The Bolsheviks adopt new tactics

By late evening of July 3rd, regiments and entire factories were pouring, first to the palace of Kshesinskaia - where the Bolsheviks had their headquarters - and then marching on to the Tauride Palace – where the Soviet E.C. was based.

Trotsky writes, “both spiritually and physically the movement revolved around those two antagonistic centres: It came to the house of Kshesinskaia for instructions, leadership, inspirational speeches; to the Tauride Palace it came to present demands and even to threaten a little with its power” [Volume Two, Chapter One ¹].

Trotsky explains how, that afternoon, a Petrograd conference of the Bolsheviks had resolved once again to appeal to the machine-gunners to hold back: “We must at all costs postpone the final conflict. The offensive at the front is holding the whole country at high tension. Its failure is inevitable - as also the determination of the government to throw all responsibility for the defeat upon the Bolsheviks. We must give the Compromisers time to ruin themselves completely” [Volume Two, Chapter One ¹]. The C.C. confirmed the decision and prepared an appeal to go out on the front page of Pravda the next morning.

But when the Machine Gun Regiment, at the front of the demonstration, first reached the place of Kshesinskaia, the appeals from the Bolshevik speakers on the balcony were shouted down with disapproving cries of ‘Doloi! Doloi!’ – ‘Down with all that!’.

Trotsky comments that “such cries the Bolshevik balcony had never yet heard from the soldiers; it was an alarming sign. Behind the regiments the factories began to march up: ‘All power to the Soviets!’ ‘Down with the ten minister capitalists!’ Those had been the banners of June 18th, but now they were hedged with bayonets. The demonstration had become a mighty fact. What was to be done?” [Volume Two, Chapter One ¹].

The mood of the Petrograd workers and soldiers was only too clear. It was no use in carrying on trying to hold them back any longer. But neither could the Bolsheviks just stand aside and allow a semi-insurrection to develop which could all too easily be led by an assortment of anarchists and other adventurers into a bloody disaster.

The Petrograd committee, along with the delegates to the conference and representatives from regiments and factories, met and agreed to change course. With the endorsement of the Central Committee, the Bolsheviks agreed “to end all fruitless attempts to restrain the masses and guide the developing movement in such a way that the governmental crisis may be decided in the interests of the people; with this goal, to appeal to the soldiers and workers to go peacefully to the Tauride Palace, elect delegates, and through them present their demands to the Executive Committee” [Volume Two, Chapter One ¹]. To the relief of the machine-gunners and, no doubt, many rank-and-file Bolsheviks, the movement had now been endorsed by the party.

By coincidence, the workers’ section of the Soviet was to meet, at last, that evening in the Tauride Palace. The Compromisers had been trying to postpone the meeting for some time but had now agreed to convene it. They feared that the results of by-elections in the factories might mean that the composition of the Soviet was catching up with the real support for the parties in the city. In other words, that the Bolsheviks might now have gained a majority of votes - and so it proved.

Putting their new policy into effect, Kamenev proposed that the meeting elect a commission of twenty-five to lead the movement. Trotsky seconded the proposal. Realising they were going to lose the vote, the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries just walked out of the hall. (From now on, this would become a favourite tactic of these supposed ‘democrats’ - when they started to lose the majority in the soviets they simply opted to boycott them.)

The motion was passed in their absence with 276 votes and fifteen Bolsheviks elected to the commission. Ten places were left for the absent minority - but they never took them. News of the victory was given rapturous applause by the crowds now massing at the Palace.

“This fact of the election of the Bolshevik commission signified both to friends and enemies that the workers’ section of the Petrograd Soviet would henceforth become a Bolshevik base. A vast step forward! In April the influence of the Bolsheviks had extended to approximately a third of the Petrograd workers; in the Soviet of those days they occupied a wholly insignificant sector. Now, at the beginning of July, the Bolsheviks were sending to the workers’ section about two-thirds of its members. That meant that among the masses their influence had become decisive” [Volume Two, Chapter One ¹].

Meanwhile, the Compromisers had also decided on a course of action, but one that rapidly exposed who really had the power in Petrograd. They decided to waste no time in seeking out armed forces to defend the government - and to try and crush the movement. Orders, signed by the Menshevik President of the E.C., Cheidze, were sent to every regiment to come to the defence of the Tauride Palace. However, the soldiers of Petrograd took little notice.

As the Menshevik given the unenviable task of gathering troops later reported: “On the first day of the demonstration we had at our disposal only a hundred men - we had no other forces. We sent out commissars to all the regiments ... but each regiment looked to the next to see what it was going to do. We were compelled ... to summon troops from the front” [Volume Two, Chapter One ¹].

As Trotsky adds: “It would be difficult, even with malice aforethought, to devise a more vicious satire upon the Compromisers. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators were demanding the transfer of power to the soviets. Cheidze, standing at the head of the soviet system and thus the logical candidate for premier, was hunting for armed forces to employ against the demonstrators. This colossal movement in favour of power to the democracy was denounced by the democratic leaders as an attack upon the democracy by an armed gang” [Volume Two, Chapter One ¹].

By now, the demonstrators surrounded the Tauride Palace on all sides. Izvestia, the official paper of the Soviet, describes how “the troops elected a deputation to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee which presented in their name the following demands: Removal of the ten bourgeois ministers, all power to the soviets, cessation of the offensive, confiscation of the printing plants of the bourgeois press, the land to be state property, state control of production” [Volume Two, Chapter One ¹].

The deputation demanded to speak to the worker-soldiers’ and peasants’ Executive Committees, then meeting in joint session. But, far from being welcomed as perhaps many of them had expected, they were, of course, met with hostility. To the machine-gunners’ amazement, Tseretelli denounced the demonstrators for taking the road of counter-revolution, not revolution. The meeting dragged on until five in the morning as the Compromisers decided to play for time - and, most of all, the arrival of reliable troops.

Already, elsewhere in the city, the first serious conflicts had broken out. The route of the march to the Tauride Palace took it along the Nevsky Prospect, the main thoroughfare through some of the most affluent parts of the city. The middle classes, students and officers had shouted their opposition to the marchers. Fights had taken place, even shots fired into the air.

Then, around midnight, as the Grenadier Regiment was on the Nevsky, they were shot at for several minutes from someone and somewhere unknown. In the panic, workers fled while soldiers lay down under fire as they had been taught in military training. But the first casualties of the ‘July Days’ never got up again.

These clashes were just one part of the balance sheet that now had to be drawn up to decide the strategy for the next day. A night session of the Bolsheviks, together with Trotsky’s ‘Inter-District’ Mezhrayontsi group, met in the Tauride Palace. Reports from the districts made clear that the July 3rd demonstration was just the start. Since the Soviet leaders had made no decision to take the power, it seemed obvious to the masses that the only course of action was to increase the pressure on them. The factories and regiments were preparing to march in even greater numbers. The garrison of the Kronstadt fortress were also setting out for Petrograd that morning.

There was clearly no possibility of pulling back the marchers now. The summons of the Central Committee to stop the demonstration - that had been agreed just that afternoon - was pulled from the presses, leaving a blank page in the July 4th Pravda as evidence of the rapid changes that had taken place.

Instead, a Bolshevik leaflet was issued summoning the workers and soldiers “by way of a peaceful and organised demonstration to bring their will to the attention of the Executive Committee now in session” [Volume Two, Chapter One ¹].

The 4th of July

The practical organisation of the movement now fell to the Petrograd committee of the party. Nevsky, Podvoisky and other members of the Military Organisation were given the task of mobilising the garrison. Appeals and instructions were issued; armoured cars sent to key bridges and junctions, ready to protect the marchers.

The demonstration started to assemble towards midday. The soldiers were again out in force, not least the 1st Machine Gun Regiment who were there to the last man. But, unlike the previous day’s demonstration, which had been led by the soldiers, the factory-workers had now come out in greatest force. Workplaces that had not come out on the 3rd were now there on the 4th, including factories previously considered strongholds of the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries.

“All the factories struck and held meetings. They elected leaders for the demonstration and delegates to present their demands to the Executive Committee.  Again hundreds of thousands moved in radii toward the Tauride Palace, and again tens of thousands turned aside on their way there to the palace of Kshesinskaia. Today’s movement was more impressive and organised than yesterday’s: the guiding hand of the party was evident. But the feeling too was hotter today. The soldiers and workers were out for a solution to the crisis.” [Volume Two, Chapter Two ²].

While the EC searched for troops to put down the movement, soldiers and sailors from all the bases around Petrograd were arriving, by land and sea, to join the demonstration. The high-point of the day was when 10,000 armed sailors, soldiers and workers from Kronstadt arrived on tugs and steamers around midday. With bands playing, rifles over their shoulders and banners flying, the Kronstadt men marched to join the demonstration at the Palace of Kshesinskaia.

Sverdlov, Lunacharsky and other Bolsheviks speaking from the balcony were stormily applauded. But that was nothing compared to the joyous outburst from the Kronstadt men that greeted the appearance of Lenin. He had arrived that morning from his temporary refuge in Finland. “His speech ... consisted of a few simple phrases: a greeting to the demonstrators; an expression of confidence that the slogan, ‘All Power to the Soviets’, would conquer in the end, an appeal for firmness and self-restraint.” [Volume Two, Chapter Two ²].

The crowds marched away, this time with the colossal banner of the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks at the head of the march, much to the disgust of the Left Social Revolutionary leaders from Kronstadt. With their demands for the banner to be removed refused, they childishly announced they would leave the demonstration. But none of the sailors and soldiers followed their leaders.

The holiday mood of the march was, however, soon to change. The Petrograd military commanders had been unable to gather together more than a few small detachments of Cossacks and junkers (students at the officers’ schools). As Trotsky puts it these limited forces were “powerless to put down the movement, but adequate for purposes of provocation” [Volume Two, Chapter Two ²].

Since almost the whole garrison was against them - or at best neutral - it was the official Government that had to rely on small bands and individual snipers to ambush the march, to spread panic and confusion and to provoke clashes with the armed demonstrators. In a good number of encounters on that day, they succeeded. For example, Raskolnikov, leader of the Bolsheviks in Kronstadt, reported how the march was fired upon from a hidden position. In the resulting confusion soldiers were shooting in all directions. Several were killed and wounded. Podvoisky reported similar provocation and panic as the soldiers passed along the Nevsky.

Further similar skirmishes broke out, with the worst encounter taking place around 8 p.m., when the demonstration was in full swing. Two Cossack squadrons rode up as a guard for the Tauride Palace, refusing to enter into conversation with the demonstrators - in itself a bad sign. They rode up towards a barricade erected near the Liteiny Bridge. Soon after, perhaps provoked by shots from reactionary officers hiding in nearby houses, the fight broke out.

The Cossacks and marchers exchanged heavy fire, enough to force the Cossacks to retreat. But they ran into another section of armed workers and were forced to flee, leaving horses and weapons behind them. Seven Cossacks and six demonstrators were killed, about twenty on each side wounded. Overall, an estimated 29 men were killed over the ‘July Days’ and 114 wounded, again in roughly equal numbers on each side.

So when the demonstration, over half a million strong, arrived to besiege the Tauride Palace, there was now an angry and tense mood. The leading Social Revolutionary Minister, Chernov, was brought out to address the Kronstadt men. Sensing the mood, he spoke briefly, directing his fire at the Kadets. Trotsky notes that “Miliukov even relates how ‘a husky worker, shaking his fist in the face of the minister, shouted furiously: “Take the power, you son of a bitch, when they give it to you”.’ Even though nothing more than an anecdote, this expresses with crude accuracy the essence of the July situation” [Volume Two, Chapter Two ²]. Unlike the angry worker, Miliukov understood that the Compromisers had absolutely no wish to take the power.

It was agreed that a delegation from the demonstrators could address the joint session of the E.C., beginning at 6 p.m. that evening. The orators protested against being described as counter-revolutionists and again outlined their demands: “ ‘We have confidence in the Soviet, but not in those whom the Soviet has confidence.  At this time when the Kadets have refused to work with you, we ask you with whom further you want to dicker. We demand that the power pass to the soviets’. The propaganda slogans of the manifestation of June 18th had now become an armed ultimatum of the masses” [Volume Two, Chapter Two ²].

The Soviet leaders, of course, would have nothing of it. Frustrated and angry, the mood of the crowd was turning nasty. A typically powerful speech from Zinoviev played a key role in encouraging the marchers to disperse.

Trotsky relates that, while having his political weaknesses: “Under the walls of the Tauride Palace in the July Days, Zinoviev was extraordinarily active, ingenious and strong. He raised the excitement of the masses to its highest note - not in order to summon them to decisive action, but, on the contrary, in order to restrain them. This corresponded to the moment and to the policy of the party. Zinoviev was wholly in his element.”  [Volume Two, Chapter Two ²].

The ‘Compromisers’ seize their chance

Isolated fights and disturbances continued throughout the nights of July 4th and 5th. Trotsky summarises events as follows: “Skirmishes, victims, fruitlessness of the struggle, and indefiniteness of practical aim - that describes the movement. The Central Committee of the Bolsheviks passed a resolution: to call on the workers and soldiers to end the demonstration. This time that appeal, which was immediately brought to the attention of the Executive Committee, met hardly any opposition at all in the lower ranks. The masses ebbed back into the suburbs, and they cherished no intention of renewing the struggle on the following day. They felt that the problem of ‘Power to the Soviets’ was considerably more complicated than had appeared” [Volume Two, Chapter Two ²].

Meanwhile, in the Tauride Palace, the workers and soldiers’ delegates were still sitting and waiting for an answer to their demands from the Executive Committee. The ‘Compromisers’ - the Menshevik and SR leaders of that E.C. - kept spinning out the meeting with long and pointless speeches.

Then suddenly, around 4 a.m., the moment that they had been waiting for arrived. Marching into the building behind a band playing the “Marseillaise”, the E.C.’s long-awaited ‘reliable troops’ were finally at hand. Their commander, a Menshevik Lieutenant, stepped onto the tribune, while the triumphant E.C. leaders embraced and sang. “A classic picture of the beginning of a counter-revolution” [Volume Two, Chapter Two ²] muttered the left Menshevik Martov, accurately enough.

These troops had not marched to Petrograd from the front. They had been finally gathered together from some of the most politically backward battalions in the capital who, up to then, had obstinately remained neutral. “Only in the afternoon of July 4th did the authorities at last discover an effective means of influencing them. They showed the Preobrazhentsi documents demonstrating as plain as 2+2=4 that Lenin was a German spy. That moved them. The news flew round the regiments. Officers, members of the regimental committee, agitators of the E.C., were active everywhere. The mood of the neutral battalions changed. By dawn, when there was no longer any need of them, it became possible to assemble them and lead them through the deserted streets to the empty Tauride Palace” [Volume Two, Chapter Two ²].

Now the counter-revolution felt its strength to go on its own offensive. Troops were sent out to arrest workers’ leaders. The story was spread far and wide that all Bolsheviks were German spies. Of course, while saying they did not want the power, the Soviet leaders were, in fact, having to take control of the deployment of the Petrograd garrison. As Trotsky wryly notes, “in order to offer armed resistance to those who had written on their banners ‘All Power to the Soviets,’ the Soviet was obliged actually to concentrate the power in its hands” [Volume Two, Chapter Three ³].

At 6 a.m. on the 5th of July, junkers and soldiers arrived at the offices of Pravda and tore it apart. Sentries and office employees were beaten up and arrested. The presses at the printing plant, paid for through three months of workers’ hard-earned donations, were smashed to pieces. Urgent preparations were made to protect the Bolshevik headquarters in the house of Kshesinskaia.

The E.C. leaders, still waiting for troops from the front, pretended to the Bolshevik leaders that they had nothing to fear. An agreement was reached where the Bolsheviks would persuade the sailors to return to Kronstadt and ensure that all armoured cars and patrols were removed. The Government, in turn, promised to oppose any repression and to free those arrested. But, bolstered by news that reliable troops were arriving from the front, and that more detachments in the city were also rediscovering their loyalty to the Government, they soon forgot about their agreement.

On the 6th, the workers went back to work. More and more regiments were arriving from the front in aggressive mood. Some were deliberately shot at by provocateurs. Trotsky explains the changed situation as follows: “It was clear that experienced provocateurs were greeting the soldiers with lead with a view to anti-Bolshevik inoculation. The workers were eager to explain this to the arriving soldiers, but they were denied access to them. For the first time since the February days the junker or the officer stood between the worker and soldier” [Volume Two, Chapter Two ²].

At 3 a.m. on July 7th, the Government finally moved troops against the palace of Kshesinskaia. But they soon found out that the Bolsheviks had largely evacuated the building already. Those Kronstadters who had not yet got away to their base had sought refuge in the Peter and Paul Fortress. By negotiation, these remaining sailors surrendered their weapons and returned to Kronstadt. The July Days were over.

A balance sheet of the ‘July Days’

A sharp struggle had developed in Petrograd. Lenin later described it as: “An anti-government demonstration - that would be the most formally accurate description of the events. But the point is that this was no ordinary demonstration. It was something considerably more than a demonstration and less than a revolution” [Volume Two, Chapter Three ³].

However, these events were not repeated in most of the country. In a few towns some large demonstrations took place but in others, even Moscow, the response to calls to come onto the streets was far more limited in both numbers and enthusiasm.

“The principal cause of this weak and unfavourable reaction of the country lay in the fact that the provinces, having received the February revolution from the hands of Petrograd without a struggle, were far slower than the capital in digesting new facts and ideas. An additional period was necessary before the vanguard could draw up to its own position the heavy reserves” [Volume Two, Chapter Three ³].

In fact, it was only a few days later, on July 7th, that the reports that could have so easily undermined the Compromisers reached Petrograd. This was news of the catastrophic failure of the offensive and that German troops had broken through on the south-western front.

However, far from strengthening the Bolsheviks, the defeat of the ‘July Days’ meant now that “the wave of indignation and despair rolling back from the front fell in with the wave of shattered hopes radiating from Petrograd. The lesson received by the masses in the capital was too severe for anyone to think of an immediate renewal of the struggle. Moreover the bitter feelings caused by the meaningless defeat sought expression, and the patriots succeeded to a certain extent in directing it against the Bolsheviks” [Volume Two, Chapter Three ³].

Trotsky makes a comparison to events in France in July 1791 and June 1848, Germany in January 1919, as well as the Paris Commune of 1871: “A prototype of the July Days is to be found in all the old revolutions - with various, but generally speaking unfavourable, and frequently catastrophic, results ... This stage is involved in the inner mechanics of a bourgeois revolution, inasmuch as the class that sacrifices most for the success of the revolution, and hopes the most from it, receives the least of all. The possessing class which is brought to power by the revolution is inclined to think that with this the revolution has accomplished its mission, and is therefore most of all concerned to demonstrate its reliability to the forces of the reaction. The disappointment of the masses follows very quickly; it follows even before their vanguard has cooled off after the revolutionary struggle. The people imagine that with a new blow they can carry through, or correct, that which they did not accomplish decisively enough before. Hence the impulse to a new revolution, a revolution without preparation, without programme, without estimation of the reserves, without calculation of consequences” [Volume Two, Chapter Three ³].

The ‘July Days’ ended in defeat for the masses and ushered in a period of reaction where the counter-revolution tried to beat back the revolution. However, they were unable to succeed, and the masses regrouped, culminating in the October revolution. This owed a great deal to the correct policy of the Bolsheviks in managing to pull the workers and soldiers back from launching, prematurely, a full-scale conflict in July.

Here was a clear lesson on the need for a careful analysis of the balance of forces, of the need to learn from the experiences of the past, to discuss tactics, plan and organise - in other words, the need for the revolutionary party. Workers too now also had a much clearer idea as to why they should heed the advice of the Bolsheviks.

“Thanks to the party’s taking its place boldly at the head of the movement, it was able to stop the masses at the moment when the demonstration began to turn into a test of armed strength. The blow struck at the masses and the party in July was very considerable, but it was not a decisive blow. The victims were counted by tens and not by tens of thousands. The working class ... fully preserved its fighting cadres, and these cadres had learned much” [Volume Two, Chapter Three ³].

The experience of the July Days had made clear that there was no question of persuading the Compromisers to peacefully stand aside. “In July… the Petrograd workers … although able to seize the power … nevertheless offered it to the Executive Committee. Many still cherished the illusion that everything could be obtained by words and demonstrations - that by frightening the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries you could get them to carry out a common policy with the Bolsheviks. Even the advanced sections of the class had no clear idea by which roads it was possible to arrive at the power. Lenin wrote soon after: ‘The real mistake of our party on the 3rd and 4th of July, as events now reveal, was only this … that the party still considered possible a peaceful development of the political transformation by way of a change of policy on the part of the soviets. In reality the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries had already tangled and bound themselves up by compromism with the bourgeoisie, and the bourgeoisie had become so counter-revolutionary, that there was no longer any use talking about a peaceful development’. ” [Volume Two, Chapter Three ³]. “But before making use of these July lessons, the party had to go through some heavy weeks, during which it seemed to the short-sighted enemy that the power of Bolshevism was conclusively broken” [Volume Two, Chapter Three ³].