meet, it was much too late, for the Bolsheviks had already gained control of Russia.
The Bolshevik victory in 1917 cannot be separated from the person and activity of Lenin. He arrived, together with some of his associates, at the Finland Station in Petrograd on the sixteenth of April, the Germans having let them through from Switzerland in hopes that they would disorganize the Russian war effort. In contrast to the attitude of satisfaction with the course of the revolution and co-operation with the Provisional Government prevalent even in the Soviet, Lenin assumed an extreme and intransigent position in his 'April Theses' and other pronouncements. He declared that the bourgeois revolution had already been accomplished in Russia and that history was moving inexorably to the next stage, the socialist stage, which had to begin with the seizure of power by the proletariat and poor peasants. As immediate goals Lenin proclaimed peace, seizure of gentry land by the peasants, control of factories by committees of workers, and 'all power to the Soviets.' 'War to the palaces, peace to the huts!' shouted Bolshevik placards. 'Expropriate the expropriators!'
Although Lenin found himself at first an isolated figure unable to win a majority even in his own party, events moved his way. The crushing burden of the war and increasing economic dislocation made the position of the Provisional Government constantly more precarious. In the middle of May, Miliukov and Guchkov were forced to resign because of popular agitation and pressure, and the cabinet was reorganized under Lvov to include five socialists rather than one, with Kerensky taking the ministries of war and the navy. The government declared itself committed to a strictly defensive war and to a peace 'without annexations and indemnities.' Yet, to drive the enemy out, Kerensky and General Alexis Brusilov started a major offensive on the southwestern front late in June. Initially successful, it soon collapsed because of confusion and lack of discipline. Entire units simply refused to fight. The Germans and Austrians in turn broke through the Russian lines, and the Provisional Government had to face another disaster. The problem of national minorities became ever more pressing as ethnic and national movements mushroomed in the disorganized former empire of the Romanovs. The government continued its increasingly hazardous policy of postponing political decisions until the meeting of a constituent assembly. Nevertheless, four Cadet ministers resigned in July because they believed that too broad a recognition had been accorded to the Ukrainian movement. Serious tensions and crises in the cabinet were also demonstrated by the resignation of the minister of trade and industry, who opposed the efforts of the new Social Democratic minister of labor to have workers participate in the management of industry, and the clash between Lvov and Victor Chernov, the Socialist
Revolutionary leader who had become minister of agriculture, over the implementation of the land policy. The crucial land problem became more urgent as peasants began to appropriate the land of the gentry on their own, without waiting for the constituent assembly.
The general crisis and unrest in the country and, in particular, the privations and restlessness in the capital led to the so-called 'July days,' from the sixteenth to the eighteenth of July, 1917, when radical soldiers, sailors, and mobs, together with the Bolsheviks, tried to seize power in Petrograd. Lenin apparently considered the uprising premature, and the Bolsheviks seemed to follow their impatient adherents as much as they led them. Although sizeable and threatening, the rebellion collapsed because the Soviet refused to endorse it, because some military units proved loyal to the Provisional Government, and because the government utilized the German connections of the Bolsheviks to accuse them of treason. Several Bolshevik leaders fled, including Lenin who went to Finland from whence he continued to direct the party; certain others were jailed. But the government did not press its victory and try to eliminate its opponents. On the twentieth of July Prince Lvov resigned and Kerensky took over the position of prime minister; socialists once more gained in the reshuffling of the cabinet.
Ministerial changes helped the regime little. The manifold crisis in the country deepened. In addition to the constant pressure from the Left, the Provisional Government attracted opposition from the Right which objected to its inability to maintain firm control over the army and the people, its lenient treatment of the Bolsheviks, and its increasingly socialist composition. In search of a broader base of understanding and support, the government arranged a State Conference in late August in Moscow, attended by some two thousand former Duma deputies and representatives of various organizations and groups, such as Soviets, unions, and local governments. The Conference produced no tangible results, but underlined the rift between the socialist and the non-socialist approaches to Russian problems. Whereas Kerensky expressed the socialist position and received strong support from socialist deputies, the Constitutional Democrats, army circles, and other 'middle-class' groups rallied around the recently appointed commander in chief, General Lavr Kornilov. Of simple cossack origin, Kornilov had no desire to restore the old regime, and he could even be considered a democratic general. But the commander in chief, along with other military men, wanted above all to re-establish discipline in the army and law and order in the country, disapproving especially of the activities of the Soviets.
The 'Kornilov affair' remains something of a mystery, although Ukraintsev's testimony and certain other evidence indicate that Kerensky, rather than Kornilov, should be blamed for its peculiar course and its
being a fiasco. Apparently the prime minister and the commander in chief had decided that loyal troops should be sent to Petrograd to protect the government. Apparently, too, that 'protection' included the destruction of Soviet power in the capital. In any case, when Kornilov dispatched an army corps to execute the plan, Kerensky appealed to the people 'to save the revolution' from Kornilov. The break between the prime minister and the general stemmed probably not only from their different views on the exact nature of the strengthened Provisional Government to be established in Russia, and on Kerensky's position in that government, but also from the strange and confusing activities of the man who acted as an intermediary between them.
The revolution was 'saved.' From the ninth to the fourteenth of September the population of the capital mobilized for defense, while the advancing troops, faced with a railroad strike, encountering general opposition, and short of supplies, became demoralized and bogged down without reaching the destination; their commanding officer committed suicide. Only the Bolsheviks really gained from the episode. Their leaders were let out of jail, and their followers were armed to defend Petrograd. After the Kornilov threat collapsed, they retained the preponderance of military strength in the capital, winning ever more adherents among the increasingly radical masses.
The Provisional Government, on the other hand, came to be bitterly despised by the Right for having betrayed Kornilov - whether the charge was entirely justified is another matter - while many on the Left suspected it of having plotted with him. The cabinet experienced another crisis and was finally able to reconstitute itself - for the third and last time - only on the twenty-fifth of September, with ten socialist and six nonsocialist ministers, Kerensky remaining at the head. It should be added that the Kornilov fiasco, followed by the arrest of Kornilov and several other generals, led to a further deterioration of military discipline, making the position of officers in many units untenable.
The Bolsheviks finally captured a majority in the Petrograd Soviet on September 13 and in the Moscow Soviet a week later, although the executive committee elected by the first All-Russian Congress of Soviets continued, of course, to be dominated by moderate socialists. Throughout the country the Bolsheviks were on the rise. From his hideout in Finland, Lenin urged the seizure of power. On October 23 he came incognito to Petrograd and managed to convince the executive committee of the party, with some division of opinion, of the soundness of his view. Lenin apparently considered victory a great gamble, not a scientific certainty, but
he correctly estimated that the fortunate circumstances had to be exploited, and he did not want to wait until the meeting of the constituent assembly. His opinions prevailed over the judgment of those of his colleagues who, in more orthodox Marxist fashion, considered Russia insufficiently prepared for a Bolshevik revolution and their party lacking adequate support in the country at large. Leon Trotsky - a pseudonym of Leon Bronstein - who first became prominent in the St. Petersburg Soviet of 1905 and who combined oratorical brilliance and outstanding intellectual qualities with energy and organizational ability, proved to be Lenin's ablest and most active assistant in staging the Bolsheviks' seizure of power.
The revolution succeeded with little opposition. On November 7 - October 25, Old Style, hence 'the Great October Revolution' - Red troops occupied various strategic points in the capital. In the early night hours of November 8, the Bolshevik-led soldiers of the Petrograd garrison, sailors from Kronstadt, and the workers' Red Guards stormed the Winter Palace, weakly defended by youngsters from military schools and even by a women's battalion, and arrested members of the Provisional Government. Kerensky himself had managed to escape some hours earlier. Soviet government was established in Petrograd and in Russia.
