26. From July to October¶
Core Argument¶
In the tumultuous summer of 1917, the Bolsheviks navigated a series of crises that propelled them from persecution to the threshold of power. On 4 June, the Bolshevik faction issued a warning at the Congress of Soviets: Kerensky’s planned military offensive would destroy the army. Ignoring this, Kerensky toured the front with theatrical gestures and ordered the advance. When disaster inevitably followed, the Bolsheviks were blamed and persecuted. The July Days erupted as a spontaneous demonstration by the machine-gun regiment, soon joined by the party under the slogan “Power to the Soviets.” At the Tauride Palace, a hostile crowd seized Minister Chernov. Trotsky freed him by addressing the crowd and securing a show of hands against violence. The Executive Committee refused delegations demanding power until the Volyn regiment arrived from the front, after which Bolsheviks were expelled and denounced. Lenin predicted they would be shot. Bolsheviks were beaten, their offices sacked, and leaders arrested or forced into hiding. Trotsky, though not yet formally a party member, addressed the Bolshevik faction and predicted a rapid upswing. He was arrested on 10 July after declaring solidarity with Lenin.
During Kornilov’s mutiny in August, the government released Bolsheviks to help defend Petrograd. Trotsky went straight to the defence committee. The Bolsheviks armed the workers. After Kornilov’s collapse, Bolshevik numbers in the Soviet grew rapidly. Trotsky proposed a coalition presidium; Tsereteli refused. Trotsky then forced the issue by asking whether Kerensky was on the opposing list, securing a vote along party lines. Kerensky was mistakenly believed to be absent from the presidium, but his political influence remained. Trotsky argued that approving the presidium’s political line-up meant endorsing Kerensky’s policies, a claim that won over around a hundred previously wavering delegates. The Soviet had over a thousand members; voting was conducted by passing through a door. The real issue was the revolution itself, not the presidium. Trotsky calculated his faction would be a hundred votes short of a majority and would consider that a success. Instead, they received a hundred votes more than the coalition of Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, securing victory. Trotsky took the chair. Departing, Tsereteli expressed a wish that the Bolsheviks would remain in the Soviet for at least half as long as their predecessors had led the revolution—a credit of no more than three months. This was a gross miscalculation; the Bolsheviks were undeviating in their march to power.