Timeline¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter presents a chronological framework for the revolutionary year of 1917, tracing the arc from the February Revolution to the Bolshevik seizure of power in October. Its core narrative thrust is the relentless radicalisation of the Russian working class and soldiery, set against the vacillation and treachery of the Provisional Government and the conciliatory socialist parties—the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs). The timeline is not a neutral list of dates but a polemical sequence designed to demonstrate the Bolsheviks’ growing alignment with mass sentiment and the inevitable collapse of all attempts to preserve bourgeois rule.
Key claims are embedded in the selection and juxtaposition of events. The February Revolution is dated according to the old Julian calendar but immediately linked to International Working Women’s Day, grounding it in class struggle rather than liberal narrative. The April Theses are presented not as a personal initiative but as a party document published in Pravda, marking the Bolshevik break with the Provisional Government. The April Crisis, triggered by Milyukov’s Note, is used to show how the imperialist war policy discredited the liberal ministers and forced the entry of ‘socialist’ ministers—Kerensky, Chernov, Tsereteli, Skobelev—into the first coalition. This is the first of several betrayals by the Mensheviks and SRs, who are shown repeatedly propping up a government that represses workers.
The June offensive is recorded as a disaster, followed by the July Days, where the Provisional Government, with the ‘knowledge and consent’ of the Menshevik and SR-led Central Executive Committee, opens fire on a peaceful demonstration of over 500,000 people. This is the decisive rupture: the Soviets become ‘a mere appendage to the Provisional Government’. The timeline then records the Bolsheviks’ forced retreat, the slander campaign, Lenin’s flight to Finland, and the Sixth Congress, where Trotsky formally joins the party. The Kornilov affair is a turning point: the Bolsheviks spearhead the fight against the general’s coup, regaining credibility and winning a majority in the Petrograd Soviet by 31 August.
The final section is a compressed narrative of the insurrection itself. Lenin’s motions for armed uprising are recorded alongside the votes against by Zinoviev and Kamenev, whose public revelation of the plans is noted as a breach of party discipline warranting expulsion. The insurrection begins on the night of 24 October, led by Trotsky and the Revolutionary Military Committee. The chapter ends with Lenin’s announcement of the overthrow and the drafting of decrees on peace, land, and Soviet government. The theoretical context is implicit: the entire sequence validates the Marxist conception of the state as an instrument of class rule and the necessity of smashing it, rather than reforming it. The polemic is directed against all those—Mensheviks, SRs, and the Bolshevik right wing—who sought compromise with the bourgeoisie.