he found wide agreement on what needed to be done to restore the fighting capacity of the armed forces: the army committees, authorized by Order No. 1, had to be disbanded or at least greatly reduced in power; military commanders had to regain disciplinary authority; measures had to be taken to restore order to the rear garrisons. Kornilov demanded the reintroduction of the death penalty for military personnel guilty of desertion and mutiny at the front as well as in the rear. But he did not stop there. He knew of the war mobilization plans of other belligerent countries and wanted something similar for Russia. It seemed to him essential that employees of defense industries and transport—the sectors of the economy most critical to the war effort—be subjected to military discipline. To the extent that he wanted greater authority than his predecessors, it was in emulation of General Ludendorff, who in December 1916 had received virtually dictatorial powers over the German economy: it was to enable the country to wage total war. This program, which Kornilov worked out jointly with the chief of staff, General A. S. Lukomskii, became the main source of conflict between himself, representing the officer corps and non-socialist opinion, and Kerensky, who had to act under the watchful eye of the Soviet. The conflict was irreconcilable because it pitted irreconcilables: the interests of Russia against those of international socialism. As Savinkov, who knew both men well, put it: Kornilov “loves freedom.… But Russia for him comes first, and freedom second, while for Kerensky … freedom and revolution come first, and Russia second.”³

On July 19, Kornilov communicated to Kerensky the terms on which he was prepared to accept command: (1) he would owe responsibility only to his conscience and the nation; (2) no one would interfere with either his operational orders or command appointments; (3) the disciplinary measures which he was discussing with the government, including the death penalty, would apply to the troops in the rear; and (4) the government would accept his previous suggestions.⁴ Kerensky was so angered by these demands that he considered withdrawing his offer to Kornilov, but on reflection decided to treat them as expressions of the general’s political “naïveté.”⁵ In fact, he was heavily dependent on Kornilcv’s help because without the army he was powerless. To be sure, the first of Kornilov’s four conditions verged on the impertinent: it can be explained, however, by the general’s desire to be rid of interference by the Soviet, which in its Order No. 1 had claimed the authority to countermand military instructions. When Kerensky’s commissar at headquarters, the SR M. M. Filonenko, told Kornilov that this demand could arouse the “most serious apprehensions” unless he meant by it “responsibility” to the Provisional Government, Kornilov replied that this was exactly what he had in mind.⁶ Then, as later, until his final break with Kerensky, Kornilov’s “insubordination” was directed against the Soviet and not against the government.

The terms under which Kornilov was willing to assume command of the armed forces were leaked to the press; probably by V. S. Zavoiko, Kornilov’s public relations official. Their publication in Russkoe slovo on July 21 caused a sensation, earning Kornilov instant popularity in non-socialist circles and commensurate hostility on the left.⁷

The negotiations between the Prime Minister and the general dragged on for two weeks. Kornilov assumed his new duties only on July 24, after receiving assurances that his conditions would be met.

In fact, however, Kerensky neither could nor would keep his promises. He could not because he was not a free agent but the executor of the will of the Ispolkom, which viewed all measures to restore military discipline, especially in the rear, as “counterrevolutionary” and vetoed them. To have carried out the reforms, therefore, would have compelled Kerensky to break with the socialists, his main political supporters. And he would not honor his promises because he soon came to see in Kornilov a dangerous rival. It is always perilous for a historian to try to penetrate an individual’s mind, but observing Kerensky’s actions in July and August it is difficult to escape the conclusion that he deliberately provoked a conflict with his military chief, rejecting every opportunity at reconciliation, because he wanted to bring down the one man who threatened his status as leader of Russia and custodian of the Revolution.*

58. General Lavr Kornilov.

Boris Savinkov, the acting director of the Ministry of War, a man ideally suited for the role of an intermediary because he enjoyed the confidence of both Kerensky and Kornilov, drafted early in August a four-point program calling for the extension of the death penalty to troops in the rear, the militarization of railroad transport, the application of martial law to war industries, and the restoration to officers of disciplinary authority with a corresponding reduction in the power of army committees.⁸ According to him, Kerensky promised to sign the document, but kept on procrastinating and on August 8 said that he would “never, under any circumstances, sign a bill about the death penalty in the rear.”⁹ Feeling deceived, Kornilov kept on bombarding the Prime Minister with “ultimata” which so irritated Kerensky that he came close to dismissing him.¹⁰ Since Kornilov knew of Kerensky’s deep interest in the revitalization of the armed forces, his failure to act confirmed him in the suspicion that the Prime Minister was not a free man but a tool of the socialists, some of them known since the July putsch to be consorting with the enemy.

Kornilov’s badgering placed Kerensky in a difficult situation. He had managed since May to straddle the gulf between the government and the Ispolkom by conceding to the latter veto powers over legislation and going out of his way not to antagonize it, while, at the same time, vigorously pursuing the war, which won him the support of the liberals and even moderate conservatives. Kornilov compelled him to do something he wished at all costs to avoid—namely, to choose between the left and the right, between the interests of international socialism and those of the Russian state. He could be under no illusion: giving in to Kornilov’s demands, most of which he thought reasonable, would mean a break with the Soviet. On August 18, the Plenum of the Soviet debated, on a Bolshevik motion, the proposal to restore the death penalty in the armed forces. It passed with a virtually unanimous vote of some 850 delegates against 4 (Tsereteli, Dan, M.I. Liber, and Chkheidze) a resolution rejecting the application of capital punishment to front-line troops as a “measure intended to frighten the soldier masses for the purpose of enslaving them to the commanding staff.”¹¹ Clearly, there was no chance of the Soviet’s approving the extension of the death penalty to troops not in the combat zone, let alone the subjection of defense and transport workers to military discipline.

In theory, Kerensky could have stood up to the Soviet and cast his lot with the liberals and conservatives. But that alternative was foreclosed for him by the very low esteem in which he was held by these circles, especially after the failure of the June offensive and his indecisive reaction to the July putsch. When he made an appearance at the Moscow State Conference on August 14, he was acclaimed by the left only: the right received him in stony silence, reserving its ovation for Kornilov.¹² The liberal and conservative press referred to him with unconcealed contempt. He had no choice, therefore, but to opt for the left, accommodating the socialist intellectuals of the Ispolkom while trying, with diminishing conviction and success, to advance Russia’s national interests.

His desire to placate the left was evident not only in the failure to carry out the promised military reforms but also in the refusal to take resolute measures against the Bolsheviks. Although he had in hand a great deal of damning evidence, he failed to prosecute the leaders of the July putsch in deference to the Ispolkom and the Soviet, which regarded the charges against the Bolsheviks as “counterrevolutionary.” He showed a similar bias in reacting to a proposal from the Ministry of War to take into custody both right-wing and left-wing “saboteurs” of Russia’s war effort. He approved the list of right-wingers to be arrested, but hesitated when coming to the other list, from which he eventually struck more than half the names. When the document reached the Minister of the Interior, the SR N. D. Avksentev, whose countersignature it required, the latter reconfirmed the first list, but crossed out from the second all but two of the remaining names (Trotsky’s and Kollontai’s).¹³

Kerensky was a very ambitious man who saw himself destined to lead democratic Russia. His only opportunity to realize this ambition was to take charge of the democratic left—that is, the Mensheviks and SRs—and to do so he had to pander to its obsessive fear of the “counterrevolution.” He not only saw but needed to see Kornilov as the focus of all the anti-democratic forces. Although he well knew what the Bolsheviks had intended with their armed “demonstrations” of April, June, and July, and could have easily determined what Lenin and Trotsky planned for the future, he persuaded himself that Russian democracy faced danger not from the left but from the right. Since he was neither uninformed nor unintelligent, this absurd assessment makes sense only if one assumes that it suited him politically. Having cast Kornilov in the role of the Russian Bonaparte, he reacted uncritically—indeed, eagerly—to rumors of a vast counterrevolutionary conspiracy allegedly being hatched by Kornilov’s friends and supporters.¹⁴

Precious days went by without the military reforms being enacted. Knowing that the Germans intended soon to resume offensive operations and hoping to stir things up, Kornilov requested permission to meet with the cabinet. He arrived in the capital on August 3. Addressing the ministers, he began with a survey of the status of the armed forces. He wanted to discuss military reforms, but Savinkov interrupted him, saying that the War Ministry was working on this matter. Kornilov then turned to the situation at the front and reported on the operations he was preparing against the Germans and Austrians. At this point, Kerensky leaned over and asked him in a whisper to be careful;¹⁵ moments later a similar warning came from Savinkov. This incident had a shattering effect on Kornilov and on his attitude toward the Provisional Government: he referred to it time and again as justification for his subsequent actions. As he correctly interpreted Kerensky’s and Savinkov’s warnings, one or more ministers were under suspicion of leaking military secrets. When he returned to Mogilev, Kornilov, still in a state of shock, told Lukomskii what had happened and asked what kind of government he thought was running Russia.¹⁶ He concluded that the minister about whom he had been warned was Chernov, who was believed to convey confidential information to colleagues in the Soviet, the Bolsheviks included.¹⁷ From that day on, Kornilov regarded the Provisional Government as unworthy to lead the nation.*

Not long after these events (on August 6 or 7), Kornilov ordered General A. M. Krymov, the commander of the Third Cavalry Corps, to move his troops from the Romanian sector northward, and, reinforced with other units, take up positions at Velikie Luki, a city in western Russia roughly equidistant from Moscow and Petrograd. The Third Corps consisted of two Cossack divisions and the so-called Native (or Savage) Division from the Caucasus, all undermanned (the Native Division had a mere 1,350 men) but regarded as dependable. Puzzled by these instructions, Lukomskii pointed out that Velikie Luki was too far from the front for these forces to be used against the Germans. Kornilov replied that he wanted the corps to be in position to suppress a potential Bolshevik putsch in either Moscow or Petrograd. He assured Lukomskii they were not intended against the Provisional Government, adding that if it proved necessary, Krymov’s troops would disperse the Soviet, hang its leaders, and make short shrift of the Bolsheviks—with or without the government’s consent.¹⁸ He also told Lukomskii that Russia desperately needed “firm authority” capable of saving the country and its armed forces:

I am not a counterrevolutionary … I despise the old regime, which badly mistreated my family. There is no return to the past and there cannot be any. But we need an authority that could truly save Russia, which would make it possible honorably to end the war and lead her to the Constituent Assembly.… Our current government has solid individuals but also those who ruin things, who ruin Russia. The main thing is that Russia has no authority and that such authority must be created. Perhaps I shall have to exert such pressure on the government. It is possible that if disorders break out in Petrograd, after they have been suppressed I will have to enter the government and participate in the formation of a new, strong authority.¹⁹

Having heard Kerensky tell Kornilov more than once that he, too, favored “strong authority,” Lukomskii concluded that Kornilov and the Prime Minister should have no difficulty cooperating.²⁰

Kornilov returned to Petrograd on August 10 at the urging of Savinkov, but against the wishes of the Prime Minister. Having heard rumors of attempts on his life, he arrived with his Tekke guards, who mounted machine guns outside Kerensky’s office. Kerensky refused to grant Kornilov’s request to meet with the full cabinet and received him instead in the presence of Nekrasov and Tereshchenko, his kitchen cabinet. The general’s sense of urgency stemmed from the knowledge that the Germans were about to initiate offensive operations near Riga, threatening the capital. He reverted to the subject of the reforms: restoration of discipline at the front and in the rear, including the death penalty for Russians who worked for foreign powers, and militarization of defense industries as well as transport.²¹ Kerensky found much of what Kornilov requested, especially in regard to defense industries and transport, “absurd,” but he did not refuse to tighten discipline in the armed forces. Kornilov told the Prime Minister he understood he was about to be dismissed and “advised” against such action as likely to provoke disorders in the army.²²

Four days later Kornilov made a sensational appearance at the State Conference which Kerensky had convened in Moscow to rally public support. At first Kerensky refused Kornilov’s request that he be allowed to address the conference, but then relented on condition that he confine himself to military matters. When Kornilov arrived at the Bolshoi Theater, he was cheered and carried aloft by crowds; the delegates on the right gave him a tumultuous welcome. Although in his rather dry speech Kornilov said nothing that could be construed as politically damaging to the government, for Kerensky this event was a watershed: he interpreted the outpouring of sympathy for the general as a personal affront. According to his subsequent testimony, “after the Moscow conference, it was clear to me that the next attempt at a blow would come from the right, and not from the left.”²³ Once this conviction lodged in his mind, it became an idée fixe; everything that happened subsequently only served to reinforce it. His certainty that a right-wing coup was underway received encouragement from cables sent by officers and private citizens demanding that he keep Kornilov at his post and confidential warnings from army headquarters of conspiracies by staff officers.²⁴ The conservative press now opened up a barrage against Kerensky and his cabinet. Typical was an editorial in the right-wing Novoe vremia which argued that Russia’s salvation lay in the unquestioned acceptance of the authority of the Commander in Chief.²⁵ No evidence exists that Kornilov inspired this political campaign: but as its beneficiary, he came under suspicion.

59. Kornilov feted on his arrival at the Moscow State Conference: August 14, 1917.

Viewed dispassionately, the outpouring of sympathy for the commanding general was an expression of unhappiness with Kerensky’s leadership, not a symptom of the “counterrevolution.” The country yearned for firm authority. But the socialists were insensitive to this mood. Better versed in history than in practical politics, they firmly believed that a conservative (“Bonapartist”) reaction was inevitable.* As early as August 24–25, before anything had happened to justify it, the socialist press spoke of counterrevolution: on August 25, the Menshevik Novaia zhizn’ announced, under the heading “Conspiracy,” that one was in full swing and expressed the hope that the government would prosecute it with at least as much zeal as it had displayed against the Bolsheviks.²⁶

Thus, the plot was written: it only remained to find the protagonist.

In the middle of August the Germans launched the expected assault on Riga. The undisciplined and politicized Russian troops fell back and on August 20–21 abandoned the city. To Kornilov this was ultimate proof that Russia’s war effort had to be urgently reorganized, or else Petrograd itself would soon share Riga’s fate. To understand the atmosphere in which the Kornilov affair unfolded, the military backdrop must never be left out of sight: for although contemporaries as well as historians have treated the Kornilov-Kerensky conflict exclusively as a struggle for power, for Kornilov it was first and foremost a critical, possibly final effort to save Russia from defeat in the war.

In the middle of August, Savinkov received from reliable French intelligence sources information that the Bolsheviks planned another putsch for the beginning of September: the information was published on August 19 in the daily Russkoe slovo.* The date coincided with what headquarters believed to be the next phase of German operations, an advance from Riga on Petrograd.²⁷ The origin of this intelligence is not known: it appears to have been faulty for there is nothing in Bolshevik sources to indicate preparations for a coup at this time. Savinkov conveyed this intelligence to Kerensky. Kerensky seemed un-fazed: then, as later, he thought a Bolshevik coup a figment of his opponents’ imagination.²⁸ But he quickly realized the utility of information on an alleged Bolshevik putsch as an excuse to disarm Kornilov. He requested Savinkov to proceed immediately to Mogilev to carry out the following missions: (1) liquidate the officer conspiracy at headquarters reported on by Filonenko; (2) abolish the Political Department at Army Headquarters; (3) obtain Kornilov’s consent to have Petrograd and its environs transferred from his command to that of the government and placed under martial law; and

(4) request from General Kornilov a cavalry corps for the purpose of imposing martial law in Petrograd and defending the Provisional Government from any and all assaults, and, in particular, from an assault of the Bolsheviks, who had already rebelled on July 3–5 and who, according to information of foreign intelligence, are once again preparing to rise in connection with German landings and an uprising in Finland.²⁹

This fourth task particularly deserves being kept in mind because Kerensky’s subsequent claim that Kornilov had sent the cavalry against Petrograd to overthrow his government would provide grounds for charging the general with treason.

The purpose of Savinkov’s mission to Mogilev was to abort a counterrevolutionary conspiracy allegedly being hatched there and to do so under the pretext of preparations against a Bolshevik putsch. Kerensky later obliquely admitted that he had asked for military units—that is, the Third Cavalry Corps—to be placed under his command because he wanted to be “militarily independent of headquarters.”³⁰ Withdrawing the Petrograd Military District from Kornilov’s command served the same end.

Savinkov arrived in Mogilev on August 22 and stayed there until August 24.³¹ He began his first meeting with Kornilov saying that it was essential for the general and the Prime Minister, for all their differences, to cooperate. Kornilov agreed: while he considered Kerensky weak and unfit for his responsibilities, he was needed. He added that Kerensky would be well advised to broaden the political base of the government by bringing in General Alekseev and patriotic socialists like Plekhanov and A. A. Argunov. Turning to Kornilov’s reform proposals, and assuring him that the government was prepared to act on them, Savinkov produced a draft of the latest reform project. Kornilov found it not entirely satisfactory because it retained the army committees and commissars. Would these reforms be acted on soon? Savinkov responded that the government did not want as yet to make them public for fear of provoking a violent reaction from the Soviet. He now informed Kornilov that the government had information that the Bolsheviks were planning fresh disturbances in Petrograd at the end of August or the beginning of September: the premature release of the military reform program could spark an immediate uprising of the Bolsheviks, in which the Soviet, which also opposed military reforms, could make common cause with them.

Savinkov next turned to the subject of measures to deal with the anticipated Bolshevik coup. The Prime Minister wished to withdraw Petrograd and its suburbs from the Petrograd Military District and place it under his direct command. Kornilov was displeased by this request, but yielded. Since one could not predict the reaction of the Soviet to the proposed military reforms and in view of the anticipated Bolshevik putsch, Savinkov went on, it was desirable to reinforce the Petrograd garrison with reliable combat troops. He requested Kornilov in two days to move the Third Cavalry Corps from Velikie Luki to the vicinity of Petrograd, where it would come under the government’s command; as soon as this was done, he was to notify Petrograd by telegraph. If necessary, he said, the government was prepared to carry out “merciless” action against the Bolsheviks and, should it side with them, the Petrograd Soviet as well. To this request Kornilov readily assented.

Kornilov also agreed to ask the Union of Officers at headquarters to move to Moscow, but he refused to do away with the Political Department. He further promised to liquidate any anti-government plots at headquarters that might come to his attention.³²

In the morning of August 24, as he was about to depart for Petrograd, Savinkov made two additional requests. Although Kerensky would later make much of Kornilov’s failure to carry them out, it is known from Savinkov’s recollections that they were made on his own initiative.³³ One was that General Krymov be replaced as commander of the Third Corps before its dispatch to Petrograd: Krymov’s “reputation,” in Savinkov’s opinion, could create “undesirable complications.” The other was that the Native Division be detached from the Third Corps on the grounds that it would be embarrassing to have Caucasian natives “liberate” the capital of Russia.

Did Kornilov see through Kerensky’s deception? From his words and deeds one would have to conclude that he took the Prime Minister’s instructions at face value, unaware that the true object of Kerensky’s apprehension was not the Bolsheviks but he himself. As they were saying goodbye, Kornilov assured Savinkov that he intended to support Kerensky because the country needed him.³⁴ For all his faults, Kerensky was a true patriot, and to Kornilov patriotic socialists were a valuable asset.

Following Savinkov’s departure, Kornilov issued orders to General Krymov, whom he retained in his post:

1. In the event you receive from me or directly on the spot information that the Bolshevik uprising has begun, you are to move without delay with the corps to Petrograd, occupy the city, disarm the units of the Petrograd garrison which have joined the Bolshevik movement, disarm the population of Petrograd, and disperse the Soviet.

2. Having carried out this mission, General Krymov is to detach one brigade with artillery to Oranienbaum; following the arrival there, he is to demand of the Kronshtadt garrison to disarm the fortress and relocate to the mainland.³⁵

The two assignments implemented Kerensky’s instructions. The first—to dispatch the Cavalry Corps to Petrograd—followed the request delivered orally by Savinkov. The second—to disarm Kronshtadt—was in line with Kerensky’s orders issued on August 8 but never carried out.³⁶ Both missions were to protect the Provisional Government from the Bolsheviks. Kornilov may be said to have shown insubordination in retaining Krymov as commander of the Third Cavalry Corps: in justification, he explained to Lukomskii that the government feared Krymov would be too harsh in dealing with the rebels, but it would be grateful to him when it was all over.³⁷ Lukomskii wondered whether the instructions brought by Savinkov were not some kind of trap: Kornilov dismissed these doubts, saying that Lukomskii was “too suspicious.”³⁸

At this time, Kornilov was approached by officers who said they had in Petrograd 2,000 men willing to help suppress the Bolsheviks. They requested from Kornilov 100 officers to lead them: Kornilov promised to provide these men. He said that all should be in readiness by August 26, the earliest of the dates for the anticipated Bolshevik coup, so that when the Bolsheviks rose, at the approach of Krymov’s cavalry the volunteers could seize Smolnyi, the seat of the Soviet.³⁹

60. Vladimir Lvov.

Savinkov reported to Kerensky on August 25 that all his instructions would be carried out.

At this point, an incident occurred which transformed the discord between the Prime Minister and the Commander in Chief into an open rift. The catalyst was a self-appointed “savior” of the country, a kind of stormy petrel, named Vladimir Nikolaevich Lvov. Forty-five years old, from a wealthy landowning family, a man of burning ambitions but no commensurate talents, Lvov had led a restless life. Having studied philosophy at St. Petersburg University, he enrolled at the Moscow Theological Seminary, then pursued desultory studies and for a while contemplated becoming a monk. He eventually chose politics. He joined the Octobrists, and served in the Third and Fourth Dumas. During the war, he belonged to the Progressive Bloc. Owing to wide social connections, he got himself appointed Procurator of the Holy Synod in the First Provisional Government, a post he held until July 1917, when he was dismissed. He took the dismissal badly and harbored a grudge against Kerensky. He is said to have had considerable personal charm, but was regarded as naïve and “incredibly frivolous”; George Katkov questions his sanity.⁴⁰

In August, Lvov joined a group of conservative intellectuals in Moscow who wanted to save Russia from looming collapse. The country had had no real cabinet since early July, when Kerensky assumed dictatorial powers. Like Kornilov, Lvov and his friends felt that the Provisional Government needed to be strengthened with representatives of business and the armed forces. It was suggested to him that he convey these views to Kerensky. The initiator of the move seems to have been A. F. Aladin, one of those mysterious figures in the Russian Revolution (such as N. V. Nekrasov and V. S. Zavoiko) who exerted great influence without ever emerging from the shadows. A Social-Democratic revolutionary in his youth, Aladin led the Trudovik faction in the First Duma. After its dissolution, he moved to England, where he remained until February 1917. He was close to Kornilov. Affiliated with the group was I. A. Dobrynskii, a Red Cross official, and Lvov’s elder brother, Nicholas, a prominent Duma deputy and leading figure in the Progressive Bloc.

According to Lvov’s recollections (which, however, have been characterized as entirely unreliable), during the week of August 17–22, following the State Conference, he heard rumors of conspiracies at headquarters to proclaim Kornilov dictator and him Minister of the Interior.* He claimed he felt it a duty to inform Kerensky. The two met on the morning of August 22. Kerensky says that he had many visits from would-be saviors of the country and paid little heed to them, but Lvov’s “message” carried a threat which gained his attention.† According to Kerensky, Lvov told him that the base of public support for the government had eroded to the point where it had become necessary to bolster it by inviting into it public figures who enjoyed good relations with the military. He claimed to speak on behalf of these figures, but who they were, he refused to say. Kerensky subsequently denied having given Lvov authority to negotiate in his name with anyone, saying that before he could “express an opinion” on Lvov’s remarks he had to know the names of his associates. He specifically denied discussing the possibility of Lvov’s going to Mogilev to consult Kornilov.⁴¹ According to Kerensky, after Lvov left his office he gave the conversation no more thought. There is no reason to doubt Kerensky, but it is not improbable that, consciously or not, he gave Lvov the impression that he wished to know more, using him, if not as a proxy, then as an intelligence agent to learn whether there was any substance to persistent rumors of anti-government plots in Mogilev.^‡

Lvov returned at once to Moscow to report to his friends on the talk with the Prime Minister: the interview had been successful, he told them, and Kerensky was prepared to discuss a reorganization of the cabinet. On the basis of Lvov’s account, Aladin drafted a memorandum:

1. Kerensky is willing to negotiate with headquarters;

2. the negotiations should be conducted through Lvov;

3. Kerensky agrees to form a cabinet enjoying the confidence of the country and the entire military;

4. in view of these facts, specific demands must be formulated;

5. a specific program has to be worked out;

6. the negotiations must be conducted in secrecy.*

This document suggests that in reporting the conversation with Kerensky, Lvov exaggerated the Prime Minister’s interest in his proposal.

Accompanied by Dobrynskii, Lvov went to Mogilev. He arrived on August 24, just as Savinkov was departing. Since Kornilov was too busy carrying out Kerensky’s instructions to receive him, he checked in at a hotel, where he claimed to have heard rumors of Kornilov’s plot to kill Kerensky. Horrified, he decided to protect the Prime Minister by pretending to act on his behalf and negotiate a reconstitution of the cabinet. “Although Kerensky had not given me specific authority to conduct negotiations with Kornilov,” he recounted, “I felt that I could negotiate in his name inasmuch as, in general, he was agreeable to the reorganization of the government.”⁴² He saw Kornilov late that night and again the following morning (August 25). According to Kornilov’s deposition and the recollections of Lukomskii, who was present, Lvov identified himself as a representative of the Prime Minister on an “important mission.”⁴³ With reckless lack of caution, Kornilov neither requested to see Lvov’s credentials nor asked Petrograd to confirm his authority to speak for the Prime Minister, but immediately entered with him into the most sensitive and potentially incriminating political discussions. His mission, Lvov said, was to learn Kornilov’s views on how to assure firm government in Russia. In his own opinion, this could be accomplished in one of three ways: (1) if Kerensky assumed dictatorial powers; (2) if a Directory was formed with Kornilov as a member; (3) if Kornilov became dictator, with Kerensky and Savinkov holding ministerial portfolios.⁴⁴ Kornilov took this information at face value because he had been officially told some time earlier that the government was contemplating a Directory modeled on the English Small War Cabinet to improve the management of the war effort.⁴⁵

Interpreting Lvov to mean that Kerensky was offering him dictatorial powers, Kornilov responded that he preferred the third option. He did not crave power, he said, and would subordinate himself to every head of state; but if asked to take on the main responsibility, as Lvov (and, presumably, the Prime Minister) suggested he might, he would not refuse.⁴⁶ He went on to say that in view of the danger of an imminent Bolshevik coup in Petrograd, it might be wise for the Prime Minister and Savinkov to seek safety in Mogilev and there join him in discussions on the composition of the new cabinet.

The interview over, Lvov at once departed for Petrograd.

Lukomskii, who was politically more astute, expressed suspicions about Lvov’s mission. Had Kornilov asked for his credentials? No, Kornilov replied, because he knew Lvov to be an honorable man. Why had Savinkov not asked his opinions of cabinet changes? Kornilov shrugged off this question.⁴⁷

On the evening of August 25, Kornilov invited Rodzianko by telegraph to come to Mogilev, along with other public leaders, in three days’ time. Lvov wired a similar message to his brother. The meeting was to deal with the composition of the new cabinet.⁴⁸

At 6 p.m. the following day (August 26), Lvov met with Kerensky in the Winter Palace.* Just as in his interview with Kornilov he had posed as a representative of the Prime Minister, so he now assumed the role of an agent of the Commander in Chief. Without telling Kerensky that he had asked Kornilov’s opinion of three options for restructuring the government, which he had formulated with his friends but presented as coming from the Prime Minister, he said that Kornilov demanded dictatorial authority. Kerensky recalls that on hearing this he burst out laughing. But amusement soon yielded to alarm. He asked Lvov to put Kornilov’s demands in writing. Lvov jotted down the following:

General Kornilov proposes:

1. That martial law be proclaimed in Petrograd.

2. That all military and civil authority be placed in the hands of the Commander in Chief.

3. That all ministers, not excluding the Prime Minister, resign and that provisional executive authority be transferred to deputy ministers until the formation of a cabinet by the Commander in Chief.

V. Lvov⁴⁹

Kerensky says that as soon as he read these words everything became clear:⁵⁰ a military coup was in the making. He might have asked himself why Kornilov had to employ as intermediary the former Procurator of the Holy Synod rather than Savinkov, or better yet, he might have rushed to the nearest telegraph to ask Kornilov or Filonenko whether the Commander in Chief had indeed commissioned Lvov to negotiate on his behalf. He did neither. His certainty that Kornilov was about to seize power was strengthened by Lvov’s insistence that Kornilov wanted Kerensky and Savinkov to depart that very night for Mogilev. Kerensky concluded that Kornilov wanted to take them prisoner.

There can be little doubt that the three “conditions” attributed by Lvov to Kornilov had been concocted by him and his friends in order to force the issue: they did not reflect Kornilov’s answer to what he had been told were questions posed to him by the Prime Minister. But they were just what Kerensky needed to break Kornilov. In order to obtain incontrovertible proof of Kornilov’s conspiracy, Kerensky decided for the time being to play along. He invited Lvov to meet him at 8 p.m. in the office of the Minister of War to communicate with the general by telegraph.

Lvov, who spent the interval with Miliukov, was late. At 8:30, having kept Kornilov waiting for half an hour, Kerensky initiated a telegraphic conversation, in the course of which he impersonated the absent Lvov. He hoped, he said later, with this deception to obtain either a confirmation of Lvov’s ultimatum or else a “bewildered” denial.

What follows is the complete text of this celebrated exchange as recorded on telegraphic tapes:

Kerensky: Prime Minister on the line. We are waiting for General Kornilov.

Kornilov: General Kornilov on the line.

Kerensky: How do you do, General. V. N. Lvov and Kerensky are on the line. We ask you to confirm that Kerensky can act in accordance with the information conveyed to him by Vladimir Nikolaevich.

Kornilov: How do you do, Aleksandr Fedorovich. How do you do, Vladimir Nikolaevich. To confirm once again the outline of the situation I believe the country and the army are in, an outline which I sketched out to Vladimir Nikolaevich with the request that he should report it to you, let me declare once more that the events of the last few days and those already in the offing make it imperative to reach a completely definite decision in the shortest possible time.

Kerensky [impersonating Lvov]: I, Vladimir Nikolaevich, am enquiring about this definite decision which has to be taken, of which you asked me to inform Aleksandr Fedorovich strictly in private. Without such confirmation from you personally, Aleksandr Fedorovich hesitates to trust me completely.

Kornilov: Yes, I confirm that I asked you to transmit my urgent request to Aleksandr Fedorovich to come to Mogilev.

Kerensky: I, Aleksandr Fedorovich, take your reply to confirm the words reported to me by Vladimir Nikolaevich. It is impossible for me to do that and leave here today, but I hope to leave tomorrow. Will Savinkov be needed?

Kornilov: I urgently request that Boris Viktorovich come along with you. What I said to Vladimir Nikolaevich applies equally to Boris Viktorovich. I would beg you most sincerely not to postpone your departure beyond tomorrow …

Kerensky: Are we to come only if there are demonstrations, rumors of which are going around, or in any case?

Kornilov: In any case.

Kerensky: Goodbye. We shall meet soon.

Kornilov: Goodbye.⁵¹

This brief dialogue was a comedy of errors with the most tragic consequences. Kerensky later maintained—and he persisted in this version to the end of his life—that Kornilov had “affirmed not only Lvov’s authority to speak in Kornilov’s name, but confirmed also the accuracy of the words which Lvov had attributed to him”—namely, that he demanded dictatorial powers.⁵² But we know from eyewitnesses at the other end of the Hughes apparatus that when the conversation was over, Kornilov heaved a sigh of relief: Kerensky’s agreement to come to Mogilev meant to him that the Prime Minister was willing to work jointly on the formation of a new, “strong” government. Later that evening, Kornilov discussed with Lukomskii the composition of such a cabinet, in which both Kerensky and Savinkov would hold ministerial posts. He also sent telegrams to leading statesmen inviting them to join him and the Prime Minister in Mogilev.⁵³

Thanks to the availability of the tapes, it can be established that the two men talked at cross-purposes. As concerned Kornilov, all that he had confirmed to Kerensky posing as Lvov was that he had, indeed, invited Kerensky and Savinkov to Mogilev. Kerensky interpreted Kornilov’s confirmation to mean—without any warrant except such as provided by his fevered imagination—that Kornilov intended to take him prisoner and proclaim himself dictator. It was an omission of monumental proportions on Kerensky’s part not to inquire directly or even obliquely whether Kornilov had in fact given Lvov for transmittal a three-point ultimatum. In the conversation with Kerensky, Kornilov said nothing about the cabinet resigning and full military and civilian power being placed in his hands. From Kornilov’s words—“Yes, I confirm that I asked you [i.e., Lvov] to transmit my urgent request to Aleksandr Fedorovich to come to Mogilev”—Kerensky chose to infer that the three political conditions presented to him by Lvov were authentic as well. When Filonenko saw the tapes, he observed that “Kerensky never stated what he was asking and Kornilov never knew to what he was responding.”* Kerensky believed that by impersonating Lvov he was communicating with Kornilov in an understandable code, whereas he was speaking in riddles. The best that can be said in defense of the Prime Minister’s behavior is that he was overwrought. But the suspicion lurks that he heard exactly what he wanted to hear.

On the basis of such flimsy evidence, Kerensky decided on an open break with Kornilov. When Lvov belatedly turned up, he had him placed under arrest.† Ignoring Savinkov’s pleas that before doing anything precipitous he communicate once again with Kornilov to clear up what in Savinkov’s mind was an obvious misunderstanding, Kerensky called a cabinet meeting for midnight. He told the ministers what had transpired and requested “full authority”—that is, dictatorial powers—to enable him to deal with the military coup d’état. The ministers agreed that one had to stand up to the “general-conspirator” and that Kerensky should enjoy full powers to deal with the emergency. Accordingly, they tendered their resignations, which Nekrasov interpreted to mean that the Provisional Government had, in effect, ceased to exist.⁵⁴ Kerensky emerged from the meeting as nominal dictator. After the cabinet adjourned at 4 a.m. on August 27, no more regular cabinet meetings were held, decisions from now until October 26 being taken by Kerensky acting alone or in consultation with Nekrasov and Tereshchenko. In the early hours of the morning, either with or without the approval of the ministers—most likely on his personal authority—Kerensky sent Kornilov a telegram dismissing him and ordering him to report at once to Petrograd. Until his replacement had been named, General Lukomskii was to serve as Commander in Chief.* By breaking with Kornilov, Kerensky could pose as champion of the Revolution: according to Nekrasov, during the night meeting of the cabinet, Kerensky said, “I will not give them the Revolution”⁵⁵—as if it were his to give or keep.

While these events were taking place, Kornilov, ignorant of Kerensky’s interpretation of their brief exchange, proceeded with preparations to help the government suppress the anticipated Bolshevik rising. At 2:40 a.m. he cabled Savinkov:

The corps is assembling in the environs of Petrograd toward evening August 28. Request that Petrograd be placed under martial law August 29.⁵⁶

If any more proof is needed that Kornilov did not engage in a military putsch, this cable should furnish it: for surely if he were ordering the Third Corps to Petrograd to unseat the government, he would hardly have forewarned the government by telegraph. It is even less credible that he would have entrusted his alleged coup to a subordinate. Zinaida Gippius, pondering the mystery of the Kornilov Affair a few days after its occurrence, asked herself the obvious question: “How was it that Kornilov sent his troops while he himself sat quietly at headquarters?”⁵⁷ Indeed, had Kornilov really planned to topple the government and take over as dictator, a man of his temperament and military presence would certainly have commanded the operation in person.

The receipt at 7:00 a.m. on August 27, at headquarters of Kerensky’s cable dismissing Kornilov threw the generals into complete confusion. Their initial reaction was that the cable had to be a forgery, not only because its contents made no sense in view of the Kerensky-Kornilov talk ten hours earlier but also because it was improperly formatted, lacking ihe customary serial number and bearing only the signature “Kerensky,” without the title. It also had no legal force, since by law only the cabinet had the authority to dismiss the Commander in Chief. (Headquarters, of course, did not know that the previous night the cabinet had resigned and Kerensky assumed dictatorial powers.) On further thought the generals concluded that the message perhaps was genuine, but that Kerensky had sent it under duress, possibly while a prisoner of the Bolsheviks. From such considerations, Kornilov refused to resign and Lukomskii to assume his duties “until the circumstances had been fully clarified.”⁵⁸ Convinced that the Bolsheviks were already in control of Petrograd, Kornilov, ignoring Kerensky’s instructions to the contrary, ordered Krymov to speed up the advance of his troops.⁵⁹

To clarify any confusion that may have arisen in Petrograd in connection with Kornilov’s answer to Lvov’s questions, whom no one in Mogilev as yet suspected of being an impostor, Lukomskii sent the government a telegram in his own name, reaffirming the need for strong authority to prevent the collapse of the armed forces.⁶⁰

That afternoon Savinkov, as yet ignorant of Lvov’s machinations but suspecting some monumental mistake, contacted Kornilov. Vasilii Maklakov stood by and toward the end joined in the conversation.⁶¹ Referring to Lukomskii’s latest telegram, Savinkov protested that on his visit to Mogilev he had never raised political matters. In response, Kornilov for the first time mentioned Vladimir Lvov and referred to the three options which Lvov had laid out before him. He went on to say that the Third Cavalry Corps was being moved toward Petrograd on instructions of the government, as conveyed by Savinkov. He was acting entirely loyally, carrying out the government’s orders. “Deeply convinced that the [dismissal] decision, entirely unexpected to me, had been taken under pressure of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies … I firmly declare … that I will not leave my post.” Kornilov added that he would be happy to meet with the Prime Minister and Savinkov at his headquarters, confident that “the misunderstanding could be cleared up through personal explanations.”

At this point, the breach was still mendable. Had Kerensky displayed the same circumspection in dealing with charges against Kornilov and held out for “documentary evidence” that would prove his “treason in final form,” as he had done the month before in the case of Lenin, all that happened would have been avoided. But while Kerensky feared to repress Lenin, he had no interest in conciliation with the general. When Miliukov, upon being informed of the course of events, offered his services as mediator, Kerensky responded that there could be no conciliation with Kornilov.⁶² Kerensky rejected a similar offer from the Allied ambassadors.⁶³ People who saw Kerensky at the time thought he was in a state of complete hysteria.⁶⁴

All that was needed to prevent a complete break between the Provisional Government and the generals was for Kerensky or his proxy to ask Kornilov point-blank whether he had authorized Lvov to demand dictatorial powers. Savinkov urged him to do so, but Kerensky refused.⁶⁵ Kerensky’s failure to take this obvious step can be explained only in one of two ways: that he was in a mental condition in which all judgment had deserted him or else that he chose deliberately to break with Kornilov in order to assume the mantle of the Revolution’s savior and in this manner neutralize the challenge from the left.

Having learned from Kornilov of Lvov’s actions, Savinkov rushed back to the Prime Minister’s office. He ran into Nekrasov, who told him that it was too late to seek a rapprochement with Kornilov because he had already sent to the evening papers the Prime Minister’s statement charging the Commander in Chief with treason.⁶⁶ This was done despite Kerensky’s promise to Savinkov that he would delay release of this document until after he had had a chance to communicate with Kornilov.⁶⁷ A few hours later, the press published in special editions a sensational communiqué bearing Kerensky’s signature, said to have been drafted by Nekrasov.⁶⁸ Golovin believes that Nekrasov released it deliberately before Savinkov had had a chance to report on his conversation with Kornilov.* It read:

On August 26, General Kornilov sent to me Duma Deputy Vladimir Nikolaevich Lvov, to demand that the Provisional Government transfer to General Kornilov full civil and military authority with the proviso that he himself, at his own discretion, would appoint a new government to administer the country. The authority of Duma Deputy Lvov to make such a proposal was subsequently confirmed to me by General Kornilov in a direct wire conversation.⁶⁹

To defend the country from the attempts of “certain circles of Russian society” to exploit its difficulties for the purpose of “establishing … a political system inimical to the conquests of the Revolution,” the statement went on, the cabinet had authorized the Prime Minister to dismiss General Kornilov and place Petrograd under martial law.

Kerensky’s accusation threw Kornilov into an uncontrollable rage because it touched his most sensitive nerve, his patriotism. After reading it, he no longer thought of Kerensky as a Bolshevik captive, but as the author of despicable provocation designed to discredit him and the armed forces. He responded by sending to all front commanders a counterappeal drafted by Zavoiko:†

The telegram of the Prime Minister … in its first part is an out-and-out lie. I did not send Duma Deputy Vladimir Lvov to the Provisional Government—he came to me as a messenger from the Prime Minister.… Thus, there occurred a grand provocation which gambles with the destiny of the Fatherland.

Russian people: our great homeland is dying!

The moment of death is near!

Forced to speak out publicly, I, General Kornilov, declare that the Provisional Government, under pressure from the Bolshevik majority in the Soviet, acts in full accord with the plans of the German General Staff and, concurrently with the imminent landings of enemy forces on the coast of Riga, destroys the army and convulses the country from within …

I, General Kornilov, the son of a Cossack peasant, declare to each and all that I personally desire nothing but to save Great Russia. I swear to lead the people through victory over the enemy to the Constituent Assembly, where it will decide its own destiny and choose its new political system.⁷⁰

61. N. V. Nekrasov.

This, at last, was mutiny: Kornilov later admitted that he had decided on an open break with the government because he had been accused by it of open rebellion—that is, treason. Golovin believes that by his actions Kerensky provoked Kornilov to rebel:⁷¹ the assessment is correct in the sense that Kornilov rebelled only after having been charged with rebelling.

That Kerensky wanted to exacerbate rather than heal the breach became apparent from the several communiqués he released on August 28. In one he instructed all military commanders to ignore orders from Kornilov, whom he accused of having “betrayed the Fatherland.”⁷² In another, he lied to the public about the reasons for the advance of Krymov’s corps on Petrograd:

The ex-Commander in Chief, General Kornilov, having rebelled against the authority of the Provisional Government, while professing in his telegrams patriotism and loyalty to the people, has now by his deeds demonstrated his treachery. He has withdrawn regiments from the front, weakening its resistance to the pitiless enemy, the German, and has sent all these regiments against Petrograd. He has spoken of saving the Fatherland and consciously instigates a fratricidal war. He says that he stands for freedom, and sends against Petrograd Native Divisions.⁷³

Had Kerensky forgotten, as he was later to claim, that only a week earlier he himself had ordered the Third Cavalry Corps to Petrograd to come under his command?⁷⁴ It would strain credulity to the utmost to find such an explanation plausible.

During the three days that followed, Kornilov tried without success to rally the nation “to pull our Fatherland out of the hands of the mercenary Bolsheviks, who lord it over Petrograd.”⁷⁵ He appealed to the regular armed forces as well as the Cossacks and ordered Krymov to occupy Petrograd. Many generals gave him moral support and sent wires to Kerensky protesting his treatment of the Commander in Chief.⁷⁶ But neither they nor the conservative politicians joined him, being confused by the disinformation spread by Kerensky, which, by blatantly distorting the background of events, made Kornilov into a mutineer and counterrevolutionary. The refusal of all the top generals to follow Kornilov furnishes additional proof that they had not been involved in any conspiracy with him.

On August 29, Kerensky wired Krymov as follows:

In Petrograd complete calm. No disturbances [vystupleniia] expected. There is no need for your corps. The Provisional Government commands you, on your personal responsibility, to stop the advance on Petrograd, ordered by the removed Commander in Chief, and direct the corps not to Petrograd but to its operational destination in Narva.⁷⁷

The message makes sense only if Kerensky assumed that Krymov was advancing to Petrograd to quell Bolshevik disturbances. Although confused, Krymov obeyed. The Ussuri Cossack Division stopped at Krasnoe Selo, near Petrograd, and on August 30 swore loyalty to the Provisional Government. The Native Division, apparently on orders of Krymov, also halted its advance. The actions of the Don Cossack Division cannot be determined. In any event, the available sources indicate that the role usually attributed to agitators sent by the Soviet to dissuade the Third Corps from advancing on Petrograd has been considerably exaggerated. The principal reason why Krymov’s forces did not occupy Petrograd was the realization of its commanding officers that the city was not, as he and they had been told, in the hands of the Bolsheviks and that their services were not required.*

62. Soldiers of the “Savage Division” meet with the Luga Soviet.

Krymov arrived in Petrograd on August 31 on the invitation of Kerensky and with a promise of personal safety. He saw the Prime Minister later that day. He explained that he had moved his corps to Petrograd to assist him and the government. As soon as he had learned of a misunderstanding between the government and headquarters, he ordered his men to halt. He never intended to rebel. Without going into explanations and refusing even to shake hands with him, Kerensky dismissed Krymov and instructed him to report to the Military-Naval Court Administration. Krymov went instead to a friend’s apartment and put a bullet through his heart.*

Because the two generals whom he had asked to assume Kornilov’s duties—Lukomskii followed by V.N. Klembovskii—had turned him down, Kerensky found himself in the awkward position of having to leave the military command in the hands of a man whom he had publicly charged with treason. Having previously instructed the military commanders to ignore Kornilov’s orders, he now reversed himself and allowed Kornilov’s strictly military orders to be obeyed for the time being. Kornilov thought the situation extraordinary: “An episode has occurred which is unique in world history,” he wrote, “the Commander in Chief, accused of treason,… has been ordered to continue commanding his armies because there is no one else to appoint.”⁷⁸

Following the breach with Kerensky, Kornilov fell into despondency: he was convinced that the Prime Minister and Savinkov had deliberately trapped him. Afraid that he would commit suicide, his wife requested him to surrender his revolver.⁷⁹ Alekseev arrived in Mogilev on September 1 to assume command: it had taken Kerensky three days to enlist him for this mission. Kornilov yielded without resistance, asking only that the government establish firm authority and cease abusing him.⁸⁰ He was first placed under house arrest at a Mogilev hotel and then transferred to the Bykhov Fortress, where Kerensky incarcerated thirty other officers suspected of involvement in the “conspiracy.” In both places he was guarded by the faithful Tekke Turkomans. He escaped from Bykhov shortly after the Bolshevik coup and made his way to the Don, where with Alekseev he would found the Volunteer Army.

Was there a “Kornilov plot”? Almost certainly not. All the available evidence, rather, points to a “Kerensky plot” engineered to discredit the general as the ringleader of an imaginary but widely anticipated counterrevolution, the suppression of which would elevate the Prime Minister to a position of unrivaled popularity and power, enabling him to meet the growing threat from the Bolsheviks. It cannot be a coincidence that none of the elements present in a genuine coup d’état ever came to light: lists of conspirators, organizational charts, code signals, programs. Such suspicious facts as communication with officers in Petrograd and orders to military units are in all instances perfectly explicable in the context of the anticipated Bolshevik putsch. Had an officer plot been hatched then surely some generals would have followed Kornilov’s appeals to join in his mutiny. None did. Neither Kerensky nor the Bolsheviks have ever been able to identify a single person who would admit to or of whom it could be demonstrated that he was in collusion with Kornilov: and a conspiracy of one is an obvious absurdity. A commission appointed in October 1917 completed in June 1918 (that is, already under Bolshevik rule) an investigation into the Kornilov Affair. It concluded that the accusations leveled at Kornilov were baseless: Kornilov’s military moves had been intended not to overthrow the Provisional Government but to defend it from the Bolsheviks. The Commission completely exonerated Kornilov, accusing Kerensky of “deliberately distorting] the truth in the matter of Kornilov from lack of courage to admit guilt for the grandiose mistake” he had committed.* ⁸¹

Kornilov was not a particularly complicated person and his behavior in July–August 1917 can be explained without resort to conspiracy theories. His first and foremost concern was with Russia and the war. He was alarmed by the vacillating policies of the Provisional Government and its dependence on the Soviet, which with its meddling in military matters had made the conduct of military operations all but impossible. He had reason to believe that the government was penetrated by enemy agents. But even though he considered Kerensky unfit for his post, he felt for him no personal animosity and regarded him as indispensable in the government. Kerensky’s behavior in August caused him to doubt whether the Prime Minister was his own man. His inability to carry out the military reforms which Kornilov knew Kerensky wanted convinced Kornilov that the Prime Minister was a captive of the Soviet and the German agents in it. When Savinkov told him of the impending Bolshevik putsch and asked for military assistance to suppress it, Kornilov saw a chance to help the government liberate itself from the Soviet. He had every reason to expect that after the putsch had been liquidated an end would be put to the “duality of power” and Russia would receive a new and effective regime. Of this he wanted to be a part. General Lukomskii, who was at his side throughout these critical days, provides what sounds like a reasonable explanation of Kornilov’s thinking during the brief interval between Savinkov’s visit to Mogilev and his break with Kerensky:

I presume that General Kornilov, being convinced of Bolshevik action in Petrograd and of the necessity of suppressing it in the most ruthless manner, assumed that this will naturally lead to a governmental crisis and the creation of a new government, new authority. He decided to participate in the formation of that authority along with some members of the current Provisional Government and major public and political figures on whose full support he had apparently reasons to rely. From his words I know that General Kornilov had discussed the formation of the new government, which he would join in the capacity of Commander in Chief, with A. F. Kerensky, Savinkov, and Filonenko.⁸²

It is hardly justified to define as “treasonous” efforts by the Commander in Chief to revitalize the armed forces and help restore effective government. As we have seen, Kornilov rebelled only after having been accused, without cause, of being a traitor. He was the victim of Kerensky’s boundless ambition, sacrificed to the Prime Minister’s futile quest to shore up his eroding political base. A fair summary of what Kornilov wanted and failed to achieve is provided by an English journalist who observed the events at first hand:

He wanted to strengthen the Government, not to weaken it. He did not want to encroach upon its authority, but to prevent others from doing so. He wanted to compel it to be what it had always professed to be but [had] never really been—the single and unchallenged depository of administrative power. He wanted to emancipate it from the illicit and paralyzing influence of the soviets. In the end, that influence destroyed Russia, and Kornilov’s defiance of the Government was a last desperate effort to arrest the process of destruction.⁸³

If it is correct that Kerensky provoked the break with Kornilov to enhance his authority, he not only failed but achieved the very opposite. The clash fatally compromised his relations with conservative and liberal circles without solidifying his socialist base. The main beneficiaries of the Kornilov Affair were the Bolsheviks: after August 27, the SR and Menshevik following on which Kerensky depended melted away. The Provisional Government now ceased to function even in that limited sense in which it may be said to have done so until then. In September and October, Russia drifted rudderless. The stage was set for a counterrevolution from the left. Thus, when Kerensky later wrote that “it was only the 27th of August that made [the Bolshevik coup of] the 27th of October possible,” he was correct, but not in the sense in which he intended.⁸⁴

As noted, Kerensky never carried out any serious punitive actions against the Bolsheviks for the July putsch. According to the chief of his counterintelligence, Colonel Nikitin, on July 10–11 he even deprived the Military Staff of the authority to arrest Bolsheviks and forbade it to confiscate weapons found in their possession.⁸⁵ At the end of July, he looked the other way as the Bolsheviks held their Sixth Party Congress in Petrograd.

This passivity derived in large measure from Kerensky’s desire to appease the Ispolkom, which rallied to the Bolsheviks. As we have seen, on August 4 it adopted a resolution, moved by Tsereteli, to stop further “persecution” of those involved in what was delicately called the “events of July 3–5.” At the August 18 session, the Soviet voted to “protest decisively the illegal arrests and excesses” committed against the representatives of the “extreme currents of the socialist parties.”⁸⁶ In response, the government began to release one by one prominent Bolsheviks, sometimes on bail, sometimes on the guarantee of friends. The first to be freed (and cleared of all charges) was Kamenev, who regained freedom on August 4. Lunacharskii, Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, and Alexandra Kollontai were set free shortly afterward. Others followed.

In the meantime, the Bolsheviks were reasserting themselves as a political force. They benefited from the political polarization which occurred during the summer when the liberals and conservatives gravitated toward Kornilov and the radicals shifted toward the extreme left. Workers, soldiers, and sailors, disgusted with the vacillations of the Mensheviks and SRs, abandoned them in droves in favor of the only alternative, the Bolsheviks. But there was also political fatigue: Russians who had gone in droves to the polling stations in the spring grew tired of elections which did nothing to improve their condition. This held especially true for conservative elements who felt they stood no chance against the radicals, but it also applied to the liberal and moderate socialist constituencies. This trend can be demonstrated by the results of the municipal elections in Petrograd and Moscow. In the voting for the Petrograd Municipal Council on August 20, one week before the Kornilov incident, the Bolsheviks increased the share of the votes they had gained in May 1917 from 20.4 percent to 33.3 percent, or by more than one-half. In absolute numbers, however, their votes increased only by 17 percent due to the drop in the number of those casting ballots. Whereas in the Spring elections, 70 percent of those elegible had gone to the polls, in August the proportion dropped to 50 percent; in some districts of the capital city, half of those who had previously voted abstained.* ⁸⁷ In Moscow, in the September municipal elections the decline in voter participation was even more dramatic. Here, 380,000 ballots were cast compared to 640,000 the previous June. More than half of them went to the Bolsheviks, who picked up 120,000 votes while the socialists (SRs, Mensheviks, and their affiliates) lost 375,000 voters; most of the latter presumably had chosen to stay home.

MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS IN MOSCOW

(in percentage of seats)⁸⁸

One effect of this polarization was the erosion of the political base on which Kerensky had counted in his bid for unchallenged power. The poor showing by the socialist parties in the Petrograd municipal elections in mid-August may have been an important factor in Kerensky’s behavior later that month. For with his political base melting away, what better way of enhancing his popularity and influence with the left than as the vanquisher of the “counterrevolution,” even if only an imaginary one?

The Kornilov Affair raised Bolshevik fortunes to unprecedented heights. To neutralize Kornilov’s phantom putsch and stop Krymov’s troops from occupying Petrograd, Kerensky asked for help from the Ispolkom. At a night session of August 27–28 the Ispolkom approved, on a Menshevik motion, the creation of a “Committee to Fight the Counterrevolution.” But since the Bolshevik Military Organization was the only force which the Ispolkom could invoke, this action had the effect of placing the Bolsheviks in charge of the Soviet’s military contingent:⁸⁹ in this manner, yesterday’s arsonists became today’s firefighters. Kerensky also appealed directly to the Bolsheviks to help him against Kornilov by using their influence with the soldiers, which had grown appreciably at this time.⁹⁰ An agent of his requested the sailors of the cruiser Aurora, known for their Anarchist and Bolshevik sympathies, to assume responsibility for the protection of the Winter Palace, Kerensky’s residence and the seat of the Provisional Government.⁹¹ M. S. Uritskii would later claim that these actions of Kerensky’s “rehabilitated” the Bolsheviks. Kerensky also made it possible for the Bolsheviks to arm themselves by distributing 40,000 guns to the workers, a good share of which fell into Bolshevik hands; these weapons the Bolsheviks kept after the crisis had passed.⁹² How far matters had progressed with the rehabilitation of the Bolshevik Party may be judged by the decision of the government on August 30 to release all the Bolsheviks still in detention except those few against whom it had initiated legal proceedings.⁹³ Trotsky was one of the beneficiaries of this amnesty: freed from the Kresty prison on September 3 on 3,000 rubles’ bail, he took charge of the Bolshevik faction in the Soviet. By October 10 all but twenty-seven Bolsheviks were at liberty⁹⁴ and preparing for the next coup, while Kornilov and other generals languished in the Bykhov Fortress. On September 12, the Ispolkom requested the government to offer guarantees of personal security and a fair trial to Lenin and Zinoviev.⁹⁵

A no less important consequence of the Kornilov Affair was a break between Kerensky and the military. For although the officer corps, confused about the issues and unwilling to defy the government openly, refused to join in Kornilov’s mutiny, it despised Kerensky for his treatment of their commander, the arrest of many prominent generals, and his pandering to the left. When, in late October, Kerensky would call on the military to help save his government from the Bolsheviks, his pleas would fall on deaf ears.

On September 1, Kerensky proclaimed Russia a “republic.” One week later (September 8) he abolished the Department of Political Counterintelligence, depriving himself of the principal source of information on Bolshevik plans.⁹⁶

It was only a question of time before Kerensky would be overthrown by someone able to provide firm leadership. Such a person had to come from the left. Whatever the differences dividing them, the parties of the left closed ranks when confronted with the specter of “counterrevolution,” a term which in their definition included any initiative to restore to Russia effective government and a viable military force. But since the country had to have both, the initiative to restore order had to emerge from within their own ranks: the “counterrevolution” would come disguised as the “true” revolution.

In the meantime, Lenin, in his rural hideaway, was busy redesigning the world.

Accompanied by Zinoviev and a worker named N. A. Emelianov, he arrived in the evening of July 9 at Razliv, a railroad junction in a region of country dachas. Lenin had his beard shaved off, following which, disguised as farm laborers, the two Bolsheviks were led to a field hut nearby, which would serve as their home for the next month.

Lenin, who had an aversion to memoirs, left no reminiscences of this period in his life, but there exists a brief account by Zinoviev.⁹⁷ The two lived in concealment, but maintained contact with the capital by means of couriers. Lenin was so irritated by attacks on him and his party that for a while he refused to read newspapers. The events of July 4 preyed on his mind: he often wondered aloud whether the Bolsheviks could not have taken power and every time reached a negative conclusion. With the late summer rains flooding their hut, it was time to move. Zinoviev returned to Petrograd while Lenin went on to Helsinki. To cross into Finland, he used false papers identifying him as a worker: judging by the passport photograph, which shows him cleanly shaven and wearing a wig, the disguise gave him something of a rakish appearance.

Removed from the day-to-day direction of his party and probably resigned to the probability that he would never have another opportunity to seize power, Lenin devoted his attention to the long-term objectives of the Communist movement. He resumed work on the essay on Marx and the State, which he would publish the next year under the title State and Revolution. It was to be his legacy to future generations, a blueprint for revolutionary strategy after the capitalist order had been overthrown.

State and Revolution is a nihilistic work which argues that the Revolution must destroy root and branch all “bourgeois” institutions. Lenin begins with citations from Engels to the effect that the state, everywhere and at all times, has represented the interests of the exploiting class and reflected class conflicts. He accepts this proposition as proven and elaborates on it exclusively with reference to Marx and Engels, without referring to the history of either political institutions or political practices.

The central message of the work derives from the lessons which Marx had drawn from the Paris Commune and formulated in Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon:

The parliamentary republic, in its struggle against the revolution, found itself compelled to strengthen, along with the means of repression, the means of centralization of state power. All revolutions have perfected this machine instead of smashing it.*

Marx rephrased the argument in a letter to a friend:

If you look into the concluding chapter of my Eighteenth Brumaire, you will find that I declare the next attempt of the French Revolution: not to transfer from one set of hands to another the bureaucratic-military machine, as was done until now, but to smash it.⁹⁸

Nothing that Marx wrote on the strategy and tactics of revolution etched itself more deeply on Lenin’s mind. He often quoted this passage: it was his guide to action after taking power. The destructive fury which he directed against the Russian state and Russian society and all their institutions found theoretical justification in this dictum of Marx’s. Marx provided Lenin with a solution to the most troublesome problem confronting modern revolutionaries: how to prevent the successful revolution from being undone by a counter revolutionary reaction. The solution was to liquidate the “bureaucratic-military machine” of the old regime in order to deprive the counterrevolution of a ground in which to breed.

What would replace the old order? Again referring to Marx’s writings on the Paris Commune, Lenin pointed to such mass-participatory institutions as communes and people’s militias that offered no haven to cadres of reactionary civil servants and officers. In this connection, he predicted the ultimate disappearance of the professional bureaucracy: “Under socialism, all will govern in turn and quickly become accustomed to no one governing.”⁹⁹ Later, when the Communist bureaucracy grew to unheard-of proportions, this passage would be flung in Lenin’s face. There is no question that Lenin was unpleasantly surprised and greatly worried by the emergence in Soviet Russia of a mammoth bureaucracy: it was probably his main concern in the final year of life. But he was never under the illusion that the bureaucracy would vanish with the fall of “capitalism.” He realized that for a long time after the Revolution the “proletarian dictatorship” would have to assume the shape of a state, with all that this implied:

In the “transition” from capitalism to communism, repression is still necessary, but it is already the repression of the minority of the exploiters by the majority of the exploited. A special apparatus, a special machine of repression, the “state,” is still necessary.¹⁰⁰

While working on State and Revolution, Lenin also addressed the economic policies of a future Communist regime. This he did in two essays written in September, after the Kornilov Affair, when Bolshevik prospects unexpectedly improved.¹⁰¹ The thesis of these essays is very different from that of his political writings. While determined to “smash” the old state and its armed forces, Lenin favored preserving the “capitalist” economy and harnessing it in the service of the revolutionary state. We shall discuss this subject in the chapter devoted to “War Communism.” Here suffice it to say that Lenin derived his economic ideas from reading certain contemporary German writers, notably Rudolf Hilferding, who held that advanced or “finance” capitalism had attained a level of concentration at which it became relatively easy to introduce socialism by the simple device of nationalizing banks and syndicates.

Thus, while intending to uproot the entire political and military apparatus of the old, “capitalist” regime, Lenin wanted to retain and use its economic apparatus. In the end, he would destroy all three.

But this lay in the future. The immediate problems involved revolutionary tactics, and here Lenin found himself at odds with his associates.

In spite of the willingness of the socialists in the Soviet to forgive and forget the July putsch and despite their defense of the Bolsheviks against the government’s harassment, Lenin decided that the time for masking his bid for power under Soviet slogans had passed: henceforth, the Bolsheviks would have to strive for power directly, openly, by means of armed insurrection. In “The Political Situation,” written on July 10, one day after reaching his rural hideaway, he argued:

All hopes for the peaceful evolution of the Russian Revolution have disappeared without trace. The objective situation: either the ultimate triumph of the military dictatorship or the triumph of the decisive struggle of the workers…

The slogan of the passage of all power to the soviets was the slogan of the peaceful evolution of the Revolution, which was possible in April, May, June, until July 5–9—that is, until the passage of actual power into the hands of the military dictatorship. Now this slogan is no longer correct, because it does not take into account the completed passage [of power] and the complete betrayal, in deed, of the Revolution by the SRs and Mensheviks.¹⁰²

In the original version of the manuscript Lenin had written “armed uprising,” which he later changed to “decisive struggle of the workers.”¹⁰³ The novelty of these remarks was not that power had to be taken by force—the Bolshevikled armed workers, soldiers, and sailors who had taken over the streets of Petrograd in April and July hardly staged a festival of song and dance—but that the Bolsheviks now had to strike for themselves, without pretending to act on behalf of the soviets.

The Sixth Bolshevik Congress held at the end of July approved this program. Its resolution stated that Russia was now ruled by a “dictatorship of the counterrevolutionary imperialist bourgeoisie” under which the slogan “All Power to the Soviets” had lost its validity. The new slogan called for the “liquidation” of Kerensky’s “dictatorship.” This was the task of the Bolshevik Party, which would rally behind itself all anti-counterrevolutionary groups, headed by the proletariat and supported by the poor peasantry.¹⁰⁴ Dispassionately analyzed, the premises of this resolution were absurd and its conclusions deceptive, but its practical meaning was unmistakable: henceforth the Bolsheviks would wage war against the Soviet as well as against the Provisional Government.

Many Bolsheviks were unhappy over the new tactic and the abandonment of pro-Soviet slogans. On another occasion that month, Stalin tried to put their minds at ease by assuring them that “the party is indubitably in favor of those soviets where we have a majority.”¹⁰⁵

But it was not long before the Bolsheviks, noting a general cooling of interest in the soviets, changed their minds once again: for this growing apathy gave them an opportunity to penetrate and manipulate the soviets for their own ends. Izvestiia, the official soviet organ, wrote at the beginning of September that

in recent times one can observe indifference toward work in soviets.… Indeed, of the more than 1,000 delegates [of the Petrograd Soviet] only 400 to 500 attend its meetings, and those who fail to turn up are precisely representatives of parties which until now had formed a soviet majority¹⁰⁶

—that is, Mensheviks and SRs. The same complaint could be read in Izvestiia one month later in an editorial called “Crisis of the Soviet Organization.” Its author recalled that when the soviets had been at the peak of popularity the “interurban” (inogorodnyi) department of the Ispolkom listed up to 800 soviets in the country. By October, many of these soviets no longer existed or existed only on paper. Reports from the provinces indicated that the soviets were losing prestige and influence. The editorial complained of the inability of the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies to get together with peasant organizations, which resulted in the peasantry remaining “entirely outside” the soviet structure. But even in localities where the soviets continued to function, as in Petrograd and Moscow, they no longer represented all “democracy” because many intellectuals and workers stayed away:

The soviets were a marvelous organization to fight the old regime, but they are entirely incapable of taking upon themselves the creation of a new one.… When autocracy fell, and the bureaucratic order along with it, we erected the soviets of deputies as temporary barracks to shelter all democracy.

Now, Izvestiia concluded, the soviets were being abandoned for permanent “stone structures,” such as the Municipal Councils, chosen on a more representative franchise.¹⁰⁷

The growing disenchantment with the soviets and the absenteeism of their socialist rivals enabled the Bolsheviks to gain in them an influence out of proportion to their national following. As their role in the soviets grew, they reverted to the old slogan: “All Power to the Soviets.”

The Bolsheviks passed an important milestone on their march to power on September 25 when they won a majority in the Workers’ Section of the Petrograd Soviet. (They had gained such a majority in Moscow on September 19.) Trotsky, who assumed the chairmanship of the Petrograd Soviet, immediately proceeded to turn it into an instrument with which to secure control of the urban soviets in the rest of the country. In the words of Izvestiia, the instant the Bolsheviks acquired a majority in the Workers’ Section of the Petrograd Soviet, they “transformed it into their party organization and, leaning on it, engaged in a partisan struggle to seize all the soviets nationwide.”¹⁰⁸ They largely ignored the Ispolkom chosen by the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which remained under SR and Menshevik control, and proceeded to create a parallel pseudo-national soviet organization of their own, representing only those soviets in which they enjoyed pluralities.

In the more favorable political environment created by the Kornilov Affair and their successes in the soviets, the Bolsheviks revived the question of a coup d’état. Opinion was divided. The July debacle fresh in mind, Kamenev and Zinoviev opposed further “adventurism.” Notwithstanding their growing strength in the soviets, they argued, the Bolsheviks remained a minority party, so that even if they managed to take power, they would soon lose it to the combined forces of the “bourgeois counterrevolution” and the peasantry. On the other extreme stood Lenin, the principal proponent of immediate and resolute action. The Kornilov incident convinced him that the chances of a successful coup were better than ever and perhaps unrepeatable. On September 12 and 14 he wrote from Finland two letters to the Central Committee, called “The Bolsheviks Must Take Power” and “Marxism and Insurrection.”¹⁰⁹ “With a majority in the soviets of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies in both capital cities,” he wrote in the first, “the Bolsheviks can and must seize power.” Contrary to Kamenev and Zinoviev, the Bolsheviks not only could seize power but hold on to it: by proposing an immediate peace and giving land to the peasants, “the Bolsheviks can establish a government that no one will overthrow.” It was essential, however, to move swiftly because the Provisional Government might turn Petrograd over to the Germans or else the war could end. The “order of the day” was

armed insurrection in Petrograd and Moscow (plus their regions), the conquest of power, the overthrow of the government. We must consider how to agitate for this, without so expressing ourselves in print.

Once power had been taken in Petrograd and Moscow, the issue would be settled. Lenin dismissed as “naïve” the advice of Kamenev and Zinoviev that the party should await the convocation of the Second Congress of Soviets in the hope of obtaining a majority: “no revolution waits for that”

In the second letter, Lenin dealt with the accusation that taking power by armed force was not “Marxism” but “Blanquism” and disposed of analogies with July: the “objective” situation in September was entirely different. He felt certain (possibly from information supplied by his German contacts) that Berlin would offer the Bolshevik government an armistice. “And to secure an armistice means to conquer the whole world.”¹¹⁰

The Central Committee took up Lenin’s letters on September 15. The laconic and almost certainly heavily censored protocols of this meeting* indicate that while Lenin’s associates hesitated to reject formally his advice (as Kamenev urged them to do), neither were they prepared to follow it: according to Trotsky, in September no one agreed with Lenin on the desirability of an immediate insurrection.¹¹¹ On Stalin’s motion, Lenin’s letters were circulated to the party’s major regional organizations, which was a way of avoiding action. Here the matter rested: at none of the six sessions that followed (September 20-October 5) was Lenin’s proposal referred to.†

Such passivity infuriated Lenin: he feared that the favorable moment for an insurrection would pass. On September 24 or 25, he moved from Helsinki to Vyborg (still in Finnish territory) to be nearer the scene of action. From there, on September 29, he dispatched a third letter to the Central Committee, under the title “The Crisis Has Ripened.” His principal operative recommendations were contained in the sixth part of the letter, first made public in 1925. It had to be frankly conceded, Lenin wrote, that some party members wanted to postpone the power seizure until the next Congress of Soviets. He totally rejected this approach: “To pass up such a moment and ‘await’ the Congress of Soviets is complete idiocy or complete treason”:

The Bolsheviks are now guaranteed the success of the uprising: (1) we can (if we do not ‘await’ the Congress of Soviets) strike suddenly from three points: Petersburg, Moscow, and the Baltic Fleet … (5) we have the technical capability to take power in Moscow (which could even begin so as to paralyze the enemy with its suddenness); (6) we have thousands of armed workers and soldiers who can at once seize the Winter Palace and the General Staff, the telephone station and all the major printing plants.… If we were to strike at once, suddenly, from three points—Petersburg, Moscow, the Baltic Fleet—then the chances are 99 percent that we will win with fewer losses than we suffered on July 3–5, because the troops will not move against a government of peace.*

In view of the fact that the Central Committee did not answer his “entreaties” and even censored his articles, Lenin submitted his resignation. This, of course, was bluff. To discuss their differences, the Central Committee requested Lenin to return to Petrograd.¹¹²

Lenin’s associates to a man rejected his demand for an immediate armed uprising, preferring a slower, safer course. Their tactics were formulated by Trotsky, who thought Lenin’s proposals too “impetuous.” Trotsky wanted the armed uprising disguised as the assumption of power by an All-Russian Congress of Soviets—not, however, one properly convened, which would certainly refuse to do so, but one which the Bolsheviks would convene on their own initiative in defiance of established procedures, and pack with followers: a congress of pro-Bolshevik soviets camouflaged as a national congress. Seen in retrospect, this undoubtedly was the correct course to follow because the country would not have tolerated the overt assumption of power by a single party, as Lenin advocated. To succeed beyond the initial days, the coup had to be given some sort of “soviet” legitimacy, even if a spurious one.

Lenin’s sense of urgency was in good measure inspired by the fear of being preempted by the Constituent Assembly. On August 9, the Provisional Government finally announced a schedule for that body: elections on November 12 and the opening session on November 28. Although on some days the Bolsheviks deluded themselves that they could win a majority of the seats in the Assembly, in their hearts they knew they had no chance given that the peasants were certain to vote solidly for the Socialists-Revolutionaries. Since Bolshevik strength lay in the cities and in the army, and they alone had soviet organizations, the Bolsheviks’ only hope of claiming a national mandate was through the soviets. Otherwise, all was lost. Once the country made known its will through a democratic election, they could no longer claim that they spoke for the “people” and that the new government was “capitalist.” If they were to take power, therefore, they had to do so before the elections to the Assembly. Once they were in control, the adverse results of the elections could be neutralized: as a Bolshevik publication put it, the composition of the Assembly “will strongly depend on who convenes it.”¹¹³ Lenin concurred: the “success” of the elections to the Assembly would be best assured after the coup.¹¹⁴ As events were to show, this meant that the Bolsheviks would either tamper with the electoral results or else disperse the Assembly. This was for Lenin a weighty reason to hurry his colleagues, to the point of threatening resignation.

The Bolsheviks had no hope of manipulating the Constituent Assembly into conceding them power, but they could conceivably use for this purpose the soviets, institutions that were irregularly elected, loosely structured, and without peasant representation. With this in mind, they began to agitate for the prompt convocation of a Second Congress of Soviets. They had a case. Since the First Congress in June, the situation in Russia had changed and so had the membership of the urban soviets. The SRs and Mensheviks were none too enthusiastic about another Congress, in part because they feared it would have a sizable Bolshevik contingent, and in part because it would interfere with the Constituent Assembly. The regional soviets and the armed forces were negative as well. At the end of September, the Ispolkom sent out questionnaires to 169 soviets and army committees, requesting their opinion on whether to convene a Second Congress of Soviets: of the sixty-three soviets that responded, only eight favored the idea.¹¹⁵ The sentiment among the troops was even more negative: on October 1, the Soldiers’ Section of the Petrograd Soviet voted against holding a national Congress of Soviets, and a report presented to it in mid-October indicated that the representatives of army committees had agreed unanimously that such a congress would be “premature” and would subvert the Constituent Assembly.¹¹⁶

But the Bolsheviks, enjoying preponderance in the Petrograd Soviet, kept up the pressure, and on September 26 the Bureau of the Ispolkom agreed to the convocation of a Second Congress of Soviets on October 20.¹¹⁷ The agenda of this congress was to be strictly limited to drafting legislative proposals for submission to the Constituent Assembly. Instructions were issued to the interurban department of the Soviet to invite the regional soviets to send representatives.

The Bolsheviks thus won a victory, but it was only a first step. Although their position in the country’s soviets was much stronger than it had been in June, it was unlikely that they would gain at the Second Congress an absolute majority.¹¹⁸ This they could secure only by taking the convocation of the Second Congress into their own hands and inviting to it only those soviets, located mostly in central and northern Russia, and those army committees in which they had assured majorities. This they now proceeded to do.

On September 10, there opened in Helsinki the Third Regional Congress of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviets of Finland. Here the Bolsheviks enjoyed a solid majority.¹¹⁹ The congress set up a Regional Committee which instructed civilian and military personnel in Finland to obey only those laws of the Provisional Government to which it gave assent.¹²⁰ The move was intended to delegitimize the Provisional Government through the agency of a pseudo-governmental center, run by the Bolsheviks.

Their success in Finland persuaded the Bolsheviks that they could use the same device to convene an equally compliant All-Russian Congress of Soviets. On September 29, the Bolshevik Central Committee discussed and on October 5 resolved to hold in Petrograd a Northern Regional Congress of Soviets.¹²¹ Invitations were sent out in the name of an ephemeral Bolshevik front calling itself the Regional Committee of the Army, Navy, and Workers of Finland. The Bureau of the Ispolkom protested that the meeting was convened in an irregular manner.¹²² Ignoring it, the Regional Committee proceeded to invite some thirty soviets in which the Bolsheviks had majorities to send representatives; among them were soviets of the Moscow province, which did not even belong to the Northern Region.¹²³ There exist strong indications that some Bolshevik leaders, Lenin among them, considered having this Regional Congress proclaim the passage of power to the soviets,¹²⁴ but the plan was given up.

The Congress of Soviets of the Northern Region opened in Petrograd on October 11. It was completely dominated by the Bolsheviks and their allies, the Left SRs, a splinter group of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. This rump “congress” heard all kinds of inflammatory speeches, including one by Trotsky, who declared that the “time for words” had passed.¹²⁵

The Bolshevik Party, of course, had no more authority than any other group to convene congresses of soviets, whether regional or national, and the Ispolkom declared the meeting a “private gathering” of individual soviets, devoid of official standing.¹²⁶ The Bolsheviks ignored this declaration. They regarded their body as the immediate forerunner of the Second Congress of Soviets, which they were determined to convene on October 20—according to Trotsky, by legal means if possible and by “revolutionary” ones if not.¹²⁷ The most important result of the Regional Congress was the formation of a “Northern Regional Committee,” composed of eleven Bolsheviks and six Left SRs, whose task it was to “ensure” the convocation of a Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets.¹²⁸ On October 16 this body sent telegrams to the soviets, as well as to military committees at the regimental, divisional, and corps level, informing them that the Second Congress would meet in Petrograd on October 20 and requesting them to send delegates. The congress was to obtain an armistice, distribute land to peasants, and ensure that the Constituent Assembly met as scheduled. The telegrams instructed all soviets and army committees opposed to the convocation of the Second Congress—and these, as is known from the Ispolkom’s survey, were the large majority—to be at once “reelected,” which was a Bolshevik code word for dissolved.¹²⁹

This Bolshevik move constituted a veritable coup d’état against the national organization of the soviets: it was the opening phase of the power seizure. With these measures, the Bolshevik Central Committee arrogated to itself the authority which the First Congress of Soviets had entrusted to the Ispolkom. It also preempted the Provisional Government, for the agenda which the Bolsheviks set for the so-called Second Congress was to be at the center of the government’s activities until the convocation of the Constituent Assembly.¹³⁰

The Mensheviks and SRs, well aware what the Bolsheviks were up to, refused to recognize the legitimacy of the Second Congress. On October 19, Izvestiia carried a statement by the Ispolkom which reasserted that only its Bureau had the authority to convene a national Congress of Soviets:

No other committee has the authority or the right to take upon itself the initiative in convening this congress. The less does this right belong to the Northern Regional Congress, brought together in violation of all the rules established for the regional soviets and representing soviets chosen arbitrarily and at random.

The Bureau went on to say that the Bolshevik invitation to regimental, divisional, and corps committees violated established procedures for military representation, which called for delegates to be chosen by army assemblies and, when these could not be convened, by army committees on the basis of one delegate for 25,000 soldiers.¹³¹ The Bolshevik organizers obviously bypassed the army committees because of their known opposition to the Second Congress.¹³² Three days later Izvestiia pointed out that the Bolsheviks not only convened an illegal Congress, but flagrantly violated accepted norms of representation. While the electoral rules called for soviets representing fewer than 25,000 persons to send no delegates to the All-Russian Congress, and those representing between 25,000 and 50,000 to send two, the Bolsheviks invited one soviet with 500 members to send two delegates and another with 1,500 to send five, which was more than was allocated to Kiev.¹³³

All of which was true enough. But even though the SRs and Mensheviks had declared the forthcoming Second Congress illegal as well as unrepresentative, they allowed it to proceed. On October 17, the Bureau of the Ispolkom approved the convocation of the Second Congress on two conditions: that it be postponed by five days, to October 25, to give provincial delegates time to get to Petrograd, and that it confine its agenda to the discussion of the internal situation in the country, preparations for the Constituent Assembly, and reelection of the Ispolkom.¹³⁴ It was an astonishing and inexplicable capitulation. Although aware of what the Bolsheviks had in mind, the Ispolkom gave them what they wanted: a handpicked body, filled with their adherents and allies, which was certain to legitimize a Bolshevik power seizure.

The gathering of pro-Bolshevik soviets, disguised as the Second Congress of Soviets, was to legitimize the Bolshevik coup. On Lenin’s insistence, however, the coup was to be carried out before the congress met, by shock troops under the command of the Military Organization. These troops were to seize strategic points in the capital city and declare the government overthrown, which would present the congress with an accomplished and irreversible fact. This action could not be carried out in the name of the Bolshevik Party. The instrument which the Bolsheviks used for this purpose was the Military-Revolutionary Committee, formed by the Petrograd Soviet in a moment of panic early in October to defend the city from an expected German assault.

The event was precipitated by German military operations in the Gulf of Riga. After Russian troops had evacuated Riga, the Germans sent reconnaissance units in the direction of Revel (Tallinn). These operations gave the Russian General Staff much concern because they posed a threat to Petrograd, only 300 kilometers away and unreliably defended.

The German threat to the capital grew more ominous in the middle of October. On September 6/19, the German High Command ordered the capture of the islands of Moon, Ösel, and Dago in the Gulf of Riga. A flotilla which sailed on September 28/October 11 soon cleared Russian minefields and after overcoming unexpectedly stiff resistance, on October 8/21 completed the occupation of the three islands.¹³⁵ The enemy now was in a position to land behind Russian forces.

The Russian General Staff viewed this naval operation as preparatory to an assault on Petrograd. On October 3/16, it ordered the evacuation of Revel, the last major stronghold standing between the Germans and the capital. The next day Kerensky participated in discussions on ways to deal with the danger. The suggestion was made that since Petrograd could soon find itself in the combat zone, the government and the Constituent Assembly transfer to Moscow. The idea found general favor, the only disagreement being over the timing of the move, which Kerensky wanted to be done immediately while others argued for a delay. It was decided to evacuate after securing approval from the Pre-Parliament, a gathering of political leaders which the government scheduled on October 7 as a forum for soliciting broad public support. The question next arose of what to do about the Ispolkom. The consensus was that since it was a private body it should arrange for its own evacuation.* On October 5, government experts reported that the evacuation of the executive offices to Moscow would require two weeks. Plans were drawn up for the relocation inland of Petrograd industries.¹³⁶

These precautions made good military and political sense: it was what the French had done in September 1914 as the Germans approached Paris and what the Bolsheviks would do in March 1918 under similar circumstances. But the socialist intelligentsia saw in them only a ploy of the “bourgeoisie” to turn over to the enemy “Red Petrograd,” the main bastion of “revolutionary democracy.” As soon as the press made public the government’s evacuation plans (October 6) the Bureau of the Ispolkom announced that no evacuation could take place without its approval. Trotsky addressed the Soldiers’ Section of the Soviet and persuaded it to adopt a resolution condemning the government for wanting to abandon the “capital of the Revolution”: if unable to defend Petrograd, his resolution said, it should either make peace or yield to another government.¹³⁷ The Provisional Government at once capitulated. That same day it declared that in view of objections it would delay the evacuation for a month. Eventually it gave up the idea altogether.¹³⁸

On October 9, the government ordered additional units of the garrison to the front to help stem the anticipated German assault. As could have been expected from past experience, the garrison resisted.¹³⁹ The dispute was turned over to the Ispolkom for adjudication.

At its meeting later that day, Mark Broido, a worker affiliated with the Mensheviks, moved a resolution calling on the Petrograd garrison to prepare to defend the city and for the Soviet to form (or, rather, reconstitute) a “Committee of Revolutionary Defense” to “work out a plan” to this end.¹⁴⁰ Caught by surprise, the Bolsheviks and Left SRs opposed Broido’s resolution on the grounds that it would strengthen the Provisional Government. It passed but with the barest majority (13–12). Following the vote, the Bolsheviks realized they had made a mistake. They had a Military Organization which they were grooming for armed insurrection: it was subordinated to the Bolshevik Central Committee and independent of the Soviet. This status was a mixed blessing: for while the Military Organization could be depended on faithfully to execute the orders of the Bolshevik high command, as the organ of one political party it could not act on behalf of the Soviet in whose name Bolsheviks intended to carry out their power seizure. A few years later, Trotsky would recall that the Bolsheviks, aware of this handicap, had decided already in September 1917 to avail themselves of any opportunity to create what he calls a “non-party ‘soviet’ organ to lead the uprising.”¹⁴¹ This is confirmed by K. A. Mekhonoshin, a member of the Military Organization, who says that the Bolsheviks felt it necessary “to transfer the center linking [them] with units of the garrison from the Military Organization of the party to the Soviet so as to be able, at the moment of action, to step forward in the name of the Soviet.”¹⁴² The organization proposed by the Mensheviks was ideally suited for this purpose.

That evening (October 9) when the Menshevik proposal came up for a vote at the Plenum of the Soviet, the Bolshevik deputies reversed their stand: they now agreed to the Soviet’s forming an organization to defend Petrograd from the Germans as long as it would defend it also from the “domestic” enemy. By the latter they meant the Provisional Government, which, in the words of one Bolshevik speaker, was conniving to surrender the “main bastion of the Revolution to the Kaiser, who, in turn, according to the Bolshevik resolution, was supported in his advance on Petrograd by the Allied Imperialists.”¹⁴³ To this end, the Bolsheviks proposed that the “Military Defense Committee” should assume full charge of the city’s security against threats from the German “imperialists” as well as from Russian “counterrevolutionaries.”

Surprised by the way the Bolsheviks reformulated Broido’s proposal and knowing why they did so, the Mensheviks resolutely opposed the amendment. Defense of the city was the responsibility of the government and its Military Staff. But the Plenum preferred the Bolshevik version and voted for the formation of a “Revolutionary Committee of Defense”

to gather in its hands all the forces participating in the defense of Petrograd and its approaches [as well as] to take all measures to arm the workers, in this manner ensuring both the revolutionary defense of Petrograd and the security of the people against the openly prepared assault of the military and civilian Kornilovites.¹⁴⁴

This extraordinary resolution adroitly combined the newly formed committee’s responsibility for meeting the real threat posed by the German armies with the imaginary one from the supporters of Kornilov, who were nowhere in sight. The Mensheviks and SRs now reaped the harvest of their demagoguery, their insistence on the “bourgeois” character of the Provisional Government and their obsessive concern with the counterrevolution.

The vote had decisive importance. Trotsky later claimed that it sealed the fate of the Provisional Government: it represented, in his words, a “silent” or “dry” revolution that gained the Bolsheviks “three-quarters if not nine-tenths” of the victory consummated on October 25–26.¹⁴⁵

The matter was still not completely settled, however, because the decision of the Plenum required the approval of the Ispolkom and the entire Soviet. At a closed session of the Ispolkom on October 12, the two Menshevik representatives assailed the Bolshevik resolution, but they again suffered defeat, the body backing the Plenum’s decision unanimously, against their two votes. The Ispolkom renamed the new organization the Military-Revolutionary Committee (Voenno-Revoliutsionnyi Komitet, or Milrevkom for short) and empowered it to take charge of the defenses of the city.¹⁴⁶

The issue was formally sealed at the meeting of the Soviet on October 16. To deflect attention from themselves, the Bolsheviks nominated as drafter of the resolution establishing the Milrevkom an unknown young paramedic, the Left SR P. E. Lazimir. The SRs, who belatedly awoke to the significance of the Bolshevik maneuver, sought, without success, to obtain a delay in the vote, probably to assemble their absent delegates; when this motion failed, they abstained. Broido once again warned that the Milrevkom was a deception, its true mission being not to defend Petrograd but to carry out a seizure of power. Trotsky diverted the attention of the Soviet by citing passages from a newspaper interview with Rodzianko, which he chose to interpret to mean that the onetime chairman of the Duma (who in any event held no post in the government) would welcome a German occupation of Petrograd.¹⁴⁷ The Bolsheviks nominated Lazimir to chair the Milrevkom, with Podvoiskii as his deputy (on the eve of the October coup Podvoiskii would formally assume leadership of the organization).* The remaining members of the Milrevkom are difficult to ascertain: they seem to have been exclusively Bolsheviks and Left SRs.† But it did not much matter who was on the Milrevkom since it was only a flag of convenience for the true organizer of the coup, the Bolshevik Military Organization.

Trotsky now launched a war of nerves. When Dan requested the Bolsheviks to state clearly in the Soviet whether or not they were preparing an uprising, as rumored, Trotsky maliciously asked whether he wanted this information for the benefit of Kerensky and his counterintelligence. “We are told that we are organizing a staff for the seizure of power. We make no secret of this.…”¹⁴⁸ Two days later, however, he asserted that if an insurrection were to take place, the Petrograd Soviet would make the decision: “We still have not decided on an insurrection.”¹⁴⁹

The deliberate ambivalence of these statements notwithstanding, the Soviet had been put on notice. The socialists either did not hear what Trotsky was saying or resigned themselves to the inevitability of a Bolshevik “adventure.” They feared Bolshevik actions much less than possible right-wing responses, which would sweep them along with Lenin’s followers. On the eve of the Bolshevik coup (October 19), the Military Organization of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party in Petrograd adopted a “neutral” position on the anticipated uprising. A circular note sent to its members and sympathizers in the garrison urged them to stay away from demonstrations and to be “fully prepared for the merciless suppression … of possible assaults by the Black Hundreds, pogromists, and counterrevolutionaries.”¹⁵⁰ This left no doubt where the SR leaders saw the main threat to democracy.

Trotsky kept Petrograd in a state of constant tension, promising, warning, threatening, cajoling, inspiring. Sukhanov describes a typical scene he witnessed during those days:

The mood of the audience of over three thousand, filling the hall, was definitely one of excitement; their hush indicated expectation. The public, of course, consisted mainly of workers and soldiers, though it had not a few typical petty bourgeois figures, male and female.

63. The Military-Revolutionary Committee (Milrevkom), which staged the Bolshevik coup in October 1917. In center, Chairman Podvoiskii. On his right, Nevskii. On the extreme right, Raskolnikov.

The ovation given Trotsky seemed to have been cut short out of curiosity and impatience: what was he going to say? Trotsky at once began to heat up the atmosphere with his skill and brilliance. I recall that he depicted for a long time and with extraordinary force the difficult … picture of suffering in the trenches. Through my mind flashed thoughts about the unavoidable contradictions between the parts of this rhetorical whole. But Trotsky knew what he was doing. The essential thing was the mood. The political conclusions had been familiar for a long time …

Soviet power [Trotsky said] was destined not only to put an end to the suffering in the trenches. It would provide land and stop internal disorder. Once again resounded the old recipes against hunger: how the soldiers, sailors, and working girls would requisition the bread from the propertied, and send it free of charge to the front.… But on this decisive “Day of the Petrograd Soviet” [October 22] Trotsky went further:

“The Soviet government will give everything the country has to the poor and to the soldiers at the front. You, bourgeois, own two coats? Give one to the soldier freezing in the trenches. You have warm boots? Stay at home. Your boots are needed by a worker …”

The mood around me verged on ecstasy. It seemed that the mob would at any moment, spontaneously and unasked, burst into some kind of religious hymn. Trotsky formulated a short general resolution or proclaimed some general formula, on the order of: “We will defend the cause of the workers and peasants to the last drop of blood.”

Who is in favor? The crowd of thousands raised its hands like one man. I saw the uplifted hands and burning eyes of men, women, adolescents, workers, soldiers, peasants, and typical petty bourgeois figures …

[They] agreed. [They] vowed … I watched this truly grandiose spectacle with an unusually heavy heart.¹⁵¹

By October 16, the Bolsheviks had at their disposal two organizations, each nominally subject to the Soviet: the Military-Revolutionary Committee to carry out the coup and the forthcoming Second Congress of Soviets to legitimize it. They had by now effectively superseded the authority of the Provisional Government in the Military Staff and that of the Ispolkom in the soviets. The Milrevkom and the Congress of Soviets were to carry out the Bolshevik decision, taken in deep secrecy on October 10, to seize power.

Sometime between October 3 and 10, Lenin slipped back into Petrograd: he did it so surreptitiously that Communist historians to this day have been unable to determine the time of his return. He lived in concealment until October 24 in the Vyborg District, surfacing only after the Bolshevik coup was already underway.

On October 10—one day after the Ispolkom and the Soviet Plenum had voted to constitute a Defense Committee and very likely in connection with that event—twelve members of the Bolshevik Central Committee gathered to decide on the question of an armed uprising. The meeting took place at night, surrounded with extreme precautions, in the apartment of Sukhanov. Lenin came in disguise, clean-shaven, wearing a wig and glasses. Our knowledge of what transpired on this occasion is imperfect, because of the two protocols taken only one has been published and even this one in a doctored version.¹⁵² The fullest account comes from the recollections of Trotsky.¹⁵³

Lenin arrived determined to secure an unequivocal commitment to a coup before October 25. When Trotsky countered, “We are convening a Congress of Soviets in which our majority is assured beforehand,” Lenin answered that

the question of the Second Congress of Soviets … held for him no interest whatever: of what importance is it? will it even take place? and what can it accomplish even if it does meet? It is necessary to tear out [vyrazi’] power. One must not tie oneself to the Congress of Soviets, it is silly and absurd to forewarn the enemy about the date of the uprising. October 25 may serve at best as camouflage, but the uprising must be carried out earlier and independently of the Congress of Soviets. The party must seize power, arms in hand, and then we will talk of the Congress of Soviets.¹⁵⁴

Trotsky thought that Lenin not only gave too much credit to the “enemy” but also underestimated the value of the soviets as a cover: the party could not seize power as Lenin wanted, independently of the soviets, because the workers and soldiers learned everything, including what they knew of the Bolshevik Party, through the medium of the soviets. Taking power outside the soviet structure would only sow confusion.

64. Grigorii Zinoviev.

The differences between Lenin and Trotsky centered on the timing and justification for the coup. But some members of the Central Committee questioned whether the party should even attempt to take power. Uritskii argued that the Bolsheviks were technically unprepared for an uprising and that the 40,000 guns at their disposal were inadequate. The most strenuous objections came again from Kamenev and Zinoviev, who explained their position in a confidential letter to Bolshevik organizations.¹⁵⁵ The time for a coup was not yet: “We are profoundly convinced that to rise now means to gamble not only with the destiny of our party but with that of the Russian Revolution as well as that of the international revolution.” The party could expect to do well in the elections to the Constituent Assembly, capturing at a minimum one-third of the seats, thereby bolstering the authority of the soviets, in which its influence was on the ascendant. “The Constituent Assembly plus the soviets—this is the type of combined government institutions toward which we strive.” They rejected Lenin’s claim that the majority of Russians and international labor supported the Bolsheviks. Their pessimistic assessment led them to counsel a patient, defensive strategy in place of armed action.

To this argument Lenin responded that it would be “senseless to wait for the Constituent Assembly, which will not be with us, because this will complicate our task.” In this, he had the support of the majority.

As the discussions drew to a close, the Central Committee divided into three factions: (1) a faction of one, consisting of Lenin, who alone favored an immediate seizure of power, without regard to the Congress of Soviets and the Constituent Assembly; (2) Zinoviev and Kamenev, supported by Nogin, Vladimir Miliutin, and Aleksei Rykov, who opposed a coup d’état for the time being; and (3) the rest of the participants, six in number, who agreed on a coup but followed Trotsky in preferring that it be carried out in conjunction with the Congress of Soviets and under its formal sponsorship—that is, in two weeks. A majority of ten voted in favor of an armed rising as “unavoidable and fully matured.”¹⁵⁶ The timing was left open. Judging by ensuing events, it was to precede the Second Congress of Soviets by one or more days. Lenin had to acquiesce to this compromise, having gained his main point that the congress merely be asked to ratify the coup.

65. L. B. Kamenev.

The formation of the Military-Revolutionary Committee and the convocation of the Congress of Northern Soviets which, in turn, initiated the Second Congress of Soviets, described previously, implemented the decision of the Central Committee on October 10.

Kamenev found this decision unacceptable. He resigned from the Central Committee and a week later explained his stand in an interview with Novaia zhizn’. He said that he and Zinoviev had sent a circular letter to party organizations in which they “firmly argued against the party assuming the initiative in any armed uprisings in the near future.” Even though the party had not decided on such an uprising, he lied, he, Zinoviev, and some others believed that to “seize power by force of arms” on the eve of the Congress of Soviets and independently of it would have fatal consequences for the Revolution. An uprising was inevitable, but in good time.¹⁵⁷

The Central Committee held three more meetings before the coup: October 20, 21, and 24.¹⁵⁸ The first of these had on its agenda the alleged breach of party discipline committed by Kamenev and Zinoviev in making public their opposition to an armed uprising.* Lenin wrote the committee two angry letters in which he demanded the expulsion of the “strikebreakers”: “We cannot tell the capitalists the truth, namely that we have decided [to go] on strike [read: make an uprising] and to conceal from them the choice of timing.”¹⁵⁹ The committee failed to act on this demand.

The minutes of these three meetings appear so truncated as to render them virtually useless: if one were to take them at face value, one would gather that the coup, by then already in progress, was not even on the agenda.

The Central Committee’s tactic called for provoking the government into retaliatory measures which would make it possible to launch the coup disguised as a defense of the Revolution. The tactic was no secret. As summarized by the SR organ, Delo naroda, weeks before the event, the Provisional Government would be accused of conspiring with Kornilov to suppress the Revolution and with the Kaiser to turn Petrograd over to the enemy, as well as of preparing to disperse both the Congress of Soviets and the Constituent Assembly.¹⁶⁰ Trotsky and Stalin confirmed after the event that such had been the party’s plan. In Trotsky’s words:

In essence, our strategy was offensive. We prepared to assault the government, but our agitation rested on the claim that the enemy was getting ready to disperse the Congress of Soviets and it was necessary mercilessly to repulse him.¹⁶¹

And according to Stalin:

The Revolution [read: the Bolshevik Party] disguised its offensive actions behind a smoke screen of defenses in order to make it easier to attract into its orbit uncertain, hesitating elements.¹⁶²

Curzio Malaparte describes the bewilderment of the English novelist, Israel Zangwill, who happened to be visiting Italy as the Fascists were taking power. Struck by the absence of “barricades, street fighting and corpses on the pavement,” Zangwill refused to believe that he was witnessing a revolution.¹⁶³ But, according to Malaparte, the characteristic quality of modern revolutions is precisely the bloodless, almost silent seizure of strategic points by small detachments of trained shock troops. The assault is carried out with such surgical precision that the public at large has no inkling of what is happening.

This description fits the October coup in Russia (which Malaparte had studied and used as one of his models). In October, the Bolsheviks gave up on massive armed demonstrations and street skirmishes, which they had employed, on Lenin’s insistence, in April and July, because the crowds had proven difficult to control and provoked a backlash. They relied instead on small, disciplined units of soldiers and workers under the command of their Military Organization, disguised as the Military-Revolutionary Committee, to occupy Petrograd’s principal communication and transport centers, utilities and printing plants—the nerve centers of the modern metropolis. Merely by severing the telephone lines connecting the government with its Military Staff they made it impossible to organize a counterattack. The entire operation was carried out so smoothly and efficiently that even as it was in progress the cafés and restaurants along with the opera, theaters, and cinemas were open for business and thronged with crowds in search of amusement.

The Milrevkom, which its secretary, the Bolshevik Antonov-Ovseenko, later described as a “fine formal cover for the military work of the Party,”¹⁶⁴ held only two meetings, just enough to allow the Bolshevik Military Organization to claim for itself the “soviet” label.¹⁶⁵ Antonov-Ovseenko concedes that it operated directly under the Bolshevik Central Committee and was “in fact its organ”: so much so that for a while consideration was given to transforming the Milrevkom into a branch of the Military Organization.¹⁶⁶ As he describes it, its headquarters located in rooms 10 and 17 of Smolnyi, were crowded all day long with young men coming and going, creating conditions which precluded serious work even if such had been intended.

In Communist accounts, the Milrevkom is given credit for mobilizing all or nearly all of the Petrograd garrison for the armed insurrection: thus, Trotsky claims that in October “the overwhelming majority of the garrison were standing openly on the side of the workers.”¹⁶⁷ Contemporary evidence indicates, however, that Bolshevik influence on the garrison was much more modest. The mood of the Petrograd garrison was anything but revolutionary. Overwhelmingly, the 160,000 men billeted in the city and the 85,000 deployed in the environs¹⁶⁸ declared “neutrality” in the looming conflict. A count of the garrison units which on the eve of October inclined toward the Bolsheviks shows that they constituted a small minority: Sukhanov estimates that at best one-tenth of the garrison took part in the October coup, and “very likely many fewer.”¹⁶⁹ The author’s own calculations indicate that the actively pro-Bolshevik element in the garrison (exclusive of the Kronshtadt naval base) amounted to perhaps 10,000 men, or 4 percent. The pessimists on the Central Committee opposed an armed insurrection precisely on the grounds that even with their advocacy of an immediate armistice, on which Lenin counted to win over the troops, the Bolsheviks did not enjoy the garrison’s support.

But the optimists proved right, because the Bolsheviks did not so much need to win the support of the garrison as to deny it to the government: if they had only 4 percent of the garrison on their side, the government had even less. The Bolsheviks’ principal concern was to prevent the government from calling out the troops against them as it had been able to do in July. To this end, they needed to delegitimize the Military Staff. This they accomplished on October 21–22, when, claiming to act in the name of the Soviet and its Soldiers’ Section, they had the Milrevkom assert exclusive authority over the garrison.

To begin with, the Milrevkom dispatched 200 “commissars” to military units in and near Petrograd: most were junior officers from the Bolshevik Military Organization who had taken part in the July putsch and had been recently freed from prison on parole.¹⁷⁰ Next, on October 21, it convened at Smolnyi a meeting of regimental committees. Addressing the troops, Trotsky stressed the danger of a “counterrevolution” and urged the garrison to rally around the Soviet and its organ, the Milrevkom. He introduced a motion so vaguely worded that it received ready approval:

Welcoming the formation of the Military-Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, the Petrograd garrison pledges the committee full support in all its efforts to bring closer the front and rear in the interest of the Revolution.¹⁷¹

Who could possibly be against bringing the front and rear closer in the interest of the February Revolution? But the Bolsheviks meant to interpret the resolution as empowering the Milrevkom to assume the functions of the staff of the Petrograd Military District. According to Podvoiskii, who directed the Military Organization, these measures marked the onset of the armed insurrection.¹⁷²

The following night (October 21–22), a deputation from the Milrevkom appeared at the headquarters of the Military Staff. Its spokesman, the Bolshevik Lieutenant Dashkevich, informed the commander of the Petrograd Military District, Colonel G. P. Polkovnikov, that by authority of the garrison meeting the staffs orders to the garrison would henceforth acquire force only if countersigned by the Milrevkom. The troops, of course, had made no such decision, and even if they had, it would have had no validity: the deputation actually acted on behalf of the Bolshevik Central Committee. Polkovnikov replied that his staff did not recognize the delegation. After he threatened to have them arrested, the Bolshevik delegates left and returned to Smolnyi.¹⁷³

Having heard the delegation’s report, the Milrevkom convened a second meeting of garrison delegates. Who came and on whose behalf cannot be determined. But it did not matter: by now, any casually assembled group could claim to represent the “Revolution.” On the Milrevkom’s motion, the meeting approved a fraudulent statement which claimed that although on October 21 the garrison had designated the Milrevkom as its “organ,” the staff refused both to recognize and to cooperate with it. No mention was made of the fact that the delegation had asked not for “recognition” or “cooperation,” but for authority to countermand the Staffs orders. The resolution went on:

In this manner, the staff has broken with the revolutionary garrison and the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. Having broken with the organized garrison of the capital, the staff has turned into a direct weapon of counterrevolutionary forces.… Soldiers of Petrograd! (1) The defense of the revolutionary order against counterrevolutionary attempts falls on you, under the leadership of the Military-Revolutionary Committee. (2) All orders concerning the garrison lacking the signature of the Military-Revolutionary Committee are invalid …¹⁷⁴

The resolution achieved three objectives: it designated the Provisional Government, allegedly in the name of the Soviet, as “counterrevolutionary”; it divested it of authority over the garrison; and it provided the Milrevkom with an excuse to conceal its bid for power as a defense of the Revolution. It was a declaration of war.

On October 22, having learned of the Milrevkom’s attempt to take over the garrison, the Military Staff gave the Soviet an ultimatum: either retract its orders or face “decisive measures.”¹⁷⁵ Thinking it prudent to play for time, the Bolsheviks accepted the ultimatum “in principle” and offered to negotiate even as they were proceeding with the coup.¹⁷⁶ Later that day, the staff and the Milrevkom reached agreement on creating a “consultative body” of Soviet representatives to sit on the staff. On October 23, a delegation from the Milrevkom was sent to the staff, ostensibly for talks, but in fact to carry out “reconnaissance.”¹⁷⁷ These actions produced the desired effect, which was to prevent the government from arresting the Milrevkom. During the night of October 23–24, the cabinet (which seems to have led a kind of shadowy existence since the Kornilov days) ordered the closing of the two leading Bolshevik dailies and, for the sake of balance, an equal number of right-wing papers, including Zhivoe slovo, which in July had published information on Lenin’s contacts with the Germans. Troops were sent for to protect strategic points, including the Winter Palace. But when Kerensky asked for authority to have the Milrevkom arrested, he was dissuaded on the grounds that the staff was negotiating its differences with the Milrevkom.¹⁷⁸

Kerensky greatly underestimated the threat posed by the Bolsheviks: he not only did not fear a Bolshevik coup, he actually hoped for one, confident that it would enable him to crush and be rid of them once and for all. In mid-October, military commanders kept reporting to him that the Bolsheviks were making unmistakable preparations for an armed uprising. At the same time they assured him that in view of the Petrograd garrison’s “overwhelming” opposition to a coup, such an uprising would be promptly liquidated.¹⁷⁹ On the basis of these assessments, which misinterpreted opposition to Bolshevik plans to mean support for his government, Kerensky offered reassurances to colleagues and foreign ambassadors. Nabokov recalls him prepared to “offer prayers to produce this uprising” because he had ample forces to crush it.¹⁸⁰ To George Buchanan, Kerensky said more than once: “I only wish that [the Bolsheviks] would come out, and I will then put them down.”¹⁸¹

But Kerensky’s self-assurance in the face of a clear and present danger was inspired not only by overconfidence: now, as during the rest of 1917, fear of the “counterrevolution” provides a key to his behavior and that of the entire non-Bolshevik left. Once Kerensky had charged Kornilov and other generals with treason and asked the Soviet for help against them, in the eyes of professional officers he was no longer distinguishable from the Bolsheviks. After August 27, therefore, any military action against the Bolsheviks was certain to result in Kerensky’s downfall. Aware of this, Kerensky hesitated far too long in rallying the military. General A. I. Verkhovskii, the Minister of War, told the British Ambassador after the event that “Kerensky had not wanted the Cossacks to suppress the [October] rising by themselves, as that would have meant the end of the revolution.”¹⁸² On the basis of shared fears, a fatal bond was thus forged between two mortal enemies, “February” and “October.” The only hope that Kerensky and his associates still entertained was that at the last moment the Bolsheviks would lose their nerve and back out, as they had done in July. P. I. Palchinskii, who directed the defense of the Winter Palace on October 24–26, jotted down during the siege of the palace or immediately after its fall his impression of the government’s attitude: “Helplessness of Polkovnikov and the lack of any plans. Hope that the senseless step will not be taken. Ignorance of what to do if, nevertheless, it is.”¹⁸³

No serious military preparations were made to stave off a blow which everyone knew was coming. Kerensky later claimed that on October 24 he had requested reinforcements from front-line commanders, but historical researches have shown that he had issued no such orders until nighttime (October 24–25), by which time it was too late, for by then the coup was already being completed.¹⁸⁴ General Alekseev estimated that there were in Petrograd 15,000 officers, one-third of them ready to fight the Bolsheviks: his offer to organize them was ignored, and as a result, as the city was being taken over they either sat on their hands or reveled in drunken orgies.¹⁸⁵ Most astonishing of all, the nerve center of the government’s defense, the Military Staff, located in the Engineers’ (Mikhailovskii) Palace, was left unguarded: any passerby was free to enter it without being asked for identification.¹⁸⁶

The final phase of the Bolshevik coup got underway in the morning of Tuesday, October 24, after the Military Staff had carried out the halfhearted measures ordered by the government the preceding night.

In the early hours of October 24, iunkers took over guard duty at key points. Two or three detachments were sent to protect the Winter Palace, where they were joined by the so-called Women’s Death Battalion consisting of 140 volunteers, some Cossacks, a bicycle unit, forty war invalids commanded by an officer with artificial legs, and several artillery pieces. Surprisingly, no machine guns were deployed. Iunkers shut down the printing plants of Rabochiipuf (ex-Pravda) and Soldat The telephone lines to Smolnyi were disconnected. Orders went out to raise the bridges over the Neva to prevent pro-Bolshevik workers and soldiers from penetrating the city’s center. The staff forbade the garrison to take any instructions from the Milrevkom. It also ordered, without effect, the arrest of the Milrevkom’s commissars.¹⁸⁷

These preparations produced an atmosphere of crisis. That day most offices closed by 2:30 p.m. and the streets emptied as people rushed home.

This was the “counterrevolutionary” signal the Bolsheviks had been waiting for. They first moved to reopen their two newspapers: this they accomplished by 11 a.m. Next, the Milrevkom sent armed detachments to take over the Central Telegraph Office and the Russian Telegraphic Agency. The telephone lines from Smolnyi were reconnected. Thus, the earliest objectives of the coup were centers of information and lines of communication.

The only violence that day occurred in the afternoon as units of the Milrevkom forced the lowering of the bridges across the Neva.

While the uprising was already in its final and decisive phase, in the evening of October 24 the Milrevkom issued a statement that, rumors notwithstanding, it was not staging an uprising but solely acting to defend the “interests of the Petrograd garrison and democracy” from the counterrevolution.¹⁸⁸

Possibly under the influence of this disinformation, Lenin, who must have been completely out of touch, wrote a despairing note to his colleagues urging them to do what they were in fact doing:

I am writing these lines in the evening of the 24th [of October], the situation is most extremely critical. It is clearer than clear that now, truly, to delay the uprising is death.

With all my strength I want to convince my comrades that now everything hangs on a hair, that we are confronting questions that are not resolved by consultations, not by congresses (even by congresses of soviets), but exclusively by the people, by the masses, by the struggle of the armed masses.

The bourgeois pressure of the Kornilovites, the dismissal of Verkhovskii indicate that one cannot wait. It is necessary, no matter what, this evening, this night, to arrest the government, to disarm the iunkers (vanquishing them if they resist), etc.…

Who should take power?

This is not important right now: let the Military-Revolutionary Committee take it or “some other institution” …

Power seizure is the task of the uprising: its political goal will become clear after power has been taken.

It would be perdition or a formality to await the uncertain voting of October 25. The people have the right and duty to solve such questions not by voting but by force …*

Later that night Lenin made his way to Smolnyi: he was heavily disguised, his bandaged face said to have made him look like a patient in a dentist’s office. En route, he was almost arrested by a government patrol but he saved himself by pretending to be drunk. In Smolnyi he stayed out of sight, in one of the back rooms, accessible only to closest associates. Trotsky recalls that Lenin grew apprehensive when he heard about the ongoing negotiations with the Military Staff, but as soon as he was assured that these talks were a feint, he beamed with pleasure:

“Oh, that is goo-oo-d,” Lenin responded gaily in a singsong voice, and began to pace up and down the room, rubbing his hands in excitement. “That is verr-rr-ry good.” Lenin liked military cunning: to deceive the enemy, to make a fool of him—what delightful work!¹⁸⁹

Lenin spent the night relaxing on the floor while Podvoiskii, Antonov-Ovseenko, and G. I. Chudnovskii, a friend of Trotsky’s, under Trotsky’s overall command, directed the operation.

That night (October 24–25), the Bolsheviks systematically took over all the objectives of strategic importance by the simple device of posting pickets: it was a model modern coup d’état as described by Malaparte. Iunker guards were told to go home: they either withdrew voluntarily or were disarmed. Thus, under cover of darkness, one by one, railroad stations, post offices, telephone centers, banks, and bridges fell under Bolshevik control. No resistance was encountered, no shots fired. The Bolsjieviks took the Engineers’ Palace in the most casual manner imaginable: “They entered and took their seats while those who were sitting there got up and left; thus the staff was taken.”¹⁹⁰

At the Central Telephone Exchange, the Bolsheviks disconnected the lines from the Winter Palace, but they missed two which were not registered. Using these lines, the ministers, gathered in the Malachite Room, maintained contact with the outside. Although in his public pronouncements he exuded confidence, to an eyewitness Kerensky appeared old and tired as he stared into the void, seeing no one, his half-closed eyes hiding “suffering and controlled fear.”¹⁹¹ At 9 p.m., a delegation from the Soviet, headed by Theodore Dan and Abraham Gots, turned up to tell the ministers that under the influence of the “reactionary” Military Staff they greatly overestimated the Bolshevik threat. Kerensky showed them the door.¹⁹² That night, Kerensky at last contacted front-line commanders and asked for aid. In vain: none was available. At 9 a.m. on October 25 he slipped out of the Winter Palace disguised as a Serbian officer and in a car borrowed from a U.S. Embassy official, flying the American flag, drove off to the front in search of help.

By then, the Winter Palace was the only structure still left in government hands. Lenin insisted that before the Second Congress of Soviets officially opened and proclaimed the Provisional Government deposed, the ministers had to be under arrest. But the Bolshevik forces proved inadequate to the task. It turned out that, for all their claims, they had no men willing to brave fire: their alleged 45,000 Red Guards and tens of thousands of supporters among the garrison were nowhere to be seen. A halfhearted assault on the palace was launched at dawn, but at the first sound of shots the attackers beat a retreat.

66. N. I. Podvoiskii.

Burning with impatience, fearful of intervention by troops from the front, Lenin decided to wait no longer. Between 8 and 9 a.m. he made his way to the Bolshevik operations room. At first no one knew him. Bonch-Bruevich burst with joy when he realized who he was: “Vladimir Ilich, our father,” he shouted as he embraced him, “I did not recognize you, dear one!”¹⁹³ Lenin sat down and drafted, in the name of the Milrevkom, a declaration announcing that the Provisional Government was deposed. Released to the press at 10 a.m. (October 25), it read as follows:

TO THE CITIZENS OF RUSSIA!

The Provisional Government has been deposed. Government authority has passed into the hands of the organ of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, the Military-Revolutionary Committee, which stands at the head of the Petrograd proletariat and garrison.

The task for which the people have been struggling—the immediate offer of a democratic peace, the abolition of landlord property in land, worker control over production, the creation of a Soviet Government—this task is assured.

Long Live the Revolution of Workers, Soldiers, and Peasants!

The Military-Revolutionary Committee of the

Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.*

This document, which takes pride of place in the corpus of Bolshevik decrees, declared sovereign power over Russia to have been assumed by a body which no one outside the Bolshevik Central Committee had given authority to do so. The Petrograd Soviet had formed the Milrevkom to defend the city, not to topple the government. The Second Congress of Soviets, which was to legitimize the coup, had not even opened when the Bolsheviks had already acted in its name. This procedure, however, was consistent with Lenin’s argument that it was of no consequence in whose name power was formally taken: “This is not important right now: let the Military-Revolutionary Committee take it or ‘some other institution,’ ” he had written the night before. Because the coup was unauthorized and so quietly carried out, the population of Petrograd had no reason to take the claim seriously. According to eyewitnesses, on October 25 life in Petrograd returned to normal as offices and shops reopened, factory workers went to work, and places of entertainment filled again with crowds. No one except a handful of principals knew what had happened: that the capital city was in the iron grip of armed Bolsheviks and that nothing would ever be the same again. Lenin later said that starting the world revolution in Russia was as easy as “picking up a feather.”¹⁹⁴

In the meantime, Kerensky was speeding to Pskov, the headquarters of the Northern Front. By an exquisite twist of history, the only troops available to move against the Bolsheviks were Cossacks of the same Third Cavalry Corps whom two months earlier he had accused of participating in Kornilov’s “treason.” They so despised Kerensky for having slandered Kornilov and driven their commander, General Krymov, to suicide that they refused to heed his pleas. Kerensky eventually persuaded some of them to advance on the capital by way of Luga. Under the command of Ataman P. N. Krasnov, they scattered the troops sent by the Bolsheviks and occupied Gatchina. That evening, they reached Tsarskoe Selo, a two-hour ride to the capital. But disappointed that no other units joined them, they dismounted and refused to go farther.

In Petrograd, the situation seemed material for comedy. After the Bolsheviks had proclaimed them deposed, the ministers remained in the Malachite Room, on the Neva side of the Winter Palace, awaiting the arrival of Kerensky at the head of relief troops. Because of that, the Second Congress of Soviets, assembled at Smolnyi, had to be postponed from hour to hour. At 2 p.m., 5,000 sailors arrived from Kronshtadt: but this “pride and beauty of the Revolution,” so adept at roughing up unarmed civilians, had no stomach for battle. When their attempt to assault the palace was met with fire, they too gave up.

Lenin did not dare to show himself in public until the cabinet (presumably including Kerensky, of whose escape he was unaware) fell into Bolshevik hands. He spent most of October 25 bandaged, wigged, and bespectacled. After Dan and Skobelev, passing by, saw through his disguise,¹⁹⁵ he retired to his hideaway, where he took catnaps on the floor, while Trotsky came and went to report the latest news.

Unwilling to open the Congress of Soviets as long as the Winter Palace held out, yet afraid of losing the delegates, Trotsky convened at 2:35 p.m. an Extraordinary Session of the Petrograd Soviet. It cannot be determined who took part in these deliberations: since the SRs and Mensheviks had left Smolnyi the day before and there were hundreds of Bolshevik and pro-Bolshevik delegates from the provinces in the building, it is safe to assume that it was virtually a completely Bolshevik and Left SR affair.

Opening the meeting (with Lenin still absent), Trotsky announced: “In the name of the Military-Revolutionary Committee, I declare that the Provisional Government has ceased to exist.” When a delegate, in response to one of Trotsky’s announcements, shouted from the floor, “You are anticipating the will of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets!” Trotsky retorted:

The will of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets has been predetermined [pre-dreshena] by the enormous feat of the uprising of Petrograd workers and soldiers which occurred last night. Now we only have to expand our victory.¹⁹⁶

What “uprising” of workers and soldiers? one might well have asked. But the intention of these words was to let the congress know that it had no choice but to acquiesce to the decisions which the Bolshevik Central Committee had “predetermined” in its name.

Lenin now made a brief appearance, welcoming the delegates and hailing “the worldwide socialist revolution,”¹⁹⁷ following which he again dropped out of sight. Trotsky recalls Lenin telling him: “The transition from the underground and the Pereverzev experience [pereverzevshchina] to power is too sudden.” And he added in German, making a circular motion: “Es schwindelt” (“It’s dizzying”).¹⁹⁸

At 6:30 p.m., the Military-Revolutionary Committee gave the Provisional Government an ultimatum to surrender or face fire from the cruiser Aurora and the Peter and Paul Fortress. The ministers, expecting assistance at any moment, did not respond: at this time rumors spread that Kerensky was approaching at the head of loyal troops.¹⁹⁹ They chatted listlessly, conversed with friends on the phone, and rested, stretched out on settees.

At 9 p.m. the cruiser Aurora opened fire. Because it had no live ammunition aboard, it shot a single blank salvo and fell silent—just enough to secure it a prominent place in the legends about October. Two hours later, the Peter and Paul Fortress opened a bombardment, this time with live shells, but its aim was so inaccurate that of the thirty to thirty-five rounds fired only two struck the palace, inflicting minor damage.²⁰⁰ After months of organizational work in the factories and garrisons, the Bolsheviks turned out to have no forces willing to die for their cause. The thinly defended seat of the Provisional Government stood defiant, mocking those who had declared it deposed. During pauses in the shelling, detachments of Red Guards penetrated the palace through one of its several entrances; inside, however, when confronted by armed iunkers, they immediately surrendered.

As night fell, the defenders of the palace, dispirited from the lack of the promised support, began to withdraw. The first to go were the Cossacks; they were followed by the iunkers manning the artillery. The Women’s Death Battalion stayed on. By midnight, the defense was reduced to them and a handful of teenage cadets guarding the Malachite Room. When no more gunfire issued from the palace, the Red Guards and sailors cautiously drew near. The first to penetrate were sailors and troops of the Pavlovskii Regiment who clambered through open windows on the Hermitage side.²⁰¹ Others made their way through unlocked gates. The Winter Palace was not taken by assault: the image of a column of storming workers, soldiers, and sailors as depicted in Eisenstein’s film Days of October is pure invention, an attempt to give Russia its own Fall of the Bastille. In reality, the Winter Palace was overrun by mobs after it had ceased to defend itself. The total casualties were five killed and several wounded, most of them victims of stray bullets.

67. Cadets (iunkers) defending the Winter Palace: October 1917.

After midnight, the palace filled with a mob which looted and vandalized its luxurious interiors. Some of the women defenders are said to have been raped. P. N. Maliantovich, the Minister of Justice, left a graphic picture of the last minutes of the Provisional Government:

Suddenly a noise arose somewhere: it at once grew in intensity and scope, drawing nearer. In its sounds—distinct but fused into a single wave—there at once resounded something special, something different from the previous noises: something final.… It became instantly clear that the end was at hand …

Those lying or sitting sprang to their feet and reached for their overcoats …

And the noise grew all the time, intensified, and swiftly, with a broad wave, rolled toward us … It penetrated and seized us with an unbearable fear, like the onslaught of poisoned air …

All this in a few minutes …

At the door to the antechamber of the room where we were holding watch one could hear sharp, excited shouts of a mass of voices, a few isolated shots, the stamping of feet, some pounding, movements, the commingled, mounting, integrated chaos of sounds and the ever-mounting fear.

It was obvious: we were under assault: we were being taken by assault … Defense was useless; victims would be sacrificed in vain …

The door flew open … A iunker rushed in. At full attention, saluting, his face excited but determined: “What does the Provisional Government command? Defend to the last man? We are ready if the Provisional Government so orders.”

“No need for this! It would be useless! This is clear! No bloodshed! Surrender!” we shouted like one without prior agreement, only looking at one another to read the same feelings and resolution in everyone’s eyes.

Kishkin stepped forward. “If they are here, this means that the palace is already taken.”*

“Yes. All the entrances have been taken. Everyone has surrendered. Only these quarters are still guarded. What does the Provisional Government command?”

“Say that we want no bloodshed, that we yield to force, that we surrender,” Kishkin said.

And there, by the door, fear mounted without letup, and we became anxious lest blood flow, lest we be too late to prevent it … And we shouted anxiously: “Hurry! Go and tell them! We want no blood! We surrender!”

The iunker left … The entire scene, I believe, took no more than a minute.²⁰²

Arrested by Antonov-Ovseenko at 2:10 a.m., the ministers were taken under guard to the Peter and Paul Fortress. On the way they barely escaped being lynched.

Three and a half hours earlier, unable to hold out any longer, the Bolsheviks had opened their congress in Smolnyi, in the large colonnaded Assembly Hall used before 1917 for theatrical performances and balls. Cleverly exploiting Theodore Dan’s vanity, they invited the Menshevik Soviet leader to inaugurate the proceedings, which had the effect of giving them an aura of Soviet legitimacy. A new Presidium was elected, composed of fourteen Bolshevik, seven Left SRs, and three Mensheviks. Kamenev took the chair. Although the legitimate Ispolkom had prescribed for the congress a very narrow agenda (the current situation, the Constituent Assembly, reelections to the Ispolkom), Kamenev altered it to something entirely different: governmental authority, war and peace, and the Constituent Assembly.

68. The Winter Palace, after being seized and looted by the Bolsheviks.

69. The Assembly Hall in Smolnyi, locale of the Second Congress of Soviets (the same hall shown on this page).

The composition of the congress bore little relationship to the country’s political alignment. Peasant organizations refused to participate, declaring the congress unauthorized and urging the nation’s soviets to boycott it.²⁰³ On the same grounds, the army committees refused to send delegates.²⁰⁴ Trotsky must have known better than to describe the Second Congress as “the most democratic of all parliaments in the history of the world.”²⁰⁵ It was, in fact, a gathering of Bolshevik-dominated urban soviets and military councils especially created for the purpose. In a statement issued on October 25, the Ispolkom declared:

The Central Executive Committee [Ispolkom] considers the Second Congress as not having taken place and regards it as a private gathering of Bolshevik delegates. The resolutions of this congress, lacking in legitimacy, are declared by the Central Executive Committee to have no binding force for local soviets and all army committees. The Central Executive Committee calls on the soviets and army organizations to rally around it to defend the Revolution. The Central Executive Committee will convene a new Congress of Soviets as soon as conditions make it possible to do so properly.²⁰⁶

The exact number of participants in this rump congress cannot be determined: the most reliable estimate indicates about 650 delegates, among them 338 Bolsheviks and 98 Left SRs. The two allied parties thus controlled two-thirds of the seats—a representation more than double what they were entitled to, judging by the elections to the Constituent Assembly three weeks later.²⁰⁷ Leaving nothing to chance, for they could not be entirely certain of the Left SRs, the Bolsheviks allocated to themselves 54 percent of the seats. How skewed the representation was is illustrated by the fact that, according to information made available seventy years later, Latvians, who had a strong Bolshevik movement, accounted for over 10 percent of the delegates.²⁰⁸

The initial hours were spent on raucous debates. While awaiting word that the ministers were under arrest, the Bolsheviks gave the floor to their socialist opponents. Amid hooting and heckling, the Mensheviks and the Socialists-Revolutionaries presented similar declarations denouncing the Bolshevik coup and demanding immediate negotiations with the Provisional Government. The Menshevik statement declared that the

military conspiracy was organized and carried out by the Bolshevik Party in the name of the soviets behind the backs of all the other parties and factions represented in the soviets … the seizure of power by the Petrograd Soviet on the eve of the Congress of Soviets constitutes a disorganization and disruption of the entire soviet organization.²⁰⁹

Trotsky described the opponents as “pitiful entities [edinitsy]” and “bankrupts” whose place was on the “garbage heap of history,” whereupon Martov declared he was leaving.²¹⁰

This happened around 1 a.m. on October 26. At 3:10 a.m. Kamenev announced that the Winter Palace had fallen and the ministers were in custody. At 6 a.m. he adjourned the congress until the evening.

Lenin now went to Bonch-Bruevich’s apartment to draft key decrees for the congress’s ratification. The two principal decrees on which he counted to win the support of soldiers and peasants for the coup, dealing with peace and land, were later in the day submitted to a caucus of the Bolshevik delegates, which approved them without debate.

The congress resumed at 10:40 p.m. Lenin, greeted with tumultuous applause, presented the decrees on peace and land. They sailed through on a voice vote.

The Decree on Peace²¹¹ was misnamed since it was not a legislative act, but an appeal to all the belligerent powers to open immediate negotiations for a “democratic” peace without annexations and contributions, guaranteeing every nation “the right to self-determination.” Secret diplomacy was to be abolished and secret treaties made public. Until peace negotiations could get underway, Russia proposed a three-month armistice.

The Decree on Land²¹² was lifted bodily from the program of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party as supplemented with 242 instructions from peasant communities published two months earlier in Izvestiia of the All-Russian Union of Peasants’ Deputies.²¹³ Instead of ordering the nationalization all the land—that is, the transfer of ownership to the state—as the Bolshevik program demanded, it called for its “socialization”—that is, withdrawal from commerce and transfer to peasant communes for use. All landed properties of landlords, the state, the church, and others not engaged in farming were to be confiscated without compensation and turned over to the volost’ land committees until such time as the Constituent Assembly decided on their ultimate disposal. Private holdings of peasants, however, were exempt. This was an unabashed concession to peasant wishes which had little in common with the Bolshevik land program and was designed to win peasant support in the elections to the Constituent Assembly.

The third and final decree presented to the delegates set up a new government called the Council of People’s Commissars (Sovet Narodnykh Komissarov, or Sovnarkom). It was to serve only until the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, scheduled for the following month: hence, like its predecessor, it was named “Provisional Government.”²¹⁴ Lenin at first offered its chairmanship to Trotsky, but Trotsky refused. Lenin was none too eager to enter the cabinet, preferring to work from behind the scenes. “At first Lenin did not want to join the government,” Lunacharskii recalled. “ ‘I will work in the Central Committee of the party,’ he said. But we said no. We would not agree to that. We made him assume principal responsibility. Everyone prefers to be only a critic.”²¹⁵ So Lenin took over the chairmanship of the Sovnarkom, while concurrently serving, in fact if not in name, as chairman of the Bolshevik Central Committee. The new cabinet had the same structure as the old, with the addition of one new post, that of chairman (rather than commissar) for Nationality Affairs. All the commissars were members of the Bolshevik Party and subject to its discipline: the Left SRs were invited to join but refused, insisting on a cabinet representative of “all the forces of revolutionary democracy,” including the Mensheviks and SRs.²¹⁶ The composition of the Sovnarkom was as follows:*

Chairman

Vladimir Ulianov (Lenin)

Internal Affairs

A. I. Rykov

Agriculture

V. P. Miliutin

Labor

A. G. Shliapnikov

War and Navy

V. A. Ovseenko (Antonov)

N. V. Krylenko

P. E. Dybenko

Trade and Industry

V. P. Nogin

Enlightenment

A. V. Lunacharskii

Finance

I. I. Skvortsov (Stepanov)

Foreign Affairs

L. D. Bronstein (Trotsky)

Justice

G. I. Oppokov (Lomov)

Supply

I. A. Teodorovich

Post and Telegraphs

N. P. Avilov (Glebov)

Chairman for Nationality Affairs

I. V. Dzhugashvili (Stalin)

The existing Ispolkom was declared deposed and replaced with a new one, composed of 101 members, of whom 62 were Bolsheviks and 29 Left SRs. Kamenev was named chairman. In the decree establishing the Sovnarkom, drafted by Lenin, the Sovnarkom was made accountable to the Ispolkom, which thereby became something of a parliament with authority to veto legislation and cabinet appointments.

The Bolshevik high command, exceedingly anxious at this uncertain time not to appear to be preempting power, insisted that the decrees passed by the congress were enacted on a provisional basis, subject to approval, emendation, or rejection by the Constituent Assembly. In the words of a Communist historian:

In the days of October, the sovereignty of the Constituent Assembly was not denied … in all its resolutions [the Second Congress of Soviets] took the Constituent Assembly into account and adopted its basic decisions “until its convocation.”²¹⁷

While the Decree on Peace did not refer to the Constituent Assembly, in his report on it to the Second Congress, Lenin promised: “We will submit all the peace proposals to the Constituent Assembly for decision.”²¹⁸ The provisions of the Land Decree were conditional as well: “Only the all-national Constituent Assembly can resolve the land question in all its dimensions.”²¹⁹ As concerned the new cabinet, the Sovnarkom, a resolution which Lenin drafted and the congress approved stated: “To form for the administration of the country, until the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, a Provisional Workers’ and Peasants’ Government to be called Council of People’s Commissars.”²²⁰ Hence, it was logical for the new government, on its first day in office (October 27), to affirm that the elections for the Constituent Assembly would proceed as scheduled on November 12.²²¹ Hence, too, by dispersing the Assembly on its first day, before it had had a chance to legislate, the Bolsheviks delegitimized themselves, even by their own definition.

The Bolsheviks made their initial concessions to legality only because they could not be certain what the future held in store. They had to allow for the possibility of Kerensky arriving momentarily in Petrograd with troops, in which case they would need the support of the entire Soviet. They ventured to violate legal norms openly only a week or so later, after it had become apparent that no punitive expeditions would materialize.

The one armed clash between pro-Bolshevik and pro-government troops for control of the capital occurred on October 30 at Pulkovo, a hilly suburb. Krasnov’s Cossacks, discouraged by lack of support and confused by Bolshevik agitators, after wasting three precious days in Tsarskoe Selo were finally persuaded to advance. They opened operations along the Slavianka River: here, 600 Cossacks confronted a force of Red Guards, sailors, and soldiers at least ten times larger.²²² The Red Guards and soldiers quickly fled, but the 3,000 sailors stood their ground and carried the day. Having lost their field commander, the Cossacks retreated to Gatchina. This ended the possibility of any further military intervention on behalf of the Provisional Government.

In Moscow, things went awry for the Bolsheviks from the start: they could have ended in disaster had the government representatives displayed greater determination.

Moscow’s Bolsheviks had not prepared themselves for a power seizure because they sided with Kamenev and Zinoviev rather than Lenin and Trotsky: Uritskii told the Central Committee on October 20 that the majority of the Moscow delegates opposed an uprising.²²³

Having learned of the events in Petrograd on October 25, the Bolsheviks had the Soviet pass a resolution setting up a Revolutionary Committee. But whereas in the capital city the equivalent organization was under Bolshevik control, in Moscow it was intended as a genuine interparty Soviet organ and the Mensheviks, SRs, and other socialists were invited to join. While the SRs declined, the Mensheviks accepted the invitation but posed several conditions; these were rejected, whereupon they withdrew.²²⁴ Emulating the Petrograd Milrevkom, the Moscow Revolutionary Committee issued at 10 p.m. an appeal to the city’s garrison to be ready for action and obey only orders issued by it or carrying its countersignature.²²⁵

The Moscow Revolutionary Committee made its first move in the morning of October 26 by sending two commissars to the Kremlin to take over the ancient fortress and distribute weapons in its arsenal to pro-Bolshevik Red Guards. Troops of the 56th Regiment guarding the Kremlin obeyed, confused by the fact that one of these commissars was its own officer. Even so, the Bolsheviks were unable to remove the weapons because the Kremlin was soon encircled by iunkers, who gave them an ultimatum to surrender. When it was rejected, the iunkers attacked: a few hours later (6 a.m. on October 28) the Kremlin was in their hands.

Its capture gave the pro-government forces control of the city’s center. At this point, the officials charged with military and civilian authority could have crushed the Bolshevik uprising. But they hesitated, in part from overconfidence, in part from a desire to avoid further bloodshed. Fear of the “counterrevolution” also weighed on their minds. The Committee of Public Safety, headed by the city’s mayor, V. V. Rudnev, and the military command under Colonel K. I. Riabtsev, instead of arresting the Revolutionary Committee, entered into negotiations with it. These negotiations, which went on for three days (October 28–30), gave the Bolsheviks time to recover and bring in reinforcements from the industrial suburbs and nearby towns. The Revolutionary Committee, which during the night of October 28–29 had viewed its situation as “critical,”²²⁶ two days later felt confident enough to go on the offensive. Ultimately, the only inhabitants of Moscow willing to defend democracy turned out to be teenage youths from military academies, universities, and gymnasia who put their lives on the line without leadership or support from their elders.

The negotiations between the Committee of Public Safety and the Revolutionary Committee for a peaceful resolution of the conflict broke down at midnight, October 30–31, when the latter unilaterally terminated the armistice and ordered its units to charge.²²⁷ The forces on both sides seem to have been roughly equal, 15,000 men each. During the ensuing night, Moscow became the scene of fierce house-to-house fighting. Determined to recapture the Kremlin, the Bolsheviks attacked with artillery fire, which inflicted damage on its ancient walls. Although the iunkers acquitted themselves well, they were gradually squeezed and isolated by the Bolshevik forces converging from the suburbs. In the morning of November 2, the Committee of Public Safety ordered its forces to cease resistance. That evening it signed with the Revolutionary Committee an act of surrender by virtue of which it dissolved itself and its forces laid down arms.²²⁸

70. Cadets defending the Moscow Kremlin: November 1917.

71. Fires burning in Moscow during battle between loyal and Bolshevik forces: November 1917.

In other parts of Russia, the situation followed a bewildering variety of scenarios, the course and outcome of the conflict in each city depending on the strength and determination of the contending parties. Although Communist ideologists have labeled the period immediately following the October coup in Petrograd “the triumphal march of Soviet power,” to the historian the matter looks different: it was not “Soviet” but Bolshevik power that was spreading, often against the wishes of the soviets, and it was not so much “triumphantly marching” as conquering by military force.

Because they followed no discernible pattern, it is next to impossible to describe the Bolshevik conquests outside the two capital cities.²²⁹ In some areas, the Bolsheviks joined hands with the SRs and Mensheviks to proclaim “soviet” rule; in others, they ejected their rivals and took power for themselves. Here and there, pro-government forces offered resistance, but in many localities they proclaimed “neutrality.” In most provincial cities local Bolsheviks had to act on their own, without directives from Petrograd. By early November, they were in control of the heartland of the Empire, Great Russia, or at any rate of the cities of that region, which they transformed into bastions in the midst of a hostile or indifferent rural population, much as the Normans had done in Russia a thousand years earlier. The countryside was almost entirely outside their grasp and so were most of the borderlands, which separated themselves to form sovereign republics. These, as we shall see, the Bolsheviks had to reconquer in military campaigns.

The vast majority of Russia’s inhabitants at the time had no inkling of what had happened. Nominally, the soviets, which since February had acted as co-regent, assumed full power. This hardly seemed a revolutionary event: it was rather a logical extension of the principle of “dual power” introduced during the first days of the February Revolution. Trotsky’s deception which disguised the Bolshevik power seizure as the transfer of power to the soviets succeeded brilliantly: looking back at the events of October, he rightly took pride in the skillful exploitation for Bolshevik ends of practices which the democratic socialists had introduced in February and March. The result of the deception was that the total break in government went virtually unnoticed, appearing merely as a “legal” resolution of yet another governmental crisis:

We term the uprising “legal” in the sense that it grew out of the “normal” conditions of dual power. When the appeasers [SRs and Mensheviks] were in charge of the Petrograd Soviet it happened more than once that the Soviet checked and corrected the government’s decisions. This [practice], as it were, formed part of the constitution of the regime known to history as “Kerenskyism.” We Bolsheviks, having taken power in the Petrograd Soviet, merely expanded and deepened the methods of dual power. We took it upon ourselves to check the order concerning the dispatch of the garrison [to the front]. In this manner, we concealed behind the traditions and practices of dual power what was a de facto rising of the Petrograd garrison. Moreover, by formally timing in our agitation the question of power to coincide with the moment of the Second Congress of Soviets, we developed and deepened the established traditions of dual power, preparing the framework of Soviet legality for the Bolshevik uprising on an all-Russian scale.²³⁰

Part of the deception was to keep hidden the socialist objective of the October coup: no official document issued in the first week of the new regime, when it felt still very unsure of itself, used the word “socialism.” That this was deliberate practice and not oversight may be seen from the fact that in the original draft of the October 25 announcement declaring the Provisional Government deposed, Lenin had written the slogan “Long Live Socialism!” but then thought better of it and crossed it out.²³¹ The earliest official use of “socialism” occurred in a document written by Lenin and dated November 2, which stated that “the Central Committee has complete faith in the triumph of the socialist revolution.”²³²

All this had the effect of lulling the sense that something drastic had happened, allaying public apprehension and inhibiting active resistance. How prevalent was ignorance of the meaning of the October coup may be illustrated by the reaction of the Petrograd Stock Exchange. According to the contemporary press, the Stock Exchange was “entirely unimpressed” by the change of regimes or even the subsequent announcement that Russia had had a socialist revolution. Although in the days immediately following the coup there was little trading in securities, prices held firm. The only indication of nervousness was the sharp fall in the value of the ruble: between October 23 and November 4, the ruble lost one-half of its foreign exchange value, declining from 6.20 to 12–14 to the U.S. dollar.²³³

The fall of the Provisional Government caused few regrets: eyewitnesses report that the population reacted to it with complete indifference. This was true even in Moscow, where the Bolsheviks had to overcome stiff opposition: here the disappearance of the government is said to have gone unnoticed. The man on the street seemed to feel that it made no difference who was in charge since things could not possibly get any worse.²³⁴

*Few subjects have aroused such interest among historians of the Russian Revolution, and the literature on it is correspondingly voluminous. The principal source materials have been published in D. A. Chugaev, ed., Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v Rossii v avguste 1917g.: Razgrom Kornilov-skogo miatezha (Moscow, 1959), esp. 419–72, and Revoliutsiia, IV, passim. Kerensky’s account is in Deh Kornilova (Ekaterinoslav, 1918) (in English: The Prelude to Bolshevism, New York, 1919); Boris Savinkov’s, in K delu Kornilova (Paris, 1919). Of the secondary literature, especially informative are: E. I. Martynov’s partisan but richly documented Kornilov (Leningrad, 1927), P. N. Miliukov’s Istoriia Vtoroi Russkoi Revoliutsii, I, Pt. 2 (Sofia, 1921), and George Katkov’s The Kornilov Affair (London-New York, 1980).

*This is also the opinion of General Martynov, who observed these events at close range and studied the archival evidence: Kornilov, 100. Cf. N. N. Golovin, Rossiiskaia kontr-revoliutsiia v 1917–1918 gg., I, pt. 2 (Tallinn, 1937), 37.

*His conviction that the government was riddled with disloyal elements and possibly enemy agents was reinforced by the leak to the press of a confidential memorandum which he had submitted to the government at this time. The left-wing press published excerpts from it and launched against Kornilov a campaign of vilification: Martynov, Kornilov, 48.

*In private conversation with the author, Kerensky conceded that his actions in 1917 had been strongly influenced by the lessons of the French Revolution.

*According to the paper (No. 189, p. 3), the government believed this would be an all-out Bolshevik effort.

*The original deposition of Lvov, drawn up on September 14, 1917, is reproduced in Chugaev, ed., Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v avguste, 425–28. His recollections, published in PN in November and December 1920, are reprinted in A. Kerensky and R. Browder, eds., The Russian Provisional Government 1917, III (Stanford, Calif., 1961), 1558–68. After Vladimir Nabokov père wrote a letter to Poslednie novosti dismissing Lvov’s account of a conversation with him as “nonsense” (PN, No. 199, December 15, 1920, 3), their publication was terminated. Lvov returned to Russia in 1921 or 1922 and joined the renegate “Living Church.”

†Kerensky gave an account of his exchanges with Lvov to the commission investigating the Kornilov Affair on October 8, 1917. He later published it, with commentaries, in Delo Kornilova, 83–86.

‡This is the opinion of Golovin: Kontr-revoliutsiia, I, Pt. 2, 25. Lvov later claimed that he had requested and received from Kerensky authority to negotiate with his associates provided he acted with great discretion and in utmost secrecy: PN, No. 190 (December 4, 1920), 2. Given Kerensky’s subsequent activities, such behavior would not have been out of character. Even more likely is the connivance of Nekrasov, Kerensky’s closest adviser, who played a major role in exacerbating the conflict between the two men.

*Martynov, Kornilov, 84–85. In his deposition, Lvov said that Aladin’s memorandum represented “not my positions but Aladin’s conclusions from my words”: Chugaev, Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v avguste, 426.

*Accounts of this meeting: Kerensky, Delo Kornilova, 132–36, and Miliukov, Istoriia I, Pt. 2, 204–5. Miliukov talked to Lvov immediately before and after his meeting with the Prime Minister.

*Miliukov, Istoriia, I, Pt. 2, 213. Unlike Kerensky, Kornilov later admitted that he had acted thoughtlessly in not asking Kerensky to spell out what Lvov had conveyed to him on his behalf: A. S. Lukomskii, Vospominaniia, I (Berlin, 1922), 240.

†He spent the night in a room adjoining the Alexander III suite occupied by the Prime Minister, who kept him awake bellowing operatic arias. He was later placed under house arrest and treated by a psychiatrist: Izvestiia, No. 201 (October 19, 1917), 5.

*Revoliutsiia, IV, 99. According to Savinkov, between 9 and 10 p.m.—that is, before the cabinet had met—Kerensky told him it was too late to reach an understanding with Kornilov because the telegram dismissing him had already gone out: Mercure de France, No. 503 (June 1, 1919), 439

*Golovin, Kontr-revoliutsiia, I, Pt. 2, 35. Nekrasov, the eminence grise of Kerensky’s regime and a thoroughly sinister figure, throughout 1917 pushed the Prime Minister leftward. A professor of engineering at the Tomsk Polytechnic and a leading figure on the left wing of the Kadet Party, he was involved on January 1, 1918, in an unsuccessful attempt on Lenin’s life. The would-be assassins were pardoned, following which Nekrasov went into Bolshevik service under an assumed name. His identity was eventually discovered and he seems to have been imprisoned (N. Iakovlev, I Avgusta 1914, Moscow, 1974, 226–32).

†A businessman with political ambitions, Zavoiko was the counterpart of Nekrasov, pushing Kornilov toward the right: on him, see Martynov, Kornilov, 20–22.

*Zinaida Gippius thus depicts the encounter between Kornilov’s cavalry and the units sent from Petrograd to intercept them: “There was no ‘bloodshed.’ Near Luga and in some other places, the divisions dispatched by Kornilov and the ‘Petrograders’ ran into each other. They confronted each other, uncomprehending. The ‘Kornilovites’ were especially amazed. They had gone to ‘defend the Provisional Government’ and encountered an ‘enemy’ who had also gone to ‘defend the Provisional Government.’ … So they stood and pondered. They couldn’t understand a thing. But recalling the teaching of frontline agitators that ‘one should fraternize with the enemy,’ they fervently fraternized”: Siniaia kniga (Belgrade, 1929), 181; diary entry of August 31, 1917.

*Kerenskii, Delo Kornilova, 75–76, Revoliutsiia, IV, 143; Martynov, Kornilov, 149–51. Krymov left a suicide note for Kornilov, which Kornilov destroyed: Martynov, Kornilov, 151. No reactionary monarchist, Krymov had participated in 1916 in plots against Nicholas II.

*Suspicions that the whole Kornilov Affair was a provocation are buttressed by Nekrasov’s uncautious remarks to the press. In a newspaper interview given two weeks after the event he praised Lvov for exposing Kornilov’s alleged plot. Distorting Kornilov’s answer to Kerensky to make it sound as if it confirmed Lvov’s ultimatum, he added: “V. N. Lvov helped save the Revolution: he exploded a prepared mine two days before it was to go off. There undoubtedly was a conspiracy and Lvov only discovered it prematurely”: NZh, No. 55 (September 13, 1917), 3. These words suggest that Nekrasov, possibly with Kerensky’s connivance, used Lvov to destroy Kornilov.

*Crane Brinton in his Anatomy of Revolution (New York, 1938, 185–86) observes that it is common in revolutionary situations for ordinary citizens to grow bored with politicking and to leave the field to extremists. The influence of the latter increases in proportion to the public’s disenchantment and loss of interest in politics.

*Cited in Lenin, PSS, XXXIII, 28. Lenin underscored the concluding sentence.

*Protokoly Tsentral’nogo Komiteta RSDRP (b) (Moscow, 1958), 55–62. This, the only presently available record of the meetings of the Bolshevik Central Committee from August 4, 1917, until February 24, 1918, first came out in 1929. It was meant to discredit Trotsky, Kamenev, and Zinoviev, whom Stalin had defeated for party control, and for this reason must be used with extreme caution. According to the editors of the second edition: “The texts of the protocols are published in full, without omissions, except for matters of conflict [konfliktnye dela] removed, as in the first edition, for reasons of inadequate explanation of these questions in the text of the protocols” (p. vii), whatever that may mean.

†It cannot be excluded, of course, that Lenin’s advice was turned down and the fact censored from the published version of the minutes.

*Lenin, PSS, XXXIV, 281–82. Lenin here inadvertently concedes that on July 3–5 the Bolsheviks had, indeed, attempted a power seizure.

*Revoliutsiia, V, 23. According to Kerensky, these discussions were secret, but they immediately leaked to the press: Ibid., V, 81.

*Lazimir later joined the Bolshevik Party. He died in 1920 of typhus.

†N. Podvoiskii in KL, No. 8 (1923), 16–17. Trotsky wrote in 1922 that even if his life were at stake he would not be able to recall the makeup of the Milrevkom: PR, No. 10 (1922), 54.

*Lenin mistakenly believed that Zinoviev had joined Kamenev in the interview with Novaia zhizn’: Protokoly TsK, 108.

*Lenin, PSS, XXXIV, 435–36. Verkhovskii had been dismissed from his post the day before (October 23) for demanding at a cabinet meeting that Russia make immediate peace with the Central Powers: SV., No. 10, June 19, 1921, 8.

*Dekrety, I, 1–2. Kerensky’s wife was arrested and detained for forty-eight hours the following day for tearing down this declaration: A. L. Fraiman, Forpost Sotsialisticheskoi Revoliutsii (Leningrad, 1969), 157.

*N. M. Kishkin, a Kadet and member of the last Provisional Government, was placed in charge after Kerensky had left the Winter Palace.

*Dekrety, I, 20–21; W. Pietsch, Staat und Revolution (Köln, 1969), 50; Lenin, PSS, XXXV, 28–29. Trotsky was the only Jew in the Sovnarkom. The Bolsheviks seemed to have been afraid of accusations that they were a “Jewish” party, setting up a government to serve the interests of “international Jewry.”