enter into a new coalition with the reactionary capitalists', and that they 'would not stand for such a policy' because 'they had already suffered enough'. Some of the soldiers penetrated into the Catherine Hall, where they watched the debate. Yet none of them thought to arrest the Soviet leaders, who were quite defenceless. There was no one to tell the soldiers to do it.35
As darkness fell, the crowd began to disperse. The uprising seemed to be coming to an end. There were rumours that the Provisional Government had already been arrested. But nothing of the sort had taken place. The remnants of the cabinet were having a meeting in Prince Lvov's apartment. At around 10 p.m. a group of armed workers and soldiers burst into the entrance hall, where they announced to the hall porter that they had come to arrest the Ministers. Tsereteli was summoned to negotiate with them, but before he got to the entrance the insurgents had lost their nerve and run away with his car.36
Precisely at this moment the Bolshevik Central Committee was meeting in the Kshesinskaya Mansion to decide on its policy towards the uprising. Although it had so far been urging restraint, afraid to risk all in a premature putsch, there seemed no holding back the movement now. The workers and soldiers had virtually taken over the city, the Kronstadt sailors were on their way, and the vast majority of the rank-and-file Bolsheviks in Petrograd were joining the uprising, leaving the Central Committee on the sidelines. Shortly before midnight it was agreed to call for further demonstrations on the following day. The front page of
The exact intentions of the Bolshevik leaders have always been a subject of fierce controversy. Some historians have argued that the Bolsheviks were planning to overthrow the Provisional Government by armed force. Richard Pipes, for example, claims that the July affair was orchestrated from the start by
the Bolshevik leaders as 'a power seizure'; it was only when the embarrassing failure of the putsch became clear that they sought to conceal their intentions by depicting the uprising as a 'spontaneous demonstration which they sought to direct into peaceful channels'. This last version of events — as a 'spontaneous demonstration' — was the standard Soviet view. It was supported by the American scholar, Alexander Rabinowitch, in his classic account of the July Days. According to Rabinowitch, the Central Committee only joined the uprising under pressure from its rank and file, and never intended it to go any further than a show of force to pressurize the Soviet into taking power.38
The only real piece of evidence in support of the 'failed putsch' thesis comes from Sukhanov's memoirs, written in 1920. Sukhanov claimed that on 7 July Lunacharsky had told him that, on the night of 3—4 July:
Lenin was definitely planning a
Sukhanov himself was the first to acknowledge that 'some elementary facts' told against this version — namely the Bolsheviks' failure to carry through their seizure of power on 4 July, when there were ample opportunities for them to do so. On the face of the evidence, it does appear that the Central Committee had anything but a clear plan. In a manner underestimated by all historians, the events of 4 July were characterized by almost total confusion. The Bolshevik leaders made everything up as they went along. The mass turn-out of 3 July had caught them unprepared, with their leader on vacation in Finland. They were caught in two minds as to whether they should seek to transform the demonstration into the overthrow of the Provisional Government, or whether they should try to limit it to a political demonstration in order to pressurize the Soviet leaders into taking power themselves. When Lenin returned, in the small hours of the morning, the Bolsheviks badgered him for an answer to this question. According to Kalinin, Lenin's tactics were to 'wait and see what happened', leaving open the option of 'throwing regiments into the battle if the correlation of forces should prove favourable'. This may well have been so. But the Bolshevik leader proved utterly unable to make up his own mind if that
moment had come. Zinoviev, who spent the whole of the 4th by his side, recalled a Lenin hopelessly paralysed by indecision. He kept asking himself if this was the occasion 'to try for power'.39 Throughout the critical hours of the uprising the Bolshevik leaders continued to sit on the fence waiting to see what would happen. Yet the organized part of the crowd, which had been brought out by the local Bolshevik organizations, would not seize power themselves without specific instructions from them. It was because of this confusion that the demonstrations appeared so badly organized as an attempted putsch — and ended in fiasco.
Tuesday, 4 July, began with an eerie silence over the city. Heavy thunder clouds hung low over the city and the river was dark and sullen. The shops were shut and the streets deserted — a certain sign that trouble was brewing in the workers' quarters. By mid-morning the centre of the city was once again taken over by crowds of workers and soldiers. A motley flotilla of tug-boats, trawlers, barges and gun-boats from the Kronstadt Naval Base was meanwhile mooring near the Nikolaevsky Bridge: 20,000 sailors disembarked, armed to the teeth with rifles and revolvers, along with their own medical teams and several marching bands. This was without doubt the Bolsheviks' chief weapon, if they were planning to seize power. The sailors were spoiling for a fight with the Provisional Government. Ever since February they had been trying to set up their own semi-Anarchist version of Soviet power at Kronstadt. Raskolnikov, the Bolshevik leader of the sailors, said they had come to Petrograd ready 'at any moment to turn the demonstration into an armed uprising'. It was clear, however, that the sailors had no strategic plan — and only a vague idea of what to do once they disembarked. Bernard Pares, who was on the scene, thought most of them had come for a holiday, to walk the streets with their girls, who were very much in evidence throughout the July Days. 'Sailors with scantily-dressed and high-heeled ladies were seen everywhere.'40
Looking for leaders, the Kronstadt sailors set off for the Bolshevik headquarters. Led by their bands, which played the Internationale, they marched in armed ranks along the University Embankment, past the Stock Exchange and through the Alexander Park to the Kshesinskaya Mansion, where they amassed in front of the balcony expecting to receive instructions from Lenin. But the Bolshevik leader did not know where he should lead them. At this point it would have been enough for him to give the command, and the sailors would have marched at once to the Tauride, arrested the Soviet leaders, rounded up the cabinet ministers and proclaimed Soviet power. But Lenin was uncharacteristically hesitant, did not want to speak, and when he was finally persuaded to make an appearance on the balcony, gave an ambiguous speech, lasting no more than a few seconds, in which he expressed his confidence in the coming of Soviet power but left the sailors without orders on how to bring it about. He did not even
make it clear if he wanted the crowd to continue the demonstration and, according to those who were with him at the time, did not even know himself.41
This was to be Lenin's last public speech until the October seizure of power. It was a telling moment, one of the few in his long career when he was faced with the task of leading a revolutionary crowd that was standing before him. Other Bolshevik leaders were much better at handling the crowd. But Lenin's public appearances had been mostly confined to the congress hall. According to his wife, he became very nervous when forced to address a mass gathering.42 Perhaps at this decisive moment, faced with the raw energy of the street, Lenin lost his nerve. True, what could he say? No doubt he was tongue-tied by the realization that, even if the Bolsheviks won Petrograd, they would still be opposed by the rest of Russia. But none the less his crucial hesitation sealed the
