Already during the session of the Executive Committee we were informed
by telephone that a regiment of machine-gunners was making ready for
attack. By telephone, too, we adopted measures to check these
preparations, but the ferment was working among the people.
Representatives of military units that had been disciplined for
insubordination brought alarming news from the front, of repressions
which aroused the garrison. Among the Petrograd workingmen the
displeasure with the official leaders was intensified also by the fact
that Tseretelli, Dan and Cheidze misrepresented the general views of the
proletariat in their endeavor to prevent the Petrograd Soviet from
becoming the mouthpiece of the new tendencies of the toilers. The
All-Russian Executive Committee, formed in the July Council and
depending upon the more backward provinces, put the Petrograd Soviet
more and more into the background and took all matters into its own
hands, including even local Petrograd affairs.
A clash was inevitable. The workers and soldiers pressed from below,
vehemently voiced their discontent with the official Soviet policies and
demanded greater resolution from our party. We considered that, in view
of the backwardness of the provinces, the time for such a course had not
yet arrived. At the same time, we feared that the events taking place at
the front might bring extreme chaos into the revolutionary ranks, and
desperation to the hearts of the people. The attitude of our party
toward the movement of July 3rd-5th was quite well defined. On the one
hand, there was the danger that Petrograd might break away from the more
backward parts of the country; while on the other, there was the feeling
that only the active and energetic intervention of Petrograd could save
the day. The party agitators who worked among the people were working in
harmony with the masses, conducting an uncompromising campaign.
There was still some hope that the demonstration of the revolutionary
masses in the streets might destroy the blind doctrinairism of the
coalitionists and make them understand that they could retain their
power only by breaking openly with the bourgeoisie. Despite all that had
recently been said and written in the bourgeois press, our party had no
intention whatever of seizing power by means of an armed revolt. In
point of fact, the revolutionary demonstration started spontaneously,
and was guided by us only in a political way.
The Central Executive Committee was holding its session in the Taurida
Palace, when turbulent crowds of armed soldiers and workmen surrounded
it from all sides. Among them was, of course, an insignificant number of
anarchistic elements, which were ready to use their arms against the
Soviet center. There were also some "pogrom" elements, black-hundred
elements, and obviously mercenary elements, seeking to utilize the
occasion for instigating pogroms and chaos. From among the sundry
elements came the demands for the arrest of Chernoff and Tseretelli, for
the dispersal of the Executive Committee, etc. An attempt was even made
to arrest Chernoff. Subsequently, at Kresty, I identified one of the
sailors who had participated in this attempt; he was a criminal,
imprisoned at Kresty for robbery. But the bourgeois and the coalitionist
press represented this movement as a pogromist, counter-revolutionary
affair, and, at the same time, as a Bolshevist crusade, the immediate
object of which was to seize the reins of Government by the use of armed
force against the Central Executive Committee.
The movement of July 3rd-5th had already disclosed with perfect
clearness that a complete impotence reigned within the ruling Soviet
parties at Petrograd. The garrison was far from being all on our side.
There were still some wavering, undecided, passive elements. But if we
should ignore the junkers, there were no regiments at all which were
ready to fight us in the defense of the Government or the leading Soviet
parties. It was necessary to summon troops from the front. The entire
strategy of Tseretelli, Chernoff, and others on the 3rd of July resolved
itself into this: to gain time in order to give Kerensky an opportunity
to bring up his "loyal" regiments. One deputation after another entered
the hall of the Taurida Palace, which was surrounded by armed crowds,
and demanded a complete separation from the bourgeoisie, positive social
reforms, and the opening of peace negotiations.
We, the Bolsheviki, met every new company of disgruntled troops gathered
in the yards and streets, with speeches, in which we called upon them to
be calm and assured them that, in view of the present temper of the
people, the coalitionists could not succeed in forming a new coalition.
Especially pronounced was the temper of the Kronstadt sailors, whom we
had to restrain from transcending the limits of a peaceful
demonstration. The fourth demonstration, which was already controlled by
our party, assumed a still more serious character. The Soviet leaders
were quite at sea; their speeches assumed an evasive character; the
answers given by Cheidze to the deputies were without any political
content. It was clear that the official leaders were marking time.
On the night of the 4th the "loyal" regiments began to arrive. During
the session of the Executive Committee the Taurida Palace resounded to
the strains of the Marseillaise. The expression on the faces of the
leaders suddenly changed. They displayed a look of confidence which had
been entirely wanting of late. It was produced by the entry into the
Taurida Palace of the Volynsk regiment, the same one, which, a few
months later, was to lead the vanguard of the October revolution, under
our banners. From this moment, everything changed. There was no longer
any need to handle the delegates of the Petrograd workmen and soldiers
with kid gloves. Speeches were made from the floor of the Executive
Committee, which referred to an armed insurrection that had been
"suppressed" on that very day by loyal revolutionary forces. The
Bolsheviki were declared to be a counter-revolutionary party.
The fear experienced by the liberal bourgeoisie during the two days of
armed demonstration betrayed itself in a hatred that was crystallized
not only in the columns of the newspapers, but also in the streets of
Petrograd, and more especially on the Nevsky Prospect, where individual
workmen and soldiers caught in the act of "criminal" agitation were
mercilessly beaten up. The junkers, army-officers, policemen, and the
St. Georgian cavaliers were now the masters of the situation. And all
these were headed by the savage counter-revolutionists. The workers'
organizations and establishments of our party were being ruthlessly
crushed and demolished. Arrests, searches, assaults and even murders
came to be common occurrences. On the night of the 4th the then
Attorney-General, Pereverzev, handed over to the press "documents" which
were intended to prove that the Bolshevist party was headed by bribed
agents of Germany.
The leaders of the Social-Revolutionist and Menshevik parties have known
us too long and too well to believe these accusations. At the same time,
they were too deeply interested in their success to repudiate them
publicly. And even now one cannot recall without disgust that saturnalia
of lies which was celebrated broadcast in all the bourgeois and
coalition newspapers. Our organs were suppressed. Revolutionary
Petrograd felt that the provinces and the army were still far from being
with it. In workingmen's sections of the city a short period of
tyrannical infringements set in, while in the garrison repressive
measures were introduced against the disorganized regiments, and certain
of its units were disarmed. At the same time, the political leaders
manufactured a new ministry, with the inclusion of representatives of
third-rate bourgeois groups, which, although adding nothing to the
government, robbed it of its last vestige of revolutionary initiative.
Meanwhile events at the front ran their own course. The organic unity of
the army was shaken to its very depths. The soldiers were becoming
convinced that the great majority of the officers, who, at the beginning
of the revolution, bedaubed themselves with red revolutionary paint,
were still very inimical to the new regime. An open selection of
counter-revolutionary elements was being made in the lines. Bolshevik
publications were ruthlessly persecuted. The military advance had long
ago changed into a tragic retreat. The bourgeois press madly libelled
the army. Whereas, on the eve of the advance, the ruling parties told us
that we were an insignificant gang and that the army had never heard of
us and would not have anything to do with us, now, when the gamble of
the drive had ended so disastrously, these same persons and parties laid
the whole blame for its failure on our shoulders. The prisons were
crowded with revolutionary workers and soldiers. All the old legal
bloodhounds of Czarism were employed in investigating the July 3-5
affair. Under these circumstances, the Social-Revolutionsts and the
Alensheviki went so far as to demand that Lenin, Zinoviev and others of
their group should surrender themselves to the "Courts of Justice."