worried that the ex-tsar’s arrival in Britain would make the house of Windsor unpopular.5 The British authorities replied in the negative. The Provisional Government held an unminuted discussion and decided to deposit the Imperial family in Tobolsk in Siberia. Its distance from the main centres was a primary advantage and the old governor’s residence was chosen for them. Nicholas told Kerenski: ‘I’m not worried. We trust you.’ The planned destination was kept secret; and although monarchist militants tried to reach him in Tobolsk there was no serious attempt at a rescue.6
Other policies of the Provisional Government were less effective. Manufacturers despaired of order being restored to the factories; many closed down their businesses and moved their accounts abroad. Few landowners dared to stay on their estates. Bankers focused their endeavours on preserving their assets and cut off financial credits to industry. The urban economy was crashing to the ground and conditions worsened for all social strata. Shopkeepers were pulling down their shutters. Mass unemployment rose steadily in the cities. Whereas the industrial workforces had once struck for higher pay and better conditions, the priority became to keep enterprises open and save jobs. Kerenski raised the prices paid for agricultural produce so as to entice the peasantry into selling to government procurers. The result was disappointing. Peasants complained about receiving rubles that were useless for purchasing farm equipment that was unavailable. Armed units had to be put at the ready to march into the countryside in order to feed the cities and the front. At the same time there were disturbing reports from the trenches that troops were deserting in an ever swelling stream. Discipline was falling apart in the Russian Army. The entire state was ceasing to exist and Russia fell to its knees.
The Bolshevik party benefited from this collapse. Increasingly its militants were again operating in the open; indeed they had never disappeared from view outside Petrograd and Moscow. Trotsky was released from prison and returned to public platforms to heap the blame for Russia’s misfortunes on the Provisional Government. Lenin in his Helsinki refuge declared that the Kornilov affair proved that there were only two alternatives: military dictatorship or socialist revolution. The Bolsheviks attended the Democratic Conference only to state their case against Kerenski and walk out.
Far from being delighted by this, Lenin thought the Bolsheviks were allowing themselves to become distracted from the organizing of an insurrection. He got articles couriered to Petrograd from his places of hiding. He nagged his comrades about the urgent need to overthrow the cabinet — and it was becoming clear that he could count on Trotsky, the newly recruited Bolshevik, to support his strategy. Although the Central Committee did not always accede to Lenin’s ideas, it never wholly ignored them. The anti-Bolshevik press went on building up his importance, representing him as a demonic figure with a mesmeric power over the Bolsheviks and Trotsky was depicted as his political twin. In the Petrograd Soviet there was anxiety among Mensheviks and Socialist- Revolutionaries whenever Trotsky appeared. He replaced Kerenski as the great orator of the Revolution. From early September he was Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, and other city soviets throughout Russia quickly began to go over to the Bolsheviks. The mood in the party grew confident that some new kind of coalition would eventually be formed with willing Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary leaders. Kerenski and his cabinet appeared about to be consigned to oblivion, and opinion grew among workers and soldiers in favour of a government composed exclusively of dedicated socialists.
Lenin’s thoughts were fixed on an uprising; he denied that ‘Kerenski’s clique’ could be removed without violence. He returned incognito to Petrograd to put his case at the Bolshevik Central Committee. A nocturnal meeting was held on 23–24 October when he harangued fellow leaders as only he could do. Lev Kamenev and Grigori Zinoviev opposed him. They doubted that the working class was firmly in favour of an uprising. They questioned whether Europe was on the point of experiencing socialist revolutions; they feared that any premature move by the Bolsheviks would expose them to an irresistible counter-strike. But Lenin beat them back and the vote went ten to four in his favour. The Central Committee met again six days later with Bolshevik leaders from the rest of Russia. For the second time Lenin faced down his opponents after a blistering dispute. Official Bolshevik policy was set definitively in the direction of seizing power.7
The principle of insurrection but not the practicalities were debated. As Lenin went back into hiding on the outskirts of the capital, it was Trotsky who devised tactics and strategy. The Petrograd Soviet had recently established a Military-Revolutionary Committee to oversee the garrisons. Trotsky saw that he could use this body to rally support among troops and co-ordinate armed action against the Provisional Government. This would have the advantage of making the coup appear less as a Bolshevik party
The situation was deeply unpromising for the Provisional Government. Germany’s army marched into Riga on 3 September and the Russian Army was scattered into retreat. The railway network was disrupted as troops piled on to any train moving towards their home regions. The economy was disintegrating. In the cities a winter of unemployment and food shortages was the prospect for all but the wealthy in the cities. In the villages of Russia and Ukraine agitation for the transfer of all arable land to the peasantry grew. Whole regions ignored government decrees. A French propaganda film of model guns and planes was shown in Petrograd to encourage Russian patriotic enthusiasm. This was never going to be popular since Russia’s war was all but over.8
By October the mood on Petrograd streets was flagging. Outwardly there was normality. The trams were running. The post and telegraph system was working. But people were talking about what the Germans might do next; they wondered whether zeppelins and aeroplanes might be used to drop bombs on the capital. The authorities took the necessary precautions. Air-raid sirens were given frequent tests. There were rehearsals for the measures to be taken in case of an attack, and firemen doubled the number of practice exercises. Street gas lamps were banned. Crime and disorder had been bad enough since March when the gendarmes fled. Now they were worse.9 These were weeks of sombre news as the war went in favour of the Central Powers. German forces seized the two islands at the extreme northern edge of the Gulf of Riga in mid-month. Russian armed forces were pushed eastwards. Although they held on to Estonian territory, they had to withdraw their strategic defence to the Gulf of Finland for the first time.10 Supplies in the capital’s shops dwindled. There was no tobacco on sale and anyone wanting chocolate had to queue for it with a ration book.11
Kerenski seldom left the Winter Palace. His courage and commitment remained high but there were days when his morale dipped low. The Bolsheviks no longer troubled to debate with other socialists. They sped round Petrograd making final preparations for a decisive violent clash. Kerenski was visibly losing his earlier confidence. He was no longer waving to his crowds: he was drowning.
3. THE ALLIED AGENDA
As the Russian Army fell apart on the eastern front, the Western Allies ceased to pay much attention to the opinions of Alexander Kerenski. They came reluctantly to this position. Sharing a dislike of the Romanov monarchy, they had hoped to co-operate well with democratic Russia. There was no rush among them to ditch the Provisional Government. But the news from Petrograd was constantly depressing, and leaders in Paris, London and Washington concluded that it was no longer sensible to fund and supply the Russian armed forces.
The French President Georges Poincare was prominent among the small group of politicians who revised the agenda of the Allied powers. An intensely ambitious lawyer who had once acted for the writer Jules Verne, he had been elected President in 1913, and held the post through to 1920. Poincare was a political conservative and had served regularly in cabinets before the Great War, constantly pushing for the firm pursuit of France’s national interest. The turnover in ministerial postings enabled him to increase his influence. There were four premiers — Aristide Briand, Alexandre Ribot, Paul Painleve and Georges Clemenceau — in 1917 alone. Not until Clemenceau, a fierce Radical who had made a name for himself by speaking against anti-Semitism during the Dreyfus Affair, became premier in November that year was there a rival to Poincare’s dominance and the President would find