Petrograd reaches boiling point

By June 1917, four months after the February Revolution, the patience of the workers and soldiers was wearing thin. War and hunger continued while the Soviet leaders, who the masses had entrusted with their hopes, seemed unable or unwilling to take action.

The costs of the war were eating up more and more of Russia’s limited national wealth. The Government was desperate for a large foreign loan to allow it to meet both foreign and domestic obligations. The value of the rouble was plummeting while inflation rocketed. Strike action to demand wage increases to keep up with rising prices broke out here and there but without any clear plan of action as to how to achieve its goals.

The Government had agreed a programme to regulate industry but acted so as to protect the capitalists rather than bring them under control. Uncertain about the future, the bosses took up a more systematic programme of closing down production. Metal output was cut by 40%, textiles by 20%. Rail transport was in an even greater crisis. Fuel and rolling stock were hard to come by, half of the locomotives in need of repair. The supply of food to the cities was running short. Combined with the threat of a rail strike, the cities were at constant risk of imminent famine.

The situation at the front was even more desperate. The soldiers had no wish to fight and Kerensky’s “June offensive” (see Lesson 18 in the previous course) was starting to collapse.

The Menshevik and Social Revolutionary leaders like Tseretelli and Kerensky had no answers. They feared the workers and soldiers who in turn, in Petrograd at least, looked on them with growing hatred. But the Soviet leaders also feared threats from the right. The Kadet leaders, even though supposedly in coalition, were openly discussing counter-revolution with the army commanders. The nobles and landlords were now confident enough to organise a ‘Congress of Landed Proprietors’ to demand the Government act to protect them from peasant ‘excesses’.

Unsure and indecisive, by mid-June the Soviet leaders did at least agree to name a date for elections to the Constituent Assembly, namely September 17th. But, as Trotsky explains, nobody took the proposal too seriously with the bourgeois press campaigning strongly against it. He also adds the following points:

“Finding no channel, the aroused energy of the masses spent itself in self-dependent activities, guerrilla manifestations, sporadic seizures. The workers, soldiers and peasants were trying to solve in a partial way those problems which the power created by them had refused to solve” [Volume Two, Chapter One ¹]

“Even the more disciplined layers of the workers - even broad circles of the party - were beginning to lose patience or at least listen to those who had lost it. The manifestation of June 18 had revealed to everybody that the government was without support. ‘Why don’t they get busy up there ?’ the soldiers and workers would ask, having in mind not only the compromise leaders, but also the governing bodies of the Bolsheviks” [Volume Two, Chapter One ¹].

“In general the soldiers were more impatient than the workers - both because they were more directly threatened with a transfer to the front, and because it was much harder for them to understand considerations of political strategy. Moreover, each had his own rifle; and ever since February the soldier had been inclined to over-estimate the independent power of a rifle” [Volume Two, Chapter One ¹].

Soldiers’ meetings, particularly of those regiments stationed in the industrial Vyborg district such as the 1st Machine Gunners, were adopting resolutions demanding that firm action be taken against the government. Their determination sprang in part from growing rumours that units of the Petrograd garrison were to be sent to the front and, in no small measure, as a consequence of months of discussion and agitation from workers in this Bolshevik-dominated proletarian suburb.

The Bolsheviks had built close links with the 1st Machine Gun Regiment in particular in the early days of the revolution. They had also forged a firm bond with an armoured-car division who had taken over the abandoned palace of the court ballerina Kshesinskaia early in March. They had gladly turned over the upper storey of the building to the Petrograd committee of the Bolsheviks. It also soon became the headquarters of the Bolshevik Central Committee and their Military Organisation. From its balcony, speakers carried on what was in effect a continuous mass meeting, by day and by night. Party meetings of one kind or another were always taking place somewhere in the building.

But Trotsky explains that the Bolshevik leaders viewed the impatient mood of the Petrograd workers and soldiers with alarm.

“The danger was growing every minute that Petrograd, lacking the support of the front and the provinces, would be broken down bit by bit. On the 21st of June, Lenin appealed in Pravda to the Petrograd workers and soldiers to wait until events should bring over the heavy reserves to the side of Petrograd. ‘We understand your bitterness, we understand the excitement of the Petersburg workers, but we say to them: Comrades, an immediate attack would be inexpedient’ ” [Volume Two, Chapter One ¹].

However, despite the Bolsheviks’ appeals, it was clear to all sides that the head of steam building up in Petrograd was heading for some kind of explosion. Meetings in the barracks were getting more and more heated. Resolutions were being adopted criticising the Provisional Government and demanding the transfer of power to the soviets. Trotsky cites as an example, “a meeting of the Grenadier regiment on July 1st was signalised by the arrest of the president of the committee, and by the obstructive heckling of the Menshevik orators: ‘Down with the offensive! Down with Kerensky!’ ” [Volume Two, Chapter One ¹].

The soldiers and workers were preparing to come out onto the streets to show their strength. The Bolsheviks were faced with a key strategic decision. Given the overall balance of forces, could they support the growing clamour for a mass demonstration?

The mass of the workers and soldiers in Petrograd had, of course, made no careful analysis, no kind of “calculation of the changes of mass consciousness” (see Lesson One of the first course). They had not even arrived at any clear practical plan as to what their demonstration should try and achieve; they just knew something had to change. They were ready to defend the revolution with their blood against any resistance from the bourgeoisie if necessary. But few would have said that their aim was an insurrection. No, their aim was, to them, quite simple - they just wanted to persuade the Soviet leaders to take charge of affairs.

But the workers and soldiers had yet to learn that the attitude of the Compromisers made this apparently straightforward wish far from simple - “The July demonstrators wanted to turn over the power to the soviets, but for this the soviets had to agree to take it” [Volume Two, Chapter Three ³]. But, as Trotsky puts it, “these gentlemen of the democracy preferred a civil war against the people to a bloodless transfer of power into their own hands” [Volume Two, Chapter Three ³].

“The people did not trust the Liberals, but they trusted the Compromisers. The Compromisers, however, did not trust themselves. And in a way they were right. Even in turning over the whole power to the bourgeoisie, the democrats had continued to be somebody. But once they had power in their own hands, they would have become nothing at all. From the democrats the power would almost automatically have slid into the hands of the Bolsheviks” [Volume Two, Chapter Three ³].

So, on the surface, both the Compromisers and the soldiers wanted the garrison to remain loyal to the Soviet E.C. The soldiers thought that they were indeed being loyal to the E.C. in demanding power was put in the hands of the soviets. But, far from welcoming their actions, the E.C. wanted the soldiers to remain loyal to the Compromisers’ refusal to take the power.

This contradiction was rooted in the fact that, while the workers and soldiers thought the E.C. was an instrument of their rule, the bourgeoisie saw it as a way of giving the possessing classes the power. “Contradictory class tendencies were intersecting in the Tauride Palace and they both covered themselves with the name of the Executive Committee - the one through unconscious trustfulness, the other with cold-blooded calculation. The struggle was about nothing more or less than the question who was to rule the country, the bourgeoisie or the proletariat?” [Volume Two, Chapter Three ³].

This is why the Bolsheviks tried at the very beginning of the July Days to persuade the soldiers to hold back, to explain that, in these circumstances, “it is impossible to talk of a manifestation at this moment unless we want a new revolution” [Volume Two, Chapter Three ³]. But this was a lesson that the Petrograd workers and soldiers were going to have to learn for themselves.

Why not call for a July insurrection?

To an ultra-left with no understanding of the careful considerations needed to lead a revolutionary struggle, the Bolsheviks’ appeals for calm might be hard to understand. After all, the mood of the Petrograd garrison was such that a successful insurrection probably could have been organised in the city at that moment. And, as Trotsky notes, “to shorten the birth pains of the proletarian revolution by four months would have been an immense gain. The Bolsheviks would have received the country in a less exhausted condition; the authority of the revolution in Europe would have been less undermined” [Volume Two, Chapter Three ³].

However, as Trotsky emphasises: “Nevertheless, the leadership of the party was completely right in not taking the road of armed insurrection. It is not enough to seize the power - you have to hold it. When in October the Bolsheviks did decide that their hour had struck, the most difficult days came after the seizure of power. It requires the highest tension of the forces of the working class to sustain the innumerable attacks of an enemy. In July even the Petrograd workers did not yet possess that preparedness for infinite struggle” [Volume Two, Chapter Three ³].

Even the Petrograd garrison was not yet sufficiently firm politically to take a determined revolutionary stand with Bolshevism, let alone the army as a whole. Without further experience of the Compromisers’ true intentions, the Soviet leaders would still be able to play the front and the provinces against Petrograd, arguing that the workers and soldiers in the capital did not want to support the men in the trenches.

As events subsequently proved, an armed insurrection in July would not have been able to hold out. Trotsky reminds readers of how the Paris Commune of 1871, where the working class briefly took power, was left isolated in a similar way to how a revolution in Petrograd would have  even in July 1917, and so the heroic stand of the Parisian masses could be crushed by reaction.

“The state of the popular consciousness - decisive factor in a revolutionary policy - made impossible the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in July. At the same time the offensive on the front impelled the party to oppose the demonstration. The collapse of the offensive was absolutely inevitable. As a fact it had already begun, but the country did not yet know it. The danger was that if the party were incautious, the government might lay the blame upon the Bolsheviks for the consequences of its own madness. The offensive must be given time to exhaust itself ” [Volume Two, Chapter Three ³].

The July Days begin

The spark that set off the July Days came not from below but from above. Aware of the impending news of the collapse at the front, the Kadets decided it would suit them best to withdraw their four ministers from the Government.

Miliukov hoped that this would leave the Compromisers to face the music alone and, so weakened, to open the way to counter-revolution. As Trotsky puts it, “the rumour of the resignation of the Kadets immediately spread through the capital, and generalised all the existing conflicts politically in one slogan - or rather, one cry to heaven: ‘Let us have an end of this coalition rigmarole!’ ” [Volume Two, Chapter One ¹].

“On the morning of July 3rd, several thousand machine-gunners, after breaking up a meeting of the company and regimental committees of their regiment, elected a chairman of their own and demanded immediate consideration of the question of an armed manifestation” [Volume Two, Chapter One ¹].

The Bolshevik chair of the meeting had tried, without success, to urge for more reflection. The party then sent speaker after speaker, including the popular and respected Nevsky, leader of the Military Organisation of the Bolsheviks, to appeal to the machine-gunners to hold back. The soldiers listened, wavered for a while, but then finally resolved that they were going to take to the streets.

Having made a decision, the machine-gunners set to work to build support for an armed demonstration - armed both to protect the crowds and to show their strength to the enemy. Cars armed with machine-guns were sent out ready to protect the route of the march. Delegates went to the factories and other regiments to appeal for support. Most took little persuasion.

The longest debate took place at the huge Putilov factory where ten thousand men assembled to listen to the delegation from the machine-gunners. “To shouts of encouragement, the machine-gunners told how they received an order to go to the front on the 4th of July, but they decided ‘to go not to the German front, against the German proletariat, but against their own capitalist ministers’ ... the secretary of the factory committee, a Bolshevik, objected, suggesting that they ask instructions from the party. Protests from all sides: ‘Down with it! Again you want to postpone things. We can’t live that way any longer...’ ” [Volume Two, Chapter One ¹]. The worker-Bolsheviks, unable to do anything further to restrain their colleagues, knew that they had to go with them to the demonstration.

“The masses had no intention of breaking with the Soviet; on the contrary, they wanted the Soviet to seize the power. Still less did the masses intend to break with the Bolshevik party. But they did feel that the party was irresolute. They wanted to get their shoulder under it - shake a fist at the Executive Committee, give the Bolsheviks a little shove” [Volume Two, Chapter One ¹].

Anarchist voices weren’t slow to encourage the soldiers and, in all probability, government provocateurs and secret police also joined in. Many of the rank-and-file Bolsheviks were also pleased at the prospect of ‘action’ and had no wish to argue for the official Party policy of ‘patience’. The workers and soldiers remembered that the Bolsheviks too had been indecisive in February and March, that the eight-hour day had been won by action from below, that in April Miliukov had been thrown out after the soldiers had taken to the streets under their own initiative. So why should they listen to the Bolshevik leadership now?

Trotsky’s ‘History’ describes how “by seven o’clock the industrial life of the capital was at a complete standstill. Factory after factory came out, lined up and armed its detachment of the Red Guard. Samsonevsky Prospect, the chief artery of the Vyborg Side, was packed full of people. To the right and left of it stood solid columns of workers. In the middle of the Prospect marched the Machine Gun Regiment, the spinal column of the procession. At the head of each company went an automobile truck with its Maxims (machine-guns). After the Machine Gun Regiment came the workers. Covering the manifestation as a rear guard, came detachments of the Moscow Regiment. Over every detachment streamed a banner: ‘All Power to the Soviets!’ …

…The funeral procession in March and the First of May demonstration were probably more numerous, but the July procession was incomparably more eager, more threatening. Under the red banners marched only workers and soldiers ... the cockades of the officials, the shiny buttons of the students, the hats of ‘lady sympathisers’ were not to be seen. All that belonged to four months ago, to February” [Volume Two, Chapter One ¹].

“Automobiles flew through the streets in all directions full of armed workers and soldiers. By nine o’clock seven regiments were already moving towards the Tauride Palace. They were joined on the way by columns from the factories and by new military detachments. The movement of the Machine Gun Regiment developed a colossal power of contagion. The ‘July Days’ had begun” [Volume Two, Chapter One ¹].