On the next day, however, things began to change. Kerensky's offensive had collapsed overnight, much in the manner of Krymov's earlier assault on Petrograd during the Kornilov crisis. Most of Krasnov's Cossacks, who had always been reluctant to fight without infantry support, simply gave up under a barrage from Bolshevik agitators, while the rest were easily repulsed by the Baltic troops on the Pulkovo Heights just outside the city. The Mensheviks and SRs were forced to soften their terms and agreed to take part in a coalition with the Bolsheviks, provided the leadership of the Soviet was broadened to include members from the First Soviet Congress, the city Dumas, the Peasant Soviet (which was still to convene) and the trade unions. Kamenev agreed and even suggested, in a moment of naive credulity, that the Bolsheviks would not insist on the presence of Lenin or Trotsky in the cabinet. But they had different ideas.
From the start, Lenin and Trotsky had been opposed to the Vikzhel talks: only the prospect of military defeat had brought them to the negotiating table. With the defeat of Kerensky, and even the battle in Moscow now beginning to swing back in their favour, with much of the city centre back in Bolshevik hands and the Kremlin itself under heavy bombardment, they set out to undermine the inter-party talks. At a meeting of the Central Committee on I November Trotsky condemned the compromise agreed by Kamenev and demanded at least 75 per cent of the cabinet seats for the Bolshevik Party: 'there was no point organizing the insurrection if we don't get the majority'. Lenin advocated leaving the talks altogether, or at least continuing with them only as 'a diplomatic cover for the military operations [in Moscow]'. He even demanded the arrest of the Vikzhel leaders as 'counter-revolutionaries' — a typical provocation designed to wreck the talks, along with the arrest and beating up of the SR leaders, Gots and Zenzinov, by Bolshevik sailors, the closure of the Kadet press, and a series of raids on Menshevik and SR newspaper offices. Despite
the objections of several moderate members of the Central Committee, it was agreed to present the Bolshevik platform as an ultimatum to the inter-party talks and abandon them if it was rejected. The SRs and Mensheviks would of course never accept this, as Lenin and Trotsky knew very well. The seizure of power had irrevocably split the socialist movement in Russia, and no amount of negotiation could hope to bridge the gulf. The Vikzhel talks were doomed, and finally broke down on 6 November.37
The chances of a coalition were extremely limited. It was almost certainly too late to resolve the power question by political means. The events of 25 October marked the beginning of the civil war. And yet it is hard to avoid the conclusion that this was precisely what Lenin had wanted all along. He believed that the civil war had started back in August, and that the 'talk talk' of all the moderators just got in the way.
Having secured the dictatorship of his party, Lenin turned next to the task of securing his own dictatorship over the party itself. On 2 November the Central Committee was bullied into passing a series of quite astounding resolutions: Kamenev was accused of 'un-Marxist' activities against the October Revolution; his supporters were ordered to withdraw from the Central Committee; and if they failed to submit to the party's policy against the inter-party talks — submitted in the form of an 'Ultimatum from the majority of the Central Committee to the minority' — were threatened with expulsion from the party altogether. Each member of the Central Committee was dragged before Lenin, in his private office, and told to sign the ultimatum or risk expulsion. As Lunacharsky had warned at a meeting of the Petrograd Bolsheviks on I November, Lenin's bullying tactics would soon lead to a situation where 'only one man would be left in the Party — the Dictator'. It was a haunting echo of Trotsky's own famous warning, fourteen years before, that the party organization would first substitute itself for the party as a whole, then the Central Committee for the party organization, and then a single dictator for the Central Committee. On 4 November the five-man minority (Kamenev, Zinoviev, Rykov, Miliutin and Nogin) finally resigned from the Central Committee. Their open letter of protest appeared in
This was without doubt one of the most critical moments in the history of the Bolshevik Party. Though Lenin's revolution had been carried out, the party emerged from it hopelessly divided and isolated from the rest of
the revolutionary movement. Few people believed, in its second week, that the Bolshevik regime could survive.
ii
Five days after the Bolshevik seizure of power, Alexandra Kollontai, the new People's Commissar of Social Welfare, drove up to the entrance of a large government building on Kazan Street. It had formerly housed the Provisional Government's Ministry of Social Welfare, and she was now coming to take possession of it. An old liveried doorman opened the door and examined Kollontai from head to foot. No woman in Russia had ever been appointed to the head of a ministry before, and, as he looked at her now, he might have been excused for thinking that she was just one more impoverished war widow looking for government aid. Kollontai demanded to see the highest-ranking official in the building, but the old man replied that visiting hours were over for the day. When she announced that she was the People's Commissar and demanded to be let in, he merely replied that petitioners were received between one and three and that it was already five. Kollontai tried to force her way through, but the doorman blocked her way and closed the doors in her face.
It was hardly an auspicious start to the new regime. The employees of the Ministry had joined a general Civil Servants' strike in protest against the Bolshevik seizure of power, and when Kollontai returned the next morning with a small detachment of soldiers to take over the building she found it almost deserted. Virtually all the officials had joined the anti-Bolshevik strike, and only the doormen, cleaners and messenger boys, who could not afford to go on strike, had turned up for work as usual. Since it was pointless to try to operate from this vacant building, Kollontai returned to the Smolny and set up office in a small room there. The old doorman in Kazan Street redirected the ragged children and widows, the refugees and ruined peasants who came to plead for aid to the Bolshevik headquarters.
The early weeks of the new regime were frustrated by similar strikes and campaigns of sabotage in all the major ministries and government departments, the banks, the post and telegraph office, the railways administration, the municipal bodies, the law courts, schools, universities and other vital institutions. Although these public employees held diverse political views, virtually all were agreed that the Bolshevik regime was illegal and had to be opposed. Trotsky was greeted with ironic laughter when he arrived at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and introduced himself to a meeting of the officials as their new Minister; when he ordered them back to work, they left the building in protest. In the Anichkov Palace, where the country's food supply was administered, the Civil
Servants removed all the office
The refusal of the State Bank and the Treasury to honour the new government's cash demands was the most serious threat of all. Without money to pay its supporters, the Bolshevik regime could not hope to survive for long. Sovnarkom (the Council of People's Commissars) had made various requests for the transfer of ten million roubles, but each was refused by the bank officials as illegal. On 7 November the new Commissar of Finance, V R. Menzhinsky, appeared at the State Bank with a detachment of sailors and demanded the money; but the bankers stood firm and, despite further armed threats, dismissals and ultimatums, continued their strike. Ten days later the Bolsheviks finally seized control of the bank and forced the employees, at the point of a gun, to open the vaults. Five
