Saving Soviet Democracy: A Russian Revolution Timeline
by GiantMonkeyMan
Chapter 7:
Once again the masses of Petrograd poured out onto the streets and once again the sailors of Kronstadt, the workers of the Vyborg district, and the soldiers of the First Machine Gun regiment were at the forefront. People were frustrated, angry, food was increasingly expensive and harder to come by, and wages couldn't rise to meet the inflation. This time, there was no Bolshevik discipline to hold them back. The Bolshevik Central Committee had urged calm but the grassroots Bolshevik activists could feel the turn in the wind; a confrontation was coming regardless of whether they told their comrades in the factories and regiments to be patient. Even the Socialist-Internationalists urged calm. Up until this moment they had enjoyed the relative protection of being a minor, secondary party of the left in the shadow of the Bolsheviks and thus had avoided deep scrutiny from the reactionary and liberal press, now they were intimately involved in the beginnings of the spiralling demonstration.
In the early afternoon of the 4th of July, the trucks of the Machine Gun Regiment entered the main commercial thoroughfare, Nevsky Prospect, which ran between the Admiralty in the west and Znamenskaia square to the east. Each truck carried three or four machine guns peppered and ready with grim faced and determined operators. Behind them marched armed workers, soldiers, and sailors although it was far less organised and prepared than previous demonstrations. The air was filled with the cacophony of rifles firing into the air and the smell of smoke. Red flags and banners with the slogans "All Power to the Soviets!" or "Down with the Capitalist Ministers!" were held aloft with common regularity. Nevsky Prospect, the clean, tidy business district of the bourgeoisie, was the mirror opposite to the centres of working class power such as the Vyborg district and it had been invaded by the angry and the desperate.
The day dragged on and the sky darkened and it was precisely in this area, the streets that had long belonged to the rich and powerful, that the senseless clashes between the demonstrators and the supporters of the government occurred. Near the Public Library, the path of the Grenadier Regiment was blocked and a hand grenade thrown. The chattering of machine guns turned the crowd into a wild panic and the soldiers took cover to return fire or rushed to drag away the wounded. The march took a long and ponderous route through the bourgeois neighbourhoods towards Tauride Palace, the seat of Soviet power, and they were peppered with sniper fire from reactionaries along the way. Most of the local businessmen and rich pedestrians had fled but any who remained met the fists and boots, sometimes the bullets and bayonets, of the demonstrators who were not in a forgiving mood. With military precision, the injured were transported from the demonstration to hospitals and by midnight the demonstration had assembled outside the Soviet.
In the dead of night close to two o'clock in the morning, some 30,000 workers of the Putilov factories joined the regiments in the streets around Tauride Palace, they were accompanied by their wives and children and brought food and blankets. Inside, the delegates of the Soviet huddled in worry. A few loyal regiments had agreed to send a few detachments to act as guards but the reality was that near 70,000 armed protesters had surrounded the building calling on them to take power. If the demonstration had clear leadership and goals, a more decisive discipline to action, then the Soviet would have had little to prevent themselves from being overthrown. The crowd, however, were calling on the Soviet to seize power, not to surrender it. Speeches were heard from the courtyard with Zinoviev and Kollontai for the Bolsheviks and Trotsky for the Socialist-Internationalists. Some Social Revolutionaries even gave speeches, Boris Kamkov and Spiridonova had thrown their lot in with the crowd against the wishes of their own party. Each of them called for calm but they were all undoubtedly for Soviet power.
The crowd outside Tauride Palace lingered on through the night and more and more people came out to join them in the morning. The second day of demonstrations attracted even larger numbers with nearly half a million workers and military personnel out in the streets protesting the Provisional Government and calling on the Soviet to take power. At Tauride the demonstrators demanded an official of the Soviet come to speak with them. Victor Chernov left the Soviet to attempt to speak to the crowd but met a hostile audience. One Kronstadt sailor grabbed the old revolutionary turned Government Minister by the collar and screamed at him, "Take power, you son of a bitch, when it's handed to you!" The air was thick with tension, a lynching could have occurred, but Trotsky clambered on top of the roof of an auto-mobile to address the crowd and save Chernov's life. Chernov, frail and frightened, was allowed back into the halls of the impotent Soviet.
The Kronstadt sailors and the Putilov workers demanded that Lenin address the crowd and Lenin initially refused, citing that he had opposed the demonstration, but he eventually acquiesced. Lenin didn't have the oratory flair of Trotsky and, contrary to what was expected, Lenin called on the masses to remain calm and peaceful and that the demonstration was a sure symbol that the Soviet must take power. The crowd, bristling with bayonets, took the call for peace somewhat tepidly. The Putilov workers announced that they would remain outside Tauride Palace until a proclamation towards Soviet power was made but many soldiers returned to their barracks and workers to their homes. The anarchist-communist sections of the march proclaimed that they were abandoning it due to the overblown Bolshevik influence.
Inside the Soviet, the Congress had been debating fiercely in an emergency session. There were no Bolsheviks present as they were outside debating amongst themselves whether this was a revolution or just the rumblings of an angry populace and the only Socialist-Internationalists present were those of Martov's wing. The session began with the introduction of legislation stipulating that anything decided upon by majority in the Soviet would be binding on all participants. Martov rose to condemn the legislation for what it was, fetters for any opposition, and the Socialist-Internationalists left the hall in protest, joined by a faction of close to thirty Social Revolutionaries led by Mark Natanson. Without anyone to challenge them, the reformists began their attacks against the left in earnest and whilst the masses were assembled outside, the Soviet decreed, "The All-Russian organs of the Soviet of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies protest against these ominous signs of disintegration which undermines all popular government".
The Preobrazhensky, Ismailovsky Guards, and Semenovsky Regiments answered the orders of the Soviet to come to Tauride Palace's rescue, arriving in full battle gear with marching bands playing La Marseillaise and dispersing the workers. There was a lot of confusion from the demonstrators and many regiments signalled their neutrality. The third day of protests saw a dwindling of numbers, workers went home or back to the factories, needing to get back to work to struggle for meagre wages to survive, whilst the soldiers drifted back to their barracks. A contingent of left-wing SR sailors from Kronstadt led by G. Smoliansky stayed to enter discussions with the SR splinter group led by Natanson, Spiridonova and Kamkov. Victor Chernov, obviously shaken by the threat to his life, wrote eight scathing editorials lambasting the traitor SRs, the conniving SIP, and, above all, the treachery and opportunism of the Bolsheviks and the best four were printed in the well-distributed SR newspapers.
It was a signal for the start of the reaction, the demonstration had been aimless, had seen nearly four hundred dead in various clashes for seemingly no result, and the right-wing and centre Socialist Revolutionaries were closing ranks with the Mensheviks. The first to face reaction were the anarchists, Durnovo villa, the headquarters for the anarchist-communists, was surrounded by loyalist soldiers and, after a brief firefight, were raided with Asnin and Bleikhman arrested on dubious grounds of murder. It would have provoked a response, and indeed the most radical workers did once again come out to protest, but the events were overshadowed by a revelation plastering the front pages of the liberal and reactionary press. Lenin was a German spy, it was claimed, Trotsky accepted tens of thousands of dollars from German-Americans in New York to sow discord in Russia, the sealed train through Germany was proof of the traitors' links to the German High Command.
The assertions were barely even half-truths, which are the most damaging of truths, but it was enough to create an atmosphere of confusion amongst the radical workers and soldiers and the reactionary right capitalised. It rested on the word of an officer who had once been in the Russian intelligence corps, Yermolenko, who claimed that during his time captured in Germany he had come into possession of documents claiming Lenin had been in the pay of the German High Command. With these unverifiable claims came the assertion that Lenin's links to the likes of Parvus, the German social democrat turned social patriot, who had aided in the organising of the sealed train for the exiled revolutionaries back into Russia proved his association with the German government, never-mind Lenin's consistent rejection of Parvus and his like as scoundrels. Circumstantial evidence, at best, but that mattered little. News from the front had arrived confirming the failure of Kerensky's offensive and all the patriots of Russia now had a clear target to blame: the Bolsheviks were in the pay of the Kaiser and it was their agitation that had caused the offensive to fail. If the Bolsheviks had their way, said the reactionaries, they would offer up Russia to German Militarism.
General Polotsev, loyal to the Provisional Government, arranged troops to raid the offices of
Pravda on the 7th of July. The printing machinery was destroyed, the papers seized, and all who were inside were arrested, including Lenin and Kamanev, the two most prominent leaders of the party. The Bolshevik leadership went into hiding, Provisional Government troops were out in force arresting any known leader and the offices of
Soldatskaya Pravda, the Bolshevik paper for the military, was similarly raided along with multiple Bolshevik district and branch offices throughout Petrograd. Especially targeted were sailors, Kronstadt was seen as one of the central focal point of dissent, but many workers and soldiers, particularly of the Bolshevik-supporting regiments, were arrested or fled into hiding. Cossacks were out in force, trucks, boats, and machine guns were seized by the government. The tide had shifted in favour of the Provisional Government and the Soviet and, although attempts at a resurging of the demonstrations were made, it was clear that the flash in the pan moment had passed.
The Socialist-Internationalist newspaper
Vypred,
Forward, published scathing attacks on the government and the acts of repression. Two days latter they too were raided and Trotsky and Martov arrested. Gots and Avksentiev, leaders of the Social Revolutionary party within the Soviet, even gave speeches to loyalist troops before they underwent operations against Bolshevik strongholds and regiments. Lenin, from his cell, managed to smuggle out instructions to his beleaguered Party: the SRs and the Mensheviks had fully thrown their lot in with the counter-revolutionary military and whilst they were in charge the slogan "All Power to the Soviets" was outdated. But many of the grassroots Bolshevik organisations were equally surprised by events and the Provisional Government had hammered home the lies about Lenin's links with Germany. One Bolshevik branch amongst the Metal Workers in Vyborg even released a statement of their support for the Soviet, such was the impact of the government propaganda.
One point of contention was the left-wing Social Revolutionary faction that had split during the days of the demonstration. The Social Revolutionary leadership still prevaricated and wavered when it came to their own radical section. The pressures of Tseretelli of the Mensheviks and Miluikov of the liberal Kadets sealed the matter and soon Mark Natanson was arrested as well on the 14th, along with several others who had left the hall of the Soviet in protest. Boris Kamkov and Maria Spiridonova went into hiding but not before publishing their intention to leave the party, the grassroots SRs were shaken and divided. Kresty prison was once again overcrowded with political prisoners, thrown in with the general prison population of murders and thieves. For some, like Trotsky, it was the same prison the Tsar had used to imprison the 1905 Soviet leaders. Within those dark cells, with scarce food or privacy, the future leaders of the revolution were forced together.
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Mid-afternoon. A seething, angry mass started to gather in the city's outskirts, heading slowly for the centre. Gone, now, were the uptown types. Vanishingly few of those present were the better-dressed, more affluent protestors who had taken part in the February marches. This was the armed anger of workers, soldiers - those Bonch-Bruevich had called to be Red Guards.
- October: The Story of the Russian Revolution by China Mieville
Delegates would arrive from the machine-gunners, or from a neighboring factory, and summon the workers into the street. It would seem as though they had been waiting for the delegates. Work would stop instantly. A worker of the Renaud Factory tells this story: “After dinner a number of machine gun men came running with the request that we give them some motor trucks. In spite of the protest of our group (the Bolsheviks), we had to give up the cars ... They promptly loaded the trucks with ‘Maxims’ (machine guns) and drove down the Nevsky. At this point we could no longer restrain our workers ... They all, just as they were, in overalls, rushed straight outdoors from the benches ...” The protests of the factory Bolsheviks were not always, we may assume, very insistent. The longest struggle took place at the Putilov Factory. At about two in the afternoon a rumour went round that a delegation had come from the machine gun unit, and was calling a meeting. About ten thousand men assembled. To shouts of encouragement, the machine-gunners told how they had received an order to go to the front on the 4th of July, but they had decided “to go not to the German front, against the German proletariat, but against their own capitalist ministers.” Feeling ran high. “Come on, let’s get moving!” cried the workers. 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. Towards six o’clock came representatives from the Executive Committee, but they succeeded still less with the workers. The meeting continued, the everlasting nervous obstinate meeting of innumerable masses seeking a way out and unwilling to be told that there is none. It was proposed that they send a delegation to the Executive Committee – still another delay, but, as before, the meeting did not disperse. About this time a group of workers and soldiers brought news that the Vyborg Side was already on its way to the Tauride Palace. To hold them back longer was impossible. They decided to go. A Putilov worker, Efimov, ran to the district committee of the party to ask: “What shall we do?” The answer he got was: “We will not join the manifestation, but we can’t leave the workers to their fate. We must go along with them.”
- The History of the Russian Revolution by Leon Trotsky
On the evening of July 3 one of the most serious of these clashes occured when the 180th Reserve Infantry and Grenadier Regiments passed the Gostiny Dvor, a block-square shopping arcade on Nevsky Prospect, and the Public Library in the course of a round-about journey from Kshesinskaia ansion to the Tauride Palace. "At around 11:00," recounts a participant, "we reached Gostiny Dvor... Our path was blocked and it was dark... Suddenly we heard a bomb go off in front of us, someone had threw a hand grenade, and the blast seemed to be a signal. Several machine guns began chattering immediately. For an instant the crowd froze, the it backed away faster and faster into the courtyard of the Armenian church and the arcade of Gostiny Dvor. Some of the soldiers crouching down on the pavement... returned fire while others retreated with the rest of the crowd..."
- Prelude to Revolution by Alexander Rabinowich
The bloody clashes would eventually claim 400 victims. Little wonder that the mood of the crowd around Tauride Palace was angry and edgy by the end of the day. Victor Chernov, Social Revolutionary Minister of Agriculture, was seized by sailors when he attempted to give a speech and had to be rescued by Trotsky. "Take power, you son of a bitch, when the give it to you!" one worker snarled at Chernov.
But they would not. And the two-day seige of Tauride Palace dissolved, the July movement petering out in backstreet skirmishes between middle-class patriots and revolutionary militants. Then, around midnight, the balance tipped decisively. Regiments that had remained neutral marched to defend the Soviet Executive Committee - the Ismailovsky, the Preobrazhensky, the Semenovsky.
- A People's History of the Russian Revolution by Neil Faulkner
During that night of July 4, when the two hundred members of both Executive Committees, the worker-soldiers’ and the peasants’, were sitting around between fruitless sessions, a mysterious rumor arrived among them. Material had been discovered connecting Lenin with the German general staff; tomorrow the newspapers would publish the documents. The gloomy augurs of the presidium, crossing the hall on their way to one of those endless conferences behind the scenes, responded unwillingly and evasively even to questions from their nearest friends. The Tauride Palace, already almost abandoned by the outside public, was bewildered. “Lenin in the service of the German staff?” Amazement, alarm, malicious pleasure, drew the delegates together in excited groups. “It goes without saying,” says Sukhanov, who was very hostile to the Bolsheviks in the July Days, “that not one person really connected with the revolution doubted for an instant that these rumors were all nonsense.” But those with a revolutionary past constituted an insignificant minority among the members of the Executive Committee. March revolutionists, accidental elements caught up by the first wave, predominated even in the ruling soviet institutions. Among those provincials – town-clerks, shopkeepers, heads of villages – deputies were to be found with a definitely Black Hundred odor. These people immediately began to feel at home: Just what was to be expected! They had known it all along!
- The History of the Russian Revolution by Leon Trotsky
The government's offensive against the Bolsheviks was launched at dawn on July 5, when General Polovtsev dispatched a detachment of soldiers to Pravda's publishing plant; the unit arrived at its destination only a little too late to catch Lenin, who had just left the premises for the first of his pre-October hide-outs. The government detachment searched the Pravda plant, wrecked it, arrested the workers and soldiers on duty there, and returned to the head-quarters of the General Staff. Meanwhile, in the city districts patrols of officers, soldiers, and Cossacks began mopping-up operations. All through the day they confiscated armed trucks and disarmed and arrested suspicious looking workers, soldiers, and especially sailors, who were prevented from escaping behind barricades in the workers districts because the bridges over the Neva either remained open or were under heavy guard.
- Prelude to Revolution by Alexander Rabinowich
As a result of changes and develops, I'm having Lenin be arrested instead of just managing to avoid capture. Many revolutionary leaders were imprisoned during OTL and, although the Soviet and the Provisional Government attempted to organise a prosecution against them, events developed beyond the government's control. The July Days were tumultuous and the Soviet Executive, ostensibly made up of socialists, was more than willing to stand aside to let the counter-revolution have its way with their revolutionary counterparts.
The skeleton cabinet left by the resignations of Lvov, Pereverzev, and the four Kadets, posed of itself the problem of how it was to be filled out, and when. In soviet circles, aside from the Bolsheviks and left SR's, there was no disposition to go it alone: the Mensheviks were opposed on principle to a socialist government; and the SR's, because of the war, because of a fear of power, because of Kerenski, and because of their general helplessness, held in effect the same point of view. [...] In two of his editorials composed on the productive evening of July 4, Chemov had spoken out clearly against a soviet assumption of power "under such circumstances, at such a moment," on the ground that it would discredit the present majority (Menshevik and SR) and pave the way for a dictatorship of the minority (Bolshevik and left SR). The words in quotation marks indicate that he was hedging, as always, for he never took a stand without qualifying it, and so never could impress the people as did Lenin with his ax-like phrases. [...] The left SR's were not taken too seriously at the moment, though already they were becoming a serious force, and Kerenski need reckon with no other opposition in the party as he prepared to renew the experiment in coalition by inviting the Kadets to return to the cabinet.
- The Agrarian Foes of Bolshevism by Oliver Radkey
We also see, finally, the split of the SRs. The Left-SRs, more organised and advanced than in OTL, tentatively join the Bolsheviks in the semi-support of the march. Like the Bolsheviks, they caution against the violence that the crowd of the July marches were demanding, but they also want Soviet power. As a result, they are swept up in the counter-revolution of the Provisional Government and as such find themselves breaking from their Party much earlier.
Thus in the middle of a revolution in which his former friends and former pupil had taken power, Trotsky found himself in the same prison in which the Tsarist government had locked him up in 1905. The conditions inside the prison were worse now. The cells were extremely overcrowded: the rounding up of suspects continued, and large batches were brought in daily. Criminal and political offenders were herded together, whereas under the old regime the political offenders had enjoyed the privilege of separation. All were kept on a near-starvation diet. The criminals were incited against the 'German agents', robbed them of their food and manhandled them. Prosecutors, examiners, and jailers were the same as under the Tsar. The contrastbetween the pretensions of the new rulers and the inside aspect of the judicial machinery was striking; and, as Trotsky watched it, he reflected that Lenin was no so mistaken when he decided to take refuge. Yet in this wild chaos, in which even the life of the prisoner was sometimes in peril, there was, just as under the old regime, still enough latitude for the prisoners' political and literary activity. With such debaters as Kamenev, Lunacharsky, Antonov-Ovseenko, and Krylenko, political debate flourished. Amongs the inmates were also Dybenko and Raskolnikov, the leaders of Kronstadt. Here were assembled nearly all the chief actors of the October insurrection and nearly the whole first Bolshevik Commisariat of War.
- The Prophet Armed: Trotsky, 1879–1921 by Isaac Deutscher
