Lenin hastened to the Kshesinskaia mansion around midday on July 4. He had hardly been briefed on the latest events when some ten thousand Bolshevik-led sailors from Kronstadt, most of them armed and battle- hungry, surrounded the building, demanding his appearance. At first Lenin declined, asserting that his refusal to appear would express his opposition to the demonstration. But at the insistence of Kronstadt Bolshevik leaders, he ultimately acquiesced. As he stepped out on the second-floor balcony to address the sailors, he grumbled to some Military Organization officials, "You should be thrashed for this!"21
Lenin's ambivalent comments on this occasion reflected his dilemma. He voiced a few words of greeting, expressed certainty that the slogan "All Power to the Soviets" would triumph in the end, and concluded by appealing to the sailors for self-restraint, determination, and vigilance, years later one of Lenin's listeners recalled that for many of the sailors, Lenin's emphasis on the necessity of a peaceful demonstration was unexpected. Anarchists among them and some Bolsheviks as well were unable to see how a column of armed men, eager for battle, could restrict itself to an armed demonstration.22
Lenin now found himself in an untenable situation. The previous day's developments had reconfirmed that among workers and soldiers in the capital, the Provisional Government had little support. The Soviet leadership, however, was still determined not to yield to mass pressure. Majority socialists remained convinced that neither the provincial population nor the army at the front would support a transfer of power to the soviets, and that in any case it was necessary for "all the vital forces of the country" to work together in the interest of the war effort and the survival of the revolution. They feared that by breaking with the liberals and the business and industrial circles who supported them they would run the risk of weakening the war effort and enhancing the likelihood of a successful counterrevolution.
Because of the Soviet's refusal to take power, the slogan "All Power to the Soviets" was, at least for the time being, tactically bankrupt from the Bolsheviks' point of view. The choice now facing the party was whether to attempt to seize power by force or to mount an effort to end the demonstrations. In weighing these alternatives Lenin considered the potential reaction of the provinces and the front to be of decisive importance. In this regard the situation was no doubt fluid and unclear, but the immediate indications were not very promising. Bolshevik support continued to be weak among the peasantry, while many soldiers were still loyal to the Soviet leadership.
On the afternoon of July 4 the extent of support for direct revolutionary action in the capital itself was by no means certain. The Kronstadt sailors were present in force and spoiling for a fight—en route from the Kshesin- skaia mansion to the Taurida Palace they engaged in a confused gun battle with snipers firing from upper-story windows and rooftops on Nevsky Prospect, and broke into scores of houses and apartments, terrorizing the occupants. But some of the troops who had participated in the demonstrations the previous evening had already wearied of the event, while other garrison units still refused to take sides. Moreover, the possibility of the Bolsheviks seizing power independently of and in opposition to the Soviet had never been presented to the workers and soldiers; indeed, while there is
July 4, 1917 in Petrograd. Demonstrators on Nevsky Prospect scatter in confusion after being fired upon.
evidence that this contingency had been considered by a few top party officials before July (specifically by Lenin and by leaders of the Bolshevik Military Organization),23 it had not been discussed within the party leadership generally. So the potential reaction to a call to battle even of many Bolshevik leaders, not to speak of their followers, was impossible to gauge.
All this suggested the advisability of a quick retreat. Yet that alternative also had drawbacks. The party was already compromised. The Bolsheviks' program and agitational work had obviously helped inspire the street movement. Banners carried by the demonstrators bore Bolshevik slogans. Pressured by its garrison converts, the Bolshevik Military Organization, without authorization from the Central Committee, had helped organize the movement in the first place. To be sure, on the afternoon of July 3 the Central Committee had made genuine attempts to hold back the movement. However, only a few hours later, with the demonstration already in progress, the leadership of the Military Organization and the Petersburg Committee, followed belatedly by the Central Committee, had reversed the party's earlier stand and publicly endorsed the demonstrations. Subsequently the Military Organization took full control of the movement and began mobilizing the most formidable and broadest possible military support. The organization had, among other things, summoned reinforcements from the front, dispatched armored cars to seize key posts and bridges, and sent a company of soldiers to occupy the Peter and Paul Fortress.24
There is no published record of the deliberations of the Bolshevik leadership on July 4; given the circumstances, it is doubtful that any record was kept. Mikhail Kalinin, a ranking Bolshevik participant, later recalled that at this point Lenin's mind was open on the question of whether the movement in the streets was the beginning of the seizure of power; Lenin did not exclude the possibility of throwing regiments into battle in favorable circumstances or, alternatively, of ultimately retreating with as few losses as possible.25 As he pondered how the party might extricate itself from its exposed position, Lenin almost certainly received conflicting advice. Right Bolsheviks on the Central Committee, in view of their tactical stance on the development of the revolution and their opposition to measures risking a decisive rupture with the moderate socialists, must have been strongly opposed to seizing power in defiance of the All-Russian Executive Committees.26
Other authoritative figures who probably appealed for caution on this occasion were Trotsky and Grigorii Zinoviev. Among associates in the party, the curly-haired, pudgy Zinoviev, the son of a Jewish dairyman, was known primarily for his talents as a writer and party organizer. During the decade before the revolution, Zinoviev was probably Lenin's closest assistant and political confidant. Zinoviev returned to Russia with Lenin in April 1917 and subsequently became an editor of Pravda and a prominent member of the Bolshevik fraction in the Petrograd Soviet. Thirty-four years old in 1917, Zinoviev was often given to alternate fits of elation and depression. An internationalist on the war issue and receptive in theory to the possibility of an early socialist revolution in Russia, in political behavior Zinoviev nonetheless tended to be vastly more cautious than Lenin. In early June, for example, he firmly opposed the organization of a mass demonstration on the grounds that such action would herald a new stage in the revolution for which the Bolsheviks were unprepared. At the afternoon Central Committee meeting on July 3, both Zinoviev and Trotsky supported the demands of Kamenev and others that the party mobilize its forces to restrain the masses. At a subsequent meeting of party officials late that night, after assuring themselves that there was nothing the Bolsheviks could do to prevent a continuation of the protest the next day, Zinoviev and Trotsky took the side of those who argued that the party should endorse and control the movement. At the same time, they were adamant in their insistence that the demonstrations be peaceful.27
Some of the Petersburg Committee members who had favored applying pressure on the All-Russian Executive Committees in the past were probably cool to the idea of escalating the action on July 4. In June the volatile Volodarsky, for one, had supported the organization of mass demonstrations as a means of disrupting the war effort, of retaining the loyalty of the increasingly impatient working-class population, and, if possible, of forcing the majority socialists to form an all-socialist government. In Volodarsky's view, the best interests of the revolution demanded the creation of a soviet government in which a broad coalition of left socialist groups would work together. As an active member of the Petrograd Soviet with close ties to both workers and soldiers, however, Volodarsky was keenly aware of the loyalty of those groups to the Soviet; he would not have advocated overthrowing the Provisional Government against the will of the Soviet leadership.