What was most astounding about the post-July days reaction in Petrograd was how quickly the prevailing political climate appeared to have shifted. One newspaper reporter observed at the time, "The difference in mood between July 4 and 5 is so enormous, it is misleading to refer to it as a change—it is as if one had suddenly been transported from one city to another and found oneself amidst different people and different moods."2 Many years later the left Menshevik Vladimir Woytinsky remembered July 5, when the streets of Petrograd became the scene of "a counterrevolutionary orgy" and "the debauchery of the Black Hundreds threatened to destroy the victory over the insurgents," as one of the saddest days of his life.3
As early as July 6 the All-Russian Executive Committees warned that the illegal arrests and the violent acts carried out in retaliation against the intimidation of July 3-4 constituted a grave threat to the revolution (that is, to the repudiation of tsarism and to the establishment of a permanent democratic political system). A session of the Petrograd City Duma on July 7 was continually interrupted by reports of trouble throughout the city. A Menshevik deputy declared, "Citizens who look like workers or who are suspected of being Bolsheviks are in constant danger of being beaten." "Quite intelligent people are conducting ultra-anti-Semitic agitation," volunteered another deputy. Responding to such reports, the City Duma deputies agreed to prepare a public condemnation of street violence. Published the next day, the statement cautioned the public against falling prey to "irresponsible agitators who, placing all the blame for the calamities being endured by the country on either the Jews, the bourgeoisie, or the workers, are instilling extremely dangerous thoughts in the minds of the aroused masses."4
In the Petrograd press of this period there appeared a rash of reports regarding a sudden burst of activity on the part of extreme rightist groups. Among these organizations, apparently one of the most active was a group called Holy Russia, which, according to a story in Izvestiia, operated out of a book store on Pushkin Street.5 Holy Russia published its own one-page weekly newspaper, Groza (Thunderstorm), which heaped blame for all of Russia's ills on non-Russians, especially Jews, as well as on socialists, liberals, the bourgeoisie, and the proletariat. According to Groza, only Tsar Nicholas II was capable of furnishing bread and peace to the Russian people; only he could save the country from total ruin.6 There were also frequent press reports of pogromist street agitation. Petrogradskii listok, for example, carried an account of a street-corner rally at which several speakers appealed to listeners to "smash the Jews and the bourgeoisie because they are responsible for the murderous war." One speaker put particular emphasis on "Jewish domination of the central organs of the Russian democracy." The assembled crowd would not disperse until broken up by a detachment of soldiers and militiamen.7
At about this time several local Bolshevik Party offices were raided and wrecked. During the afternoon of July 9, for instance, soldiers raided party headquarters in the Liteiny District. The same evening Bolshevik headquarters in the Petrograd District was attacked by "one hundred military school cadets arriving in four trucks and an armored car." Three party members in the headquarters were arrested and some money was seized by the cadets. Coming across the rubles, one of the cadets inquired incredulously, "Is this German money?"8 Not only Jews and Bolsheviks but also nonparty labor organizations and Menshevik and SR groups felt the impact of this kind of action. Thus the Trud publishing house, which printed much trade union as well as exclusively Bolshevik material, was wrecked on July 5. A few days later the headquarters of the metalworkers' union, the largest labor union in Russia, was also raided.9 A local Menshevik office that happened to adjoin the Bolshevik headquarters in the Petrograd District was wrecked when the latter was raided on July 9.10 Office personnel had already left for the day.
During these days several moderate socialist officials were less successful in escaping blows aimed primarily at the Bolsheviks. Thus a Trudovik representative on the Central Executive Committee was badly beaten and briefly jailed for publicly urging that people refrain from referring to Lenin as a spy until his case had been properly investigated.11 And on July 5 Mark Liber, one of the most influential Mensheviks in the Soviet and an arch-critic of the Bolsheviks as well, was arrested by soldiers who mistook him for Zinoviev.12
During these same days, Iurii Steklov (a prominent radical Social Democrat with close ties to Bolshevik moderates) encountered such difficulties not once, but three times. The night of July 7 his apartment was raided by a detachment from the Petrograd Military District. Steklov immediately phoned Kerensky, who arrived on the scene and persuaded the soldiers to leave Steklov alone. Later, however, a crowd of private citizens and soldiers, indignant that the first raiding party had come away empty- handed, gathered at Steklov's door bent on lynching him. Once more, Kerensky was summoned, and again he hurried over and freed Steklov, this time seeing to it that Steklov left the premises. Evidently in part to avoid such harassment, Steklov left the capital the next afternoon for a few days at his summer home in Finland. Yet this proved no escape. Steklov's cottage neighbored that of Bonch-Bruevich, where Lenin had been staying on the eve of the July days. During the night of July 10 military cadets, looking for Lenin and not finding him at Bonch-Bruevich's, moved on to search Steklov's home, grabbed Steklov, and forced him to return to Petrograd. In reference to such incidents the Izvestiia of the Moscow Soviet commented ruefully, "The cadets are not very knowledgeable about our differences."13 On July 18 the Provisional Committee of the Duma held a sensational, widely publicized meeting, yet another barometer of the times. During the February days, deputies to the State Duma had created the Provisional Committee to help restore order. Along with the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, this committee had played a prominent role in the formation of the first Provisional Government. Subsequently, relatively little was heard from the Provisional Committee; its fifty or sixty active members, headed by Mikhail Rodzianko, seemed content to hold periodic unofficial discussions of governmental problems and, with less frequency, to issue pronouncements on political questions about which they felt strongly. During the early summer, however, as liberal and conservative members of the committee reacted to attacks from the left and to the government's obvious incapacity to deal with outstanding problems, the committee's meetings and pronouncements became increasingly militant. In the wake of developments in June and July, more than a few deputies became convinced that the Duma's complicity in the overthrow of the old regime had been a tragic error and that the Russian state was on the brink of destruction. Quite a number of deputies now also came to believe that the Duma, Russia's sole legally elected representative body, was duty bound to try to save the country by helping to create a powerful government free of leftist influence.
This view was forcefully expressed on July 18 at a meeting of the Provisional Committee convened to formulate a public declaration on the existing political situation and, more fundamentally, to discuss the Duma's course of action.14 At this meeting, two rightist deputies, A. M. Maslenikov and Vladimir Purishkevich, the latter best known for his involvement in the assassination of Rasputin, went furthest in attacking the prevailing situation.