John Medhurst - No Less Than Mystic - A History of Lenin and the Russian Revolution for a 21st-Century Left

That effort was increasingly successful, aided by a growing network of factory and army committees, rural and urban Soviets, and newly formed “Red Guard” civil militias.

Martov now watched appalled as old comrades like Tseretelli and Dan supported the government’s deportation from Russia of the Swiss socialist Robert Grimm, with whom Martov had organised the Zimmerwald Conference. Grimm had continued his efforts for peace by forwarding a German peace offer to the new Russian government. The government refused to entertain it and deported Grimm as a “German agent”. Kerensky then launched the offensive with an appeal to Russian forces to strike at the Germans on the Southwestern Front. For the first time the Central Executive of the Soviets came out in support of continuation of the war. In a blistering speech, Martov told the Soviet, “In this offensive we discern clearly the face of world imperialism and therefore refuse to lend support to it. We re-iterate our old slogan–‘Down with the War; Long Live the International!’” 7

When the new commander of the Russian army, General Brusilov, assumed command he spoke to many rank-and-file soldiers and asked them what they wanted. Almost without exception they replied “Land and Freedom”. As Orlando Figes records, “It was more a case of tired and angry soldiers picking up the slogans of the Bolshevik press and using them to legitimise their own growing resistance to the war” than a specific desire for socialist revolution. 8As the time approached for the resumption of hostilities many troops refused to advance to the front. After a two-day bombardment beginning on 16th June, Russian troops advanced for two or three days over shattered German lines but as soon as the Germans rallied the advance collapsed. Many soldiers simply fled and set up camps behind the lines, living as bandits. Tens of thousands of lives and millions of square miles of Russian territory were lost in days.

On 3rd July Lvov resigned as Prime Minister. The Kadets were now veering to the right and staking all on defence of the landowners. They accused the Menshevik and SR ministers in the Cabinet of serving the interests of militant workers, and citied Agriculture Minister Chernov’s attempts to facilitate land redistribution as an overt attack on the landed nobility. Lvov considered Chernov’s policy “nothing less than a Bolshevik programme of organised confiscation”. Had it not derived from a Provisional Government still wedded to the war, it would have received more acknowledgment from the socialist left (and socialist historians) than it has. For Lvov it was the final straw. “I have reached the end of the road”, he told his secretary, “and so, I am afraid, has my sort of liberalism”. 9He was replaced by Kerensky. In theory the SRs now controlled the government, yet its political complexion still leaned towards the Kadets and the SR Prime Minister was an ambitious, opportunistic newcomer to their ranks.

The military command now ordered up regiments that had remained in the capital, such as the Bolshevikdominated 1st Machine Gun Regiment and 176th Reserve Regiment. The 1st Machine Gun Regiment was well armed and its barracks in the Vyborg district provided easy access to workers at Putilov and sailors at Kronstadt. On 3rd July, as Lvov tendered his resignation in despair, it refused to mobilise for the front. It joined with workers in Vyborg to demand the Petrograd Soviet remove the government and assume power itself. Many felt at the time that the Bolsheviks were orchestrating this activity, but the “July Days” appear to have caught the Bolsheviks by surprise. Lenin had gone to Finland for a brief recuperation from fatigue. Trotsky was inside the Soviet at the Tauride Palace and did not know about the demonstration (although at that point he was not yet technically a Bolshevik). By the next day the mass demonstration had grown to nearly 50,000 angry soldiers, sailors and workers. The existence of the Provisional Government now hung by a thread.

The Bolshevik Central Committee was torn about how far to take the demonstrations. After much debate it decided, still without Lenin, to back what looked like a final uprising against the government, especially once it was confirmed that the Kronstadt sailors had left their base and set out for the city. But when other reports arrived of fighting taking place throughout the city and of a vigorous fight back by pro-government forces, it backtracked and tried to call the demonstration off. Pravda , given no clear line, appeared with a blank front page. Confused and disappointed, the demonstrators marched to Bolshevik HQ at the Kheshinskaya Mansion, to which Lenin hurriedly returned.

This was the moment when Lenin could have assumed command of a huge revolutionary force and directed it to his ends. For once he was not issuing commands to others through letters and pamphlets. He was physically present and in the line of fire. If he ordered the arrest of the Provisional Government or the Soviet Executive and it failed to come off, he would be arrested and shot. It was a defining moment, “one of the few in his long career when he was faced with the task of leading a revolutionary crowd that was standing before him”. 10But after a few mumbled words about the eventual victory of Soviet power, the man who wrote in loving detail in letters to party cadres about physical attacks on policemen and the need for attacking banks left the balcony, leaving it to Lunarcharsky to take charge. Lunacharsky, a “moderate” Bolshevik, literary critic and essayist, told the crowd to march to the Tauride Palace and demand the Soviet assume power. He then put himself at the front of the procession.

Twenty thousand armed sailors and workers arrived at the Tauride, led by the Kronstadt Bolshevik leader Raskolnikov. They demanded that the leaders of the Soviet come out and justify their actions, specifically their support for a Provisional Government that was willing to send them to die in a war they had thought was over. Chernov came out to address them, perhaps expecting that as the SR Minister who had defended the rights of rural Soviets to seize landed estates he might be well received. He was wrong. He was surrounded by angry sailors, one of whom yelled in his face, “Take power you son-of-a-bitch, when its given to you!”

After a few minutes in which he tried to justify the Soviet’s actions he was brusquely manhandled into a car and put under armed arrest. The mood turned ugly and for a while it looked as if Chernov might be summarily executed. Only a physically brave intervention by Trotsky, diving into the middle of the Kronstadt sailors and assuring them that this was not the time and place for such activity, secured his release. Trotsky escorted Chernov back inside and the mood of the crowd began to calm down.

The only guidance Raskolnikov received from Bolshevik HQ was to proceed as he thought fit, which placed the entire responsibility of the future of the revolution on the shoulders of a young Bolshevik naval ensign. Taking his cue from Trotsky’s actions Raskolnikov dispersed the sailors with vague promises of future action. The “July Days” then dribbled out as different waves of Bolshevik supporters–the Putilov workers and the 176th Reserve Regiment–arrived at different times and failed to take decisive action. The Putilov workers actually stormed inside the Tauride only to be told to leave, which they did. And the 176th Regiment, arriving last and unsure what to do, was ordered by Menshevik leader Theodore Dan to guard the building, which it did.

The picture in the rest of the country was equally chaotic. In Moscow the Bolsheviks discussed launching an insurrection but after a few street rallies called it off. In cities where local Soviets were already under the control of the Bolsheviks, such as Ivanovo-Voznesensk, they teetered on the brink of decisive action but once news came of the collapse in Petrograd they retreated. In Riga and Ekaterinburg local Soviets adopted resolutions calling for a purely Sovietled government but refrained from further action until sure it had succeeded in Petrograd. These quiverings of possible insurrection subsided once the surge in Petrograd fell back. With the immediate threat passed, the Provisional Government, now with the open support of Soviet leaders Tseretelli and Dan, moved to arrest leading Bolsheviks whom they believed had planned to overthrow the government and the Soviet Executive. On 6th July armed troops loyal to the Provisional Government surrounded the Khesinskaya Mansion and moved in, arresting many Bolshevik leaders and clearing the building. Lenin and Zinoviev had already fled to Finland.