On 6 October the government announced that half the garrison were to be moved out of the city to defend it against the sweeping German advance. Interpreting this as an attempt to rid the capital of its most revolutionary elements, the Soviet on 9 October created the embryo of a Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC) to resist the transfer. This was the organization that Trotsky used to unseat the government. There would have been no possibility of obeying Lenin's injunction to seize power prior to the Second Congress had the moderate socialists on the Soviet CEC not postponed its opening from 20 to 25 October, evidentlytoallowKerenskytimeto prepare a pre-emptive strike against
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7. Red Guards in Ekaterinburg
the Bolsheviks. On 20 October when the government ordered the transfer of troops to commence, the MRC ordered units not to move without its permission. On the night of 23-4 October Kerensky gave Trotsky the pretext he was looking for when he ordered the Bolshevik printing press to be shut down, as a preiudeto moving against the MRC. On 24 October military units, backed by armed bands of workers, known as Red Guards, took control of bridges, railway stations, and other strategic points. Kerensky fled, unable to muster troops to resist the insurgents. By the morning of 25 October, only the Winter Palace, the headquarters of the government, remained to be taken. That afternoon Lenin appeared for the first time in public since July, proclaiming to the Petrograd Soviet that the Provisional Government
Dear Kolia
Why have you not written? Are you busy, or is it for some political reason? It's hard to believe you haven't written for six months. What are you up to? How are grandma and your mother? Are they in good health? What's happening in Tambov? What news have you? Here nothing remarkable is happening at present. True, these Bolshevik days have caused me great anxiety. I've been sitting here in the telegraph office until three or four in the morning. The office is guarded by Cossacks. We're in the theatre of military operations and political life is registered much more strongly than in Tambov, as strongly as in the capitals. Please write. I'm waiting to hear from you. The situation here is complicated, but no matter, I'm calm. We have here in Smolensk the icon of the Blessed Virgin, so in the past all disasters have passed us by. We believe this will continue in the future.
Your uncle
Smolensk, 29 October 1917
had been overthrown. 'In Russia we must now set about building a proletarian socialist state.' At 10.40 p.m. the Second Congress of Soviets finally opened against the sound of distant artillery bombardment of the Winter Palace. The Mensheviks and SRs denounced the insurrection as a provocation to civil war and demonstratively walked out, Trotsky's taunt echoing in their ears: 'You are miserable bankrupts; your role is played out. Co where you ought to be: into the dustbin of history.'
The seizure of power is often presented as a conspiratorial coup against a democratic government. It had all the elements of a coup - albeit one much advertised in the press - except for the fact that a coup implies the seizure of a functioning state machine. Arguably, Russia had not had this since February. The reasons for the failure are not hard to pinpoint. Lacking legitimacy from the first, the Provisional Government relied on the moderate socialists in the Petrograd Soviet to make its writ felt.
£ From the summer it was engulfed by a concatenation of crises - at the
g front, in the countryside, in industry, and in the non-Russian periphery.
e Few governments could have coped with such a situation, and certainly
jg not without an army to rely on.
a:
<v
.c
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Many historians argue that democratic government was simply a non-starter in Russia in 1917. The analysis above leans to that conclusion but we should note that in spring there was widespread enthusiasm for 'democracy'. Workers, soldiers, and peasants showed enthusiasm for a constitution, a republic, and civil rights; yet such matters were always secondary to the solution of their pressing socio-economic problems. It was the Soviets and the factory committees, the institutions dedicated to promoting the social revolution, that were perceived as truly democratic. In other words, from the first, a heavily 'socialized' conception of democracy vied with a liberal notion of democracy tied to the defence of private property. The fact that the bases for a democratic regime were slender does not mean that they were non-existent, not at least if we think in terms of a regime that was socialist ratherthan liberal in complexion. If the Petrograd Soviet, having taken power in March,
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had hastened to summon the Constituent Assembly and to tackle the land question, the SRs and Mensheviks might have been able to consolidate a parliamentary regime. Following the Kornilov rebellion, a majority of moderate socialists finally came round to the view that the coalition with the 'bourgeoisie' had to end, and took up demands for a speedy end to the war, the transfer of land to the land committees, and the immediate summoning of the Constituent Assembly. If these demands had been raised in the spring it might have made all the difference. But then again, there were many in the SR party whose instincts were little different from those of Keren sky and who would have insisted on continuing the war, at least pending an international peace conference (something the Allies had no intention of agreeing to). And therein lay the rub. For the fate of democracy in 1917 was ultimately sealed by the decision to continue the war. It was the war that focused the otherwise disparate grievances of the people. It was war that exacerbated the deep polarization in society to a murderous extent. In 1902 Karl Kautsky, the leader of the German Social Democrats, had warned:
Revolution which arises from war is a sign of the weakness of the revolutionary class, and often the cause of further weakness, because of the sacrifice it brings with it, and because of the moral and intellectual degradation to which war gives rise.
In the last analysis, it was the war that made the Bolshevik seizure of power irresistible.