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THE HISTORY OF THE RUSSIAN
REVOLUTION

The Attempted Counter-Revolution

THE HISTORY

OF THE

RUSSIAN
REVOLUTION

VOLUME TWO

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN BY

MAX EASTMAN

SIMON AND SCHUSTER

- MEW YORK

X.3L, K. I G i*X *T S

386
j?R.iosnnei> iisr XT. s. A.

T jest* v,

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

INTRODUCTION TO VOLUMES Two AND THREE . vii

L THE "JULY DAYS": PREPARATION AND BEGINNING 3

II, THE "JULY DAYS": CULMINATION AND ROUT , .31

III. COULD THE BOLSHEVIKS HAVE SEIZED THE POWER

IN JULY? 62

IV* THE MONTH OF THE GREAT SLANDER . . 85

V. THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION LIFTS ITS HEAD . ,113

VI. KERENSKY AND KORNILOV 136

VII. THE STATE CONFERENCE IN Moscow . . . .160

VIII. KERENSKY'S PLOT 184

IX. KORNILOV'S INSURRECTION 204

X. THE BOURGEOISIE MEASURES STRENGTH WITH THE

DEMOCRACY 223

XI. THE MASSES UNDER ATTACK 250

XII. THE RISING TIDE 275

XIII. THE BOLSHEVIKS AND THE SOVIETS 304

XIV. THE LAST COALITION 323

INDEX TO VOLUME Two 351

INTRODUCTION TO VOLUMES TWO AND THREE

RUSSIA was so late in accomplishing her bourgeois revolu-
tion that she found herself compelled to turn it into a
proletarian revolution. Or in other words: Russia was so
far behind the other countries that she was compelled, at least in
certain spheres, to out-strip them. That seems inconsistent, but
history is full of such paradoxes. Capitalist England was so far
in advance of other countries, that she had to trail behind them.
Pedants think that the dialectic is an idle play of the mind. In
reality it only reproduces the process of evolution, which lives
and moves by way of contradictions.

The first volume of this work should have explained why that
historically belated democratic regime which replaced tzarism
proved wholly unviable. The present volumes are devoted to the
coming to power of the Bolsheviks. Here too the fundamental
thing is the narrative, In the facts themselves the reader ought to
find sufficient support for the inferences.

By this the author does not mean to say that he has avoided
sociological generalizations. History would have no value if it
taught us nothing. The mighty design of the Russian revolution,
the consecutiveness of its stages, the inexorable pressure of the
masses, the finishedness of political groupings, the succinctness of
slogans, all this wonderfully promotes the understanding of revo-
lution in general, and therewith of human society. For we may
consider it proven by the whole course of history that society, torn
as it is by inner contradictions, conclusively reveals in a revolu-
tion not only its anatomy, but also its "soul."

In a more immediate manner the present work should pro-

vii

INTRODUCTION TO VOLUMES TWO AND THREE

mote an understanding of the character of the Soviet Union. The
timeliness of our theme lies not only in that the October revolu-
tion took place before the eyes of a generation still living al-
though that of course has no small significance but in the fact
that the regime which issued from the revolution still lives and
develops, and is confronting humanity with ever new riddles.
Throughout the whole world the question of the soviet country is
never lost sight of for a moment. However, it is impossible to
understand any existent thing without a preliminary examina-
tion of its origin. For large-scale political appraisals an historic
perspective is essential.

The eight months of the revolution, February to October
1917, have required three volumes. The critics, as a general
rule, have not accused us of prolixity. The scale of the work is
explained rather by our approach to the material. You can present
a photograph of a hand on one page, but it requires a volume to
present the results of a microscopic investigation of its tissues.
The author has no illusion as to the fullness or finished ness of his
investigation. But nevertheless in many cases he was obliged to
employ methods closer to the miscroscope than the camera.

At times, when it seemed to us that we were abusing the pa-
tience of the reader, we generously crossed out the testimony of
some witness, the confession of a participant or some secondary
episode, but we afterward not infrequently restored much that
had been crossed out. In this struggle for details we were guided
by a desire to reveal as concretely as possible the very process of
the revolution. In particular it was impossible not to try to make
the most of the opportunity to paint history from the life,

Thousands and thousands of books are thrown on the market
every year presenting some new variant of the personal romance,
some tale of the vacillations of the melancholic or the career of the
ambitious. The heroine of Proust requires several finely-wrought
pages in order to feel that she does not feel anything. It would
seem that one might, at least with equal justice, demand attention
to a series of collective historic dramas which lifted hundreds of
millions of human beings out of non-existence, transforming the
character of nations and intruding forever into the life of all
mankind.

viii

INTRODUCTION TO VOLUMES TWO AND THREE

The accuracy of our references and quotations in the first
volume no one has so far called in question; that would indeed be
difficult. Our opponents confine themselves for the most part to
reflections upon the topic of how personal prejudice may reveal
itself in an artificial and one-sided selection of facts and texts.
These observations, although irrefutable in themselves, say noth-
ing about the given work, and still less about its scientific meth-
ods. Moreover we take the liberty to insist firmly that the
coefficient of subjectivism is defined, limited, and tested not so
much by the temperament of the historian, as by the nature of
his method.

The purely psychological school, which looks upon the tissue
of events as an interweaving of the free activities of separate in-
dividuals or their groupings, offers, even with the best intentions
on the part of the investigator, a colossal scope to caprice* The
materialist method disciplines the historian, compelling him to
take his departure from the weighty facts of the social structure,
For us the fundamental forces of the historic process are classes;
political parties rest upon them; ideas and slogans emerge as the
small change of objective interests. The whole course of the in-
vestigation proceeds from the objective to the subjective, from
the social to the individual, from the fundamental to the inci-
dental. This sets a rigid limit to the personal whims of the author.

When a mining engineer finds magnetic ore in an uninvesti-
gated region by drilling, it is always possible to assume that this
was a happy accident: the construction of a mine is hardly to be
recommended* But when the same engineer, on the basis, let us
say* of the deviation of a magnetic needle, comes to the conclusion
that a vein of ore lies concealed in the earth, and subsequently
actually strikes ore at various different points in the region, then
the most cavilling sceptic will not venture to talk about accidents.
What convinces is the system, which unites the general with the
particular*

The proof of scientific objectivism is not to be sought in the
eyes of the historian or the tones of his voice, but in the inner
logic of the narrative itself. If episodes, testimonies, figures,
quotations, fall in with the general pointing of the needle of his
social analysis, then the reader has a most weighty guarantee of

INTRODUCTION TO VOLUMES TWO AND THREE

the scientific solidity of his conclusions. To be more concrete: the
present author has been true to objectivism in the degree that his
book actually reveals the inevitability of the October revolution
and the causes of its victory.

The reader already knows that in a revolution we look first of
all for the direct interference of the masses in the destinies of
society. We seek to uncover behind the events changes in the col-
lective consciousness. We reject wholesale references to the
"spontaneity" of the movement, references which in most cases
explain nothing and teach nobody. Revolutions take place ac-
cording to certain laws. This does not mean that the masses in
action are aware of the laws of revolution, but it does mean that
the changes in mass consciousness are not accidental, but are sub-
ject to an objective necessity which is capable of theoretic ex-
planation, and thus makes both prophecy and leadership possible.
Certain official soviet historians, surprising as it may seem,
have attempted to criticize our conception as idealistic. Professor
Pokrovsky, for example, has insisted that we underestimate the
objective factors of the revolution. "Between February and
October there occurred a colossal economic collapse." "During
this time the peasantry . . . rose against the Provisional Gov-
ernment." It is in these "objective shifts/' says Pokrovsky, and
not in fickle psychic processes, that one should see the motive
force of the revolution. Thanks to a praiseworthy incisiveness of
formulation, Pokrovsky exposes to perfection the worthlessness
of that vulgarly economic interpretation of history which is
frequently given out for Marxism.

The radical turns which take place in the course of a revolu-
tion are as a matter-of-fact evoked, not by those episodic eco-
nomic disturbances which arise during the events themselves, but
by fundamental changes which have accumulated in the very
foundations of society throughout the whole preceding epoch.
The fact that on the eve of the overthrow of the monarchy, as
also between February and October, the economic collapse was
steadily deepening, nourishing and whipping up the discontent
of the masses that fact is indubitable and has never lacked our
attention. But it would be the crudest mistake to assume that the

INTRODUCTION TO VOLUMES TWO AND THREE

second revolution was accomplished eight months after the first
owing to the fact that the bread ration was lowered during that
period from one-and-a-half to three-quarters of a pound. In the
years immediately following the October revolution the food
situation of the masses continued steadily to grow worse. Never-
theless the hopes of the counter-revolutionary politicians for a
new overturn were defeated every time. This circumstance can
seem puzzling only to one who looks upon the insurrection of the
masses as "spontaneous" that is, as a herd-mutiny artificially
made use of by leaders. In reality the mere existence of privations
is not enough to cause an insurrection; if it were, the masses
would be always in revolt. It is necessary that the bankruptcy of
the social regime, being conclusively revealed, should make these
privations intolerable, and that new conditions and new ideas
should open the prospect of a revolutionary way out. Then in the
cause of the great aims conceived by them, those same masses
will prove capable of enduring doubled and tripled privations.

The reference to the revolt of the peasantry as a second "ob-
jective factor" shows a still more obvious misunderstanding. For
the proletariat the peasant war was of course an objective circum-
stance insofar as the activity of one class does in general become
an external stimulus to the consciousness of another. But the
direct cause of the peasant revolt itself lay in changes in the con-
sciousness of the villages; a discovery of the character of these
changes makes the content of one chapter of this book. Let us not
forget that revolutions are accomplished through people, al-
though they be nameless, Materialism does not ignore the feeling,
thinking and acting man, but explains him. What else is the task
of the historian? l

Certain critics from the democratic camp, inclined to oper-

1 News of the death of M. N. Pokrovsky, with 'whom we have had to do battle
more than once in the course of these two volumes, arrived after our work was
finished. Having come over to Marxism from the liberal camp when already a finished
scholar, l?okrovsky enriched the most recent historic literature with precious works
and beginnings* But nonetheless he never fully mastered the method of dialectic
materialism. It is a matter of simple justice to add that Pokrovsky was a man not
only of high gifts and exceptional erudition, but also of deep loyalty to the cause
which he served*

INTRODUCTION TO

ate with the help of indirect evidence, have looked upon the
"ironic" attitude of the author to the compromise leaders as the
expression of an undue subjectivism vitiating the scientific char-
acter of his exposition. We venture to regard this criterion as
unconvincing. Spinoza's principle, "not to weep or laugh, but to
understand" gives warning against inappropriate laughter and
untimely tears. It does not deprive a man, even though he be a
historian, of the right to his share of tears and laughter when
justified by a correct understanding of the material itself. That
purely individualistic irony which spreads out like a smoke of
indifference over the whole effort and intention of mankind, is
the worst form of snobbism. It rings false alike in artistic crea-
tions and works of history. But there is an irony deep laid in the
very relations of life. It is the duty of the historian as of the
artist to bring it to the surface,

A failure of correspondence between subjective and objec-
tive is, generally speaking, the fountain-source of the comic, as
also the tragic, in both life and art, The sphere of politics less than
any other is exempted from the action of this law. People and
parties are heroic or comic not in themselves but in their relation
to circumstances. When the French revolution entered its decisive
stage the most eminent of Girondists became pitiful and ludicrous
beside the rank-and-file Jacobin. Jean-Marie Rolland, a respected
figure as factory inspector of Lyons, looks like a living caricature
against the background of 1792. The Jacobins, on the contrary,
measure up to the events. They may evoke hostility, hatred,
horror but not irony.

The heroine of Dickens who tried to hold back the tide with
a broom is an acknowledged comic image because of the fatal lack
of correspondence between means and end. If we assert that this
person symbolizes the policies of the compromise parties in the
revolution, it may seem an extravagant exaggeration. And yet
Tseretelli, the actual inspiritor of the dual-power regime, con-
fessed to Nabokov, one of the liberal leaders, after the October
revolution: "Everything we did at that time was a vain effort to
hold back a destructive elemental flood with a handful of in-
significant chips/' Those words sound like spiteful satire, but they

xii

INTRODUCTION TO VOLUMES TWO AND THREE

are the truest words spoken by the Compromisers about them-
selves. To renounce irony in depicting "revolutionists" who tried
to hold back a revolution with chips, would be to plunder reality
and betray objectivism for the benefit of pedants.

Peter Struve, a monarchist from among the former Marxists,
wrote as an ernigr^: "Only Bolshevism was logical about revoluA
tion and true to its essence, and therefore in the revolution it cony
quered." Miliukov, the leader of liberalism, made approximately
the same statement: "They knew where they were going, and
they went in the direction which they had chosen once for all,
toward a goal which came nearer and nearer with every new, un-
successful experiment of compromisism." And finally, one of the
white emigres not so well known, trying in his own way to under-
stand the revolution, has expressed himself thus: "Only iron peo-
ple could take this road * * . only people who were revolutionists
by their very 'profession' and had no fear of calling into life the
all-devouring spirit of riot and revolt." You may say of the Bol-
sheviks with still more justice what was said above about the
Jacobins. They were adequate to the epoch and its tasks; curses
in plenty resounded in their direction, but irony would not stick
to them it had nothing to catch hold of.

In the introduction to the first volume it was explained why
the author deemed it suitable to speak of himself as a participant
of the events in the third person, and not the first. This literary
form, preserved also in the second and third volumes, does not in
itself of course offer a defense against subjectivism, but at least
it does not make subjectivism necessary. Indeed it reminds one of
the obligation to avoid it.

On many occasions we hesitated long whether to quote this or
that remark of a contemporary, characterizing the role of the
author in the flow of events. It would have been easy to renounce
any such quotation, were nothing greater involved than the rules
of correct tone in polite society. The author of this book was presi-
dent of the Petrograd Soviet after the Bolsheviks won a majority
there, and he was afterward president of the Military Revolution-
ary Committee which organized the October uprising. These
facts he neither wishes nor is able to erase from history. The f ac-

INTRODUCTION TO VOLUMES TWO AND THREE

tion now ruling in the Soviet Union has of late years dedicated
many articles, and no few books, to the author of this work, set-
ting themselves the task of proving that his activity was steadily
directed against the interests of the revolution. The question why
the Bolshevik party placed so stubborn an "enemy** during the
most critical years in the most responsible posts remains unan-
swered. To pass these retrospective quarrels in complete silence
would be to renounce to some extent the task of establishing the
actual course of events. And to what end? A pretense of disinter-
estedness is needful only to him whose aim is slyly to convey to
his readers conclusions which do not flow from the facts. We
prefer to call things by their whole name as it is found in the
dictionary.

We will not conceal the fact that for us the question here is
not only about the past. Just as the enemy in attacking a man's
prestige are striking at his program, so his own struggle for a
definite program obliges a man to restore his actual position in
the events. As for those who are incapable of seeing anything but
personal vanity in a man's struggle for great causes and for his
place under the banner, we may be sorry for them but we will
not undertake to convince them. In any case we have taken
measures to see to it that "personal'* questions should not occupy
a greater place in this book than that to which they can justly lay
claim.

Certain of the friends of the Soviet Union a phrase which
often means friends of the present Soviet powers and that only
so long as they remain powers have reproached the author for
his critical attitude to the Bolshevik party or its individual lead-
ers. Nobody, however, has made the attempt to refute or correct
the picture given of the condition of the party during the events.
For the information of these "friends" who consider themselves
called to defend against us 1 the r61e of the Bolsheviks in the
October revolution, we give warning that our book teaches not
how to love a victorious revolution after the event in the person
of the bureaucracy it has brought forward, but only how a revo-
lution is prepared, how it develops, and how it conquers* A party
is not for us a machine whose sinlessness is to be defended by state
measures of repression, but a complicated organism which like all

XIV

INTRODUCTION TO VOLUMES TWO AND THREE

living things develops in contradictions. The uncovering of these
contradictions among them the waverings and mistakes of the
general staff docs not in our view weaken in the slightest degree
the significance of that gigantic historic task which the Bolshevik
party was the first in history to take upon its shoulders.

L. TROTSKY

Prinkipo
May 13, 1932

P.S. The critics have already paid their tribute to Max East-
man's translation. He has brought to his work not only a creative
gift of style, but also the carefulness of a friend. I subscribe with
warm gratitude to the unanimous voice of the critics.

L. T.

THE HISTORY OF THE RUSSIAN
REVOLUTION

The Attemted Countcr~R.evolution

CHAPTER I

THE "JULY DAYS": PREPARATION AND
BEGINNING

IN 19 1J, the war cost Russia 10 billion rubles; in 1916, 19
billion; during the first half of 1917, 10% billion; by the
beginning of 1918, the national debt would have amounted
to 60 billion would have almost equalled, that is, the entire
wealth of the country, estimated at 70 billion. The Central Execu-
tive Committee was preparing an appeal for a war loan, under
the sugary name of "Liberty Loan," while the government was
arriving at the not very complicated conclusion that without an
immense new foreign loan, it not only could not pay for its for-
eign orders, but could not even handle its domestic obligations.
The liability side of the trade balance was continually on the rise.
The Entente was evidently getting ready to leave the ruble wholly
to its fate* On the very day when the appeal for a Liberty Loan
filled the first page of the Soviet Izvcstia, the government Vyestnik
announced a sharp drop in the value of the ruble. The printing
presses could no longer keep up with the tempo of inflation. For
the old respectable bank notes, about which there still clung a
glamour of their former buying power, they were getting ready
to substitute those red bottle-labels which came to be known as
"kerenkies/* Both the bourgeois and the worker, each in his own
way, embodied in that name a slight note of disgust.

In words the government had adopted a program of state regu-
lation of industry, and had even established towards the end of
June some lumbering institutions for this purpose. But the word
and deed of the February regime, like the spirit and flesh of the
pious Christian, were in a continual state of conflict. These ap-
propriately hand-picked regulative institutions were more con-
cerned to protect the capitalist from the caprices of a shaky and
tottering state power, than to curb the interests of private per-
sons'. The administrative and technical personnel of industry was

THE ATTEMPTED CQVNTER-REVOWTION

becoming stratified; the upper layers, frightened by the levelling
tendencies of the workers, were going over decisively to the side
of the capitalist. The workers had acquired an attitude of disgust
toward the war orders by which the disintegrating f iictories had
been guaranteed for a year or two in advance. But the capitalists
also were losing their taste for a production which promised more
trouble than profits. The deliberate closing-down of the factories
from above was now becoming systematic. Metal production was
cut down 4*0 per cent; the textile industry, 20 per cent. The
supply of all the necessities of life was inadequate. Prices were
rising at a pace with inflation and the decline of industry. The
workers were aspiring towards a control of that administrative-
commercial mechanism which in concealment from them decides
their destinies. The Minister of Labor, Skobelev, was preaching to
the workers in wordy manifestoes the inadvisability of their in-
terference in the administration of the factories. On June 24,
Izvestia told about a new proposal for the closing of a series of
plants. Similar news was arriving from the provinces. Railroad
transport was stricken even more heavily than industry. Half of
the locomotives were in need of capital repairs; the greater part
of the rolling stock was at the front; fuel was lacking. The Min-
istry of Communications was in a continual state of struggle with
the railroad workers and clerks. The supply of foodstuffs was
steadily on the decrease. In Petrograd, the flour reserve was ade-
quate for ten or fifteen days; in other centers, for little longer.
With the semi-paralysis of rolling stock and the impending threat
of a railroad strike, this meant a continual danger of famine. The
future contained no glimmer of hope- This was not what the
workers had expected from the revolution.

Things were still worse, if that is possible, in the sphere of
politics. Indecisiveness is the worst possible condition in the life
of governments, nations, classes as also of individuals* A revolu-
tion is the most ruthless of all methods of solving historic prob-
lems. To introduce evasiveness into a revolution is the most de-
structive policy imaginable. The party of revolution dare not
waver no more than a surgeon dare who has plunged a knife
into a sick body. However, that double regime or regime of
duplicity which issued from the February overturn was in-

THE f 7UIY D AYS"; PREPARATION AND BEGINNING

decisiveness organized. Everything was going against the gov-
ernment. Its qualified friends were becoming opponents; its
opponents, enemies; its enemies were taking arms. The counter-
revolution was mobilizing quite in the open inspired by the
central committee of the Kadet party, the political staff of all
those who had something to lose. The Head Committee of the
League of Officers at General Headquarters in Moghiliev, repre-
senting about a hundred thousand discontented commanders, and
the Council of the Union of Cossack troops in Petrograd, were
the two military levers of the counter-revolution. The State
Duma, in spite of the decision of the June congress of the Soviets,
had resolved to continue its "private conferences." Its Provisional
Committee supplied a legal covering for the counter-revolution-
ary work, which was broadly financed by the banks and by the
embassies of the Entente, The Compromisers were threatened with
dangers both right and left. Glancing uneasily in these two di-
rections, the government secretly resolved to make a disburse-
ment for the organization of a public intelligence service that
is, a secret political police. At about this same time, in the middle
of June, the government designated September 17 as the date
for elections to the Constituent Assembly. The liberal press, in
spite of the participation of Kadets in the ministry, waged a stub-
born campaign against this officially designated date in which
nobody believed and which nobody seriously defended. The very
image of the Constituent Assembly, so bright in the first days of
March, had dissolved and grown dim. Everything was going
against the government, even its own thin-blooded good inten-
tions. Only on the 30th of June did it muster the courage to
dismiss those aristocratic guardians over the villages, the zemsky
nachalnikS) 1 whose very name had been hateful to the whole
country ever since the day of their establishment by Alexander
III. And this enforced and belated partial reform only stamped
the Provisional Government with a brand of contemptible cow-
ardice. The nobility were by this time recovering from their
fright. The landed proprietors were uniting and bringing pres-
sure to bear. Toward the end of June, the Provisional Committee

1 Appointed officials having both administrative and judicial power over the local
peasant population.

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

of the Duma addressed to the government a demand that decisive
measures be taken to protect the landlords from peasants incited
by the "criminal element." On the first of July there met in
Moscow an All-Russian Congress of Landed Proprietors, contain-
ing an overwhelming majority of nobles* The government
wriggled and tried to hypnotize with words, now the muzhiks,
now the landlords.

Worst of all, however, was the situation at the front. The of-
fensive against the enemy, which had also become Kcrensky's
decisive play in a domestic struggle, was dying in convulsions.
The soldiers did not want to fight. The diplomats of Prince
Lvov were afraid to look the diplomats of the Entente in the
eyes. They needed a loan to the point of desperation. In order to
make a show of firmness, the condemned and impotent govern-
ment waged an offensive against Finland, carrying it through, as
it did all of its very dirtiest work, by the hands of the socialists.
At the same time a conflict had arisen with the Ukraine and was
moving towards an open break.

Those days were far away when Albert Thomas sang hymns
to the luminous revolution and to Kerensky. At the beginning
of July the French ambassador, Paleologue, who srnelled too
strongly of the aromas of the Rasputin salons, was replaced by
the "radical" Noulens. The journalist, Claude Anet, gave the new
ambassador an introductory lecture on Petrograd. Opposite the
French embassy he told him across the Neva, spreads the Vy-
borg district. "This is a district of big factories which belongs
wholly to the Bolsheviks. Lenin and Trotsky reign there as mas-
ters." In that same district are located the barracks of the
Machine Gun Regiment, numbering about 10,000 men and over
1,000 machine guns. Neither the Social Revolutionaries nor the
Mensheviks have access to the barracks of that regiment. The re-
maining regiments are either Bolshevik or neutral "If Lenin and
Trotsky want to take Petrograd, what will stop them?** Noulens
listened with astonishment. "How can the government tolerate
such a situation?" "But what can it do?" answered the journalist.
"You must understand that the government has no power but a
moral one, and even that seems to me very weak. , ."

Finding no channel, the aroused energy of the masses spent

THE "JULY DAYS"^ PREPARATION AND BEGINNING

itself in self-dependent activities, guerrilla manifestations, spo-
radic 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. More than anything else, indecisive-
ness in their leaders exhausts the nerves of the masses. Fruitless
waiting impels them to more and more insistent knockings at
that door which will not open to them, or to actual outbreaks of
despair. Already in the days of the congress of Soviets, when the
provincials could hardly withhold the hands of their leaders
stretched out against Petrograd, the workers and soldiers had
plenty of opportunity to find out what was the feeling and atti-
tude toward them of the soviet leaders. Tseretelli, following
Kerensky, had become not only an alien, but a hated figure to
the majority of the Petrograd workers and soldiers. On the fringes
of the revolution there was a growing influence of the an-
archists, whose chief role so far had been played in the self-
constituted revolutionary committee in the summer home of
Durnovo. But even the more disciplined layers of the workers
even broad circles of the party were beginning to lose pa-
tience or at least listen to those who had lost it. The manifesta-
tion of June 1 8 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.

Under inflation prices the struggle for wages was exciting the
workers and getting on their nerves. During June this question
became especially sharp in the giant Putilov factory, where
36,000 men worked. On June 21 a strike of skilled workers broke
out in certain parts of the factory. The fruitlessness of these
scattered outbreaks was only too clear to the party. On the next
day a meeting of representatives of the principal workers* or-
ganizations, led by the Bolsheviks, and of 70 factories, an-
nounced that "the cause of the Putilov workers is the cause of
the whole Petrograd proletariat," but appealed to the Putilov
men to "restrain their legitimate indignation." The strike was
postponed. But the following 12 days brought no change. The
factory masses were seething, seeking an outlet. Every plant had

THE ATTEMPTED

its conflict, and all these conflicts tended upward toward the
government. A report of the trade union of the Locomotive
Brigade to the Minister of Communications reads: 'Tor the last
time we announce; patience has its limit; we simply cannot live
in such conditions. . . ." That was a complaint not only against
want and hunger, but against duplicity, characterlessness, false
dealing. The report protests with especial rage against the "end-
less exhorting of us to the duties of a citizen and to self-restraint
in starvation."

The March transfer of power by the Executive Committee to
the Provisional Government had been made on the condition
that the revolutionary troops should not be removed from the
capital. But those days were far in the past. The garrison had
moved to the left, the ruling soviet circles to the right. The
struggle with the garrison had never disappeared from the order
of the day. Although no whole units were transferred from the
capital, nevertheless the more revolutionary under the pretext
of strategic necessities were systematically weakened by a
pumping-out of replacement companies. Rumors from the front
of the disbandment of more and more units for disobedience, for
refusal to carry out military orders, were continually arriving at
the capital. Two Siberian divisions and were not the Siberian
sharp-shooters long considered the finest? had to be disbanded
by military force. In a case of mass disobedience in the Fifth
Army only that nearest the capital 87 officers and 12,725
soldiers were arraigned. The Petrograd garrison accumulator
of discontent from the front, the village, the workers* districts,
and the barracks was in a continual ferment. Bearded men in
their forties were demanding with hysterical insistence that they
be sent home for work in the fields. The regiments distributed
through the Vyborg district the 1st Machine Gun, the 1st
Grenadier, the Moscow, the 180th Infantry, and others were
continually washed by the hot springs of the proletarian suburb.
Thousands of workers were passing the barracks, among them no
small number of the tireless agitators of Bolshevism. Under those
dirty and dilapidated walls impromptu meetings were being held
almost continuously. On the 22nd of June, before the patriotic
manifestations called out by the offensive had died out, an auto-

THE "JULY DAYS' 9 : PREPARATION AND BEGINNING

mobile of the Executive Committee incautiously drove through
the Sampsonevsky Prospect, carrying the placard: "Forward
for Kerensky !" The Moscow Regiment stopped the agitators, tore
up the placard, and turned over the patriotic automobile to the
Machine Gun Regiment.

In general the soldiers were more Impatient than the workers
both because they were directly threatened with a transfer to
the front, and because it was much harder for them to understand
considerations of political strategy. Moreover, each one had his
rifle; and ever since February the soldier had been inclined to
overestimate the independent power of a rifle. An old worker-
Bolshevik, Ladin, told later how the soldiers of the 180th Reserve
Regiment said to him: "What are they doing there, fast asleep
in Kshesinskaia's Palace? Come on, let's kick out Kerensky!" At
meetings of the regiments, resolutions would be adopted con-
tinually, proclaiming the necessity of taking final action against
the government. Delegations from individual factories would
come to a regiment with the query: Will the soldiers go into the
streets? The machine-gunners sent representatives to the other
units of the garrison with an appeal to rise against the prolonga-
tion of the war. The more Impatient of these delegates added:
The Pavlov and Moscow regiments and forty thousand Putilov
men are coming out "tomorrow." Official admonitions from the
Executive Committee had no effect. 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."
On the next day a private conference of leading Bolsheviks
standing, apparently, "to the left" of Lenin came to the con-
clusion that in spite of the mood of the soldier and worker masses,
they must not give battle; "Better wait until the ruling parties
have disgraced themselves completely with their offensive, and
then the game is ours." Thus reports the district organizer, Latsis,
one of the most impatient m those days. The Central Committee

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

was oftener and oftener compelled to send agitators to the troops
and the factories to restrain them from untimely action. With
an embarrassed shake of the head, the Vyborg Bolsheviks would
complain to their friends: "We have to play the part of the fire
hose." Appeals to come into the street did not cease, however,
for a single day. Some of them were obviously provocative in
character. The Military Organization of the Bolsheviks felt com-
pelled to address the soldiers and workers with an appeal: "Do
not trust any summons to go into the street in the name of the
Military Organization, The Military Organization is not sum-
moning you to action." And then, even more insistently: "De-
mand of any agitator or orator who summons you to come out
in the name of the Military Organization credentials signed by
the president and secretary."

On the famous Yakorny Square in Kronstadt, where the an-
archists were more and more confidently lifting their voices, one
ultimatum was drawn up after another. On the 23rd of June,
delegates from Yakorny Square, acting over the head of the
Kronstadt soviet, demanded from the Ministry of Justice the
liberation of a group of Petrograd anarchists, threatening, in case
their demand was not granted, that the sailors would march on
the prison. Upon the following day, representatives from Oran-
ienbaum informed the Ministry of Justice that their garrison was
as much disturbed about the arrests in the summer home of
Durnovo as Kronstadt, and that they were "already cleaning the
machine guns." The bourgeois press caught these threats on the
wing, and shook them under the very noses of their compromisist
allies. On June 26, delegates from the Grenadier Guard Regiment
came from the front to their reserve battalion with the announce-
ment: "The regiment is against the Provisional Government and
demands the transfer of power to the Soviets, it declines the
offensive begun by Kerensky, and expresses an apprehension lest
the Executive Committee has gone over along with the minister-
socialists to the side of the Bourjui." The organ of the Executive
Committee published a reproachful account of this visit.

Not only Kronstadt was boiling like a kettle, but also the
whole Baltic fleet with its principal base in Helsingfors. The
head boss of the Bolsheviks in the fleet was undoubtedly Antonov-

THE "JULY ^TC" : PREPARATION AND BEGINNING

Ovseenko, who years ago as a young officer had taken part in
the Sebastopol insurrection o 1905. A Menshevik during the
reaction years, an emigrant-internationalist during the war, a
colleague of Trotsky on Nashe Slovo, in Paris, he joined the Bol-
sheviks after his return from abroad. Politically shaky, but per-
sonally courageous impulsive and disorderly, but capable of
initiative and improvisation Antonov-Ovseenko, although still
little known in those days, was to play by no means the smallest
role in the future events of the revolution. "We in the Helsing-
fors committee of the Party," he relates in his memoirs, "under-
stood the necessity of restraint and serious preparation. We had
directions to that effect, moreover, from the Central Committee.
But we saw the utter inevitability of an explosion, and were
looking with alarm towards Petersburg." And in Petersburg the
elements of an explosion were piling up day by day. The 2nd
Machine Gun Regiment, which was less advanced than the first,
adopted a resolution demanding the transfer of power to the
Soviet. The 3rd Infantry Regiment refused to send out fourteen
replacement companies. Meetings in the barracks were acquiring
a more and more stormy character. A meeting of the Grenadier
Regiment on July 1st was signalized by the arrest of the president
of the committee, and by the obstructive heckling of the Men-
shevik orators: Down with the offensive! Down with Kerensky!
At the focus of the garrison stood the machine gun men. It was
they who opened the sluices for the July flood.

We have already met with the name of the 1st Machine Gun
Regiment in the events of the first month of the revolution. Arriv-
ing shortly after the overturn, having marched from Oranien-
baum to Petrograd upon its own initiative "for the defense of the
revolution," this regiment immediately ran into the opposition
of the Executive Committee, which adopted a resolution: to send
the regiment back with thanks to Oranienbaum, The machine-
gunners flatly refused to leave the capital: "Counter-revolution-
ists might attack the Soviet and restore the old regime." The
Executive Committee surrendered, and several thousand machine-
gunners remained in Petrograd along with their machine guns.
They took up their quarters in the House of the People, and
wondered what their further destiny was to be. They had among

THE ATTEMPTED

them, however, a good many Petrograd workers, and therefore by
no accident the Bolshevik Committee took upon itself the care of
these machine-gunners. Through its intercession they were as-
sured provisions from Peter and Paul fortress. A friendship began.
It soon became indestructible. On the 21st of June, the machine-
gunners introduced at a mass meeting a resolution: "In the
future detachments shall be sent to the front only when the war
has a revolutionary character." On the 2nd of July, the regi-
ment called a farewell meeting in the House of the People for
the "last" replacement company to depart for the front. The
speakers were Lunacharsky and Trotsky. The authorities tried
subsequently to attribute unusual significance to this accidental
fact. Responses were made in the name of the regiment by the
soldier, Zhilin, and the old Bolshevik non-commissioned officer,
Lashevich. The mood was exalted. They denounced Kerensky
and swore fealty to the revolution but nobody made any prac-
tical proposal for the immediate future. However, during those
last days the city persisted in expecting something to happen. The
"July Days" were casting their shadow before them. "Every-
where," Sukhanov remembers, "in all corners, in the Soviet, in
the Mariinsky Palace, in people's apartments, on the public squares
and boulevards, in the barracks, in the factories, they were talking
about some sort of manifestation to be expected, if not today, to-
morrow. . . . Nobody knew exactly who was going to manifest
what, or where, but the city felt itself to be upon the verge
of some sort of explosion." And the explosion did actually come.
The stimulus was given from above from the ruling circles.

On the same day when Trotsky and Lunacharsky were speak-
ing to the machine gun men about the bankruptcy of the coali-
tion, four Kadet ministers exploded the coalition by withdraw-
ing from the government. They chose as pretext an agreement
which their compromisist colleagues had concluded with the
Ukraine, an agreement unacceptable to their imperial ambitions.
The real cause of this demonstrative break lay in the fact that the
Compromisers had been dilatory about bridling the masses. The
moment chosen was suggested by the collapse of the offensive
not yet officially acknowledged, but no longer a matter of
doubt to the well-informed. These Liberals considered it ex-

THE "JULY DAYS" ^ AND BEGINNING

pedient to leave their left allies face to face with defeat, and with
the Bolsheviks, The rumor of the resignation of the Kadets
immediately spread through the capital, and generalized all the
existing conflicts politically in one slogan or rather, one cry
to heaven: "Let us have an end of this coalition rigmarole!" The
soldiers and workers considered that all other questions that
of wages, of the price of bread, and of whether it is necessary to
die at the front for nobody knows what depended upon the
question who was to rule the country in the future, the bourgeoisie
or their own Soviet. In these expectations there was a certain
element of illusion in so far, at least, as the masses hoped with
a change of power to achieve an immediate solution of all sore
problems. But in the last analysis they were right: the question
of power determined the direction of the revolution as a whole,
and that means that it decided the fate of everyone in particular.
To imagine that the Kadets may not have foreseen the effect of
this act of open sabotage of the Soviet would be decidedly to
underestimate Miliukov. The leader of liberalism was obviously
trying to drag the Compromisers into a difficult situation from
which they could make a way out only with bayonets. In those
days Miliukov firmly believed that the situation could be saved
with a bold blood-letting.

On the morning of July 3, 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. The meeting was a storm from the first
moment. The problem of the front intercrossed with the crisis
in the government. The chairman of the meeting, a Bolshevik,
Golovin, tried to apply the brakes, proposing that they have a
preliminary talk with other units and with the Military Or-
ganization. But every suggestion of delay set the soldiers on
edge. There appeared at this meeting the anarchist, Bleichman, a
small but colorful figure on the background of 1917, with a very;
modest equipment of ideas but a certain feeling for the masses
sincere in his limited and ever inflammable intelligence his
shirt open at the breast and curly hair flying out on all sides.
Bleichman was greeted at such meetings with a certain amount

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

of semi-ironical sympathy. The workers, it is true, treated him
somewhat coolly, a little impatiently especially the metal-
workers. But the soldiers smiled delightedly at his speeches, nudg-
ing each other with their elbows and egging the orator on with
pithy comments. They plainly liked his eccentric looks, his un-
reasoning decisiveness, and his Jewish-American accent sharp
as vinegar. By the end of June, Bleichman was swimming in all
these impromptu meetings like a fish in a river. His opinion he
had always with him: It is necessary to come out with arms in
our hands. Organization? "The street will organize us." The
task? "To overthrow the Provisional Government just as it over-
threw the tsar although no party was then demanding it* w These
speeches perfectly met the feelings of the machine-gunners at
that moment and not theirs alone. Many of the Bolsheviks did
not conceal their satisfaction when the lower ranks pressed for-
ward against their official admonition. The progressive workers
remembered that in February their leaders had been ready to
beat a retreat just on the eve of the victory; that in March the
eight hour day had been won by action from below; that in
April Miliukov had been thrown out by regiments who went
into the street on their own initiative. A recollection of these
facts augmented the tense and impatient mood of the masses.

The Military Organization of the Bolsheviks, being promptly
informed that a meeting of the machine-gunners was at the boil-
ing point, sent over one agitator after another. Soon came Nevsky
himself, the leader of the Military Organization, a man respected
by the soldiers. They seemed to listen to him. But the mood of
that endless meeting changed with its ingredients. <c lt was an
immense surprise to us," relates Podvoisky, another leader of the
Military Organization, "when at seven o'clock in the evening a
horseman galloped up to inform us that ... the machine-
gunners had again resolved to come out." In place of the old
regimental committee they had elected a provisional revolution-
ary committee consisting of two men from each company under
the presidency of ensign Semashko, Specially appointed delegates
were already making the rounds of the shops and regiments with
an appeal for support. The machine-gunners had not forgotten,
either, to send their men to Kronstadt. In this way, one step

PREPAY AND BEGINNING

below the official organisations, and partly under their protec-
tion, new temporary relations were established between the more
restive regiments and the factories. 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.
Thus impromptu systems of representation were created, new
knots were tied, new centers of activity formed not perma-
nently, but for the given situation. Changes in circumstance and
mood were taking place so fast and sharply, that even such ex-
tremely flexible organizations as the Soviets inevitably lagged
behind, and the masses were compelled at every new turn to
create auxiliary organs for the demands of the moment. In the
course of these improvisations accidental and not always reliable
elements would often spring into prominence. The anarchists
poured oil on the fire. But so did some of the new and impatient
Bolsheviks. Provocateurs also undoubtedly mixed in perhaps
also German agents, but surest of all the agents of the 100 per cent
Russian secret police. How can one analyze the complicated web
of a mass movement into its separate threads? The general char-
acter of the event emerges at least with complete clarity. Petro-
grad was feeling its strength, was straining at the leash, not
glancing round at either the provinces or the front, and even the
Bolshevik party was no longer able to hold it back. Only ex-
perience could teach them.

In calling the factories and regiments into the street, the dele-
gates of the machine-gunners did not forget to add that the
manifestation was to be armed. Yes, and how could it be other-
wise? You wouldn't present yourself unarmed to the blows of an
enemy? Moreover and this perhaps was the chief thing we
must show our force, and a soldier without weapons is not a
force. Upon this point all the regiments and all the factories were
of one mind: if we do go out, we must go with plenty of lead.
The machine-gunners lost no time: having started a big job, they
intended to push it through as fast as possible. The report of a
Court of Inquiry subsequently characterized the activities of

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

ensign Semashko, one of the principal leaders of the regiment
in these words: "He demanded automobiles from the factories,
armed them with machine guns, sent them to the Tauridc Palace
and other points, designating the route, personally led out his
regiment from the barracks into the town, rode out to the reserve
battalion of the Moscow Regiment to persuade it to come out, in
which he was successful, promised the soldiers of the Machine
Gun Regiment support from the regiments of the Military Or-
ganization, kept in continual touch with this organization,
quartered in the house of Kshesinskaia, and with the leader of
the Bolsheviks, Lenin, despatched sentries for the protection of
the Military Organization. . . ." The reference to Lenin here is
inserted only to fill out the picture, Lenin was not in Petrograd
either on that day or the days preceding. Since the 29th of June
he had been ill in a bungalow in Finland. But for the rest, the
compressed language of the military court official conveys not
at all badly the feverish preparations of the machine-gunners. In
the yard of the barracks a no less feverish work was going on.
They were giving out rifles to the soldiers who did not possess
them, giving bombs to some, installing three machine guns with
operators on each motor truck supplied by the factories. The
regiment was to go into the street in full military array.

And just about the same thing was going on in the factories.
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

PREPARE AND BEGINNING

gun unit, and was calling a meeting. About ten thousand men
assembled. To shouts o 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 mov-
ing!" 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." At that moment appeared a member of the com-
mittee, Chudin, with the word that the workers were going out
in all the districts, and that it was up to the party men to "main-
tain order." In this way the Bolsheviks were caught up by the
movement and dragged into it, looking around the while for some
justification for an action which flatly contravened the official
decision of the party.

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. "Amid an in-
numerable mass of workers," relates the Vyborg Worker, Metelev,
"hundreds of young Red Guards were working away loading
their rifles. Others were piling cartridges into the cartridge-
chambers, tightening up their belts, tying on their knapsacks or
cartridge boxes, adjusting their bayonets. And the workers with-

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

out arms were helping the Red Guards get ready . . ." Sam-
sonevsky Prospect, the chief artery of the Vyborg Side, was
packed full of people. To the right and left of it stood solid col-
umns 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. 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 ban-
ner: "All Power to the Soviets!" The funeral procession in March
and the First of May demonstration were probably more nu-
merous, but the July procession was incomparably more eager,
more threatening, and more homogeneous in its composition.
"Under the red banners marched only workers and soldiers,"
writes one of the participants. "The cockades of the officials, the
shiny buttons of students, the hats of 'lady sympathizers' were
not to be seen. All that belonged to four months ago, to February.
In today's movement there was none of that. Today only the
common slaves of capital were marching." As before, auto-
mobiles flew through the streets in all directions full of armed
workers and soldiers delegates, agitators, reconnoiterers, tele-
phone men, and detachments for calling out workers and regi-
ments. They all held their bayonets advanced. The bristling
motor trucks completed a picture of the February days, electrify-
ing some, terrorizing others. The Kadet Nabokov writes: "The
same insane, dumb, beastlike faces which we all remember from
the February days" that is, the days of that very revolution
which the liberals had officially pronounced glorious and blood-
less. By nine o'clock seven regiments were already moving toward
the Tauride Palace. They were joined on the way by columns
from the factories and by new military detachments. The move-
ment of the Machine Gun Regiment developed a colossal power of
contagion. The "July days" had begun.

Meetings were held on the march. Shots rang out. According
to a worker, Korotkov, "they dragged out of a cellar on the
Liteiny a machine gun and an officer whom they killed on the
spot." All conceivable rumours ran ahead of the demonstration.
Fears rayed out from it on all sides like beams of light. What

THE "JULY DAYS"; PREPARATION AND BEGINNING

imaginable thing was not reported over the telephones from the
frightened central districts? It was said that about eight o'clock in
the evening an armed automobile dashed up to the Warsaw sta-
tion seeking Kerensky who had left that very day for the front,
intending to arrest him, but that the train had gone and the arrest
did not occur. That episode was subsequently repeated more than
once as proving a conspiracy. Just who was in the automobile and
who discovered its mysterious intentions, has nevertheless re-
mained unknown. On that evening automobiles with armed men
were careering in all directions doubtless, therefore, in the vicin-
ity of the Warsaw station. Strong words were to be heard about
Kerensky in many places. This evidently served as a basis for
the myth if it was not indeed simply manufactured out of
whole cloth.

Izvestia sketched the following outline of the events of July
3rd: "At five o'clock in the afternoon there came out, armed,
the First Machine Gun, a part of the Moscow, a part of the
Grenadier, and a part of the Pavlovsky Regiments. They were
joined by crowds of workers ... By eight o'clock in the eve-
ning, separate parts of regiments began to pour towards the Palace
of Kshesinskaia, armed to the teeth and with red banners and
placards demanding the transfer of power to the Soviets. Speeches
were made from the balcony ... At ten-thirty a meeting was
held on the square in front of the Tauride Palace . . . The
troops elected a deputation to the All-Russian Central Executive
Committee which presented in their name the following de-
mands: 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/' Aside from certain prunings "parts
of regiments" instead of regiments, "crowds of workers" instead
of entire factories you may say that the official report of Tsere-
telli and Dan does not distort the general picture of what hap-
pened. In particular it correctly notes the two focal points of
the demonstration: the private residence of Kshesinskaia and the
Tauride Palace. Both spiritually and physically the movement
revolved around those two antagonistic centers: It came to the
house of Kshesinskaia for instructions, leadership, inspirational

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

speeches; to the Tauride Palace it came to present demands and
even to threaten a little with its power.

At three o'clock in the afternoon, two delegates from the
machine-gunners came to an all-city conference of the Bolshe-
viks, sitting that day in the house of Kshesinskaia, with the in-
formation that their regiment had decided to come out. Nobody
had expected this, and nobody wanted it. Tomsky declared:
"The regiments which have come out have acted in an uncom-
radely manner, not having invited the Central Committee of our
party to consider the question of a manifestation. The Central
Committee proposes to the conference: in the first place, to issue
an appeal in order to hold back the masses; in the second, to pre-
pare an address to the Executive Committee urging them to take
the power in their hands. It is impossible to talk of a manifesta-
tion at this moment unless we want a new revolution." Tomsky,
an old worker-Bolshevik who had certified his loyalty to the
party with years at hard labor famous subsequently as leader
of the trade unions was in general more inclined by character
to restrain the masses from action than summon them to it. But
on this occasion he was merely carrying out the thought of
Lenin: "It is impossible to talk of a manifestation at this moment
unless we want a new revolution." Even the attempt at a peace-
ful demonstration on June 10th had been denounced by the Com-
promisers as a conspiracy. An overwhelming majority of the
conference was at one with Tomsky. We must at all costs post-
pone 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 the respon-
sibility for the defeat upon the Bolsheviks. We must give the
Compromisers time to ruin themselves completely. Volodarsky
answered the machine-gunners in the name of the conference to
the effect that the regiment must submit to the decisions of the
party. The machine-gunners departed with a protest. At four
o'clock the Central Committee confirmed the decision of the
conference. Its members dispersed to the districts and factories
to restrain the masses from going out. Appeals to the same effect
were sent to Pravda to be printed on the front page the following
morning. Stalin was appointed to bring the decision to the atten-

THE "JULY DAYS"; PREPARATION AND BEGINNING

tion of the joint session of the Executive Committees. There re-
mains, therefore, no doubt whatever as to the intention of the
Bolsheviks. Their Central Committee addressed an appeal to the
workers and soldiers: "Unknown persons . . . are summoning
you into the streets under arms," and that proves that the sum-
mons does not come from any one of the soviet parties . . . Thus
the central committees both of the party and the Soviet <
proposed, but the masses disposed.

At eight o'clock in the evening, the Machine Gun Regiment,
and soon after it the Moscow Regiment, came up to the palace
of Kshcsinskaia. Popular Bolsheviks Nevsky, Lashevich, Pod-
voisky speaking from the balcony, tried to send the regiments
home. They were answered from below: Doloi! Doloi! 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? Could the
Bolsheviks possibly stand aside? The members of the Petrograd
committee, together with the delegates to the conference an4
representatives from the regiments and factories, passed a resolu-
tion: to reconsider the question, 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 work-
ers to go peacefully to the Tauride Palace, elect delegates, and.
through them present their demands to the Executive Committee.
The members of the Central Committee who were present sanc-
tioned this change of tactics. This new decision, announced from
the balcony, was met with welcoming shouts and with singing
of the Marseillaise. The movement had been legalized by the
party. The machine-gunners could heave a sigh of relief. A part
of the regiment immediately went to the Peter and Paul fortress
to influence its garrison, and in case of necessity protect from its
blows the Palace of Kshcsinskaia, which was separated from the
fortress only by the narrow Kronverksky canal.

The principal ranks of the demonstration moved out into the

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

Nevsky, the artery o the bourgeoisie, bureaucracy and officers,
as though into a foreign country. From the sidewalks, windows,
balconies, thousands of eyes looked out with no good wishes.
Regiment pressed upon factory, factory upon regiment. Fresh
masses arrived continually. All the banners, in gold letters on
red, cried out with one voice: "All Power to the Soviets!" The pro-
cession brimmed the Nevsky and poured like a river at the flood
to the Tauride Palace. The placards "Down with the war!" pro-
voke the bitterest hostility from the officers among them many
war-invalids. Waving their arms and straining their voices, stu-
dents, college girls, officials, endeavor to persuade the soldiers that
German agents behind them are aiming to let Wilhelm's troops
into Petrograd to strangle freedom. To these orators their own
conclusions seem irrefutable, "They are deceived by spies," say
the officials, pointing at the workers, and the workers' answer is
a surly growl. "Led astray by fanatics!" say the more indulgent.
"Ignorant elements," others agree. But the workers have their
own way of measuring things. They did not learn from German
spies those ideas which have brought them into the streets today.
The demonstrators impolitely push aside their importunate tutors,
and move forward. This drives the patriots of the Nevsky out
of their heads. Shock groups, led for the most part by war-
cripples and Cavaliers of St. George, fall upon individual sec-
tions of the demonstration, trying to snatch away the banners.
Clashes occur here and there. The atmosphere grows hot. Shots
ring out. One, and then another. From a window? From the
Anichkin Palace? The pavement answers with a volley in the air,
aimed nowhere. In a short time the whole street is in confusion.
At about midnight relates a worker from the "Vulcan" Fac-
tory as the Grenadier Regiment was passing through the Nevsky
in the vicinity of the Public Library, somebody opened fire on
them from somewhere, and the shooting continued several min-
utes. A panic followed. The workers began to scatter into the side
streets. The soldiers lay down under fire they had learned that in
the war school. That midnight scene on the Nevsky, with Grena-
dier Guards lying down on the pavement, was a fantastic spectacle.
Neither Pushkin nor Gogol, singers of the Nevsky, ever imagined

THJS "JULY DAYS": PREPARATION AND BEGINNING

it thus. Moreover, there was reality in this fantasia: dead and
wounded men stayed there on the pavement.

THE TAURIDE was living a life of its own in those days. In view
of the resignation of the Kadets, both Executive Committees,
the worker-soldier's and the peasant's, had met in joint session
to consider a discourse of Tseretelli on how to pour out the coali-
tion bath without the baby. The secret of this operation would
undoubtedly have been discovered in the long run, if the restless
suburbs had not intervened. A telephone communication about
the manifestation under preparation by the Machine Gun Regi-
ment produced frowns of anger and vexation on the faces of the
leaders. Can it be that the soldiers and workers will not wait until
our newspapers bring them salvation in the form of a resolution?
Oblique glances were cast in the direction of the Bolsheviks, But
for them too, this time, the demonstration was a surprise.
Kamenev, and other representatives of the party who happened
to be present, even agreed at the end of the day's session to go to
the factories and barracks and attempt to restrain the masses
from going out. This gesture was afterward interpreted by the
Compromisers as a military trick. The Executive Committee as
usual hastily adopted a proclamation declaring any manifestation
an act of treachery to the revolution. But even so, how were they
going to deal with the governmental crisis? A way out was found:
they would leave the mutilated cabinet as it was, postponing
the whole question until the provincial members of the Executive
Committee could be summoned. To drag things out, to gain time
for your own vacillations is not that the most ingenious of all po-
litical policies?

Only in their struggle against the masses did the Compromisers
consider it unwise to lose time. The official apparatus was im-
mediately set in motion to prepare arms against the "insurrection"
for so they named the demonstration from the very beginning.
The leaders searched everywhere for armed forces to defend the
government and the Executive Committee. Over the signature of

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

Cheidze and other members of the Praesidium, demands were
sent to various military institutions to send to the Tauride Palace
armored cars, three-inch guns and shells. At the same time almost
every regiment received orders to send armed detachments for
the defense of the palace. But they did not stop there. Their
bureau telegraphed an order that same day to the front to the
Fifth Army, stationed nearest the capital to "send to Petrograd
a cavalry division, a brigade of infantry, and armored cars." The
Menshevik, Voitinsky, to whom was allotted the task of protect-
ing the Executive Committee, let the whole thing out later in
his retrospective survey: "The entire day of July 3rd was spent
in getting together troops to fortify the Tauride Palace. . . Our
problem was to bring in at least a few companies. ... At one
time we had absolutely no forces. Six men stood at the doors of
the Tauride Palace without power to hold back the crowd . . ."
And again: "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 with a request to give us sol-
diers to form a patrol . . . But each regiment looked to the next
to see what it was going to do. We were compelled at whatever
cost to put a stop to this outrage, and we summoned troops from
the front." 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 colos-
sal movement in favor of power to the democracy, was denounced
by the democratic leaders as an attack upon the democracy by
an armed gang.

In the Tauride Palace at that same time the workers* section
of the Soviet was meeting after a long intermission. In the course
of the last two months this section had so far changed its com-
position, as a result of by-elections in the factories, that the Execu-
tive Committee had well-grounded fears of a predominance of
Bolsheviks. The artificially delayed meeting of the section
finally called a few days before by the Compromisers themselves
accidentally coincided with the armed demonstration. In this the

THE "JULY DAYS": PREPARATION AND BEGINNING

newspapers saw the hand of the Bolsheviks. Zinoviev in a speech
to the section convincingly developed the thought that the Com-
promisers, being allies of the bourgeoisie, were unable and un-
willing to struggle against the counter-revolution, since that
word meant to them only individual manifestations of Black
Hundred hooliganism; it did not mean what it was a political
union of the possessing classes for the purpose of strangling the
Soviets as centers of the resistance of the toiling masses. His speech
hit the mark. The Mensheviks, finding themselves for the first
time in a minority on soviet soil, proposed that no decision should
be arrived at, and that they should disperse to the districts to
preserve order. But it was already too late! The news that armed
workers and machine-gunners were approaching the Tauride
Palace produced a mighty excitement in the hall. Kamenev
ascended the tribune: "We did not summon the manifestation,'*
he said. "The popular masses themselves came into the street . . .
But once the masses have come out, our place is among them. . . .
Our present task is to give the movement an organized char-
acter." Kamenev concluded with a proposal that they elect a
commission of twenty-five men for the leadership of the move-
ment. Trotsky seconded the motion. Cheidze feared a Bolshevik
commission, and vainly insisted that the question be turned over
to the Executive Committee. The debate became fiercer. Con-
vinced finally that all together they constituted only a third of
the assembly, the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries left the
hall. This was becoming a favorite tactic with the democrats;
they began to boycott the Soviets from the moment they lost the
majority there. A resolution summoning the Executive Committee
to take the power was adopted in the absence of the opposition by
276 votes. Elections were immediately held for the fifteen mem-
bers of the commission. Ten places were left for the minority
and these ten would remain unoccupied. This fact of the election
of a Bolshevik commission signified both to friends and enemies
that the workers' section of the Petrograd soviet would hence-
forth 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

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

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.

Through the streets leading to the Tauride Palace there is
flowing a steady column of working men and women and sol-
diers, with banners, songs and bands playing. The light artillery
comes along, its commander reporting amid rapture that all
the batteries of his division are at one with the workers. The
thoroughfares and square near the Tauride are filled with peo-
ple. All are trying to crowd in around the tribune at the chief
entrance to the palace. Cheidze comes out to the demonstrators
with the gloomy look of a man who has been unnecessarily torn
from his work. The popular soviet president is met with an
unfriendly silence. In a tired and hoarse voice Cheidze repeats
those commonplaces which have long puckered his mouth. Voitin-
sky, who comes out to help him, is no better received* "Trotsky,
however" according to the account of Miliukov, "having an-
nounced that the moment was now come when the power
should go over to the Soviets, was met with loud applause. . . ."
This sentence of Miliukov's is purposely ambiguous. None of the
Bolsheviks declared that "the moment was come/' A machinist
from the small Duflon factory on the Petrograd side said later
about that meeting under the wall of the Tauride Palace: "I re-
member the speech of Trotsky, who said that it was not yet time
to seize the power in our hands." The machinist reports the
essence of the speech more correctly than the professor of his-
tory. From the lips of the Bolshevik orators the demonstrators
learned of the victory just won in the Workers' Section, and
that fact gave them almost as palpable a satisfaction as would an
entrance upon the epoch of soviet power.

The joint session of the Executive Committees met again a
little before midnight. (Just then the grenadiers were lying down
on the Nevsky.) On a motion from Dan, it was resolved that only
those could remain at the meeting who should bind themselves in
advance to defend and carry out its decisions. This was a new
note! From a workers' and soldiers' parliament, which was what
the Mensheviks had declared the Soviet to be, they were trying to
convert it into an administrative organ of the compromise ma~

THE "JULY DAYS": PREPARATION AND BEGINNING

jority. After they have become a minority and this is only two
months away the Compromisers will passionately defend the
principle of democracy in the soviet. Today, however as indeed
at all decisive moments in social life democracy is held in re-
serve. A number of Mezhrayontsi 1 left the hall with a protest.
The Bolsheviks were not there; they were in the Palace of Kshesin-
skaia getting ready for tomorrow. During the further course of
the meeting the Mezhrayontsi and the Bolsheviks appeared in the
hall with the announcement that no one could take from them
the mandate given them by their electors. The majority greeted
this announcement with silence, and Dan's resolution was quietly
dropped into oblivion. The session dragged out like a death agony.
In tired voices the Compromisers kept on assuring each other
that they were right. Tseretelli, in his character of Postmaster
General, entered a complaint against his employees: "I just
now learned of the strike of the postal and telegraph work-
ers. . . . As to their political demands, their slogans are the same:
All Power to the Soviets!"

Delegates from the demonstrators, now surrounding the
Tauride Palace on all sides, demanded admission to the meeting.
They were admitted with alarm and hostility. The delegates,
however, sincerely believed that this time the Compromisers
could not help coming to meet them. Had not today's issues of
the Menshevik and Social Revolutionary papers, wrought up over
the resignation of the Kadets, themselves exposed the intrigues
and sabotage of their bourgeois allies? Moreover the workers' sec-
tion had come out in favor of a soviet government. "What else
was there to wait for? But their fervent appeals, in which hope
still mingled with indignation, dropped impotent and inappro-
priate into the stagnant atmosphere of that parliament of com-
promise. The leaders had but one thought: how quickest to get
rid of their uninvited guests. To suggest that they withdraw to
the gallery, to drive them back into the street to the demonstra-
tors, would be indiscreet. In the gallery machine gun men were
listening with amazement to the evolving debate, which had only
one goal to gain time. The Compromisers were waiting for

1 Members of the "Inter-district" organization to which the author at that time
belonged. Trans.

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

reliable regiments. "A revolutionary people is in the streets,"
cried Dan, "but that people is engaged in a counter-revolutionary
work." Dan was supported by Abramovich, one of the leaders
of the Jewish Bund, a conservative pedant whose every instinct
had been outraged by the revolution. "We are witnesses to a
conspiracy," he asserts, in defiance of the obvious, and he pro-
poses to the Bolsheviks that they openly announce that "this is
their work." Tseretelli deepens the discussion: "To go out into
the streets with the demand, 'All Power to the Soviets' is that
to support the Soviets? If the Soviets so desired, the power could
pass to them. There is no obstacle anywhere to the will of the
Soviets. , , . Such a manifestation is not along the road of revolu-
tion, but of counter-revolution." These considerations the work-
ers' delegates could not possibly understand. It seemed to them
that the high-up leaders were a little bit out of their heads. The
meeting at last resolved once more, by all votes except 11, that
an armed manifestation would be a stab in the back at the
revolutionary army, etc., etc. The meeting adjourned at five
o'clock in the morning.

The masses were gradually gathered back into their districts.
Armed automobiles traveled all night, uniting regiments, fac-
tories and district centers. As in the last days of February, the
masses spent the night casting the balance of the day's struggle.
But now they did this with the aid of a complicated system of or-
ganizations factory, party and regimental which conferred
continually. In the districts it was considered self-evident that
the movement could not stop half way. The Executive Committee
had postponed the decision about the power. The masses regarded
that as wavering. The conclusion was clear: we must bring more
pressure to bear. A night session of Bolsheviks and Mezhrayontsi,
meeting in the Tauride Palace simultaneously with the Executive
Committees, also cast the balance of the day and tried to foretell
what the morrow would bring. Reports from the districts testified
that today's demonstration had merely set the masses in motion,
presenting to their minds nakedly for the first time the question
of power. Tomorrow the factories and regiments would go after
the answer, and no force in the world could hold them in the
suburbs. The debate was not about whether to summon the

THE "JULY DAYS": PREPARATION AND BEGINNING

masses to a seizure of power as enemies later asserted but
about whether to try to call off the demonstration the next morn-
ing or to stand at the head of it.

Late in the night, or rather at about three o'clock in the morn-
ing, the Putilov factory approached the Tauride Palace a mass
of eighty thousand workers, many with wives and children. The
procession had started at eleven o'clock in the evening, and other
belated factories had joined it on the road. In spite of the late
hour, there was such a mass of people at the Narva Gate as to
suggest that nobody stayed home that night in the whole dis-
trict. The women had exclaimed: "Everybody must go we will
watch the houses." At a signal from the belfry of the Church of
the Savior shots had rattled out as though from a machine gun.
From below a volley was fired at the belfry. "Near Gostiny Dvor
a company of junkers and students fell upon the demonstrators
and tried to -tear away their placards. The workers resisted. The
crowd piled up. Somebody fired a shot. The writer of these lines
got his head broken, his sides and chest badly mashed by tramp-
ing feet/' These are the words of the worker Efimov, already
known to us. Passing across the whole town, silent now, the
Putilov men finally arrived at the Tauride Palace. Thanks to the
insistent efforts of Riazanov, closely associated at that time with
the trade unions, a delegation was admitted to the Executive Com-
mittee. The throng of workers, hungry and dead-tired, scattered
about on the street and in the garden, a majority immediately
stretching themselves out, thinking to wait there for an answer.
The entire Putilov factory lying there on the ground at three
o'clock in the morning around the Tauride Palace, where the
democratic leaders were waiting for the arrival of troops from
the front that is one of the most startling pictures offered by the
revolution on this summit of the pass between February and
October. Twelve years before no small numbers of these same
workers had participated in the' January procession to the Winter
Palace with ikons and religious standards. Ages had passed since
that Sunday afternoon; other ages will pass during the next four
months.

The sombre image of these Putilov workers lying down in the
courtyard hung over the conference of Bolshevik leaders and

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER^KEVOLUTION

organizers as they debated about the next day's plans. Tomorrow
the Putilovtsi will refuse to work yes, and what work would
they be good for after the night's vigil? Zinoviev was summoned
to the telephone. Raskolnikov had rung up from Kronstadt to
say that tomorrow early in the morning the garrison of the fortress
would start for Petrograd and nobody and nothing could stop
it. The young midshipman was holding on in suspense at the other
end of the wire: Would the central committee order him to break
with the Soviets, and ruin himself in their eyes? To the picture
of the Putilov factory as a gypsy camp was thus joined the no
less suggestive picture of the sailors* island getting ready in those
sleepless hours of the night to support workers' and! soldiers'
Petrograd. No, the situation was too clear. There was no more
room for wavering. Trotsky inquired for the last time: Can we,
nevertheless, try to make it an unarmed demonstration? No,
there can be no question of that. One squad of Junkers can scat-
ter tens of thousands of unarmed workers like a flock of sheep.
The soldiers and the workers, too, will regard that proposal as a
trap. The answer was categorical and convincing. All unani-
mously decided to summon the masses in the name of the party
to prolong the demonstration on the next day. Zinoviev hastened
to relieve the mind of Raskolnikov, languishing at the other end
of the telephone. An address to the workers and soldiers was im-
mediately drawn up: Into the streets! The afternoon's summons
from the Central Committee to stop the demonstration, was torn
from the presses but too late to replace it with a new text. A
white page in Pravda the next morning will be deadly evidence
against the Bolsheviks: Evidently getting frightened at the last
moment, they withdrew the appeal for an insurrection; or maybe,
just the opposite maybe they renounced an earlier appeal for a
peaceful demonstration in order to go in for insurrection. Mean-
while the real decision of the Bolsheviks was issued on a separate
leaflet. It summoned the workers and soldiers u by way of a peace-
ful and organized demonstration to bring their will to the atten-
tion of the Executive Committees now in session." No, that was
not a summons to insurrection.

CHAPTER II
THE "JULY DAYS": CULMINATION AND ROUT

FROM that moment the direct leadership of the movement
passed conclusively into the hands of the Petrograd com-
mittee of the party, whose chief force as an agitator was
Volodarsky. The task of mobilizing the garrison was assigned to
the Military Organization. The direction of this organization
ever since March had been in the hands of two old Bolsheviks to
whom the organization was to owe much in its further develop-
ment. Podvoisky was a sharply outlined and unique figure in
the ranks of Bolshevism, with traits of the Russian revolutionary
of the old type from the theological seminaries a man of
great although undisciplined energy, with a creative imagination
which, it must be confessed, often went to the length of fan-
tasy. The word "Podvoiskyism" subsequently acquired on the lips
of Lenin a friendly-ironical and admonitory flavor. But the
weaker sides of this ebullient nature were to show themselves
chiefly after the conquest of power, when an abundance of op-
portunities and means gave too many stimuli to the extravagant
energy of Podvoisky and his passion for decorative undertak-
ings. In the conditions of the revolutionary struggle for power,
his optimistic decisiveness of character, his self-abnegation, his
tirelessness, made him an irreplaceable leader of the awakening
soldiers. Nevsky, a university instructor in the past, of more
prosaic mould than Podvoisky, but no less devoted to the party,
in no sense an organizer, and only by an unlucky accident made
soviet Minister of Communications a year later, attached the
soldiers to him by his simplicity, sociability, and attentive kind-
ness. Around these leaders stood a group of close assistants, sol-
diers and young officers, some of whom in the future were to
play no small r6le. On the night of July 4th the Military Or-
ganization suddenly came forward to the center of the stage.
Under Podvoisky, who easily mastered the functions of com-

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

mand, an impromptu general staff was formed. Brief appeals
and instructions were issued to all the troops of the garrison. In
order to protect the demonstration from attack, armored cars
were to be placed at the bridges leading from the suburbs to the
capital and at the central crossings of the chief streets. The
machine-gunners had already, during that night, established their
own sentries at the Peter and Paul fortress. The garrisons of
Oranienbaum, Peterhoff, Krasnoe Selo and other points near the
capital, were informed of tomorrow's demonstration by telephone
and special messenger* The general political leadership, of course,
remained in the hands of the Central Committee of the party.

The machine-gunners returned to their barracks at dawn,
tired and, in spite of the July weather, shivering. A night rain
had soaked the Putilov men also to the skin. The demonstrators
did not assemble until eleven o'clock in the morning. The mili-
tary sections got there still later. Today the 1st Machine Gun
Regiment was on the street to the last man. But it will no longer
play the r6le of initiator as it did yesterday. The factories have
moved into the front rank. Moreover, those plants have been
drawn into the movement which yesterday stood aside. Where
the leaders wavered or resisted, younger workers had compelled
the member-on-duty of the factory committee to blow the
whistle as a signal to stop work. In the Baltic factory, where
Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries dominated, about four
out of five thousand workers came out. In the Skorokhod shoe
factory, long considered a stronghold of the Social Revolution-
aries, the mood had so sharply changed that an old deputy from
that factory, a Social Revolutionary, did not dare show his face
for several days. 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 or-
ganized 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 of the crisis. The government was
in despair, for on this second day of the demonstration its im-

THE "JULY DAYS": CULMINATION AND ROUT

potence was even more obvious than on the first. The Executive
Committee was waiting for loyal troops, and getting reports
from all sides that hostile troops were moving on the capital.
From Kronstadt, from New Peterhoff, from Krasnoe Selo, from
the Krasnaia Gorka fort, from all the nearby centers, by land
and sea, soldiers and sailors were marching in with music, with
weapons, and, worst of all, with Bolshevik standards. A number
of regiments were bringing their officers with them, just as in the
February days, pretending to "be acting under their command.

"The sitting of the government was not over," relates Miliu-
kov, "when news came from the staff that there was shooting
on the Nevsky. It was decided to transfer the sitting to staff-
headquarters. Here were Prince Lvov, Tseretelli, Minister of
Justice Pereverzev, and two assistants from the Ministry of "War.
There was one moment when the situation of the government
seemed hopeless. The Preobrazhentsi, 1 the Semenovtsi, 1 and the
Izmailovtsi, 1 who had not joined the Bolsheviks, announced to the
government that they would remain 'neutral.' On Palace Square,
for the defense of headquarters, there were to be found only war-
invalids and a few hundred Cossacks/* General Polovtsev pub-
lished on the morning of July 4th an announcement that he was
going to cleanse Petrograd of armed hordes. The inhabitants were
strictly advised to lock their doors and not go into the streets
except in case of absolute necessity. This threatening order fell
flat. The commander of all the troops of the district was able
to bring out against the demonstrators only petty detachments
of Cossacks and junkers. In the course of the day they caused
some meaningless shootings and some bloody clashes. An ensign
of the First Don Regiment guarding the Winter Palace reported
subsequently to a commission of inquiry: "We were ordered to
disarm small groups of people tyho passed by, no matter who
they were, and also armed automobiles. To carry out this
order, we would run out of the palace on foot from time to time
and disarm people . . ." The ingenuous tale of the Cossack en-
sign correctly portrays the correlation of forces, and gives a
picture of the struggle. The "mutinous" troops came out of the
barracks in companies and battalions, taking possession of the

1 Members of the regiments named Preobrazhensky, etc. Trans.

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTERREVOLUTION

streets and squares. The government troops acted from ambush,
or made raids in small detachments that is, they functioned
exactly as insurrectionary bands are supposed to, This exchange
of roles is explained by the fact that almost the whole armed force
of the government was hostile to it or at the best, neutral. The
government was living by the authorization of the Executive
Committee; the power of the Executive Committee derived in
turn from the hopes of the masses that it might at last come to
its senses and take the power.

The demonstration attained its highest point with the ap-
pearance on the Petrograd arena of the Kronstadt sailors. Dele-
gates from the machine-gunners had been working the day before
in the garrison of the naval fortress. A meeting had assembled in
Yakorny Square, unexpectedly to the local organization, on the
initiative of some anarchists from Petrograd. The orators had
appealed to the sailors to come to the help of Petrograd. Roshal,
a medical student, one of the young heroes of Kronstadt and a
favorite on Yakorny Square, had tried to make a speech coun-
selling moderation. Thousands of voices cut him off. Roshal, ac-
customed to a different welcome, had been compelled to leave the
tribune. Not until night did it become known that in Petrograd
the Bolsheviks were calling the masses into the streets. That settled
the matter. The Left Social Revolutionaries and in Kronstadt
there could be no right ones announced that they intended to
take part in the demonstration. These people belonged to the
same party with Kerensky, who at that very moment was at the
front collecting troops to put down the demonstration. The
mood at that night's session of the Kronstadt organization was
such that even the timid commissar of the Provisional Govern-
ment, Parchevsky, voted for the march on Petrograd. A plan
was drawn up; transports were mobilized. For the necessities of
this political siege, two and a half tons of arms and ammunition
were given out from the stores. Crowded on tugs and passenger
steamers, about 10,000 armed sailors, soldiers and workers came
into the narrows of the Neva at twelve o'clock noon* Disembark-
ing on both sides of the river, they formed a procession with
bands playing and with rifles slung over their shoulders. Behind
the detachments of sailors and soldiers came columns of workers

THE f 7C7LY DAYS": CULMINATION AND ROUT

from the Petrograd and Vassilievsky Island districts, interspersed
with companies of the Red Guard flanked by armored cars and
with innumerable standards and banners rising above them.

The Palace of Kshesinskaia was but two steps away, A little
lank man, black as tar, Sverdlov one of the basic organizers of
the party elected to the Central Committee in the April con-
ference was standing on the balcony and in a businesslike man-
ner, as always, shouting down instructions in his powerful bass
voice: "Head of the procession, advance close up ranks rear
ranks come closer." The demonstrators were greeted from the
balcony by Lunacharsky, a man always easily infected by the
moods of those around him, imposing in appearance and voice,
eloquent in a declamatory way none too reliable, but often
irreplaceable. He was stormily applauded from below. But most
of all the demonstrators wanted to hear Lenin himself. He had
been summoned that morning, by the way, from his temporary
Finland refuge. And the sailors so insisted on having their will,
that in spite of ill health Lenin could not beg off. An irresistible
wave of ecstasy, a genuine Kronstadt wave, greeted the leader's
appearance on the balcony. Impatiently and as always with some
embarrassment awaiting the end of the greeting, Lenin began
speaking before the voices died down. His speech, which the
hostile press for weeks after growled over and tore to pieces in
every possible manner, consisted of a few simple phrases: a greet-
ing 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. With renewed shouts the
procession marched away to the music of the band.

Between this holiday introduction and the next stage of the
proceedings, when blood began to flow, a curious episode in-
truded. The leaders of the Kronstadt Left Social Revolutionaries
noticed only after they arrived on Mars Field a colossal standard
of the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks which had appeared
at the head of the procession after the stop at the Palace of
Kshesinskaia. Burning with party rivalry, they demanded its re-
moval. The Bolsheviks refused. The Social Revolutionaries then
announced that they would withdraw entirely. However, none
of the sailors or soldiers followed the leaders. The whole policy

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTEK-RE^

of the Left Social Revolutionaries consisted of such capricious
waverings, now comic and now tragic.

At the corner of the Nevsky and Liteiny, the rear guard of
the demonstration was suddenly fired on, and several people were
wounded. A more cruel fire occurred on the corner of the Liteiny
and Panteleimonov Street. The leader of the Kronstadt men,
Raskolnikov, tells how "like a sharp pain to the demonstrators
was their uncertainty where the enemy was, from what side he
was shooting." The soldiers seized their rifles. Disorderly firing
began in all directions. Several were killed and wounded. Only
with great difficulty was order restored in the ranks. The proces-
sion again moved forward with music, but not a trace was left
of its holiday spirit. "There seemed to be a hidden enemy every-
where. Rifles no longer rested peacefully on the left shoulder, but
were held ready for action."

There were no few bloody encounters on that day in different
parts of the town. A certain number of them were doubtless due
to misunderstanding, confusion, stray shots, panic. Such tragic
accidents are one of the inevitable overhead expenses of a revolu-
tion itself one of the overhead expenses of historic progress.
But an element of bloody provocation was also indubitable in the
July events. It was manifest in those very days, and was subse-
quently confirmed. Says Podvoisky: "When the demonstrating
soldiers began to pass through the Nevsky and the surrounding
sections, inhabited for the most part by the bourgeoisie, ominous
indications of a clash began to appear: strange shots were fired,
nobody knew whence or by whom . , , The columns were
seized at first with confusion, and then the least steady and self-
restrained began to open an irregular fire." In the official Izvcstia,
the Menshevik, Kantorovich, described the firing upon one of the
workers' columns in the following words; "A crowd of sixty
thousand workers from many factories was marching along
Sadovaia Street. As they were passing by a church, a bell tolled
in the steeple and as though at a signal both rifle and machine
gun fire was opened from the roofs of the houses. When the crowd
of workers dashed to the other side of the street, shots came also
from the roofs opposite." In those attics and roofs, where in
February Protopopov's "Pharaohs" had posted themselves with

THE "JULY DAYS": CULMINATION AND ROUT

machine guns, members of the officers' organizations were now
at work. They were attempting and not without success by
firing on the demonstrators to spread panic and produce clashes
between the different military units participating. When the
houses from which shots came were searched, machine gun nests
were found, and sometimes also the gunners.

The chief instigators of the bloodshed, however, were the
government troops powerless to put down the movement, but
adequate for purposes of provocation. At about eight o'clock in
the evening, when the demonstration was in full swing, two Cos-
sack squadrons with flying artillery rode up as a guard for the
Tauride Palace. On the way they stubbornly refused to enter into
conversation with the demonstrators in itself a bad sign. These
Cossacks seized armored automobiles wherever they could and
disarmed individual small groups. Cossack weapons on streets
occupied by workers and soldiers seemed an intolerable challenge.
Everything pointed to a clash. Near the Liteiny Bridge the Cos-
sacks drew near to a compact mass of the enemy, who had here,
on the road to the Tauride, succeeded in throwing up some sort
of barrier. There was a moment of ominous silence broken by
shots from neighboring houses. Then the fight began. "The Cos-
sacks used up cartridges by the box," writes the worker, Metelev.
"The workers and soldiers, scattering to shelter, or simply lying
down on the sidewalk under fire, replied in the same fashion."
The soldiers' fire compelled the Cossacks to retreat. Having fought
their way through to the quay along the Neva, they fired three
volleys from cannon the cannon shots are also remarked upon
by Izvestia but under the long-range rifle fire they retired in
the direction of the Tauride Palace. Running into another work-
ers* column the Cossacks received a decisive blow. Abandoning
their cannon, horses, rifles, they sought shelter in the entrances
of bourgeois houses, or dispersed altogether.

That encounter on Liteiny, an actual small battle, was the
biggest military episode of the July days, and stories about it are
to be found in the recollections of many demonstrators. Bursin, a
worker of the Ericcson factory which came out with the machine-
gunners, tells how upon meeting them "the Cossacks immediately
opened fire with their rifles." "Many workers were left lying

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-^

dead, and it was here that I was struck by a bullet, which passed
through one leg and stopped in the other. ... As a memento
of the July days I have my crutch and my useless leg. . . ." In
the encounter on the Liteiny seven Cossacks were killed, and
nineteen wounded or knocked out by shell explosions* Among
the demonstrators six were killed, and about twenty wounded.
Here and there lay the dead bodies o horses.

"We have an interesting testimony from the opposing camp.
That same ensign, Averin, who in the morning had made guerrilla
attacks on the regular troops of the mutineers, writes as follows:
"At eight o'clock in the evening we received an order from Gen-
eral Polovtsev to go out in two companies with two field-guns
to the Tauride Palace. . . . We got as far as the Liteiny Bridge,
upon which I saw armed workers, soldiers and sailors. . . , With
my advance detachment I approached them and asked them to
surrender their weapons, but my request was not granted, and
the whole gang turned and ran across the bridge to the Vyborg
side. I had not yet started after them, when a small-sized soldier
without shoulder straps turned round and fired at me, but missed.
That shot served as a signal, and an irregular rifle fire was opened
on us from all sides. The crowd sent up a shout: "The Cossacks
are shooting us.' And that was the fact: the Cossacks slid from
their horses and began to shoot. They even attempted to open fire
with cannon, but the soldiers let go such a hurricane of rifle
fire that the Cossacks were compelled to retreat and scatter
through the town." It is not at all impossible that some soldier
shot at the ensign; a Cossack officer could better expect a bullet
than a greeting from that July crowd. But it is easier to believe
the abundant testimony to the fact that the first shots came not
from the streets, but from ambush. A rank-and-file Cossack from
the same squadron as the ensign has testified with conviction that
the Cossacks were shot at from the direction of the District Court,
and afterward from other houses in Samursky Alley and on the
Liteiny. In the official organ of the Soviet, it was related that the
Cossacks, before arriving at the Liteiny Bridge, were fired on
with machine guns from a stone house. The worker, Metelev,
asserts that when the soldiers searched that house they found in
the apartment of a general who lived there a store of fire-arms,

THE "JULY DAYS": CULMINATION AND ROUT

including two machine guns with cartridges. There is nothing
unlikely in that. By hook or crook quantities of all kinds of
weapons had been accumulated in the hands of the commanding
staff during the war period. And the temptation to sprinkle that
"rabble" with a hail of lead from above must have been great. To
be sure, shots did fall among the Cossacks, but there was a convic-
tion among the July crowds that counter -revolutionists were
consciously shooting at the government troops in order to incite
them to ruthless action. Officers who only yesterday possessed
unlimited powers, recognize no limits to trickery and cruelty when
the civil war comes. Petrograd was swarming with secret and
semi-secret officer organizations enjoying lofty protection and
generous support. In a confidential report made by the Men-
shevik, Lieber, almost a month before the July Days, it was
asserted that the officer-conspirators were in touch with Buchanan.
Yes, and how could the diplomats of the Entente help trying to
promote the speedy establishment of a strong power in Russia?

In all excesses the Liberals and Compromisers would see the
hand of "Anarcho-Bolsheviks" and German agents. The work-
ers and soldiers, on the other hand, confidently laid the responsi-
bility for the July clashes and victims upon patriotic provocateurs.
"Which side was right? The judgment of the masses is of course
not infallible. But it is a crude mistake to imagine that the mass
is blind and credulous. Where it is touched to the quick, it gathers
facts and conjectures with a thousand eyes and ears, tests rumors
by its own experience, selects some and rejects others. Where
versions touching a mass movement are contradictory, those ap-
propriated by the mass itself are nearest to the truth. It is for
this reason that international sycophants of the type of Hippolyte
Taine, who in studying great popular movements ignore the voices
of the street, and spend their time carefully collecting and sift-
ing the empty gossip produced in drawing-rooms by moods of
isolation and fear, are so useless to science.

The demonstrators again besieged the Tauride Palace and de-
manded their answer. At the moment the Kronstadt men ar-
rived, some group or other brought Chernov out to them. Sensing
the mood of the crowd, the word-loving minister pronounced
upon this one occasion a very brief speech. Sliding over the crisis

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

in the problem of power, he referred scornfully to the Kadets who
had withdrawn from the government. "Good riddance!" he
cried. Shouts interrupted him: "Then why didn't you say so be-
fore?" 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. 5 " Even
though nothing more than an anecdote, this expresses with crude
accuracy the essence of the July situation. Chernov's answers have
no interest; in any case, they did not win him the hearts of the
Kronstadters. ... In just two or three minutes someone ran
into the hall where the Executive Committee was sitting, and
yelled that the sailors had arrested Chernov and were going to
end him. With indescribable excitement the Executive Committee
delegated several of its prominent members, exclusively inter-
nationalists and Bolsheviks, to rescue the minister. Chernov testi-
fied subsequently before a government commission that as he
was descending from the tribune he noticed in the entrance be-
hind the columns a hostile movement of several people. 'They
surrounded me and would not let me through to the door. . . .
A suspicious-looking person in command of the sailors who were
holding me back, kept pointing to an automobile standing
near. ... At that moment Trotsky, emerging from the Tauride
Palace, came up and mounting on the front of the automobile
. in which I found myself, made a short speech." Proposing that
Chernov be released, Trotsky asked all those opposed to raise
their hands. "Not one hand was raised. The group which had con-
ducted me to the automobile then stepped aside with a disgruntled
look. Trotsky, as I remember, said: 'Citizen Chernov, nobody is
hindering you from going back/ . . The general picture of
this whole episode leaves no doubt in my mind that there was
here a planned attempt of dark elements, acting over the heads
of the general mass of the workers and soldiers, to call me out and

arrest me."

A week before his own arrest Trotsky stated at a joint session
of the Executive Committees, "These facts are going into his-
tory and we will try to establish them as they were. ... I saw
that a bunch of thugs was standing around the entrance. I said

THE "JULY DAYS": CULMINATION AND ROUT

to Lunacharsky and Riazanov that those were okhranniki l and
they were trying to break into the Tauride Palace (Lunacharsky
from his seat: 'That's correct.') ... I would know them, I said,
in a crowd of ten thousand." In his testimony of July 24th, Trot-
sky, already in solitary confinement in Kresty Prison, wrote: "I
was first minded to ride out of the crowd in the automobile along
with Chernov and those who wanted to arrest him, in order to
avoid conflict and panic in the crowd. But Midshipman Raskolni-
kov, running up in extreme excitement, called to me: *That is
impossible, ... If you ride away with Chernov, they will say
tomorrow that the Kronstadters arrested him, Chernov must be
freed immediately.' As soon as the trumpeter had summoned the
crowd to silence, and given me a chance to make a short speech,
which ended with the question: 'Those here in favor of violence,
raise their hands/ Chernov found it possible to go back im-
mediately into the palace without hindrance." The testimony of
these two witnesses, who were at the same time the chief par-
ticipants in the adventure, exhausts the factual side of it. But that
did not in the least hinder the press hostile to the Bolsheviks from
presenting the Chernov incident, together with the "attempt"
at an arrest of Kerensky, as the most convincing of proofs that
an armed insurrection had been organized by the Bolsheviks.
There was no lack of allusion also, especially in oral agitation, to
the fact that Trotsky had directed the arrest of Chernov. That
version even arrived at the Tauride Palace. Chernov himself, who
described the circumstances of his half -hour arrest with sufficient
accuracy in a secret document addressed to a Commission of In-
quiry, nevertheless refrained from making any public statement,
in order not to hinder his party from creating indignation against
the Bolsheviks, Moreover Chernov was a member of the govern-
ment which put Trotsky in prison. The Compromisers, to be
sure, might have remarked that a gang of dark conspirators
would never have ventured upon so insolent a plot as to arrest
a minister in the middle of a crowd in broad daylight, had they
not hoped that the hostility of the mass to the "victim" would be
a sufficient protection. Such indeed to a certain degree it was.

1 Agents of the tsarist secret police.

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

Nobody around the automobile made of his own accord the slight-
est attempt to liberate Chernov, If to supplement this, somebody
had somewhere arrested Kerensky, of course neither the workers
nor soldiers would have grieved about that either. In this sense
the moral sympathy of the masses for actual and imaginary at-
tempts against the socialist ministers did exist and give support
to the accusations against the Kronstadters* But the Compromisers
were hindered from drawing this candid conclusion by their
worry about the relics of their democratic prestige. While fenc-
ing themselves off with hostility from the demonstrators, they
continued nevertheless to be heads of the system of workers',
soldiers' and peasants* Soviets in the besieged Tauride Palace.

At eight o'clock in the evening. General Polovtsev revived
the hopes of the Executive Committee by telephone: two Cossack
squadrons with flying artillery are on the way to the Tauride
Palace. At last! But this time, too, their expectations were dis-
appointed. Telephone calls in all directions only deepened their
panic: the Cossacks had disappeared as though by evaporation,
and their horses, saddles and flying artillery with them. Miliukov
writes that towards evening there appeared "the first results of
the governmental appeal to the troops/* Thus, he adds, the 176th
regiment was said to be hastening to the Tauride Palace. This
remark, which sounds so accurate, is curiously characteristic of
those qui pro quo's which inevitably arise in the first period
of a civil war when the two camps are still only beginning to
divide. A regiment did actually arrive at the Tauride Palace in
campaign array: knapsacks and folded coats on their backs, can-
teens and kettles at their belts. The soldiers had got wet through
on the way and were tired; they had come from Krasnoe Selo.
It was, too, the 176th regiment. But they had no intention what-
ever of rescuing the government. Affiliated with the Mezhrayontsi,
this regiment had come out under the leadership of two soldier-
Bolsheviks, Levinson and Medvediev, to win the power for the
Soviets. It was immediately reported to the leaders of the Execu-
tive Committee, sitting so-to-speak on pins and needles, that a
regiment in campaign array had arrived from a distance with
its officers, and was settling down to a well-earned rest beneath
the windows of the palace. Dan, dressed in the uniform of a mili-

THE "JULY DAYS": CULMINATION AND ROUT

tary physician, went to the commander with the request that he
supply sentries for the defense of the palace. The sentries were
soon actually supplied. Dan, we may imagine, communicated
this fact with satisfaction to the praesidium, and from that
source it arrived in the newspapers. Sukhanov in his "Notes"
makes fun of the submissiveness with which a Bolshevik regi-
ment fulfilled the directions of a Menshevik leader a further
proof, he thinks, of the "absurdity" of the July demonstration.
In reality the matter was both simpler and more complex. Having
received the request for sentries, the commander of the regiment
turned to an assistant commandant on duty in the palace, the
young lieutenant, Prigorovsky. By good or bad luck Prigorovsky
was a Bolshevik, a member of the Mezhrayonny organization,
and he immediately turned for advice to Trotsky, who was oc-
cupying a point of observation with a small group of Bolsheviks
in one of the side rooms of the palace. It goes without saying that
Prigorovsky was advised to post the sentries immediately: far
better to have friends than enemies at the entrances and exits of
the palace! Thus it happened that the 176th regiment, having
come out for a demonstration against the government, defended
the government against demonstrators. If it had really been a
question of insurrection, Lieutenant Prigorovsky with four
soldiers at his back could easily have arrested the whole Executive
Committee. But nobody thought of arresting anybody. The
soldiers of the Bolshevik regiment conscientiously fulfilled their
duty as sentries.

After the Cossack squadrons, who were the sole obstacle on the
road to the Tauride Palace, had been swept away, it seemed to
many demonstrators that victory was assured. In reality the
chief obstacle was sitting in the very palace itself. At the joint
session of the Executive Committees, which had begun at six
o'clock in the evening, there were present 90 representatives from
54 shops and factories. The five orators, who were given the floor
by agreement, began by protesting against the denunciation of
the demonstrators as counter-revolutionists in the manifestoes
of the Executive Committee. "You see what is written on our
standards," said one. "Such are the decisions adopted by the work-
ers. . . . We demand the resignation of the ten minister-

THE ATTEMPTED COE/NT^

capitalists. We have confidence in the Soviet, but not in those in
whom the Soviet has confidence, . * . We demand that the land
be seized immediately, that control of industry be established im-
mediately. We demand a struggle against the famine which
threatens us. . . ." Another added: "This is not a meeting, but
a fully organized manifestation. We demand the transfer of the
land to the peasants. We demand an annulment of the orders
directed against the revolutionary army. ... At this time when
the Kadcts 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.
But the Compromisers were still bound with too heavy chains
to the chariot of the possessing classes* Power to the Soviets? But
that means first of all a bold policy of peace, a break with the
Allies, a break with our own bourgeoisie, complete isolation, and
in the course of a few weeks, ruin. No! A responsible democracy
will not enter on the path of adventurism! "The present circum-
stances," said Tseretclli, "make it impossible in the Petrograd
atmosphere to carry out any new decisions whatever." It re-
mains, therefore, "to recognize the government with the staff
it has left ... to call an extraordinary session of the Soviets in
two weeks ... in a place where it may be able to work without
interference, best of all in Moscow."

But the course of the meeting was continually interrupted.
The Putilovtsi were knocking at the door of the palace: they
came up only towards evening, tired, irritated, in extreme excite-
ment. "Tseretelli we want Tseretelli!" This mass, thirty thou-
sand strong, sends its representatives into the palace, somebody
shouting after them that if Tseretelli won't come out of his own
accord they must bring him out. It is a long way from threat to
action, but nevertheless the thing is taking a rough turn, and the
Bolsheviks hasten to interfere. Zinoviev subsequently reported:
"Our comrades proposed that I should go out to the Putilov
men ... a sea of heads such as I never saw before, Tens of
thousands of men were solidly packed together. The cries of
Tseretelli' continued. ... I began: 'In place of Tseretelli, it
is I who have come out to you.' Laughter. That changed the

THE '[JULY DAYS": CULM AND ROUT

mood. I was able to make quite a long speech. . . . And in con-
clusion I appealed to that audience to disperse peacefully at once,
keeping perfect order, and under no circumstances permitting
anyone to provoke them to any aggressive action. The assembled
workers applauded stormily, formed in ranks, and began to dis-
perse." This episode offers the best possible illustration of the
keen discontent of the masses, their lack of any plan of attack,
and the actual role of the Bolshevik party in the July events.

During the moments when Zinoviev was exchanging views
with the Putilovtsi outdoors, a large group of their delegates, some
of them with rifles, burst stormily into the hall where the Ex-
ecutive Committees were in session. The members of the Com-
mittees jumped up from their seats. "Some of them did not reveal
a sufficient courage and self -restraint," says Sukhanov, who has
left a vivid description of this dramatic moment. One of the
workers, "a classic sansculotte in cap and short blue blouse with-
out belt, with a rifle in his hand," jumped up on the speaker's
tribune, trembling with excitement and wrath: " 'Comrades!
How long arc we workers going to stand for this treachery? You
are making bargains with the bourgeoisie and the landlords. . . .
Here we are, thirty thousand Putilovtsi. . . . We are going to
have our will!' Cheidze, before whose nose the rifle was dancing,
showed great presence of mind. Calmly leaning down from his
elevation, he thrust into the quivering hand of the worker a
printed manifesto: 'Here, comrade, take this, please, and I ask
you to read it. It says here what the Putilov comrades should
do. . . / " In the manifesto it said nothing at all except that the
demonstrators ought to go home, as otherwise they would be
traitors to the revolution. And what else, indeed, was there left
for the Mensheviks to say?

In the agitation under the walls of the Tauride Palace as
everywhere in the agitational whirlwind of that period a great
place was occupied by Zinoviev, an orator of extraordinary power.
His high tenor voice would surprise you at first, but afterward
win you with its unique music. Zinoviev was a born agitator. He
knew how to infect himself with the mood of the masses, excite
himself with their emotions, and find for their thoughts and feel-
ings a somewhat prolix, perhaps, but very gripping expression. En-

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

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emies used to call Zinoviev the greatest demagogue among the
Bolsheviks. This was their usual way of paying tribute to his
strongest trait his ability to penetrate the heart of the demos
and play upon its strings. It is impossible to deny, however, that
being merely an agitator, and neither a theoretician nor a revolu-
tionary strategist, Zinoviev, when he was not restrained by an
external discipline, easily slid down the path of demagoguism
speaking not in the philistine, but in the scientific sense of that
word. That is, he showed an inclination to sacrifice enduring
interests to the success of the moment. Zinoviev's agitatorial
quick scent made him an extraordinarily valuable counsellor
whenever it was a question of estimating political conjunctures
but nothing deeper than that. At meetings of the party he was
able to conquer, convince, bewitch, whenever he came with a
prepared political idea, tested in mass meetings and, so-to-speak,
saturated with the hopes and hates of the workers and soldiers.
On the other hand, Zinoviev was able in a hostile meeting even
in the Executive Committee of those days to give to the most
extreme and explosive thoughts an enveloping and insinuating
form, making his way into the minds of those who had met him
with a preconceived distrust. In order to achieve these invaluable
results, he had to have something more than a consciousness that
he was right; he had to have a tranquillizing certainty that he was
to be relieved of the political responsibility by a reliable and
strong hand. Lenin gave him this certainty. Armed with a pre-
pared strategic formula containing the very essence of a ques-
tion, Zinoviev would adroitly and astutely supplement it with
fresh exclamations, protests, demands, just now caught up by
him on the street, in the factory or the barrack. In those moments
he was an ideal mechanism of transmission between Lenin and
the masses sometimes between the masses and Lenin. Zinoviev
always followed his teacher except in a very few cases. But the
hour of disagreement was just that hour when the fate of the
party, of the class, of the country, was to be decided. The agitator
of the revolution lacked revolutionary character. "When it was
a question of conquering minds and hearts Zinoviev remained a
tireless fighter, but he suddenly lost his fighting confidence when

THE f 7t7LY DAYS": CULMINATION AND ROUT

he came face to face with the necessity of action. Here he drew
back from the masses from Lenin too responded only to voices
of indecision, caught up every doubt, saw nothing but obstacles.
And then his insinuating, almost feminine voice, losing its con-
viction, would expose his inner weakness. 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 de-
cisive action, but, on the contrary, in order to restrain them. This
corresponded to the moment and to the policy of the party. Zino-
viev was wholly in his element.

The battle on the Liteiny produced a sharp break in the de-
velopment of the demonstration. Nobody was now watching the
procession from window or balcony. The more well-to-do part
of the public, besieging the railroad stations, were leaving town.
The struggle in the streets turned into a scattered skirmishing
without definite aim. During the night there were hand-to-hand
fights between demonstrators and patriots, unsystematic dis-
armings, transfers of rifles from one hand to another. Groups of
soldiers from the dispersed regiments functioned helter-skelter.
"Shady elements and provocateurs, attaching themselves to the
soldiers, incited them to anarchistic activities," adds Podvoisky.
On a hunt for those who had shot from the roofs, groups of sailors
and soldiers carried out searches in the cellars. Here and there,
under the pretext of a search, plunderings would occur. On the
other side deeds of a pogrom character were perpetrated. Mer-
chants furiously attacked the workers in those parts of the town
where they felt strong, and ruthlessly beat them up. Says Af anas-
siev, a worker from the New Lessner factory: "With cries of
'Beat the Yids and Bolsheviks! Drown them!' the crowd attacked
us and gave it to us good/' One of the victims died in the hospital.
Afanassiev himself was dragged by sailors, bruised and bloody,
from the Ekaterininsky Canal.

Skirmishes, victims, fruitlessness of the struggle, and indef-
initeness 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

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTJiR^KEVOLUTION

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 fol-
lowing day. They felt that the problem of "Power to the Soviets"
was considerably more complicated than had appeared.

The siege of the Tauride Palace was conclusively raised. The
nearby streets stood empty. But the vigil of the Executive Com-
mittees continued, with intermissions, with long-drawn-out
speeches, meaningless and fruitless. Only afterwards did it be-
come clear that the Compromisers were waiting for something.
In neighboring rooms the delegates of the factories and regiments
were still languishing. <c lt was already long after midnight,"
relates Metelev, u and we were still waiting for a 'decision*, . . .
Irritated with weariness and hunger, we were wandering through
the Alexandrovsky hall. ... At four o'clock in the morning on
the Jth of July our waiting came to an end. . . * Through the
open doors of the chief entrance to the palace burst in a noisy
crowd of officers and soldiers." The whole building was filled with
the brassy sounds of the Marseillaise. The trampling of feet and
the thunder of the band at that hour before the dawn, caused
an extraordinary excitement in the session hall. The deputies leapt
from their seats. A new danger? But Dan was in the tribune, . . .
"Comrades," he shouted, "don't get excited. There is no danger.
Those are regiments loyal to the revolution that have arrived,"
Yes, the reliable troops had arrived at last, They occupied the
corridors, viciously fell upon the few workers still remaining in
the palace, grabbed the weapons of those having them, arrested
them and led them away. Lieutenant Kuchin, a well-known Men-
shevik, ascended the tribune in field uniform. The chairman,
Dan, received him with open arms to the triumphal notes of the
band. Choking with delight, and scorching the Lefts with their
triumphant glances, the Compromisers seized each other by the
hand, opened their mouths wide, and poured out their enthusiasm
in the notes of the Marseillaise. "A classic picture of the beginning
of a counter-revolution," angrily muttered Martov, who knew
how to see and understand many things. The political meaning
of this scene recorded by Sukhanov will become still more

THE "JULY ' fif y" 5 "; CULMINATION AND ROUT

clear if you remember that Martov belonged to the same party
with Dan for whom it represented the highest triumph of the
revolution.

Only now, as they observed the joy of the majority bubbling
like a fountain, did the Left Wing of the Soviet begin to under-
stand in a downright way how isolated was this highest organ of
the official democracy when the genuine democracy came into
the streets. For thirty-six hours these people had been alternately
disappearing behind the scenes, running to a telephone booth to
get in touch with headquarters or with Kerensky at the front, to
demand troops, to appeal, to urge, to beseech, to dispatch agitators
and ever more agitators, and again to come back and wait. The
danger was past, but the fear retained its momentum. The tramp-
ing steps of the "loyal" at five o'clock in the morning therefore
sounded to their ears like a symphony of liberation. At last from
the tribune came frank speeches about the lucky putting down
of an armed revolt, and about the necessity of settling with the
Bolsheviks this time for good. That detachment which entered the
Tauride Palace had not come from the front, however, as many
in the heat of the moment thought. It had been hand-picked from
the Petrograd garrison chiefly from the three most backward
guard battalions, the Preobrazhensky, the Semenovsky and the
Izmailovsky. On the 3rd of June these regiments had declared
themselves neutral, and vain efforts had been made to capture
them with the authority of the government and the Executive
Committee. The soldiers sat gloomily in their barracks waiting.
Only in the afternoon of July 4th did the authorities at last dis-
cover 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 com-
mittee, agitators of the Executive Committee, were active every-
where. 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. The Marseillaise was played that night
by the band of the Izmailovsky Regiment the same reactionary
regiment to which on December 3, 1905 had been intrusted the

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTED

task of arresting the first Petrograd Soviet of Workers* Deputies,
In session with Trotsky in the chair. The blind director of the
historic drama achieves striking theatrical effects at every step
without striving after them; he simply gives a loose rein to the
logic of events.

the streets had been cleansed of the masses, the young
government of the revolution stretched out its gouty limbs.
Workers' representatives were arrested, weapons were seized, one
district of the town was cut off from another. At about six
o'clock in the morning an automobile stopped in front of the
editorial office of Pravdct. 1 It was loaded with junkers and soldiers
with a machine gun which was immediately set up at the window.
After the departure of these uninvited guests the office was a
picture of destruction: desk drawers smashed open, the floor
heaped with torn-up manuscripts, the telephones ripped loose.
The sentries and employees of the office had been beaten up and
arrested. A still more violent attack was made on the printing
plant for whose purchase the workers had been collecting money
during the last three months. The rotary presses were destroyed,
monotypes ruined, linotype machines smashed to pieces. The
Bolsheviks were wrong, it seems, when they accused the Kerensky
government of lacking energy!

"Generally speaking, the streets had now become normal,"
writes Sukhanov. "There were almost no crowds or street meet-
ings; almost all the stores were open." In the morning the sum-
mons of the Bolsheviks to stop the demonstration the last
product of the destroyed printing plant was distributed. Cos-
sacks and junkers were arresting sailors, soldiers and workers on
the streets, and sending them to jail or to the guardhouses. In the
stores and on the sidewalks the talk was of German money. They
arrested everybody who made a peep in defense of the Bolsheviks.
"It was no longer possible to declare Lenin an honest man they
would take you to the police station." Sukhanov as always appears
as an attentive observer of what is happening on the streets of

1 Official organ of the Bolshevik party.

THE "JULY DAYS": CULMINATION AND ROUT

the- bourgeoisie, the intelligentsia, the burghers. But things looked
different in the workers' districts. The factories and shops were
still closed. The mood was vigilant. Rumors went round that
troops had arrived from the front. The streets of the Vyborg sec-
tion were filled with groups discussing what to do in case of at-
tack. "The Red Guards and the factory youth in general," says
Metelev, "were getting ready to penetrate the Peter and Paul
fortress and support the detachment besieged there, concealing
hand grenades in their pockets, in their shoes, under their coats.
They crossed the river in row-boats and partly by the bridges."
The typesetter, Smirnov, from the Kolomensky district, remem-
bers: "I saw a tugboat with naval cadets coming down the Neva
from Duderhoff and Oranienbaum. Toward two o'clock the
situation cleared up in the bad sense ... I saw how the sailors
one by one were returning to Kronstadt along the back streets.
. . . The story was being spread that all Bolsheviks were German
spies. A vile hue and cry was raised. . . ." The historian, Miliukov,
sums it all up with satisfaction: "The mood and personnel of the
public on the streets had completely changed. By evening Petro-
grad was entirely tranquil."

So long as the troops from the front had not arrived, Petro-
grad headquarters, with the political co-operation of the Com-
promisers, continued to disguise its intentions. In the afternoon
some members of the Executive Committee, with Lieber at their
head, came to the Palace of Kshesinskaia for a conference with
the Bolshevik leaders. That visit alone testified to a very peace-
able feeling. According to the agreement then arrived at, the
Bolsheviks were to induce the sailors to return to Kronstadt, to
withdraw the machine gun company from Peter and Paul
fortress, and to remove the patrols and armored cars from their
positions. The government, on its part, promised not to permit
any pogroms or repressions against the Bolsheviks, and to liberate
all arrested persons except those who had engaged in criminal
activities.

But the agreement did not last long. As the rumors spread
about German money and the approach of troops from the front,
more and more detachments and small groups were discovered
in the garrison mindful of their loyalty to the government and

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

to Kerensky. They sent delegates to the Tauride Palace or to the
district staff. Finally echelons from the front actually began to
arrive. The mood in compromise spheres grew fiercer and fiercer
from hour to hour. The troops from the front had arrived all
ready to snatch the capital with bloody hands from the agents of
the Kaiser. Now that it was clear the troops were not needed, it
became necessary to justify sending for them. To avoid falling
under suspicion themselves, the Compromisers tried with all their
might to show the commanders that Mcnshcviks and Social Rev-
olutionaries belong to the same camp with them, and that Bolshe-
viks are a common enemy. When Kamenev tried to remind the
members of the praesidium of the Executive Committee about
the agreement arrived at a few hours before, Lieber answered in
the tone of an iron -hearted statesman: "The correlation of forces
has now changed." Lieber had learned from the popular speeches
of Lassalle that cannon is an important part of a constitution, A
delegation of Kronstadters headed by Raskolnikov was several
times summoned before the military commission of the Executive
Committee, where the demands, increasing from hour to hour,
at last resolved themselves into an ultimatum from Lieber: that
they should agree at once to the disarming of the Kronstadt men*
"Departing from the session of the military commission," related
Raskolnikov, "we renewed our conferences with Trotsky and
Kamenev. Lyev Davidovich (Trotsky) advised us immediately
and secretly to send the Kronstadters home. A decision was adopted
to send comrades around the barracks to warn the Kronstadters
that they were going to be forcibly disarmed," A majority of the
Kronstadters got away in time. Only a few detachments remained
in the house of Kshesinskaia and the Peter and Paul fortress.

With the knowledge and consent of the minister-socialists,
Prince Lvov had already on July 4 given General Polovtsev a
written order to "arrest the Bolsheviks occupying the house of
Kshesinskaia, clear out the house, and occupy it with troops." At
this time, after the destruction of the editorial office and printing
plant, the question of the fate of the central headquarters of the
Bolsheviks became a very vital one. It was necessary to put the
residence in a state of defense. The Military Organization ap-
pointed Raskolnikov commander of the building. He took his

n *

THE "JULY DAYS' 9 : CULMINATION AND ROUT

duties in a broad way in a Kronstadt way sent requisitions for
cannon and even ordered a small warship to enter the mouth of
the Neva. Raskolnikov subsequently explained this step in the
following manner: "These military preparations were of course
made on my part not merely with a view to self-defense, since
there was a smell in the air not only of powder but of pogroms.
... I also thought and not, I believe, without foundation
that one good warship in the mouth of the Neva would be enough
to considerably shake the resolution of the Provisional Govern-
ment." All this is rather indefinite and none too serious. We may
rather assume that at five o'clock in the afternoon of July Jth the
leaders of the Military Organization, including Raskolnikov, had
not yet estimated the extent of the changes in the situation, and
hence at that moment, when the armed demonstration was com-
pelled to beat a hasty retreat in order not to turn into an armed
insurrection imposed by the enemy, some of the military leaders
made certain accidental and not well thought-out steps forward.
The young Kronstadt leaders did in this first action over-reach
themselves. But can you make a revolution without the help of
people who over-reach themselves? Indeed, does not a certain
percentage of light-mindedness enter as a constituent part into
all great human deeds? This time it came to nothing more than
instructions, and these moreover were soon annulled by Raskolni-
kov himself. During this time more and more alarming news
was pouring into the place. One man had seen in the windows of
a house on the opposite shore of the Neva machine guns aimed at
the Palace of Kshesinskaia; another had observed a column of
armored automobiles traveling in the same direction; a third
brought news of the approach of a detachment off Cossacks. Two
members of the Military Organization were sent to the com-
mander of the district to negotiate. Polovtsev assured the emis-
saries that the raid on fravia had been made without his knowl-
edge, and that no repressions were in preparation against the
Military Organization. In reality he was only awaiting sufficient
reinforcements from the front.

During this time, while Kronstadt was retreating, the Baltic
Fleet as a whole was still only getting ready to advance. The
principal part of the fleet was in the Finland waters, with a total

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

of about 70,000 sailors. An army corps was also located in Fin-
land, and ten thousand Russian workers were in the port factories
o Helsingfors. That was a good-sized fist of the revolution. The
pressure of the sailors and soldiers was so irresistible that even
the Helsingfors committee of the Social Revolutionaries had
come out against the Coalition, and in consequence all the soviet
bodies of the fleet and army in Finland had unanimously de-
manded that the Executive Committee take the power. In sup-
port of their demand the Baltic men were ready at any moment
to move into the mouth of the Neva. They were restrained, how-
ever, by the fear of weakening the naval line of defense, and
making it easy for the German fleet to attack Kronstadt and
Petrograd.

But here something completely unexpected occurred. The
Central Committee of the Baltic Fleet the so-called Centrobalt
called on the 4th of July an extraordinary session of the ship com-
mittees at which the president, Dybenko, read two secret
orders just received by the fleet commander and signed by the
assistant minister of the navy Dudarev. The first obliged the
Admiral Verderevsky to send four destroyers to Petrograd to
prevent by force the landing of sailors from the side of Kronstadt;
the second demanded of the commander of the fleet that he should
not on any pretext permit the departure of ships from Helsing-
fors to Kronstadt, not hesitating to sink disobedient ships with
submarines. Finding himself between two fires, and worried
most of all about his own head, the admiral anticipated events
by turning over the telegram to the Centrobalt with the an-
nouncement that he would not carry out the orders even if
countersigned by the Centrobalt. The reading of the telegram
startled the sailors. To be sure, they had been ready on any pre-
text to abuse Kerensky and the Compromisers in no kind-hearted
terms. But up to now this had been in their eyes an intra-soviet
struggle. A majority in the Executive Committee belonged to
the same parties as the majority in the Regional Committee of
Finland which had just come out for a soviet government. It
seemed clear enough that neither Mensheviks nor Social Revolu-
tionaries could possibly approve the sinking of ships which had
come out for the power of the Executive Committee. How could

THE "JULY DAYS"; CULMINATION AND ROUT

an old naval officer like Dudarev get mixed up in a family quarrel
of the Soviets, turning it into a naval battle? Only yesterday the
big battleships had been officially regarded as the bulwark of the
revolution and this in contrast to the backward destroyers and
submarines, which had hardly been touched by revolutionary
propaganda. Could it be that the government now seriously in-
tended to sink the battleships with the help of the submarines?

These facts simply could not find their way into the stub-
born skulls of the sailors. That order which justifiably seemed
to them to belong to the realm of nightmare was nevertheless a
legitimate July harvest of the March sowing. Already in April
the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries had begun to appeal
to the provinces against Petrograd, to the soldiers against the
workers, to the cavalry against the machine-gunners. They had
given the troops representative privileges in the Soviets above the
factories; they had favored the small and scattered enterprises as
against the giants of the metal industry. Themselves representing
the past, they had sought support in backwardness of all kinds.
With the ground slipping under their feet, they were now incit-
ing the rear guard against the advance guard. Politics has its
own logic, especially in times of revolution. Pressed from all sides,
the Compromisers had found themselves obliged to direct Ad-
miral Verderevsky to sink the more advanced battleships. Un-
fortunately for the Compromisers, the backward ones upon
whom they were relying were more and more striving to catch
up to those in advance. The submarine command was no less in-
dignant at Dudarev's orders than the commanders of the battle-
ships.

The men at the head of Centrobalt were not at all of the
Hamlet type. They lost no time in passing a resolution, together
with the members of the ship committees, to send immediately
to Petrograd the squadron destroyer Orphem, designated for the
sinking of the Kronstadters, in the first place to get informa-
tion as to what was happening there, and in the second "to
arrest the Assistant-Minister of the Navy, Dudarev." However
unexpected this decision may seem, it nevertheless clearly reveals
to what an extent the Baltic sailors were still inclined to regard
the Compromisers as a private opponent in contrast to any old

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

Dudarev whom they considered a public enemy. The Orpheus
entered the mouth o the Neva twenty-four hours after the
ten thousand armed Kronstadters had moored their vessels there.
But "'the correlation of forces had changed." For a whole day
the crew was not permitted to disembark. Only in the evening
a delegation consisting of sixty-seven sailors from the Centrobalt
and the ship's crews was admitted to the joint session of the Ex-
ecutive Committees, then engaged in casting up the first balance
of the July Days. The victors were luxuriating in their new vic-
tory. The spokesman, Voitinsky, was complacently describing
the hours of weakness and humiliation, in order the more sharply
to depict the triumph which followed, "The first unit which came
to our help," he said, "was the armored cars. We firmly intended
in case of violence from the side of the armed gang to open
fire. . . . Seeing the extent of the danger threatening the revolu-
tion we issued an order to certain units (on the front) to entrain
and come to the capital. . . /' A majority of that high assembly
were breathing out hatred for the Bolsheviks, and especially for
the sailors. It was in this atmosphere that the Baltic delegates ar-
rived armed with an order for the arrest of Dudarev. With a wild
yelp, a pounding of fists on tables, and a stamping of feet, the
victors greeted the reading of the resolution of the Baltic fleet.
Arrest Dudarev? Why, this gallant captain of the first rank was
only fulfilling his sacred duty to the revolution, which they, the
sailors, the rebels, the counter-revolutionists, were stabbing in
the back! In a special resolution the joint session solemnly de-
clared its solidarity with Dudarev. The sailors looked at the
orators and at each other with startled eyes. Only at this moment
did they begin to understand what had been taking place before
their eyes. The next day the whole delegation was arrested, and
completed its political education in jail! Immediately after that,
the president of the Centrobalt, the non-commissioned naval
officer Dybenko, who had followed them up, was arrested, and
after him also Admiral Verderevsky who had been summoned to
the capital to explain matters.

On the morning of the 6th the workers went back to work.
Only the troops summoned from the front were now demonstrat-
ing in the streets. Agents of the Intelligence Service were examin-

THE "JULY DAYS": CULMINATION AND ROUT

ing passports and making arrests right and left. A young worker,
Voinov, who was distributing the "Pravda Leaflet," published in
place of the destroyed Bolshevik paper, was killed in the streets by
a gang perhaps composed of these same intelligence men. The
Black Hundred elements were acquiring a taste for the putting
down of revolts. Plundering, violence, and in some places shoot-
ing continued in different parts of the city. In the course of the
day echelon after echelon arrived from the front the Cavalier
Division, the Don Cossack regiment, the Uhlan division, the
Izborsky, the Malorossisky, the Dragoon regiment, and others.
"The Cossack divisions, arriving in great numbers/* writes
Gorky's paper, "were in a very aggressive mood." Machine gun
fire was opened on the newly arrived Izborsky regiment in two
parts of the city. In both cases the machine guns were found in
an attic; those guilty were not discovered. In other places, too,
the arriving troops were shot at. The deliberate madness of this
shooting deeply disturbed the workers. It was clear that ex-
perienced 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.

The Compromisers joyfully welcomed the arriving regiments.
At a meeting of representatives of the troops, in the presence of
a great number of officers and junkers, our friend Voitinsky
unctuously explained: "Now along Milliony Street troops and
armored cars are traveling towards Palace Square to place them-
selves at the disposal of General Polovtsev, and this is our real
strength upon which we rely." To act as a political covering, four
socialist assistants were appointed to the commander of the dis-
trict: Avksentiev and Gotz from the Executive Committee,
Skobelev and Chernov from the Provisional Government. But
that did not save the commander. Kerensky subsequently boasted
to the White Guards that on returning from the front in the
July Days, he had discharged General Polovtsev for "irresolu-
tion."

Now at last it was possible to solve the so long postponed
problem: to clean up that wasp's nest of Bolsheviks in the house

THE ATTEMPTED

of Kshesinskaia. In social life in general, and particularly in a
time of revolution, secondary facts which act upon the imagina-
tion sometimes acquire through their symbolic meaning an
enormous significance. Thus a disproportionately large place in
the struggle against the Bolsheviks was occupied by the question
of the "seizure*' by Lenin of the Palace of Kshesinskaia, a court
ballerina famous not so much for her art as for her relations with
the male representatives of the Romanov dynasty. Her private
palace was the fruit of these relations the foundation of which
was laid down, it seems, by Nicholas II when still heir to the
throne. Before the war, people gossiped with a tinge of envious
respectfulness about this den of luxury, spurs, and diamonds
located opposite the "Winter Palace, But in wartime they more
frequently remarked; "Stolen goods." The soldiers expressed
themselves even more accurately* Arriving at a critical age, the
ballerina took up a career in patriotism, The outspoken Rodidanko
has this to say on that subject: "The high Commander-in-chief
(the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaievich) remarked that he was
aware of the participation and influence in artillery matters of
the ballerina, Kshesinskaia, through whom various firms had re-
ceived orders." It is no wonder if after the revolution the aban-
doned Palace of Kshesinskaia failed to awaken benevolent feel-
ings among the people. In those times when the revolution was
making an insatiable demand for quarters, the government never
dared lay its hands on a single private residence. To requisition
the peasants' horses for the war that is one thing; to requisition
vacant palaces for the revolution that is quite another. But the
masses of the people saw it otherwise*

On a search for suitable quarters, a reserve armored -car di-
vision had run into the residence of Kshesinskaia in the first days
of March, and occupied it: the ballerina had an excellent garage.
The division gladly turned over the upper story of the building
to the Petrograd committee of the Bolsheviks. The friendship
of the Bolsheviks with this armored-car division supplemented
their friendship with the machine-gunners. The occupation of the
palace, which occurred a few weeks before the arrival of Lenin,
passed almost unnoticed at first. The indignation against the
usurpers grew with the growth of the influence of the Bolsheviks.

THE "JULY DAYS": CULMINATION AND R.OUT

The wild stories in the newspapers about how Lenin was occupy-
ing the boudoir of the ballerina, and how all the decorations of
the palace had been shattered to pieces and torn up, were mere
lies. Lenin lived in the modest apartment of his sister. The
ballerina's furnishings were put away by the commendant of
the building and kept under seal. Sukhanov, who visited the palace
at the time of Lenin's arrival, has left an interesting description
of the quarters. "The chambers of the famous ballerina had a
rather strange and inappropriate look; the exquisite ceilings and
walls did not harmonize at all with the unpretentious furnishings,
the primitive tables, chairs, and benches set casually about ac-
cording to the demands of business. In general there was very
little furniture. Kshesinskaia's movable property had been put
away somewhere. . . ." Discreetly avoiding the question of the
armored-car division, the press represented Lenin as guilty of an
armed seizure of the house from the hands of a defenseless dev-
otee of art. This theme was developed in leading editorials and
feuilletons. Tattered workers and soldiers among those velvets
and silks and beautiful rugs! All the drawing-rooms of the capital
shuddered with moral indignation. As once the Girondists held
the Jacobins responsible for the September murders, the disap-
pearance of mattresses in the barracks, and the campaign for an
agrarian law, so now the Kadets and democrats accused the Bol-
sheviks of undermining the pillars of human morality and hawk-
ing and spitting on the polished floors of the Palace of Kshesin-
skaia. The dynastic ballerina became a symbol of culture trampled
under the hoofs of barbarism. This apotheosis gave wings to the
lady herself, and she complained to the court. The court decided
that the Bolsheviks should be removed from the premises. But
that was not quite so easy to do. "The armored cars on duty in
the courtyard looked sufficiently imposing," remembers Zalezh-
sky, then a member of the Petrograd committee. Moreover the
Machine Gun Regiment, and other units too, were ready in case
of need to back up the armored cars. On May 25, the bureau of
the Executive Committee, upon a complaint from the ballerina's
lawyer, recognized that "the interests of the revolution demand
submission to the decisions of the court." Beyond this platonic
aphorism, however, the Compromisers did not venture to the

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

extreme distress of the ballerina, who was not by nature inclined
to platonism.

The Central Committee, the Petrograd committee, and the
Military Organization, continued to work in the palace side by
side. "A continuous mass of people crowded into the house of
Kshesinskaia," says Raskolnikov. "Some would come on business
to this or that secretariat, others to the literature department, oth-
ers to the editorial offices of the soldiers* fravda, others to some
meeting or other. Meetings took place very often, sometimes con-
tinually either in the spacious wide hall below, or in the room
upstairs with a long table which had evidently been the dining-
room of the ballerina." From the palace balcony, above which
waved the impressive banner of the Central Committee, orators
carried on a continuous mass meeting, not only by day but by
night. Often out of the darkness some military detachment would
approach the building, or some crowd of workers with a demand
for an orator. Accidental groups of citizens would also stop be-
fore the balcony, their curiosity aroused by some uproar in the
newspapers. During the critical days hostile manifestations would
draw near to the building for a time, demanding the arrest of
Lenin and the driving out of the Bolsheviks. Under the streams
of people flowing past the palace one felt the seething depths of
the revolution. The house of Kshesinskaia reached its apogee in
the July days. "The chief headquarters of the movement/* says
Miliukov, "was not the Tauride Palace, but Lenin's citadel, the
house of Kshesinskaia with its classic balcony," The putting down
of the demonstration led fatally to the break-up of this staff head-
quarters of the Bolsheviks.

At three o'clock in the morning there advanced against the
house of Kshesinskaia and the Peter and Paul fortress separated
from each other by a strip of water the reserve battalion of the
Petrograd regiment, a machine gun detachment, a company of
Semenovtsi, a company of Preobrazhentsi, the training squad of
the Volynsky regiment, two cannon, and a detachment of eight
armored cars. At seven o'clock in the morning an assistant of the
commander of the district, the Social Revolutionary Kuzmin, de-
manded that the house be vacated. Not wishing to surrender their
weapons, the Kronstadters, of whom there remained only a hun-

THE "JUttf ' P' CULMINATION AND ROUT

dred and twenty in the palace, dashed across to the Peter and Paul
fortress. When the government troops occupied the house, they
found nobody there but a few employees. There then remained
the problem of the Peter and Paul fortress. Young Red Guards, as
we remember, had gone over from the Vyborg district in order in
case of need to help the sailors. "On the fortress walls," one of
them relates, "stood a number of cannon, evidently set up by the
sailors in case anything should happen. ... It began to look like
bloody doings." But diplomatic negotiations settled the problem
peacefully. At the direction of the Central Committee, Stalin pro-
posed to the compromise leaders to adopt joint measures for the
bloodless termination of the action of the Kronstadt men. In com-
pany with the Menshevik, Bogdanov, he had no difficulty in per-
suading the sailors to accept Lieber's ultimatum of the day before.
When the government armored cars approached the fortress, a
deputation came out of its gates announcing that the garrison
would submit to the Executive Committee. The weapons given
up by the sailors and soldiers were carried away in trucks. The dis-
armed sailors were sent to the barges for return to Kronstadt. The
surrender of the fortress may be considered the concluding epi-
sode of the July movement. A bicycle brigade from the front
occupied the house of Kshesinskaia and the Peter and Paul for-
tress. This brigade in its turn, will go over on the eve of the
October revolution, to the Bolsheviks.

CHAPTER III

COULD THE BOLSHEVIKS HAVE SEIZED THE
POWER IN JULY?

THE demonstration forbidden by the government and the
Executive Committee had been a colossal one. On the sec-
ond day not less than five hundred thousand people par-
ticipated. Sukhanov, who cannot find words strong enough for
the "blood and filth" of the July Days, nevertheless writes: "Po-
litical results aside, it was impossible not to look with admiration
upon that amazing movement of the popular masses. Even while
deeming it fatal, one could not but feel a rapture in its gigantic
spontaneous scope." According to the reckonings of the Commis-
sion of Inquiry, 29 men were killed and 1 14 wounded about an
equal number on each side*

That the movement had begun from below, irrespective of the
Bolsheviks to a certain extent against their willwas at first
recognized even by the Compromisers. But on the night of July 3,
and yet more on the following day, official opinion began to
change. The movement was declared an insurrection, the Bolshe-
viks its organizers. "Under the slogan, 'All Power to the Soviets/ "
writes Stankevich, a man close to Kerensky, "there occurred an
organized insurrection of the Bolsheviks against the majority of
the Soviets, consisting at that time of the defensist parties." This
charge of organizing an insurrection was something more than a
method of political struggle. During the month of June those
people had well convinced themselves of the strong influence of
the Bolsheviks on the masses, and they now simply refused to be-
lieve that a movement of workers and soldiers could have surged
up over the heads of the Bolsheviks. Trotsky tried to explain the
situation at a session of the Executive Committee: "They accuse
us of creating the mood of the masses; that is wrong, we only tried
to formulate it." In books published by their enemies after the
October revolution, particularly in Sukhanov, you will find it

COULD BOLSHEVIKS HAVE SEIZED POWER IN JULY?

asserted that the Bolsheviks covered up their actual aim only in
consequence of the defeat of the July insurrection, hiding behind
the spontaneous movement of the masses. But could one possibly
conceal, like a buried treasure, the plans of an armed insurrection
which drew into its whirlpool hundreds of thousands of people?
Were not the Bolsheviks compelled in October to summon the
masses quite openly to insurrection, and to make preparations for
it before the eyes of all? If no one discovered such a plan in July,
it is only because there was none. The entry of the machine-
gunners and Kronstadters into the Peter and Paul fortress with
the consent of its permanent garrison upon which "seizure" the
Compromisers especially insist was not at all an act of armed in-
surrection. That building situated on an island a prison rather
than a military post might perhaps serve as a refuge for men in
retreat, but it offers nothing whatever to attacking forces. In
making their way to the Tauride Palace the demonstrators passed
calmly by the most important government buildings to occupy
which the Putilov detachment of the Red Guard would have been
an adequate force. They took possession of the Peter and Paul
fortress exactly as they took possession of the streets, the sentry
posts, the public squares. An additional motive was its nearness to
the Palace of Kshesinskaia to whose aid it could have come in case
of need.

The Bolsheviks made every effort to reduce the July move-
ment to a demonstration. But did it not, nevertheless, by the very
logic of things transcend these limits? This political question is
harder to answer than the criminal indictment. Appraising the
July Days immediately after they occurred, Lenin wrote: "An
anti-government demonstration that would be the most for-
mally 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." When
the masses once get hold of some idea, they want to realize it. Al-
though trusting the Bolshevik party, the workers, and still more
the soldiers, had not yet acquired a conviction that they ought to
come out only upon the summons of the party and under its lead-
ership. The experiences of February and April had taught them
rather the opposite. When Lenin said in May that the workers and

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTF : R^EVOLUTION

peasants were a hundred times more revolutionary than the party,
he undoubtedly generalized this February and April experience.
But the masses had also generalised the experience in their own
way. They were saying to themselves: "Kven the Bolsheviks are
dawdling and holding us back." The demonstrators were entirely
ready in the July Days to liquidate the official government if that
should seem necessary in the course of business* In case of resist-
ance from the bourgeoisie they were ready to employ arms. To
that extent there was an element of armed insurrection. If, in
spite of this, it was not carried through even to the middle to say
nothing of the end that is because the Compromisers confused
the whole picture*

In the first volume of this work we described in detail the
paradox of the February regime. The petty bourgeois democrats,
Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries received the power from
the hands of the revolutionary people* They had not set them-
selves the task of winning it. They had not conquered the power,
They were put in possession of it against their will. Against the
will of the masses, they tried to hand over this power to the
imperialist bourgeoisie. The people did not trust the Liberals,
but they trusted the Compromisers. The Compromisers, however,
did not trust themselves. And in this they were in a way right.
Even in turning over the whole power to the bourgeoisie, the
democrats had continued to be somebody. But once they had
seized the power in their own hands, they would have become
nothing at all From the democrats the power would almost auto-
matically have slid into the hands of the Bolsheviks. This was in-
evitable, for it was involved in the organic insignificance of the
Russian democracy*

The July demonstrators wanted to turn over the power to the
Soviets, but for this the Soviets had to agree to take it. Even in the
capital, however, where a majority of the workers and the active
elements of the garrison were already for the Bolsheviks, a ma-
jority in the Soviet owing to that law of inertia which applies to
every representative system still belonged to those petty bour-
geois parties who regarded an attempt against the power of the
bourgeoisie as an attempt against themselves. The workers and
soldiers felt clearly enough the contrast between their rnoods and

COULD BOLSHEVIKS HAVE SEIZED POWER IN JULY?

the policy of the Soviet that is, between their today and their
yesterday. In coming out for a government of the Soviets, they by
no means gave their confidence to the compromisist majority in
those Soviets. But they did not know how to settle with this ma-
jority. To overthrow it by violence would have meant to dissolve
the Soviets instead of giving them the power. Before they could
find the path to a change of the personal composition of the Soviets,
the workers and soldiers tried to subject the Soviets to their will by
the method of direct action.

In a proclamation of the two Executive Committees on the
subject of the July Days, the Compromisers indignantly appealed
to the workers and soldiers against the demonstrators, who, they
alleged, had "attempted by force of arms to impose their will
upon your elected representatives." As though the demonstrators
and the electors were not merely two names for the same workers
and soldiers! As though electors have not a right to impose their
will upon those they have elected! And as though this will con-
sisted of anything else but the demand that they should fulfill
their duty namely, get possession of the power in the interests
of the people! The masses concentrated around the Tauride Palace
were shouting into the ears of the Executive Committee the very
same phrase which that nameless worker had thrust up at
Chernov with his horny fist: "Take the power when they give it
to you!" In answer the Compromisers sent for the Cossacks. These
gentlemen of the democracy preferred a civil war against the
people to a bloodless transfer of power into their own hands. It
was the White Guards who fired the first shots, but the political
atmosphere of the civil war was created by the Mensheviks and
Social Revolutionaries.

Running into this armed resistance from the very institution
to which they wished to turn over the power, the workers and
soldiers lost a clear sense of their goal. From their mighty mass
movement the political axis had been torn out. The July cam-
paign was thus reduced to a demonstration partially carried out
with the instruments of armed insurrection. Or, it would be
equally true to say: It was a semi-insurrection, directed toward
goals which did not permit other methods than those proper to a
demonstration.

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

Although declining the power, the Compromisers had not
wholly given it over to the Liberals* This was both because they
feared them the petty bourgeois always fears the big bourgeois
and because they feared for them, A pure Radet ministry
would have been immediately overthrown by the masses. More-
over, as Miliukov rightly points out, M In struggling against inde-
pendent armed actions, the Executive Committee of the Soviet
was fortifying its own right, proclaimed in the tumultuous days
of the 20th and 21st of April, to deploy at its own discretion the
armed forces of the Petrograd garrison/* The Compromisers were
continuing to steal the power from under their own pillows. 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.

The Executive Committee went even farther in the July
Days: it formally proclaimed its sovereignty. **If the revolution-
ary democracy deemed necessary a transfer of all power into the
hands of the Soviets," says their resolution of July 4, "the decision
of that question could belong only to a plenary session of the Ex-
ecutive Committees." "While declaring the demonstration in favor
of the soviet power a counter-revolutionary insurrection, the Ex-
ecutive Committee thus at the same time constituted itself the
supreme power, and decided the fate of the government,

When at dawn on the 5th of July the "loyal troops" entered
the Tauride Palace, their commander reported that his detach-
ment submitted to the Executive Committee wholly and without
reserve. Not a word about the government! But the rebels also
wanted to submit to the Executive Committee in the character of
a sovereign power. In surrendering the Peter and Paul fortress,
the garrison considered it sufficient to announce their submission
to the Executive Committee. Nobody demanded a submission to
the official authority. The troops summoned from the front also
placed themselves wholly at the disposal of the Executive Com-
mittee. "Why, in that case, was there any shedding of blood?

If this conflict had taken place toward the end of the Middle
Ages, both sides in slaughtering each other would have cited the
same text from the Bible. Formalist historians would afterwards
have come to the conclusion that they were fighting about the

COULD BOLSHEVIKS HAVE SEIZED POWER IN JULY?

correct interpretation of texts. The craftsmen and illiterate peas-
ants of the Middle Ages had a strange passion, as is well known,
for allowing themselves to be killed in the cause of philological
subtleties in the Revelations of Saint John, just as the Russian Sep-
aratists submitted to extermination in order to decide the ques-
tion whether one should cross himself with two fingers or three.
In reality there lies hidden under such symbolic formulae in the
Middle Ages no less than now a conflict of life interests which
we must learn to uncover. The very same verse of the Evangelist
meant serfdom for some, freedom for others.

But there is a far more fresh and modern analogy. In the June
days of 1848 in France, the same shout went up on both sides of
the barricades: "Long live the Republic!" To the petty bourgeois
idealist, therefore, the June fight has seemed a misunderstanding
caused by the inattention of one side, the hot-headedness of the
other. In reality the bourgeoisie wanted a republic for themselves,
the workers a republic for everybody. Political slogans serve
of tcner to disguise interests than to call them by name.

In spite of the paradoxical character of the February regime
scribbled all over to boot with Marxian and Narodnik hiero-
glyphics by the Compromisers the actual inter-relation of
classes is easy enough to see. It is only necessary to keep in view the
twofold nature of the compromise parties. The educated petty
bourgeois oriented himself upon the workers and peasants, but
hobnobbed with the titled landlords and owners of sugar fac-
tories. While forming a part of the soviet system, through which
the demands of the lower classes found their way up to the official
state, the Executive Committee served at the same time as a politi-
cal screen for the bourgeoisie. The possessing classes "submitted"
to the Executive Committee so long as it pushed the power over
to their side. The masses submitted to the Executive Committee,
in so far as they hoped it might become an instrument of the rule
of workers and peasants. Contradictory class tendencies were in-
tersecting in the Tauride Palace and they both covered themselves
with the name of the Executive Committee the one through un-
conscious 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?

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

But if the Compromisers did not want to take the power, and
the bourgeoisie did not have the strength to take it, maybe the
Bolsheviks could have seized the helm in July? In the course of
those two critical days the power In Petrograd completely
dropped from the hands of the governmental institutions. The
Executive Committee then felt for the first time its own complete
impotence. In such circumstances it would have been easy enough
for the Bolsheviks to seize the power* They could have seized the
power, too, at certain individual points in the provinces. That be-
ing the case, was the Bolshevik party right in refraining from an
insurrection? Might they not, fortifying themselves in the capital
and in certain industrial districts, have subsequently extended
their rule to the whole country? That is an important question.
Nothing gave more help to the triumph of imperialism and re-
action in Europe at the end of the war than those few months of
Kerenskyism, exhausting revolutionary Russia and immeasurably
damaging her moral authority in the eyes of the warring armies
and of the toiling masses of Europe who had been hopefully
awaiting some new word from the revolution. 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. This
would not only have given the Soviets an immense predominance
in conducting the negotiations with Germany, but would have
exerted a mighty influence on the fortunes of war and peace in
Europe. The prospect was only too enticing!

But 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 Octo-
ber 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.
Although able to seize the power, they nevertheless offered it to
the Executive Committee. The proletariat of the capital, although
inclining toward the Bolsheviks in its overwhelming majority,

COULD BOLSHEVIKS HAVE SEIZED POWER IN JULY?

had still not broken the February umbilical cord attaching it to
the Compromisers. Many still cherished the illusion that every-
thing 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 compromisism
with the bourgeoisie, and the bourgeoisie had become so counter-
revolutionary, that there was no longer any use talking about a
peaceful development."

If the proletariat was not politically homogeneous and not
sufficiently resolute, still less so was the peasant army. By its
conduct on the 3rd and 4th of July the garrison made it wholly
possible for the Bolsheviks to seize the power, but nevertheless
there were neutral units which by the evening of the 4th were
decisively inclining to the side of the patriotic party. By July ?,,
the neutral regiments had taken their stand with the Executive
Committee, and the regiments tending towards Bolshevism were
striving to assume a color of neutrality. It was this, far more than
the belated arrival of troops from the front, that gave a free hand
to the authorities. If the Bolsheviks in the heat of the moment had
seized the power on the evening of July 4th, the Petrograd garri-
son would not itself have held it, and would have hindered the
workers from defending it against the inevitable blow from
without.

The situation looked still less favorable in the active army.
The struggle for peace and land had made the army extremely
hospitable, especially since the June offensive, to the slogans of the
Bolsheviks, but the so-called "spontaneous" Bolshevism of the
soldier was not in the least identified in his consciousness with a
definite party, with its Central Committee, or its leaders. The
soldiers' letters of those times clearly depict this condition of the

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

army. "Remember, Messers Ministers, and all you chief leaders,"
writes the crooked hand of a soldier from the front, "we don't
understand very well about parties, only that the future and the
past are not far off. The Tzar sent you to Siberia and sat you in
jail, and we will sit you on our bayonets," In these lines an extreme
bitterness against those higher up who are deceiving the soldiers,
is united with a recognition of the soldiers* own helplessness.
"We don't understand very well about parties." The army muti-
nied continually against the war and the officers, making use of
slogans from the Bolshevik dictionary. But it was far from ready
to raise an insurrection in order to give the power to the Bolshe-
vik party. For the subduing of Petrograd the government picked
out reliable detachments from the troops nearest the capital with-
out encountering active resistance from other detachments, and
it transported the echelons without resistance from the railroad
workers. The discontented, rebellious, easily excitable army was
still formless politically. It still contained too few compact Bol-
shevik nuclei capable of giving a single direction to the thought
and activity of the crumbly soldier mass.

On the other hand the Compromisers, in order to turn the
front against Petrograd and the peasant rear, made successful use
of that poisoned weapon which in March the reaction had so
carefully tried to bring to bear against the Soviet. The Social
Revolutionaries and Mensheviks said to the soldiers on the front:
The Petrograd garrison, under the influence of the Bolsheviks, is
refusing to send replacements; the workers do not want to work
for the necessities of the front; if the peasant listens to the Bolshe-
viks and seizes the land now, nothing will be left for the men at
the front. The soldiers needed some supplementary experience
before they would understand for whom the government was
saving the land, whether for the peasants at the front or the land-
lords.

Between Petrograd and the active army stood the provinces.
Their reaction to the July events serves in itself as a very im-
portant a posteriori criterion for deciding the question whether
the Bolsheviks were right in refraining from a direct struggle for
power in July. Even in Moscow the pulse of the revolution was
incomparably weaker than in Petrograd. In the session of the

COULD BOLSHEVIKS HAVE SEIZED POWER IN JULY?

Moscow committee of the Bolsheviks stormy debates arose. Indi-
viduals belonging to the extreme left wing of the party such,
for example, as Bubnov proposed that they occupy the Post
Office, the telegraph and telephone stations, the editorial offices
of Russkoe Slovo that is, that they take the road of insurrection.
The committee, very moderate in its general spirit, decisively re-
jected these proposals, considering that the Moscow masses were
not in the least ready for such action. It was nevertheless decided
to hold a demonstration in spite of the veto of the Soviet. A con-
siderable crowd of workers marched to Skobelevsky Square with
the same slogans as in Petrograd, but with far from the same en-
thusiasm. The garrison reacted by no means unanimously; indi-
vidual units joined the procession, but only one of them came
fully armed. The artillery soldier, Davidovsky, who subsequently
took a serious part in the October struggles, testifies in his mem-
oirs that Moscow was not prepared for the July Days, and that
the leaders of the demonstration were left with a bad taste in their
mouths by its unsuccess.

In Ivanovo-Voznesensk, the textile capital where the soviet
was already under the leadership of the Bolsheviks, news came of
the events in Petrograd, accompanied by a rumor that the Pro-
visional Government had fallen. At a night session of the Execu-
tive Committee it was resolved, as a preliminary measure, to es-
tablish control over the telephone and telegraph. "Work was
stopped in the factories on July 6. Forty thousand took part in
the demonstration, many of them armed. When it was learned
that the Petrograd demonstration had not led to victory, the
Ivanovo- Voznesensk soviet hastily beat a retreat.

In Riga, under influence of the news from Petrograd, a clash
occurred on the night of July 6 between Lettish sharpshooters in-
clined towards Bolshevism and the "Battalion of Death," the pa-
triotic battalion being compelled to retire. The Riga soviet
adopted on that same night a resolution in favor of a government
of the Soviets. Two days later a similar resolution was adopted in
Ekaterinburg, the capital of the Urals. The fact that this slogan of
Soviet Power, which had been advanced in the early months only
in the name of the party, became henceforward the program of
individual local Soviets indubitably meant a gigantic step for-

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER^REVOWTION

ward. But from resolutions in favor of a Soviet Power to insurrec-
tion under the banner of the Bolsheviks, there was still a consid-
erable road to travel.

In certain parts of the country the Petrograd events served as
a stimulus to set off acute conflicts of a private character. In
Nizhni-Novgorod, where some soldiers on furlough had long
been resisting their entrapment for the front, junkers sent from
Moscow to enforce orders aroused the indignation of two local
regiments by their violence. Shooting followed, and men were
killed and wounded. The junkers surrendered and were disarmed.
The authorities disappeared. A punitive expedition set out from
Moscow with three kinds of troops. At its head was the com-
mander of the Moscow district, the impulsive Colonel Verkhov-
sky a future War Minister of Kerensky and the president of
the Moscow soviet, the old Menshevik Khinchuk, a man of no
military temper, the future head of the cooperatives, and after-
ward soviet ambassador in Berlin. However, they found nobody
to subdue, as a committee elected by the mutinous soldiers had
fully restored order by the time they arrived.

In Kiev, during approximately the same hours of the same
night, and on the same ground refusal to go to the front sol-
diers of the regiment named after the Hetman Polubotko muti-
nied to the number of five thousand, seized a store of weapons,
occupied the fortress and the district headquarters, and arrested
the commander and the head of the militia. The panic in the city
lasted several hours, until by the combined efforts of the military
authorities, a committee of social organizations, and the institu-
tions of the central Ukrainian Rada, the arrestees were liberated
and the greater part of the mutinous troops disarmed,

In far away Krasnoyarsk the Bolsheviks, thanks to the mood
of the garrison, felt so strong that, in spite of the wave of reaction
already gathering in the country, they held a demonstration on
July 9, in which eight to ten thousand people took part, a ma-
jority of them soldiers. A detachment of 400 soldiers with artil-
lery was moved against Krasnoyarsk from Irkutsk, led by the dis-
trict military commander, the Social Revolutionary, Krakovetsky.
During the two days of conferences and negotiations necessitated
by the two-power regime, the punitive detachment became so

COULD BOLSHEVIKS HAVE SEIZED POWER IN JULY?

demoralized by the soldiers' agitation that the commissar has-
tened to send them back to Irkutsk. But Krasnoyarsk was upon
the whole an exception.

In a majority of the provinces and county seats, the situation
was incomparably less favorable. In Samara, for instance, the
local Bolshevik organization, upon receiving news of the fights in
the capital, "awaited the signal for action, although there was al-
most nobody they could count on." One of the local members of
the party says: "The workers had begun to sympathize with the
Bolsheviks" but it was impossible to hope that they would go into
a fight; it was still less possible to count on the soldiers. As for the
Bolshevik organizations: "They were altogether weak; we were a
mere handful. In the soviet of workers deputies there were a few
Bolsheviks, but in the soldiers' soviet there was, it seems, not a
single one; and moreover the soviet consisted almost exclusively
of officers." The principal cause of this weak and unfavorable re-
action 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 re-
serves.

Thus 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 col-
lapse 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. The
Bolsheviks had no doubt, that the break in the mood of the masses
would be very abrupt when it came. Then it would be clear what
should be undertaken. Their reckoning was absolutely right.
Events, however, have their own logic which takes no account of
political reckonings, and this time events came down cruelly on
the heads of the Bolsheviks.

The failure of the offensive became catastrophic on the 6th of

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

July, when the Germans broke through the Russian troops on a
front twelve versts l long and to a depth of ten versts. The breach
became known in the capital on July 7, at the very height of the
punitive and repressive activities. Many months later, when pas-
sions ought to have quieted down a little, or at least become a little
more sensible, Stankevich not one of the most vicious enemies
of Bolshevism was nevertheless still writing about the "mys-
terious sequence of events" to be observed in the breach at
Tarnopol following just after the July Days in Petrograd. Those
people did not see, or did not want to see, the real sequence of
events the fact that a hopeless offensive begun under the whip
of the Entente could not but lead to military catastrophe and,
simultaneously therewith, to an outbreak of indignation in the
masses deceived in their hopes of the revolution. But what differ-
ence does it make what the real concatenation of events was? The
temptation to link up the Petrograd manifestation with the mis-
fortune at the front was too strong. The patriotic press not only
did not conceal the reverses, but exaggerated them with all its
might, not hesitating even to reveal military secrets printing
the names of divisions and regiments and indicating their posi-
tion. "Beginning on July 8," Miliukov confesses, ''the newspapers
began purposely to print outspoken telegrams from the front
which struck Russian society like a clap of thunder/' And that
was their purpose to shock, to frighten, to deafen, in order the
more easily to link up the Bolsheviks with the Germans.

Provocation undoubtedly played a certain role in the events
at the front as well as on the streets of Petrograd. After the Febru-
ary revolution the government had thrown over into the active
army a large number of former gendarmes and policemen. None
of them of course wanted to fight* They were more afraid of the
Russian soldiers than of the Germans. In order to get their past
forgotten, they would simulate the most extreme moods of the
army, incite the soldiers against the officers, come out loudest of
all against discipline, and often openly give themselves out for
Bolsheviks. Bound naturally together as accomplices, they created
a kind of special Brotherhood of Cowardice and Villainy.
Through them would penetrate and quickly spread through the

1 A verst is very nearly % of a mile.

COULD BOLSHEVIKS HAVE SEIZED POWER IN JULY?

army the most fantastic rumors, in which ultra-revolutionism
was combined with Black Hundredism. In critical hours these
creatures would give the first signals for panic. The press more
than once referred to this demoralizing work of the police and
gendarmes. No less frequent references of this kind are to be
found in the secret documents of the army itself. But the high
command remained silent, preferring to identify the Black Hun-
dred provocateurs with the Bolsheviks. And now, after the col-
lapse of the offensive, this method was legalized, and the Menshe-
vik papers endeavored not to fall behind the dirtiest sheets of the
chauvinists. "With shouts about "Anarcho-Bolsheviks" and Ger-
man agents, and about former gendarmes, they succeeded for a
time in drowning out the question of the general condition of the
army and of the policy of peace. "Our deep breach on the Lenin
front," Prince Lvov openly boasted, "has incomparably more im-
portance for Russia in my firm opinion than the breach made by
the Germans on the southwestern front. . . ." The respected
head of the government was like Rodzianko, the Lord Chamber-
lain, in that he did not know when to keep still.

If it had been possible to restrain the masses from demonstrat-
ing on July 3-4, the demonstration would inevitably have broken
out as a result of the Tarnopol breach. However, a delay even of a
few days would have brought important changes in the political
situation. The movement would have assumed at once a broader
scope, taking in not only the provinces but also, to a considerable
degree, the front. The government would have been exposed po-
litically, and would have found it incomparably more difficult to
lay the blame upon "traitors" in the rear. The situation of the
Bolshevik party would have been more advantageous in every
respect. However, even in that case the thing could not have been
carried to the point of an immediate conquest of power. Only
this much, indeed, can be confidently affirmed: If the July move-
ment had broken out a week later, the reaction would not have
come off so victorious. It was just that "mysterious sequence" of
the date of the demonstration and the date of the breach which
counted heavily against the Bolsheviks. 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 ATTEMPTED COUNT ER-REVOLUT JON

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.

In April, June, and July, the principal actors were the same:
the Liberals, the Compromisers and the Bolsheviks. At all these
stages the masses were trying to crowd the bourgeoisie out of the
government. But the difference in the political consequences of
mass interference in the several cases was enormous. It was the
bourgeoisie who suffered in consequence of the "April days." The
annexation policy was condemned in words at least; the Kadet
party was humiliated; the portfolio of foreign affairs was taken
from it. In June the movement came to nothing. A gesture was
made against the Bolsheviks, but the blow was not struck. In July
the Bolshevik party was accused of treason, shattered, deprived of
food and drink. Whereas in April Miliukov had been forced out
of the government, in July Lenin was forced underground.

"What was the cause of this sharp change occurring in a period
of ten weeks? It is quite obvious that in the ruling circles a serious
shift had occurred to the side of the liberal bourgeoisie. However,
in that same period April to July the mood of the masses had
sharply shifted to the side of the Bolsheviks. These two opposing
processes developed in close dependence one upon the other. The
more the workers and soldiers closed up around the Bolsheviks, the
more resolutely were the Compromisers compelled to support the
bourgeoisie. In April the leaders of the Executive Committee,
worrying about their own influence, could still come one step to
meet the masses and throw Miliukov overboard supplying him,
to be sure, with a reliable life-belt. In July the Compromisers
joined the bourgeoisie and the officers in raiding the Bolsheviks.
The change in the correlation of forces was thus caused this time,
too, by a shift of the least stable of political forces, the petty
bourgeois democracy its abrupt movement to the side of the
bourgeois counter-revolution.

But if this is so, were the Bolsheviks right in joining the demon-
stration and assuming responsibility for it? On July 3, Tomsky
expounded the thought of Lenin: "It is impossible to talk of a

COULD BOLSHEVIKS HAVE SEIZED POWER IN JULY?

manifestation at this moment unless we want a new revolution." In
that case how could the party a few hours later stand at the head
of an armed demonstration without summoning the masses to a
new re volution? -Doctrinaires will see inconsistency here or still
worse, political light-mindedness. Sukhanov, for instance, sees the
matter in this way, and incorporates in his "Notes" no few ironi-
cal references to the vacillation of the Bolshevik leadership. The
masses take part in events, however, not at the bidding of doc-
trinaires, but at whatever time this flows inevitably from their
own political development. The Bolshevik leadership understood
that only a new revolution could change the political situation,
but the workers and soldiers did not yet understand this. The Bol-
shevik leadership saw clearly that the heavy reserves the front
and the provinces needed time to make their own inferences
from the adventure of the offensive. But the advanced ranks were
rushing into the street under the influence of that same adven-
ture. They combined a most radical understanding of the task
with illusions as to its methods. The warnings of the Bolsheviks
were ineffective. The Petrograd workers and soldiers had to test
the situation with their own experience. And their armed demon-
stration was such a test. But the test might, against the will of
the masses, have turned into a general battle and by the same
token into a decisive defeat. In such a situation the party dared
not stand aside. To wash one's hands in the water of strategical
morals would have meant simply to betray the workers and
soldiers to their enemies. The party of the masses was compelled to
stand on the same ground on which the masses stood, in order,
while not in the least sharing their illusions, to help them make the
necessary inferences with the least possible loss. Trotsky answered
in the press the innumerable critics of those days: "We do not
consider it necessary to justify ourselves before anybody for not
having stood aside waiting while General Polovtsev 'conversed'
with the demonstrators. In any case our participation could not
possibly have increased the number of victims, nor converted a
chaotic armed manifestation into a political insurrection. 3 '

A prototype of the July Days is to be found in all the old
revolutions with various, but generally speaking unfavorable,
and frequently catastrophic, results. This stage is involved in the

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

inner mechanics of a bourgeois revolution, inasmuch as that class
which sacrifices most for the success of the revolution and hopes
the most from it, receives the least of all The natural law of the
process is perfectly clear. 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 reac-
tion. This "revolutionary" bourgeoisie provokes the indignation
of the popular masses by those same measures with which it strives
to win the good will of the classes it has overthrown. The disap-
pointment of the masses follows very quickly; it follows even be-
fore their vanguard has cooled off after the revolutionary strug-
gle. The people imagine that with a new blow they can carry
through, or correct, that which they did not accomplish deci-
sively enough before. Hence the impulse to a new revolution, a
revolution without preparation, without program, without estima-
tion of the reserves, without calculation of consequences. On the
other hand those bourgeois layers which have arrived at the power
are in a way only waiting for a stormy outbreak from below, in
order to make the attempt decisively to settle accounts with the
people. Such is the social and psychological basis of that supple-
mentary semi-revolution, which has more than once in history
become the starting-point of a victorious counter-revolution.

On July 17, 1791, on the Champs de Mars, Lafayette fired on
a peaceful demonstration of republicans attempting to bring a
petition to the National Assembly which was engaged in screen-
ing the treachery of the monarchical power, just as the Russian
Compromisers one hundred and twenty-six years later were
screening the treachery of the Liberals. The royalist bourgeoisie
hoped with a timely bath of blood to settle accounts with the
party of the revolution forever, The republican leaders, still not
feeling strong enough for victory, declined the battle and that
was entirely reasonable. They even hastened to separate themselves
from the petitioners and that was, to say the least, unworthy and
a mistaken policy. The regime of the bourgeois terror compelled
the Jacobins to quiet down for several months, Robespierre took
shelter with the carpenter Duplay. Desmoulins went into hiding.
Danton spent several weeks in England, But the royalist provoca-

COULD BOLSHEVIKS HAVE SEIZED POWER IN JULY?

tion nevertheless failed: the settlement on the Champ de Mars did
not prevent the republican movement from going on to victory.
The great French revolution thus had its "July Days" both in
the political and the calendar sense of the word.

Fifty-seven years later in France, the "July Days" came in
June and were incomparably more colossal and tragic. The so-
called "June Days" of 1848 grew irresistibly out of the February
overturn. The French bourgeoisie had proclaimed in the hour of
its victory "the right to labor" just as in 1789 it announced a
great many admirable things, just as in 1914 it swore that it was
now waging its last war. Out of that vainglorious "right to labor"
arose those pitiful national sweatshops where a hundred thousand
workers, after winning the power for their bosses, got a wage of
twenty-three sous a day. Only a few weeks later the republican
bourgeoisie, generous of phrase but stingy of money, could find
no words insulting enough for these "spongers" living on a na-
tional starvation dole. In the abundance of those February prom-
ises and the cold-bloodedness of the pre-June provocations, the
national traits of the French bourgeoisie find admirable expres-
sion. But even without provocation, the Parisian worker with the
February weapons still in his hands could not help reacting to the
contrast between gorgeous program and miserable reality that
intolerable contrast every day gnawing at his stomach and his
conscience. With what cool and barely concealed calculation did
Cavaignac before the eyes of the whole dominant society, permit
an insurrection to develop in order the better to drown it in blood!
No less than 12,000 workers were slaughtered by the republican
bourgeoisie, no less than 20,000 were imprisoned, in order to
divest the remainder of their faith in that "right to labor" which
the bourgeoisie had proclaimed. Without plan, without program,
without leadership, the movement of the June days of 1 848 was
like a mighty and unrestrainable reflex action of the proletariat.
Deprived of their most elementary necessities and insulted in their
highest hopes, the insurrectionary workers were not only put
down but slandered. The left democrat, Flaucon, a follower of
Ledru-Rollin, a predecessor of Tseretelli, assured the National
Assembly that the insurrectionaries had been bribed by monarch-
ists and foreign governments. The Compromisers of 1848 did not

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

even have to have a war atmosphere in order to discover English
and Russian gold in the pockets of the rebels. It was in this way
that the democrats laid down the road to Bonapartism.

The gigantic outbreak of the Commune bore the same rela-
tion to the September overturn of 1870, as the June Days to the
February revolution of 1848. That March uprising of the Parisian
proletariat was least of all a matter of strategic calculation. It re-
sulted from a tragic combination of circumstances, supplemented
by one of those acts of provocation in which the French bourgeoisie
is so inventive when fear puts the spurs to its spiteful will. Against
the plans of the ruling clique, which wished above all to disarm
the people, the workers wanted to defend that Paris which they
had first tried to make their own. The National Guard had given
them an armed organization one very close to the soviet type
and it had given them political leadership in the person of its Cen-
tral Committee. In consequence of unfavorable objective condi-
tions and political mistakes, Paris became opposed to France
misunderstood, not supported, in part actually betrayed by the
provinces and fell into the hands of the enraged men of Ver-
sailles with Bismarck and Moltke behind their backs. The de-
praved and beaten officers of Napoleon III proved indispensable
hangmen in the service of the gentle Marianne, whom the Prus-
sians in heavy boots had just freed from the embraces of a false
Bonaparte. In the Paris Commune the reflex protest of the prole-
tariat against the deceitf ulness of a bourgeois revolution first rose
to the height of proletarian revolution but rose only to fall im-
mediately.

Spartacus Week in January 1919 in Berlin belonged to the
same type of intermediate, semi-revolution as the July Days in
Petrograd, Owing to the prevailing position of the proletariat in
the German nation, especially in its industry, the November revo-
lution automatically transferred the state sovereignty to the
Workers' and Soldiers* Soviet. But the proletariat was politically
identical with the Social Democracy, which in turn identified
itself with the bourgeois regime. The independent party occupied
in the German revolution the place which in Russia belonged to
the Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. The thing lacking was
a Bolshevik party.

COULD BOLSHEVIKS HAVE SEIZED POWER IN JULY?

Every day after the 9th of November gave the German work-
ers a vivid feeling as though of something slipping from their
hands, being withdrawn, sliding through their fingers. The desire
to keep what they had won, to fortify themselves, to put up a re-
sistance, was growing from day to day. And this defensive tend-
ency lay at the bottom of the January fights of 1919. Spartacus
"Week began, not in the manner of a strategy calculated by the
party, but in the manner of a pressure from the indignant lower
ranks. It developed around a question of third-rate importance,
that of retaining the office of chief -of -police, although it was in
its tendencies the beginning of a new revolution. Both organiza-
tions participating in the leadership, the Spartacus League and the
Left Independents, were taken unawares; they went farther than
they intended and at the same time did not go through to the end.
The Spartacus men were still too weak for independent leader-
ship. The Left Independents balked at those methods which could
alone have brought them to the goal, vascillated, and played with
the insurrection, combining it with diplomatic negotiations.

In number of victims the January defeat falls far below the
colossal figures of the "June Days" in France. However, the po-
litical importance of a defeat is not measured only by the statistics
of killed and executed. It is enough that the young communist
party was physically beheaded, and the Independent Party dem-
onstrated that by the very essence of its methods it was incapable
of leading the proletariat to victory. From a larger point of view
the "July Days" repeated themselves in Germany in several dif-
ferent editions: the January week of 1919, the March days of
1921, the October retreat of 1923. The whole subsequent history
of Germany derives from those events. The unachieved revolu-
tion was switched over into Fascism.

At the present moment, while these lines are being written
early in May 1931 the bloodless, peaceful, glorious (the list of
these adjectives is always the same) revolution in Spain, is prepar-
ing before our eyes its "June Days" if you go by the French
calendar its "July Days" by the Russian. The Provisional Gov-
ernment in Madrid, bathing in phrases a good part of them ap-
parently translated from the Russian language is promising
broad measures against unemployment and land-hunger, but

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

dares not touch a single one of the old social sores. The coalition
socialists are helping the republicans sabotage the tasks of the
revolution. Is it hard to foresee the feverish growth of indignation
among workers and peasants? The incompatible movements of
the mass revolution on the one hand, and the policy of the new
ruling classes on the other that is the source of an irreconcilable
conflict, which as it develops will either bury the first, the April,
revolution, or lead to a second.

ALTHOUGH the underlying mass of Russian Bolsheviks felt in
July, 1917, that beyond certain limits it was still impossible to go,
still there was no complete homogeneity of mood. Many workers
and soldiers were at times inclined to estimate the developing
movement as a decisive action. Metelev, in his memoirs written
five years later, expresses himself about the meaning of the events
in the following words: "In that insurrection our chief mistake
was that we proposed to the compromisist Executive Committee
to seize the power. . . . We ought not to have proposed, but to
have seized the power ourselves. Our second mistake may be con-
sidered to be this, that we spent almost two days marching in the
streets, instead of immediately occupying all the institutions,
palaces, banks, railroad stations, telegraph offices, arresting the
whole Provisional Government/* etc., etc. As applied to an in-
surrection those words would be unanswerable, but to convert the
July movement into an insurrection would have meant almost
certainly to bury the revolution.

The anarchists in summoning the masses to battle referred to
the fact that *'the February revolution also took place without the
leadership of a party/' But the February revolution had its
prepared tasks laid down by the struggle of whole generations,
and above the February revolution stood an oppositional liberal
society and a patriotic democracy ready to receive the power. The
July movement, on the contrary, would have had to lay down a
wholly new historic road-bed. The whole of bourgeois society, the
soviet democracy included, were implacably hostile to it. This
basic difference between the conditions of a bourgeois and a work-

COULD BOLSHEVIKS [HAVE SEIZED POWER. IN JULY?

ers' revolution, the anarchists did not see, or did not understand.

Had the Bolshevik party, stubbornly clanging to a doctrinaire
appraisal of the July movement as "untimely," turned its back on
the masses, the semi-insurrection would inevitably have fallen
under the scattered and uncoordinated leadership of anarchists,
of adventurers, of accidental expressers of the indignation of the
masses, and would have expired in bloody and bootless convul-
sions. On the other hand, if the party, after taking its place at the
head of the machine-gunners and Putilov men, had renounced its
own appraisal of the situation as a whole, and glided down the
road to a decisive fight, the insurrection would indubitably have
taken a bold scope. The workers and soldiers under the leadership
of the Bolsheviks would have conquered the power but only to
prepare the subsequent shipwreck of the revolution. The question
of power on a national scale would not have been decided, as it
was in February, by a victory in Petrograd. The provinces would
not have caught up to the capital. The front would not have un-
derstood or accepted the revolution. The railroads and the
telegraphs would have served the Compromisers against the Bol-
sheviks. Kerensky and headquarters would have created a gov-
ernment for the front and the provinces. Petrograd would have
been blockaded. Disintegration would have begun within its
walls. The government would have been able to send considerable
masses of soldiers against Petrograd. The insurrection would have
ended, in those circumstances, with the tragedy of a Petrograd
Commune.

At the July forking of historic roads, the interference of the
Bolshevik party eliminated both fatally dangerous variants
both that in the likeness of the June Days of 1 848, and that of the
Paris Commune of 1871. 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 an
armed test of 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 thou-
sands. The working class issued from the trial, not headless and
not bled to death. It fully preserved its fighting cadres, and these
cadres had learned much.

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

During the February overturn all the many preceding years'
work of the Bolsheviks came to fruition, and progressive workers
educated by the party found their place in the struggle, but there
was still no direct leadership from the party. In the April events
the slogans of the party manifested their dynamic force, but the
movement itself developed independently. In June the enormous
influence of the party revealed itself, but the masses were still
functioning within the limits of a demonstration officially sum-
moned by the enemy. Only in July did the Bolshevik Party, feel-
ing the pressure of the masses, come out into the street against all
the other parties, and not only with its slogans, but with its or-
ganized leadership, determine the fundamental character of the
movement. The value of a close-knit vanguard was first fully
manifested in the July Days, when the party at great cost de-
fended the proletariat from defeat, and safeguarded its own fu-
ture revolution.

"As a technical trial," wrote Miliukov, speaking of the sig-
nificance of the July Days to the Bolsheviks, "the experience was
for them undoubtedly of extraordinary value. It showed them
with what elements they had to deal, how to organize these ele-
ments, and finally what resistance could be put up by the govern-
ment, the Soviet and the military units. ... It was evident that
when the time came for repeating the experiment, they would
carry it out more systematically and consciously." Those words
correctly evaluate the significance of the July experiment for the
further development of the policy of the Bolsheviks. But before
making use of these July lessons, the party had to go through
some heavy weeks, during which it seemed to the shortsighted
enemy that the power of Bolshevism was conclusively broken.

CHAPTER IV
THE MONTH OF THE GREAT SLANDER

DURING that night of July 4, when the two hundred mem-
bers 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 praesidium, 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 Ger-
man staif?" 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 mi-
nority 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 depu-
ties 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!

Alarmed by this unforeseen and too abrupt turn of events,
the leaders sparred for time. Cheidze and Tseretelli suggested to
the newspapers by telephone that they refrain from printing the
sensational exposure as "unverified." The editors did not dare
ignore this "request" from the Tauride Palace except one of
them. The small yellow sheet published by one of the sons of
Suvorin, the powerful publisher of Novoe Vremya, served up to

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

its readers the next morning an official-sounding document about
Lenin's receiving directions and money from the German govern-
ment. The censorship was thus broken, and within a day the
whole press was full of this sensation. Thus began the most in-
credible episode of a year rich in events: The leaders of a revolu-
tionary party, whose lives for decades had been passed in a
struggle against rulers, both crowned and uncrowned, found
themselves portrayed before the country and the whole world as
hired agents of the Hohenzollern. On a scale hitherto unheard
of, this slander was sown in the thick of the popular masses, a
vast majority of whom had heard of the Bolshevik leaders for the
first time only after the February revolution. Mud-slinging here
became a political factor of primary importance. This makes
necessary an attentive examination of its mechanism.

The primary source of this sensational document was the testi-
mony of a certain Ermolenko. The image of this hero is suffi-
ciently delineated by the official records: In the period from the
Japanese War to 1913, he was an agent of the Intelligence Serv-
ice; in 1913, for reasons not established, he was discharged from
service with the title of ensign from the ranks; in 1914 he was
called to service in the army, gallantly permitted himself to be
captured, and became a police spy among the war prisoners. The
regime of a concentration camp was not to this spy*s taste, how-
ever, and "at the insistence of his friends,** so he testifies, he took
service with the Germans needless to say, with patriotic aims.
Here a new chapter opened in his life. On April 2S this ensign
from the ranks was "thrown over the Russian front'* by the Ger-
man military authorities for the purpose of dynamiting bridges,
reporting military secrets, struggling for the independence of the
Ukraine, and agitating for a separate peace. The German officers,
Captains Shiditsky and Liebers, in contracting with Ermolenko
for these services, informed him in passing, without any practical
necessity and evidently merely in order to keep up his spirits,
that besides the ensign himself, Lenin would be working in Russia
in the same direction. That was the foundation of the whole
affair.

Who or what suggested to Ermolenko his testimony about
Lenin? Not the German officers, in any case. A simple juxtaposi-

THE MONTH OF THE GREAT SLANDER

tion of dates and facts will introduce us into the intellectual
workshop of the ensign. On April 4 Lenin issued his famous
theses, constituting a declaration of war against the February
regime. On April 20-21 occurred the armed demonstration
against a continuance of the war. The attack upon Lenin at that
time became a veritable hurricane. On the 25th Ermolenko was
"thrown over" the front, and during the first half of May was
getting in contact with the Intelligence Service at headquarters.
Ambiguous newspaper articles demonstrating that the policy of
Lenin was advantageous to the Kaiser gave birth to the idea that
Lenin was a German agent. Officers and commissars at the front,
struggling with the irrepressible "Bolshevism" of the soldiers,
were still less ceremonious in their forms of expression when the
talk was about Lenin. Ermolenko promptly plunged into these
waters. "Whether he himself thought up the dragged-in remark
about Lenin, whether it was suggested to him by some outside
person, or whether it was cooperatively manufactured by Ermo-
lenko and the officials of the Intelligence Service, has no great
significance. The demand for slanders against the Bolsheviks had
reached such intensity that a supply could not fail to turn up.
The chief of the headquarters staff, General Denikin, future
generalissimo of the White Guards in the civil war himself not
very much higher in his outlook than the agents of the tzarist
secret service attributed, or pretended to attribute, great im-
portance to the testimony of Ermolenko, and turned it over to
the "War Minister on May 16 with an appropriate letter. Kerensky,
we may assume, exchanged opinions with Tseretelli or Cheidze,
who could hardly have failed to put a curb on his righteous in-
dignation. That evidently explains why the thing went no fur-
ther. Kerensky wrote later that, although Ermolenko had testified
to a connection of Lenin with the German staff, he did so "not
with sufficient credibility." The report of Ermolenko-Denikin
thus remained for a month and a half under a bushel. The Intelli-
gence Service dismissed Ermolenko as superfluous, and the ensign
wandered off to the Far East to drink away the money he had
received from two sources.

The events of the July Days, however, revealing the danger
of Bolshevism in its full stature, called to mind the exposures of

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

Ermolenko. He was hastily summoned from Blagoveshchensk,
but owing to a sheer lack of imagination he could not, in spite of
all duckings and jerkings of the reins, add one word to his
original testimony. By that time, however, the Department of
Justice and the Intelligence Service were working under full
steam. Inquiries about possible criminal connections of the Bol-
sheviks were addressed to politicians, generals, gendarmes, mer-
chants, innumerable people of any and every profession* The
respectable tzarist secret police conducted themselves in this in-
vestigation with considerably more discretion than the brand-
new representatives of democratic justice. "Such evidence/* wrote
a former chief of the Petrograd secret police, the venerable gen-
eral Globachev, "as that Lenin worked in Russia to her injury and
on German money, was not, at least during my period of service,
in the possession of the secret police/* Another secret police offi-
cer, Yakubov, chief of the intelligence department of the Petro-
grad military district, testified: <C I know nothing of a connection
between Lenin and his followers and the German general staff,
but I also know nothing of the resources upon which Lenin
worked." Thus from the institutions of the tzarist spy system,
which had kept watch of Bolshevism from its very inception,
nothing useful could be squeezed out.

However, when people seek long, especially if they are armed
with power, they find something in the end. A certain Z* Burstein,
a merchant by official calling, opened the eyes of the Provisional
Government to a "German espionage organization in Stockholm,
headed by Parvus," a well-known German social democrat of
Russian origin. According to the testimony of Burstein, Lenin
was in contact with this organization through the Polish revo-
lutionists, Ganetsky and Kozlovsky, Kerensky wrote later: "Some
extraordinarily serious data unfortunately not of a legal, but
merely of a secret police character were to receive absolutely
unquestionable confirmation with the arrival in Russia of Ganet-
sky, who had been arrested on the border, and were to be con-
verted into authentic juridical material against the Bolshevik
staff." Kerensky knew in advance into what this material would
be converted!

The testimony of the merchant, Burstein, concerned the trade

THE MONTH OF THE GREAT SLANDER.

operations of Ganetsky and Kozlovsky between Petrograd and
Stockholm. This wartime commerce, which evidently had re-
course at times to a code correspondence, had no relation to poli-
tics. The Bolshevik party had no relation to this commerce. Lenin
and Trotsky had publicly denounced Parvus, who combined good
commerce with bad politics^ and in printed words had appealed
to the Russian revolutionists to break off all relations with him.
But who was there in the swirlpool of events who had time to
look into all this? An espionage organization in Stockholm that
sounded plain enough. And so the light unsuccessfully ignited by
the hand of ensign Ermolenko, flared up from another direction.
To be sure, here too they ran into a difficulty. The head of the
Intelligence Service of the general staff, Prince Turkestanov, to
the query of an investigator into the especially important affair
of Alexandrov, had answered, "Z. Burstein is a person not de-
serving the slightest confidence. Burstein is an unscrupulous type
of business man, who will not stop at any kind of undertaking."
But could Burstein's bad reputation stand in the way of an at-
tempt to besmirch the reputation of Lenin? No, Kerensky did
not hesitate to recognize the testimony of Burstein as "extraordi-
narily serious." Henceforth the investigation was off on the Stock-
holm scent. The exposures of a spy who had been in the service
of two general staffs, and an unscrupulous business man, "not de-
serving the slightest confidence," lay at the foundation of that
utterly fantastic accusation against a revolutionary party which
a nation of 160 million were about to raise to the supreme power.
But how did it happen that the materials of a preliminary
investigation appeared in print, and moreover just at the moment
when the shattered offensive of Kerensky was becoming a ca-
tastrophe, and the July demonstration in Petrograd was revealing
the irresistible growth of the Bolsheviks? One of the initiators of
this business, the attorney general, Bessarabov, later frankly de-
scribed in the press how, when it became clear that the Provi-
sional Government in Petrograd was wholly without reliable
armed forces, it was decided in the district headquarters to try
to create a psychological change in the regiments by means of
some strong medicine. "The substance of the documents was
communicated to representatives of the Preobrazhensky regiment

THE ATTEMPTED

nearest to headquarters; those present observed what an over-
whelming impression the communication made. From that mo-
ment it was clear what a powerful weapon was in the hands of
the government," After this successful experimental test, these
conspirators from the Department of Justice, the Intelligence
Service and the General Staff hastened to make known their dis-
coveries to the Minister of Justice. Pereverzev answered that no
official communication could be issued, but that by the members
of the Provisional Government who were present "no obstacle
would be put in the way of a private initiative," The names of
the juridical and staff officials were rightly judged inapposite to
the best interests of the business: in order to get the sensational
slander into circulation a "political figure" was needed. By the
method of private initiative the conspirators had no difficulty in
finding exactly the personage they needed, A former revolu-
tionist, a member of the second Duma, a shrieking orator and a
passionate lover of intrigue, Alexinsky had once stood on the ex-
treme left flank of the Bolsheviks. Lenin had been a hopeless op-
portunist in his eyes. In the years of reaction Alexinsky had cre-
ated a special ultra-left group, which he had continued to lead
from abroad until the war, at the beginning of which he took an
ultra-patriotic position and straightway made a specialty of ac-
cusing all and everybody of being in the service of the Kaiser.
Along this line he developed an extensive espionage business in
Paris in company with Russian and French patriots of the same
type. The Paris Association of Foreign Journalists that is, the
correspondents of Allied and neutral countries, a very patriotic
and by no means austere body found it necessary in a special
resolution to declare Alexinsky "a dishonest slanderer" and expel
him from its midst. Arriving in Petrograd with this attestation
after the February revolution, Alexinsky made an attempt, in the
character of a former Left, to get into the Executive Committee.
In spite of all their tolerance, the Mensheviks and Social Revolu-
tionaries by a resolution of April 11 shut the door in his face,
suggesting that he make an attempt to re-establish his honor.
That was easy to propose! Having decided that he was better
fitted to besmirch others than rehabilitate himself, Alexinsky got
into connection with the Intelligence Service, and laid hold of a

THE MONTH OF THE GREAT SLANDER

national field of operation for his instinct for intrigue. By the
second half of July he had already begun to include Mensheviks,
too, in the widening circle of his slanders. A leader of the latter
party, Dan, abandoning the policy of watchful waiting, printed
in the official soviet Izvestia (June 22) a letter of protest: "It is
time to put an end to the doings of a man officially denounced
as a dishonest slanderer." Is it not clear that Themis, inspired by
Ermolenko and Burstein, could find no better intermediary be-
tween herself and public opinion than Alexinsky? It was his
signature which adorned the documents of the exposure.

Behind the scenes the minister-socialists protested against the
handing over of these documents to the press, as also did two of
the bourgeois ministers, Nekrasov and Tereshchenko. On the day
of their publication, June 5, Pereverzev, with whom the gov-
ernment had already been willing to part, found himself obliged
to resign. The Mensheviks passed the hint that this was their
victory. Kerensky subsequently asserted that the minister had
been removed for being too hasty with the exposure, thus hinder-
ing the course of the investigation. In any case, Pereverzev, with
his departure, if not with his presence in the government, gave
satisfaction to everybody,

On that same day Zinoviev appeared at a sitting of the bureau
of the Executive Committee, and in the name of the Central Com-
mittee of the Bolsheviks demanded that immediate measures be
taken to exonerate Lenin and to prevent possible consequences of
the slander. The bureau could not refuse to appoint a commission
of inquiry. Sukhanov writes: "The commission itself understood
that what needed investigation was not the question of Lenin's
selling out Russia, but only of the sources of the slander." But
the commission ran into the jealous competition of the Institu-
tions of Justice and the Intelligence Service, which had every
reason not to desire outside interference in their trade. To be
sure, the soviet bodies had not up to that time had any difficulty
in getting the better of the governmental bodies when they found
it necessary. But the July Days had produced a serious shift of
power to the right, and moreover the soviet commission was in
no hurry to fulfill a task obviously in conflict with the political
interests of those who had intrusted it. The more serious of the

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

compromise leaders that Is, properly speaking, only the Men-
sheviks were concerned to establish a formal disconnection with
the slander, but nothing more. In all cases where it was impossible
to avoid making some direct answer, they would in a few words
clear themselves of guilt. But they did not extend a finger to
ward off the poisoned sword poised over the head of the Bolshe-
viks. A popular image of their policy was once provided by the
Roman pro-consul, Pilate. Yes, and could they behave otherwise
without betraying themselves? It was only the slander against
Lenin that in the July Days turned away a part of the garrison
from the Bolsheviks. If the Compromisers had made a fight
against the slander, it is easy to imagine that the battalion of the
Izmailovstsi would have stopped singing the Marseillaise in honor
of the Executive Committee and gone back to their barracks, if
not to the Palace of Kshesinskaia,

In line with the general policy of the Mensheviks, the Min-
ister of the Interior, Tseretelli, who took the responsibility for
the arrest of Bolsheviks soon to follow, did indeed, under pressure
from the Bolshevik faction, announce at a meeting of the Execu-
tive Committee that he personally did not suspect the Bolshevik
leaders of espionage, but that he did accuse them of conspiracy
and armed insurrection. On July 13, Lieber, in introducing a
resolution which in essence outlawed the Bolshevik party, deemed
it necessary to remark: "I myself consider that the accusations
directed against Lenin and Zinoviev have no foundation." Such
declarations were met by all in gloomy silence: to the Bolsheviks
they seemed dishonorably evasive, to the patriots, superfluous
or unprofitable.

Speaking on the 17th at a joint session of the two Executive
Committees, Trotsky said; "An intolerable atmosphere has been
created, in which you as well as we are choking. They are throw-
ing dirty accusations at Lenin and Zinoviev. (Voice: That is
true.' Uproar. Trotsky continues.) There are in this hall, it ap-
pears, people who sympathize with these accusations. There are
people here who have only sneaked into the revolution. (Uproar.
The president's bell long tries to restore order.) . . . Lenin has
fought thirty years for the revolution. I have fought twenty
years against the oppression of the people. And we cannot but

THE MONTH OF THE GREAT SLANDER

cherish a hatred for German militarism. ... A suspicion against
us in that direction could be expressed only by those who do not
know what a revolutionist is. I have been sentenced by a German
court to eight months' imprisonment for my struggle against
German militarism. . . . This everybody knows. Let nobody in
this hall say that we are hirelings of Germany, for that is not the
voice of convinced revolutionists but the voice of scoundrels.
(Applause) " Thus the episode was reported in the anti-Bolshevik
publications of the day. The Bolshevik publications were already
closed. It is necessary to explain, however, that the applause came
from a small left sector. A part of the deputies bellowed with
hatred. The majority were silent. No one, however, even of the
direct agents of Kerensky, ascended the tribune to support the
official version of the accusation, or even indirectly to defend it.

In Moscow, where the struggle between Bolsheviks and Com-
promisers had in general assumed a milder character only to
become so much the more cruel in October a joint session of the
two Soviets, the workers' and soldiers', passed a resolution on
July 10th to "publish and paste up a manifesto in which it shall
be declared that the accusation of espionage against the Bolshevik
faction is a slander and a plot of the counter-revolution." The
Petrograd soviet, more directly dependent upon governmental
combinations, took no steps whatever, awaiting the conclusions of
a Commission of Inquiry which had not even met.

On July 5, Lenin, in a conversation with Trotsky, raised the
question: "Aren't they getting ready to shoot us all?" Only such
an intention could explain the official stamp placed upon that
monstrous slander. Lenin considered the enemy capable of carry-
ing through to the end the scheme they had thought up, and de-
cided not to fall into their hands. On the evening of the 6th,
Kerensky arrived from the front all stuffed full of the suggestions
of the generals, and demanded decisive measures against the
Bolsheviks. At about two o'clock at night the government re-
solved to bring to trial all the leaders of the "armed insurrection/'
and to disband the regiments which had taken part in the mutiny.
The military detachment sent to the apartment of Lenin for
purposes of search and arrest had to content itself with search,
for the occupant had already left home. Lenin still remained in

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

Petrograd, but hid in a worker's apartment, demanding that the
soviet Inquiry Commission hear him and Zinoviev in conditions
precluding the danger of attack from the counter-revolution. In
a declaration sent to the Commission, Lenin and Zinoviev wrote:
"This morning (Friday, July 7) it was communicated to
Kamenev from the Duma that the commission was to go at 12
o'clock to an apartment agreed upon. We are writing these lines
at 6:30 in the evening of July 7, and we remark that up to now
the Commission has not appeared or given the slightest sign of its
existence. . . . The responsibility for the delay of the inquiry
does not rest upon us." The disinclination of the soviet commis-
sion to begin the promised investigation finally convinced Lenin
that the Compromisers were washing their hands of the case, and
leaving it to the mercies of the White Guards, The officers and
junkers, who had by that time broken up the party printing
plant, were now beating up and arresting in the streets everyone
who protested against the charge of espionage against the Bolshe-
viks. Lenin therefore finally decided to go into hiding not from
the investigation, but from possible attempts upon his life.

On the 15th, Lenin and Zinoviev explained in the Kronstadt
Bolshevik paper, which the authorities had not dared to shut
down, why they did not consider it possible to hand themselves
over to the authorities: "From a letter of the former Minister of
Justice, Pereverzev, printed on Sunday in the newspaper Novoe
Vremya, it has become perfectly clear that the 'case' of the spy
activities of Lenin and others was a perfectly deliberate frame-up
by the party of counter-revolution. Pereverzev quite openly
acknowledges that he put in circulation unverified accusations in
order to arouse the rage (his verbatim expression) of the soldiers
against our party. This is the confession of yesterday's Minister
of Justice! . . . There is no guarantee of justice in Russia at this
moment. To turn oneself over to the authorities would mean to
put oneself in the hands of the Miliukovs, Alexinskies, Pere-
verzevs, in the hands of infuriated counter-revolutionists for
whom the whole accusation against us is a mere episode in a civil
war." In order to explain at this day the meaning of the phrase
"episode in a civil war," it is sufficient to remember the fate of

THE MONTH OF THE GREAT SLANDER

Karl Liebnekcht and Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin knew how to see
ahead.

While agitators of the hostile camp were telling a thousand
stories Lenin is on a destroyer, Lenin has fled to Germany in a
submarine, etc. the majority of the Executive Committee
hastily condemned Lenin for avoiding an investigation. Ignoring
the political essence of the accusation, and the pogrom situation
in which, and for the sake of which, it was launched, the Com-
promisers came out as champions of pure justice. This was the
least inexpedient position of all those remaining open to them.
A resolution of the Executive Committee on July 13 not only de-
clared the conduct of Lenin and Zinoviev "absolutely unpermis-
sible," but also demanded of the Bolshevik faction "an immediate,
categorical and clear condemnation" of its leaders. The faction
unanimously rejected the demands of the Executive Committee.
However in the Bolshevik ranks at least in the upper circles
there were waverings on the subject of Lenin's avoiding an in-
vestigation. And among even the most extreme Left Compro-
misers Lenin's disappearance caused downright indignation an
indignation not always hypocritical, either, as we see in the ex-
ample of Sukhanov. The slanderous character of the material
supplied by the secret police had not been subject to the slightest
doubt in his mind, as we know, from the beginning. "The non-
sensical accusation went up like smoke," he wrote. "It had no
confirmation, and people simply stopped believing it." But it re-
mained a mystery for Sukhanov how Lenin could decide to avoid
an inquiry. "That was something wholly special, unexampled,
incomprehensible. Any other mortal would have demanded a
court and an investigation, no matter how unfavorable the cir-
cumstances." Yes, any other mortal But no other mortal could
have become an object of such raging hatred to the ruling classes.
Lenin was not any other mortal, and did not for one moment
forget the responsibility which rested on him. He knew how to
draw all the inferences from a situation, and he knew how in the
name of those tasks to which he had consecrated his life, to ignore
the oscillations of "public opinion." Quixotism was just as foreign
to him as posing.

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

In company with Zinoviev Lenin passed a number of weeks
in the environs of Petrograd in a forest near Sestrorctsk. They had
to spend the nights and find shelter from rain in a haystack.
Disguised as a fireman Lenin then crossed the Finland border on a
locomotive, and concealed himself in the apartment of a Helsing-
f ors police chief, a former Petrograd worker. Afterward he moved
nearer the Russian border, to Vyborg. From the end of September
he lived secretly in Petrograd. And on the day of the insurrection
he appeared, after an almost four months* absence, in the open
arena.

July became a month of shameless, unbridled and triumphant
slander. By August the slander had already begun to exhaust it-
self. Just a month after the attack was let loose, Tseretelli, ever
true to himself, deemed it necessary to repeat at a session of the
Executive Committee: "On the day after the arrests I gave an
oral answer to the questions of the Bolsheviks, and I said: 'The
leaders of the Bolsheviks, under indictment for inciting to in-
surrection on July 3-J, I do not suspect of connection with the
German staff.' " To say less than that would have been impossible;
to say more would have been inexpedient. The press of the com-
promise parties went no farther than these words of Tseretelli,
and since this press was at the same time bitterly denouncing the
Bolsheviks as auxiliaries of German militarism, the voice of the
compromisist papers merged politically with the outcry of all the
rest of the press, which was speaking of the Bolsheviks not as
"Auxiliaries" of Ludendorff but as his hired agents. The highest
notes in this chorus were sung by the Kadets, Russfde Vedomosti,
the paper of the liberal Moscow professors, printed a communica-
tion to the effect that in a search in the editorial offices of Pravda
a German letter had been found in which a Baron from
Gaparanda "welcomes the activities of the Bolsheviks and foresees
what legitimate rejoicing this will cause in Berlin/' The German
Baron on the Finland border well knew what letters were needed
by the Russian patriots, The press of cultivated society, defend-
ing itself against Bolshevik barbarism, was filled with such com-
munications.

Did the professors and lawyers believe their own words? To
admit this, at least in regard to the leaders in the capital, would

THE MONTH OF THE GREAT SLANDER

be to think far too little of their political intelligence. Even if not
considerations of principle, or of psychological possibility, mere
business considerations alone ought to have revealed to them the
vacuity of these accusations and first of all financial considera-
tions. The German government could obviously have helped the
Bolsheviks, not with ideas, but with money. But money was just
what the Bolsheviks did not have. The center of the party abroad
during the war was struggling with cruel need; a hundred francs
was a big sum; the central organ was appearing once a month, or
once in two months, and Lenin was carefully counting the lines
in order not to exceed his budget. The expenses of the Petrograd
organization during the war years amounted to a few thousand
rubles, which went mostly to the printing of illegal leaflets. In
two and a half years only 300,000 copies of these leaflets were
distributed in Petrograd. After the revolution the inflow of mem-
bers and of means increased, of course, remarkably. The workers
were wonderfully ready to tax themselves for the Soviet and for
the soviet parties. "Contributions, all kinds of dues, collections
and deductions in behalf of the Soviet," reported the lawyer
Bramson, a Trudovik, at the first congress of the Soviets, "began
on the very first day after our revolution broke out. . . . You
could see the extraordinarily touching spectacle of an uninter-
rupted pilgrimage to us in the Tauride Palace from early morn-
ing to late at night bringing these contributions." As time went
on, the workers were still more ready to make these deductions in
behalf of the Bolsheviks. However, in spite of the swift growth
of the party and of money receipts, Pravda was, in physical pro-
portions, the smallest of all the party papers. Soon after his ar-
rival in Russia Lenin wrote to Radek in Stockholm: "Write ar-
ticles for Pravda about foreign politics extremely short and in
the spirit of Pravda (there is very, very little space we are try-
ing hard to enlarge it) ." In spite of the Spartan regime of econ-
omy instituted by Lenin, the party was always in need. The dis-
bursement of two or three thousand war-time rubles in behalf of
some local organization would mean always a serious problem for
the Central Committee. In order to send papers to the front, it
became necessary again and again to take up special collections
among the workers. And even so, the Bolshevik papers arrived

THE ATTEMPTED COUNT FJt-REVQlUTIQN

in the trenches In incomparably fewer number than the papers
of the Compromisers and Liberals. Complaints about this were
continual. "We are living only on the rumor of your papers/'
wrote the soldiers. In April a city conference of the party ap-
pealed to the workers of Petrograd to collect in three days the
75,000 rubles lacking for the purchase of a printing plant* The
sum was more than covered, and the party finally acquired its own
printing press the same one which the junkers shattered to the
ground in July. The influence of the Bolshevik slogans spread like
a fire in the steppes, but the material instruments of their propa-
ganda remained exceedingly scant. The personal lives of the Bol-
sheviks gave still less occasion for slander. "What then remained?
Nothing, in the last analysis, but Lenin's trip through Germany.
But that very fact, advanced oftenest of all before inexperienced
audiences as proof of Lenin's friendship with the German govern-
ment, in reality proved the opposite. An agent would have trav-
eled through the hostile territory concealed and without the
slightest danger. Only a revolutionist confident of himself to the
last degree would have dared openly to transgress the laws of
patriotism in wartime.

The Ministry of Justice, however, did not hesitate to carry
out its unpleasant task. It had not for nothing inherited em-
ployees trained during the final period of the autocracy, when the
murder of liberal deputies by Black Hundred agents known by
name to the whole country would remain systematically undis-
covered, while a Jewish salesman in Kiev would be accused of
using the blood of a Christian boy. Over the signature of the in-
vestigator in the exceptionally important affair of Alexandrov,
and that of the Attorney General, Karinsky, a decree was pub-
lished on the 21st of July, indicting on a charge of state treason
Lenin, Zinoviev, Kollontai and a number of other people, among
them the German social democrat Helfand-Parvus, The same
articles of the Criminal Code, H, 100 and 108, were afterwards
invoked in indicting Trotsky and Lunacharsky, arrested by mili-
tary detachments on the 23rd of July, According to the text of
the decree, the leaders of the Bolsheviks "being Russian citizens,
did, according to a preliminary agreement between themselves
and other parties, with the aim of aiding other states engaged in

THE MONTH OF THE GREAT SLANDER

hostile activities within the borders of Russia, enter into an agree-
ment with the agents of the said governments to co-operate in
the disorganization of the Russian army and rear for the purpose
of weakening the fighting power of the army. For which purpose,
with monies received by them from these states, they did organize
a propaganda among the population and troops, summoning
them to an immediate refusal of military activity against the
enemy, and they did also with the same ends in view, during the
period from the 3rd to the 5th of July, 1917, organize in Petro-
grad an armed insurrection." Although every educated person
in those days, at least in the capital, knew in what circumstances
Trotsky had come from New York through Christiania and
Stockholm to Petrograd, the Court of Inquiry charged him also
with having traveled through Germany. The Department of Jus-
tice evidently desired to leave no doubt as to the solidity of the
materials which had been placed at its disposition by the Intelli-
gence Service.

The latter institution has nowhere been a propagator of good
morals. But in Russia the Intelligence Service was the very sewer
of the Rasputin regime. The scum of the military officers, the
police, the gendarmerie, together with discharged agents of the
secret police, formed the cadres of that foul, stupid and all-
powerful institution. Colonels, captains and ensigns who were
useless for military deeds took under their supervision all branches
of the social and governmental life, establishing throughout the
country a system of spy feudalism. "The situation became ab-
solutely catastrophic," complains a former director of police,
Kurlov, "when the notorious Intelligence Service began to take
part in the affairs of civil administration." Kurlov himself has no
little dirty business to his credit among other things an indirect
participation in the murder of the Prime Minister, Stolypin.
Nevertheless the activities of the Intelligence Service made even
his experienced imagination shudder. During the time when "the
struggle with enemy espionage . . . was being carried on very
weakly," he writes, notoriously framed-up cases would fre-
quently come down upon the heads of completely innocent peo-
ple with the aim of naked blackmail. Kurlov ran into one such
case: "To my horror," he says, ce [I] heard the pseudonym of a

99.

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-RIWQLUTIQN

secret agent known to me in my former service with the police
department as having been expelled for blackmail," One of the
provincial heads of the Intelligence Service, a certain Ustinov,
a notary before the war, describes the morals of this service in his
memoirs in practically the same terms as those used by Kurlov:
"In search of something to do, the agents themselves would manu-
facture material."

It is still more instructive to verify the intellectual level of the
institution by the example of this very accuser, "Russia went
to ruin," writes Ustinov, speaking of the February revolution,
"the victim of a revolution created by German agents on German
money." The attitude of the patriotic notary to the Bolsheviks
needs no further explanation* "The reports of the Intelligence
Service as to the former activities of Lenin, as to his connection
with the German staff, as to his receipt of German gold, are con-
vincing enough to hang him immediately/ 1 Kerensky did not do
this, it would seem, only because he was himself a traitor. "Espe-
cially astonishing, and even downright exasperating, was the
leadership of a good-for-nothing lawyer among the Yids, Sashka
Kerensky." Ustinov testifies that Kerensky "was well-known as a
provocateur who betrayed his comrades*" The French general,
Anselm, as was found out later, abandoned Odessa in March,
1919, not under pressure from the Bolsheviks, but because he
received an immense bribe. From the Bolsheviks? No. "The Bol-
sheviks had nothing to do with it," said Ustinov, "Here the Free
Masons were at work." Such was that world.

Soon after the February revolution this institution, consisting
of sharpers, falsificators and blackmailers, was put in charge of
a patriotic Social Revolutionary, Mironov, who had arrived from
abroad and whom an assistant minister, Demianov, a "people's
socialist," characterized in the following words: "Mironov cre-
ates a good impression externally. , . , But I shall not be sur-
prised if I learn that this is not a wholly normal person* It is quite
possible to believe he is not: a normal person would hardly have
agreed to stand at the head of an institution which ought to have
been simply disbanded and its walls washed with sublimate*" As
a result of that administrative mix-up caused by the revolution,
the Intelligence Service came under the supervision of the Min-

100

THE MONTH OF THE GREAT SLANDER

ister of Justice, Pereverzev, a man of incredible light-mindedness
and complete indifference to the means he employed. The same
Demianov says in his memoirs that his minister "enjoyed almost
no prestige at all in the Soviet." Under the protection of Mironov
and Pereverzev, the Intelligence men, frightened at first by the
revolution, soon came to themselves and accommodated their
old activities to the new political situation. In June even the left
wing of the governmental press began to publish information
about blackmail and other crimes committed by the highest ranks
of the Intelligence Service, even including two chiefs of the in-
stitution, Shukin and Broy, first assistants of the miserable Mir-
onov. A week before the July crisis the Executive Committee,
under pressure from the Bolsheviks, had addressed a demand to
the government for an immediate inspection of the Intelligence
Service with the participation of soviet representatives. The in-
telligence men thus had their own departmental reasons or
rather reasons of livelihood for striking at the Bolsheviks as
quickly and as hard as possible. Prince Lvov had signed a timely
law giving the Intelligence Service the right to hold an arrestee
under lock and key for three months.

The character of the accusation, and of the accusers, in-
evitably gives rise to the question, how could people of normal
mould believe, or even pretend to believe, in this notorious lie
which was inept from beginning to end. The success of the In-
telligence Service would in truth have been unthinkable, except
for the general atmosphere created by war, defeat, ruin, revolu-
tion, and the embitterment of the social struggle. Since the au-
tumn of 1914 nothing had gone well with the ruling classes of
Russia. The ground was crumbling under their feet. Everything
was falling from their hands. Misfortunes were coming down on
them from all directions. How could they help seeking a scape-
goat? The former Attorney General, Zavadsky, remembers that
"entirely healthy people were inclined in the alarming years of
the war to suspect treachery where it apparently, and even in-
dubitably, was not to be found. The majority of the cases of this
kind prosecuted while I was attorney general, were fanciful."
These cases were initiated, not only by spiteful agents, but by
ordinary philistines who had lost their heads. But often, too, the

101

THE ATTEMPTED

war psychosis united with the pre-revolutionary political fever
to produce even nx>rc freakish fruits. The Liberals, in common
with the unsuccessful generals, sought everywhere and in every-
body for the hand of the Germans. The court camarilla had been
considered Germanified. The whole clique of Rasputin had been
believed, or at least declared by the Liberals, to be under instruc-
tions from Potsdam. The mrina had been widely and openly ac-
cused of espionage. She had been held responsible even in court
circles for the sinking by Germans of the vessel in which General
Kitchener was coming to Russia, The Rights, it goes without say-
ing, were not slow to pay back the debt- Zavadsky relates how the
Assistant Minister of the Interior, Beletsky, attempted early in
1916 to bring a charge against the national-liberal industrialist,
Guchkov, accusing him of "'activities bordering upon state trea-
son in wartime." In exposing the performances of Bcletsky, Kur-
lov, also a former Assistant Minister of the Interior, in his turn
put the question to Miliukov: "For what honorable work in be-
half of the fatherland did he (Miliukov) receive two hundred
thousand rubles of 'Finland* money, transferred to him by mail
in the name of the janitor of his house?" The quotation marks
around "Finland" are supposed to show that it was really a ques-
tion of German money. But nevertheless Miliukov had a well-
earned reputation for Germanophobia! In governmental circles
it was generally considered as proven that all the opposition
parties were operating with German money. In August 1915,
when disturbances were expected in connection with the dissolu-
tion of the Duma, the naval minister, Grigorovich, considered to
be almost a Liberal, said at a session of the government: "The
Germans are conducting a reinforced propaganda and shower-
ing the anti-government organisations with money." The Octo-
brists and Kadets, although indignant at these insinuations, never-
theless never thought of fending them off in a leftward direction.
On the subject of a semi-patriotic speech of the Menshevik,
Cheidze, at the beginning of the war, the president of the Duma,
Rodzianko, wrote: "Subsequent events proved the closeness of
Cheidze to German circles," You will wait in vain for the slightest
shadow of such proof!

In his "History of the Second Russian Revolution," Miliukov

THE MONTH OF THE GREAT SLANDER

says: "The role of the "dark sources' in the revolution of Febru-
ary 27 is wholly unclear, but judging by all that followed it is
difficult to deny it." Peter Struve, a former Marxist and now a
reactionary Slavophile of German origin, expresses himself more
decisively: "When the Russian revolution, planned and created
by Germany, succeeded, Russia had to all intents and purposes
withdrawn from the war," Like Miliukov, Struve is here speaking
not of the October, but of the February Revolution. On the
subject of the famous "Order No. I, 5 * the Magna Charta of sol-
diers' liberties drawn up by the delegates of the Petrograd garri-
son, Rodzianko wrote: "I have not the slightest doubt of the
German origin of Order No. 1." The chief of one of the divisions.
General Barkovsky, told Rodzianko that "Order No. 1 was sup-
plied to his troops in enormous quantities from the German
trenches." When he became war minister, Guchkov, whom they
had tried to indict for state treason under the tzar, hastened to
switch this accusation to the left. The April orders of Guchkov
to the army read: "Persons who hate Russia, and are undoubtedly
in the service of our enemies, have penetrated into the active
army with the persistence characteristic of our enemies, and evi-
dently in fulfilment of their demands are preaching the necessity
of ending the war as soon as possible." On the subject of the
April manifestation, which was directed against an imperialist
policy, Miliukov writes: "The task of removing both ministers
(Miliukov and Guchkov) was directly imposed by Germany,"
and the workers got 1 5 rubles a day from the Bolsheviks for tak-
ing part in the demonstration. With this key of German gold the
liberal historian unlocks all those enigmas against which he
bumped his head as a politician.

The patriotic socialists who baited the Bolsheviks as invol-
untary allies, if not agents, of the German ruling circles, were
themselves under the same accusation from the right. We have
seen what Rodzianko said about Cheidze, He did not even spare
Kerensky himself. "It was he, undoubtedly, who through secret
sympathy for the Bolsheviks, but perhaps also because of other
considerations, impelled the Provisional Government" to admit
the Bolsheviks into Russia. "Other considerations" can mean
nothing but a partiality for German gold. In his curious memoirs,

103

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

which have been translated into foreign languages, the General
of Gendarmes, Spiridovich, remarking upon the abundance of
Jews in the ruling circles of the Social Revolutionaries, adds:
"Among them Russian names also glimmered, such as the future
Rural Minister, the German spy, Victor Chernov/' And it was
by no means only this gendarme who suspected the leader of the
Social Revolutionary party. After the July pogrom of the Bolshe-
viks, the Kadets lost no time in raising a hue and cry against the
Minister of Agriculture, Chernov, a man suspected of connec-
tions with Berlin; and the unhappy patriot had to resign tempo-
rarily in order to exonerate himself. Speaking in the autumn of
1917 on the instructions given by the patriotic Executive Com-
mittee to the Menshevik, Skobelev, for his participation in an
international socialist conference, Miliukov, in the tribune of
the Pre-parliament, demonstrated by means of a meticulous
syntactical analysis of its text, the obvious "German origin" of
the document. The style of the instructions, as indeed of all the
compromisist literature, was as a fact bad. The belated democ-
racy, without ideas, without will, glancing round affrightedly on
all sides, piled up qualification after qualification in its writings,
until they sounded like a bad translation from a foreign lan-
guage just as the democracy itself was, indeed, the shadow of a
foreign past. Ludendorff, however, is not in the least to blame
for that.

The journey of Lenin through Germany offered inexhaustible
possibilities for chauvinist demagoguism. But as though to demon-
strate beyond a doubt the purely instrumental role of patriotism
in their policies, the bourgeois press, after having at first met
Lenin with a hypocritical good-will, started their licentious attack
upon his "Germanophilism" only after his social program had
become clear. "Land, bread, and peace" those slogans he could
only have brought from Germany. At that time there were still
no revelations of Ermolenko.

After Trotsky and several other emigrants, returning from
America, had been arrested by the military authorities of King
George in the latitude of Halifax, the British ambassador in Petro-
grad gave to the press an official communication in a quite in-
imitable Anglo-Russian language: "Those Russian citizens on the

104

THE MONTH OF THE GREAT SLANDER

steamer Christianiafiord were detained in Halifax because it was
communicated to the British government that they had connec-
tions with a plan subsidized by the German government to over-
throw the Russian Provisional Government. . . ." Buchanan's
communication was dated April 14: at that time neither Burstein
nor Ermolenko had appeared upon the horizon. Miliukov, in his
capacity of Minister of Foreign Affairs, found himself obliged,
however, to request the British government through the Russian
ambassador, Nabokov, to liberate Trotsky and permit him to
come to Russia. "Knowing of Trotsky's activities in America,"
writes Nabokov, "the British government was perplexed: e ls this
ill-will or blindness?' The Englishmen shrugged their shoulders,
understood the danger, gave us warning." Lloyd George however
was compelled to yield. In answer to a question put by Trotsky
to the British Ambassador in the Petrograd press, Buchanan took
back in some embarrassment his first explanation, and this time
announced: "My government detained the group of emigrants in
Halifax only for the purpose of, and until, the establishment of
their identity by the Russian government. . . . That is the whole
story of the detaining of the Russian emigrants." Buchanan was
not only a gentleman, but also a diplomat.

At a conference of members of the State Duma early in June,
Miliukov, having been pushed out of the government by the
April demonstration, demanded the arrest of Lenin and Trotsky,
unequivocally hinting at their connections with Germany. On
the following day at the congress of the Soviets, Trotsky declared:
"Until Miliukov confirms or withdraws this accusation, he wears
the brand of a dishonest slanderer." Miliukov answered in the
newspaper Kech that he was "in truth dissatisfied that Messrs.
Lenin and Trotsky are at liberty," but that he had motivated the
demand for their arrest "not on the ground that they are agents
of Germany, but that they have sufficiently violated the criminal
code." Miliukov was a diplomat without being a gentleman. The
necessity of arresting Lenin and Trotsky had been perfectly clear
to him before the revelations of Ermolenko; the juridical dress-
ings of the arrest were a mere question of technique. The leader
of the Liberals had been playing with the sharp blade of this ac-
cusation long before it was set in motion in a "juridical" form.

105

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTED

The role of the myth of German gold becomes most obvious
of all in a colorful episode described by the general administrator
of the Provisional Government, the Kadet Nabokov (not to be
confused with the Russian ambassador in London mentioned
above) . In one of the sittings of the government, Miliukov, speak-
ing on some other question, remarked: "It is no secret to anybody
that German money played its role among the factors promot-
ing the revolution. , . " That was quite in the character of
Miliukov, although the formula was obviously softened, "Ker-
ensky," according to Nabokov's report, "went into a rage. He
seized his portfolio and slamming it down on the table, cried out:
'Since Miliukov has dared in my presence to slander the sacred
cause of the great Russian Revolution, I do not wish to remain
here another minute/ " That is wholly in the character of Ker-
ensky although his gestures were perhaps a little exaggerated. A
Russian proverb advises us not to spit in the well from which we
may have to drink, When he was offended by the October Revo-
lution, Kerensky could think of nothing better to use against it
than this myth of German gold. That which in Miliukov's mouth
had been a "slander against a sacred cause" became for Kerensky
in the mouth of Burstein the sacred cause of slandering the Bol-
sheviks.

The unbroken chain of suspicions of Gcrmanophilism and
espionage, extending from the tzarina, Rasputin and the court
circles, through the ministry, the staffs, the Duma, the liberal
newspapers, to Kerensky and a number of the Soviet leaders,
strikes one most of all by its monotony. The political enemy seem
to have firmly resolved not to overwork their imaginations: they
simply switched the same old accusations about from one point
to another, the movement being predominantly from right to
left. The July slander against the Bolsheviks least of all fell down
out of a clear sky. It was the natural fruit of panic and hate, the
last link in a shameful chain, the transfer of a stereotyped slander-
ous formula to its new and final object, permitting a reconcilia-
tion of the accusers and the accused of yesterday. All the insults
of the ruling group, all their fears, all their bitterness, were now
directed against that party which stood at the extreme left and
incarnated most completely the unconquerable force of the revo-

106

THE MONTH OF THE GREAT SLANDER

lution. Was it in actual fact possible for the possessing classes to
surrender their place to the Bolsheviks without having made a
last desperate effort to trample them in the blood and filth? That
tangle of slander, well snarled up from long usage, was inevitably
fated to come down on the heads of the Bolsheviks. The revela-
tions of the retired ensign from the Intelligence Service were only-
a materialization of the ravings of possessing classes who found
themselves in a blind alley. For that reason the slander acquired
such frightful force.

The idea of German agentry was not in itself, to be sure, mere
raving. The German espionage in Russia was incomparably better
organized than the Russian in Germany. It is sufficient to recall
the fact that the War Minister, Sukhomlinov, was arrested even
under the old regime as the trusted man of Berlin. It is also
indubitable that German agents inserted themselves not only
into the court and Black Hundred circles, but also among the
Lefts. The Austrian and German governments had flirted from
the first days of the war with separatist tendencies, beginning
among the Ukrainian and Caucasian emigrants. It is interesting
that Ermolenko, recruited in April 1917, was sent over to struggle
for the secession of the Ukraine. As early as 1914, both Lenin and
Trotsky in Switzerland had demanded in print a break with those
revolutionists who were getting caught on the hook of Austro-
German militarism. Early in 1917 Trotsky repeated this printed
warning to the left German social democrats, the followers of
Liebknecht, with whom agents of the British embassy were try-
ing to establish connections. But in flirting with separatists in or-
der to weaken Russia and frighten the tzar, the German govern-
ment was far from the thought of overthrowing tzarism. The
best evidence of this is a proclamation scattered in the Russian
trenches after the February revolution, and read on March 1 1 at a
session of the Petrograd soviet. "At the beginning the English
joined hands with your tzar; now they have turned against him
because he would not agree to their self-interested demands. They
have overthrown your tzar, given to you by God. Why has this
happened? Because he understood and divulged the faults and
crafty schemes of the English." Both the form and contents of
this document give internal guarantee of its genuineness. Just

107

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

as you cannot imitate a Prussian lieutenant, so you cannot imitate
his historic philosophy. Hoffmann, a Prussian lieutenant with a
general's rank, imagined that the Russian revolution was thought
up and its foundations laid in England. In that, however, there
is less absurdity than in the theory of Miliukov and Struve, for
Potsdam continued to the end to hope for a separate peace with
Tzarskoe Selo, while in London they feared more than anything
else a separate peace between them. Only when the impossibility
of restoring the tzar became wholly obvious, did the German staff
transfer its hopes to the disintegrating power of the revolutionary
process. Even in the matter of Lenin's trip through Germany, the
initiative came not from German circles but from Lenin himself
in its very first form, indeed, from the Menshevik, Martov. The
German staff only consented to it, and that probably not with-
out hesitation. Ludendorff said to himself: Perhaps relief will
come from that side.

During the July events the Bolsheviks themselves sought for
an alien and criminal hand in certain unexpected excesses that
were obviously provoked with malice aforethought. Trotsky
wrote in those days: "What role has been played in this by
counter-revolutionary provocation and German agents? It is dif-
ficult at present to pronounce definitely upon this question. . . .
We must await the results of an authentic investigation. . . . But
even now it is possible to say with certainty that the results of
such an investigation will throw a clear light upon the work of
Black Hundred gangs, and upon the underground role played
by gold, German, English or 100 per cent Russian, or indeed all
three of them. But no judicial investigation will change the politi-
cal meaning of the events. The worker and soldier masses of
Petrograd were not, and could not have been, bought. They are
not in the service of Wilhelm, or Buchanan, or Miliukov. . . .
The movement was prepared by the war, by oncoming hunger,
by the reaction lifting its head, by the headlessness of the govern-
ment, by the adventurist offensive, by the political distrust and
revolutionary alarm of the workers and soldiers. . . ." All the
material in the archives, the documents and memoirs, which have
become public since the war and the two revolutions, prove
beyond a doubt that the partiality of German agents for the

10g

THE MONTH OF THE GREAT SLANDER

revolutionary processes in Russia did not for one moment rise out
of the military-police sphere into the sphere of big politics. Is
there, by the way, any need of insisting upon this, after the
revolution in Germany itself? How pitiful and impotent did
these supposedly all-powerful Hohenzollern agents turn out to
be in the autumn of 1918 in the face of the German workers and
soldiers! "The calculation of our enemy in sending Lenin to
Russia was absolutely right," says Miliukov. Ludendorflf him-
self quite otherwise estimates the results of the undertaking: "I
could not suppose" so he justifies himself, speaking of the Rus-
sian revolution, "that it would become the tomb of our own
might." This merely means that of the two strategists, Ludendorff
who permitted Lenin to go, and Lenin who accepted his permis-
sion, Lenin saw farther and better.

"The enemy propaganda and Bolshevism" complains Luden-
dorflf in his memoirs, "were seeking one and the same goal within
the boundaries of the German state. England gave opium to
China, our enemies gave us revolution. . . ." Ludendorflf at-
tributes to the Entente the same thing of which Miliukov and
Kerensky were accusing Germany. Thus cruelly does the insulted
reason ojf history avenge itself! But Ludendorflf did not stop there.
In February 1931, he informed the world that behind the back
of the Bolsheviks stood international and especially Jewish finance
capital, united in the struggle against tzarist Russia and im-
perialist Germany. "Trotsky arrived in Petrograd from America
through Sweden, provided with great supplies of the money of
international capitalists. Other moneys were supplied to the Bol-
sheviks by the Jew, Solmsen, from Germany." (Ludendorff's
Volkswarte, February 15, 1931). However the testimonies of
Ludendorflf and Ermolenko may disagree, they coincide in one
point: a part of the money did actually come from Germany
not from Ludendorflf, it is true, but from his mortal enemy,
Solmsen. Only this testimony was lacking to provide an esthetic
finish to the whole question.

But not Ludendorff, nor yet Miliukov, nor Kerensky, in-
vented this device, although they first made a broad use of it.
"Solmsen" has many predecessors in history, both as Jew and as
German agent. Count Fersen, a Swedish ambassador in France

109

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

during the great revolution, a passionate partisan of the monarchi-
cal power of the king, and more especially of the queen, more
than once sent to his government in Stockholm such com-
munications as the following: "The Jew, Efraim, an emissary of
Herr Herzberg in Berlin, (the Prussian Minister of Foreign Af-
fairs) is supplying them (the Jacobins) with money; not long
ago he received another 600,000 livres." The moderate newspaper,
Les Revolutions de Pans made the supposition that during the re-
publican revolution "emissaries of the European diplomats, such
as for instance the Jew Efraim, an agent of the Prussian king,
made their way into the volatile and fickle crowd, . . ."The same
Fersen reported: "The Jacobins would have perished, but for
the help of the rabble bribed by them." If the Bolsheviks paid
daily wages to the participants in that demonstration, they only
followed the example of the Jacobins, and moreover the money
for bribing the "rabble" came in both cases from a source in
Berlin. This similarity in the action of revolutionists in the twen-
tieth and eighteenth centuries would be striking, were it not out-
weighed by a more striking similarity in the slanders peddled by
their enemies. But we need not limit ourselves to the Jacobins.
The history of all revolutions and civil wars invariably testifies
that a threatened or an overthrown ruling class is disposed to find
the cause of its misfortunes, not in itself, but in foreign agents
and emissaries. Not only Miliukov in his character as a learned
historian, but even Kerensky in his character as a superficial reader
of history, must be aware of this. However, in their char-
acter as politicians they were victims of their own counter-
revolutionary functions.

Under these theories about the revolutionary role of foreign
agents, as under all typical mass-misunderstandings, there lies an
indirect historical foundation. Consciously or unconsciously,
every nation at the critical period of its existence makes especially
broad and bold borrowings from the treasury of other peoples.
Not infrequently, moreover, a leading r61e in the progressive
movement is played by people living on the border or emigrants
returning to the homeland. The new ideas and institutions thus
appear to the conservative strata first of all as alien, as foreign
inventions. The village against the city, the backwoods against

110

THE MONTH OF THE GREAT SLANDER

the capital, the petty bourgeois against the worker they all de-
fend themselves under the guise of a national force resisting for-
eign influence. Miliukov portrayed the Bolshevik movement as
"German" for the same reason in the last analysis that the Rus-
sian muzhik has for a hundred years regarded as a German any
man dressed up in city clothes. The difference is that the muzhik
was making an honest mistake.

In 1918 that is, after the October Revolution a press
bureau of the American government triumphantly published a
collection of documents connecting the Bolsheviks with the Ger-
mans. This crude forgery, which would not stand up under a
breath of criticism, was believed in by many educated and per-
spicacious people, until it was discovered that the originals of the
documents supposed to have been drawn up in different countries
were all written on the same machine. The forgers did not stand
on ceremony with their customers: they were obviously con-
fident that the political demand for exposures of the Bolsheviks
would outweigh the voice of criticism. And they made no mis-
take, for they were well paid for the documents. However, the
American government, separated by an ocean from the scene of
the struggle, was only secondarily interested in this matter.

But why after all is political slander as such so poor and
monotonous? Because the social mind is economical and conserva-
tive. It does not expend more efforts than are necessary for its
goal. It prefers to borrow the old, when not compelled to create
the new. But even when so compelled, it combines with it elements
of the old. Each successive religion has created no new mythology,
but has merely repersonified the superstitions of the past. In the
same manner philosophical systems are created, and doctrines of
law and morals. Separate individuals, even those possessed of
genius, develop in the same inharmonious way as the society which
nourishes them. A bold imagination lives in the same skull with
a slavish adherence to trite images. Audacious flights reconcile
themselves with crude prejudices. Shakespeare nourished his crea-
tive genius upon subjects handed down from the deep ages. Pascal
used the theory of probability to demonstrate the existence of
God. Newton discovered the law of gravitation and believed in
the Apocalypse. After Marconi had established a wireless station

111

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

in the residence of the pope, the vicar of Christ distributed his
mystic blessing by radio. In ordinary times these contradictions
do not rise above a condition of drowsiness, but in times of ca-
tastrophe they acquire explosive force. When it comes to a threat
against their material interests, the educated classes set in motion
all the prejudices and confusion which humanity is dragging in
its wagon-train behind it. Can we too much blame the lords of
old Russia, if they built the mythology of their fall out of in-
discriminate borrowings from those classes which were over-
thrown before them? To be sure, the circumstance that Kerensky
resurrects the tale of Ermolenko in his memoirs many years after
the event, is, to say the least, superfluous.

The slander of those years of war and revolution was striking,
we remarked, in its monotony. However, it does contain a varia-
tion. From the piling up of quantity we get a new quality. The
struggle of the other parties among themselves was almost like
a family spat in comparison with their common baiting of the
Bolsheviks. In conflict with one another they were, so to speak,
only getting in training for a further conflict, a decisive one. Even
in employing against each other the sharpened accusation of
German connections, they never carried the thing through to the
limit. July presents a different picture* In the assault upon the
Bolsheviks all the ruling forces, the government, the courts, the
Intelligence Service, the staffs, the officialdom, the municipalities,
the parties of the soviet majority, their press, their orators, con-
stituted one colossal unit. The very disagreements among them,
like the different tone qualities of the instruments in an orchestra,
only strengthened the general effect. An inept invention of two
contemptible creatures was elevated to the height of a factor in
history. The slanders poured down like Niagara. If you take into
consideration the setting the war and the revolution and the
character of the accused revolutionary leaders of millions who
were conducting their party to the sovereign power you can say
without exaggeration that July 1917 was the month of the most
gigantic slander in world history.

112

CHAPTER V
THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION LIFTS ITS HEAD

DURING the first two months, when the power belonged
formally to the government of Guchkov and Miliukov,
it was as a fact wholly in the hands of the Soviet.
During the following two months the Soviet grew weaker. A
part of its influence upon the masses went over to the Bolsheviks;
a part of its power the minister-socialists took with them into
their portfolios in the Coalition Government. From the outset
of preparations for the offensive there began an automatic in-
crease of the influence of the commanding staff, the organs of
finance capital and the Kadet party. Before shedding the blood
of the soldiers, the Executive Committee carried out a substantial
transfusion of its own blood into the arteries of the bourgeoisie.
Behind the scenes the threads of all this were held in the hands
of the embassies and governments of the Entente.

At an inter-allied conference in London the western friends
"forgot" to invite the Russian ambassador. Only after he had
reminded them of his existence, did they send him an invitation
it was about ten minutes before the opening of the session and
moreover there was no place for him at the table, and he had to
crowd in between the Frenchmen. This mockery of the ambas-
sador of the Provisional Government and the demonstrative exit
of the Kadets from the government both events happening on
the 2nd of July had the same purpose: to bring the Compro-
misers to their knees. The armed demonstration, bursting out just
after this, had an especially exasperating effect upon the soviet
leaders, because having been struck this double blow, they were
at the time directing all their attention in exactly the other direc-
tion. Once it had become necessary to take up a bloody task in
alliance with the Entente, it would be hard after all to find better
intermediaries than the Kadets. Chaikovsky, one of the oldest
revolutionists, who had become metamorphosed after long years

113

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

abroad into a moderate British Liberal, moralized as follows:
"Money is necessary for war, and the Allies will not give money
to socialists." The Compromisers were embarrassed by this argu-
ment, but fully understood the force of it.

The correlation of forces had obviously changed to the dis-
advantage of the people, but nobody was able to say how much:
The appetites of the bourgeoisie, at least, had grown considerably
more than their opportunities. In this uncertainty lay the source
of the conflict, for the strength of class forces is tested in action,
and all the events of a revolution reduce themselves to these re-
peated trials of force. However great may have been the shift of
power from left to right, in any case it very little affected the
Provisional Government which remained a vacant space. The
people who in those critical July Days were interested in the
ministry of Prince Lvov could be counted on the fingers of one
hand. General Krymov, the same one who once had a conversa-
tion with Guckhov about overthrowing Nicholas II we will
soon meet this general for the last time sent the prince a telegram
concluding with the urgent demand: "It is time to pass from
words to deeds." The advice sounded funny, and merely further
emphasized the impotence of the government.

"At the beginning of July," subsequently wrote the Liberal,
Nabokov, "there was one short moment when the authority of
the government seemed again to lift its head; that was after the
putting down of the first Bolshevik uprising. But the Provisional
Government was unable to make use of this opportunity, and let
slip the favorable conditions of the moment. It was never re-
peated/* Other representatives of the right camp have expressed
themselves to the same effect. In reality, in the July Days as in
all other critical moments, the constituent parts of the coalition
were pursuing different goals. The Compromisers would have
been perfectly ready to permit a final wiping out of the Bol-
sheviks, had it not been obvious that after settling with the
Bolsheviks, the officers, Cossacks, Cavaliers of St. George and shock
battalions would have cleaned up the Compromisers themselves.
The Kadets wanted to carry through, and sweep away not only
the Bolsheviks but the Soviets also. However, it was no accident
that at all acute moments the Kadets found themselves outside

114

THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION LIFTS ITS HEAD

the government. In the last analysis what pushed them out was
the pressure of the masses, irresistible in spite of the buffer pro-
vided by the Compromisers. Even if they had succeeded in seiz-
ing the power, the Liberals could not have held it. Subsequent
events conclusively proved this. The idea of a lost opportunity
in July is a retrospective illusion. At any rate, the July victory
did not strengthen the government, but on the contrary opened
a prolonged period of crisis which was formally resolved only on
the 24th of July, and was in essence an introduction to the four
months' death agony of the February regime.

The Compromisers were torn between the necessity of re-
viving their half-friendship with the bourgeoisie, and the need
of softening the hostility of the masses. Tacking became for them
a form of existence. Their zigzags became a feverish tossing to
and fro, but the fundamental line kept swinging sharply to the
right. On the 7th of July, a whole series of repressive measures
was decreed by the government. But at the same session, and so
to speak by stealth, taking advantage of the absence of the "old
man" that is, the Kadets the minister-socialists proposed to
the government that it undertake to carry out the program of
the June congress of the Soviets. This, however, straightway led
to a further disintegration of the government. The great land-
lord and former president of the land union, Prince Lvov, accused
the government of "undermining" with its agrarian policy "the
popular sense of right." The landlords were worried not only lest
they be deprived of their hereditary possessions, but lest the Com-
promisers "attempt to place the Constituent Assembly before
the fact of a decision already arrived at." All the pillars of the
monarchist reaction now became flaming partisans of pure de-
mocracy! The government decided that Kerensky should occupy
the position of Minister-President, retaining also the portfolios
of war and navy. To Tseretelli as the new Minister of the Interior
fell the task of responding in the Executive Committee to ques-
tions about the arrest of the Bolsheviks. A protesting question was
raised by Martov, and Tseretelli unceremoniously answered his
old party comrade that he would rather deal with Lenin than
Martov: with the former he knew what to do, but with the
latter his hands were tied. . . . "I take upon myself the responsi-

THE ATTEMPTEDCO^

bility for these arrests": the minister threw this challenge into the
tensely attentive hall.

In dealing blows to the left, the Compromisers would justif y
themselves by citing a danger to the right. "Russia is threatened
with a military dictatorship," declared Dan at the session of July
9th. "We are obliged to snatch the bayonet from the hand of
the "military dictator. And this we can do only by declaring the
Provisional Government a Committee of Public Safety. We must
give it unlimited powers, so that it may root out to the bottom
anarchy on the left and counter-revolution on the right. . . ."
As though in the hands of a government fighting against workers
and soldiers and peasants there could be any other bayonet but
the bayonet of counter-revolution! By 253 votes with 47 ab-
staining, the joint session adopted the following resolutions: "1.
The country and the revolution are in danger. 2. The Provisional
Government is a government of the Salvation of the Revolution.
3 .It is endowed with unlimited powers." The resolution resounded
as loud as an empty barrel. The Bolsheviks present at the session
abstained from the voting, which testifies to an indubitable discon-
certedness among the heads of the party at that time.

Mass movements, even when shattered, never fail to leave
their traces. The place of the titled nobleman at the head of the
government was now occupied by a radical lawyer. The Ministry
of the Interior was occupied by a former hard-labor convict. The
plebeian transformation of the government was at hand. Keren-
sky, Tseretelli, Chernov, Skobelev, leaders of the Executive Com-
mittee, now determined the physiognomy of the government.
"Was not this a realization of the slogan of the June Days, "Down
with the ten minister-capitalists"? No, this was only an exposure
of its inadequacy. The minister-democrats took the power only
in order to bring back the minister-capitalists. La Coalition est
morte, vive la coalition!

The comedy is now put on the solemnly shameful comedy
of the disarming of the machine-gunners on Palace Square. A
series of regiments are disbanded, the soldiers are sent in small
detachments to fill up the ranks at the front. Forty-year-old men
are brought to submission, and herded into the trenches. They are
all agitators against the regime of Kerenskyism. There are tens of

116

THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION LIFTS ITS HEAD

thousands of them, and in the autumn they will accomplish a
great work in the trenches. At the same time the workers are
disarmed, although with less success. Under pressure from the
generals we shall see in a minute what forms it took the death
penalty is reintroduced at the front. But on the same day, the
12th of July, a decree is published limiting the sales of land. That
belated half -measure, adopted under the axe of the muzhik, pro-
vokes mockery from the left and a grinding of teeth on the right.
While forbidding all processions in the streets a threat to the
left Tseretelli warns of the prevalence of unlegalized arrests
an attempt to pull up the reins on the Right. In removing the
commander-in-chief of the forces of the Petrograd district, Ker-
ensky explains to the Left that this is because he broke up the
workers' organizations, to the Right that it is because he was not
decisive enough.

The Cossacks became the veritable heroes of bourgeois Petro-
grad. "There were occasions," relates the Cossack officer, Grekov,
"when upon the entrance into a public place, a restaurant for
example, of someone in a Cossack uniform, all would stand up
and greet the newcomer with applause." The theaters, the moving-
picture houses, the public gardens, instituted a series of benefit
evenings for the wounded Cossacks and the families of the slain.
The bureau of the Executive Committee found itself compelled
to elect a commission, with Cheidze at the head, to participate in
the organization of a public funeral for the "warriors fallen while
fulfilling their revolutionary duty in the days of July 3-5." The
Compromisers had to drink the cup of humiliation to the dregs.
The ceremonial began with a liturgy in the Isaakievsky Cathedral.
The pall-bearers were Rodzianko, Miliukov, Prince Lvov, Keren-
sky, and they marched in procession to the burial-place in the
Alexandro-Nevsky Monastery. On the line of march the militia
were not to be seen; order was preserved by the Cossacks. The
day of the funeral was the day of their complete dominion of
Petrograd. The workers and soldiers slain by the Cossacks, own
brothers of the February martyrs, were buried secretly, as were
the martyrs of January 9th under tzarism.

The Kronstadt Executive Committee was ordered by the
government, under threat of a blockade of the island, to put

117

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

Raskolnikov, Roshal and ensign Remnev at the disposal of the
Court of Inquiry. At Helsingfors, Left Social-Revolutionaries
were for the first time arrested along with Bolsheviks. The retired
Prince Lvov complained in the newspapers that "the Soviets are
beneath the level of state morals and have not yet cleansed them-
selves of Leninists those agents of the Germans. . . ."It became
a matter of honor with the Compromisers to demonstrate their
state morals. On July 13th the Executive Committees in joint
session adopted a resolution introduced by Dan: "Any person
indicted by the courts is deprived of membership in the Execu-
tive Committees until sentence is pronounced/' This placed the
Bolsheviks in fact beyond the law. Kerensky shut down the whole
Bolshevik press. In the provinces the land committees were ar-
rested. Izvestia sobbed impotently: "Only a few days ago we
witnessed a debauch of anarchy on the streets of Petrograd. Today
on the same streets there is an unrestrained flow of counter-
revolutionary Black Hundred speeches."

After the disbandment of the more revolutionary regiments
and the disarming of the workers, the resultant of the composi-
tion of forces moved still farther to the right. A considerable
part of the real power was now clearly in the hands of the military
chiefs, the industrial and banking and Kadet groups. The rest
of it remained as before in the hands of the Soviets. The dual
power was still there, but now no longer the legalized, contactual
or coalitional dual power of the preceding two months, but the
explosive dual power of a clique of two cliques, the bourgeois-
military and the compromisist, who feared, but at the same time
needed each other. What remained to be done? To resurrect the
Coalition. "After the insurrection of July 3-5," says Miliukov
quite justly, "the idea of a Coalition not only did not disappear,
but acquired for the time being more force and importance than
it had possessed before*"

The Provisional Committee of the state Duma unexpectedly
came to life at this time and adopted a drastic resolution against
the Government of Salvation. That was the last straw. All the
ministers handed their portfolios to Kerensky, thereby making
him the focus of the national sovereignty. In the further develop-
ment of the February revolution, as also in the personal fate of

118

THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION LIFTS ITS HEAD

Kerensky, that moment acquired an important significance. In
the chaos of groupings, resignations and appointments, something
in the nature of an immovable point had been designated around
which everything else revolved. The resignation of the ministers
served only as an introduction to negotiations with the Kadets
and industrialists. The Kadets laid down their conditions: re-
sponsibility of the members of the government "exclusively to
their own conscience"; complete unity with the Allies; restora-
tion of discipline in the army; no social reforms until the Con-
stituent Assembly. A point not written down was the demand
that the elections to the Constituent Assembly be postponed. This
was called a "non-party and national program." A similar pro-
gram was advanced by the representatives of trade and industry,
whom the Compromisers had tried vainly to set against the Kadets.
The Executive Committee again confirmed its resolution endow-
ing the Government of Salvation with "unlimited powers." That
meant agreeing to the government's independence of the Soviets.
On the same day Tseretelli as Minister of the Interior sent out
instructions for the taking of "swift and decisive measures put-
ting an end to all illegal activities in the matter of land relations."
The Minister of Food Supply, Peshekhonov, likewise demanded
an end of all "violent and criminal manifestations against the
landlords." The Government of the Salvation of the Revolution
recommended itself above all as a government of the salvation
of the landlord's property. But not that alone. An industrial
magnate, the engineer Palchinsky, in his three-fold calling as
director of the Ministry of Trade and Industry, plenipotentiary
administrator of fuel and metal, and head of the Commission on
Defense, was conducting an energetic campaign for syndicated
capital. The Menshevik economist, Cherevanin, complained in
the economic department of the Soviet that the noble undertak-
ings of the democracy were going to smash against the sabotage
of Palchinsky. The Minister of Agriculture, Chernov, to whose
shoulders the Kadets had shifted the accusation of German con-
nections, felt obliged "for purposes of rehabilitation" to resign.
On June 18, the government, in which socialists predominated,
issued a decree dissolving the unsubmissive Finnish Seim 1 with its

1 Parliament.

119

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

socialist majority. In a solemn note to the Allies on the third an-
niversary of the World "War, the government not only repeated
the ritual oath of loyalty, but also reported the happy putting
down of an insurrection caused by agents of the enemy. A price-
less documentary record of bootlicking! At the same time a
fierce law was promulgated against transgressions of discipline on
the railroads. After the government had thus demonstrated its
statesmanly maturity, Kerensky finally made up his mind to an-
swer the ultimatum of the Kadet party. His answer was to the
effect that the demands presented by it "could not serve as an
obstacle to its participation in the Provisional Government/' This
veiled capitulation was, however, not enough for the Liberals.
They had to bring the Compromisers to their knees. The central
committee of the Kadet party declared that the governmental
declaration issued after the break-up of the coalition on July 8
a collection of democratic commonplaces was unacceptable to
them, and broke off the negotiations.

It was a concentrated attack. The Kadets were acting in close
union, not only with the industrialists and Allied diplomats, but
also with the army generals. The head committee of the League of
Officers at headquarters functioned under the de facto leader-
ship of the Kadet party. Through the high commanding staff the
Kadets brought pressure against the Compromisers on their most
sensitive side. On July 8th the commander-in-chief of the south-
western front, General Kornilov, gave orders to open fire upon
retreating soldiers with machine-guns and artillery. Supported by
the commissar of the front, Savinkov former head of a ter-
rorist organization of Social Revolutionaries Kornilov had be-
fore this demanded the introduction of the death penalty at the
front, threatening otherwise to resign the command. A secret tele-
gram had immediately appeared in the press. Kornilov was trying
to get publicity for himself. The supreme commander-in-chief,
Brussilov, more cautious and evasive, wrote to Kerensky in peda-
gogical tone: "The lessons of the great French Revolution, parti-
ally forgotten by us, nevertheless forcibly call themselves to
mind. . . ." These lessons lay in the fact that the French Revolu-
tionists, after vainly trying to reorganize the army "upon humane
principles" afterward adopted the death penalty and "their tri-

120

THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION LIFTS ITS HEAD

umphal banners filled half the world." This was all that the gen-
eral had learned from the book of revolution. On July 12, the
government restored the death penalty "in war time for certain
major crimes committed by men on military duty." However, the
commander-in-chief of the northern front, General Klembovsky,
wrote three days later: "Experience has shown that those military
units in which there have been many replacements have become
utterly incapable of fighting. An army cannot be healthy if the
source of its replacements is rotten." This rotten source of re-
placements was the Russian people.

On the 16th of July, Kerensky called a conference of the
older military chiefs at headquarters with the participation of
Tereshchenko and Savinkov. Kornilov was absent. The recoil on
his front was in full swing, and came to a stand only several days
later when the Germans themselves called a halt on the old state
frontier. The names of the conferees, Brussilov, Alexeiev, Ruszky,
Klembovsky, Denikin, Romanovsky, sounded like the last echo
of an epoch that was disappearing in the abyss. For four months
these high generals had been regarding themselves as half-dead.
They now came to life and, considering the minister-president an
incarnation of the revolution which had so vexed them, spitefully
pinched and slapped him with impunity.

According to headquarters' figures, the army on the south-
western front had lost between June 18 and July 6, 56,000 men.
An insignificant sacrifice measured by the scale of the war! But
two revolutions, the February and the October, cost a great deal
less. What had the Liberals and Compromisers got out of the of-
fensive besides death, destruction and disaster? The social earth-
quakes of 1917 changed the aspect of one-sixth of the earth's
surface and opened new possibilities before humanity. The cruel-
ties and horrors of revolution which we have no desire either
to soften or deny do not fall from the sky. They are inseparable
from the whole process of historic development.

Brussilov made a report on the results of the offensive begun
a month before: "Complete failure." Its cause lay in the fact that
"the officers, from the company commander to the commander-
in-chief, have no power." How and why they lost it, he did not
say. As for future operations: ""We cannot get ready for them

121

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

before spring." While insisting like the rest upon repressive meas-
ures, Klembovsky expressed a doubt whether they could be real.
"The death penalty? But is it possible to put to death whole di-
visions? Court-martials? But in that case half of the army would
be in Siberia. . . ." The chief of the general staff reported: "Five
regiments of the Petrograd garrison disbanded; the instigators
court-martialled. ... In all about 90,000 men will be trans-
ferred from Petrograd." This news was received with satisfaction.
It did not occur to anybody to ponder the consequences of an
evacuation of the Petrograd garrison.

As to the committees, said Alexeiev, "they must be abolished.
. . . Military history extending over thousands of years has
created its laws. We tried to violate these laws, and we have had
a fiasco." This man confused the laws of history with the rules
of the drill-master. "People followed the old banners as sacred
things and went to their deaths," boasted Ruszky. "But to what
have the red banners brought us? To the surrender of armies in
whole corps." The decrepit general had forgotten that he himself
in August 1915 reported to the Council of Ministers: "The con-
temporary demands of military technique are beyond our powers;
in any case "^e cannot keep up with the Germans." Klembovsky
insisted with spiteful pleasure that the army had not really been
ruined by Bolsheviks, but by "other persons" who had introduced
a good-for-nothing military code, "persons who do not under-
stand the life and conditions of existence of an army." This was
a direct slap at Kerensky. Denikin came down on the ministers
more decisively: "You have trampled them in the mud, our
glorious war banners, and you will lift them again if you have
a conscience. . . ." And Kerensky? Suspected of lacking a con-
science, he humbly thanked the military boor for his "frankly
and justly expressed opinion." And as for the declaration of rights
of the soldier: "If I had been minister when it was drawn up, the
declaration would not have been issued. "Who first put down the
Siberian sharp-shooters? Who first shed blood to bring the dis-
obedient into line? My appointee! My commissar!" the Minister
of Foreign Affairs, Tereshchenko, ingratiated himself with this
consoling observation: "Our offensive even though unsuccessful
has increased the confidence in us of the Allies." The confidence

122

THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION LIFTS ITS HEAD

of the Allies! "Was it not for this that the earth rotated upon
its axis?

"At the present time the officers are the sole bulwark of free-
dom and the revolution/ 3 declaimed Klembovsky. "The officer is
not a bourgeois," explained Brussilov, "he is the most real prole-
tarian/' General Ruszky added: "Generals also are proletarian."
To abolish the committees, restore power to the old chiefs, drive
politics and that means revolution out of the army: such was
the program of these proletarians with a general's rank. And
Kerensky did not object to the program itself; he was only
troubled about the date. "As for the proposed measures," he said,
"I think that even General Denikin would not insist upon their
immediate introduction. . . ." Those generals were mere drab
mediocrities, but they could hardly have failed to say to them-
selves: "That's the kind of language to use with these fellows!"

As a result of the conference there was a change in the high
command. The compliant and flexible Brussilov who had replaced
the cautious bureaucrat Alexeiev, the latter having opposed the
offensive, was now removed, and General Kornilov named in his
place. The change was variously motivated: to the Kadets they
promised that Kornilov would establish iron discipline; they
assured the Compromisers that Kornilov was a friend of the com-
mittees and commissars; Savinkov himself vouched for his re-
publican sentiments. In answer to his high appointment the gen-
eral sent a new ultimatum to the government: He, Kornilov,
would accept the appointment only on the following conditions:
"Responsibility only to his own conscience and the people; no
interference in the appointment of the high-commanding staff;
restoration of the death penalty at the rear." The first point
created difficulties. Kerensky had started the business of "answer-
ing to his own conscience and the people," and this particular
business does not tolerate competitors. Kornilov's telegram was
published in the most widely circulated liberal papers. The cauti-
ous politicians of the reaction puckered their noses. Kornilov's
ultimatum was merely the ultimatum of the Kadet party trans-
lated into the forthright language of a Cossack general. But Korni-
lov's calculations were right: The exorbitant demands and im-
pudent tone of his ultimatum delighted all the enemies of the

123

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

revolution, and above all the regular officers. Kerensky took fright
, and wanted to remove Kornilov forthwith, but found no sup-
port in his government. In the end, upon the advice of his backers,
Kornilov agreed to concede in an oral statement that by responsi-
bility to the people he meant responsibility to the Provisional
Government. For the rest, the ultimatum was accepted with some
slight qualifications. Kornilov became commander-in-chief. At
the same time the military engineer, Filomenko, was appointed as
his commissar, and the former commissar of the southwestern
front, Savinkov, was made general administrator of the War
Ministry. The one was an accidental figure, a parvenu, the other
a man with a big revolutionary past both of them pure ad-
venturers, ready for anything. Filomenko at least was ready for
anything, and Savinkov was ready for much. Their close con-
nection with Kornilov, promoters of the swift career of the gen-
eral, played its role as we shall see in the further development of
events.

The Compromisers were surrendering all along the line. Tsere-
telli asserted: "The Coalition is a union of salvation." In spite of
the formal split, negotiations were in full swing behind the scenes.
In order to hasten the solution, Kerensky, in obvious agreement
with the Kadets, resorted to a purely histrionic measure a meas-
ure, that is to say, wholly in the spirit of his general policy, but
at the same time useful to his goal. He resigned and left town,
abandoning the Compromisers to their own desperation. Miliukov
says on this theme: "By his demonstrative departure he proved
to his enemies, rivals and adherents that, however they might look
upon his personal qualities, he was indispensable at the present
moment simply because of the political position he occupied be-
tween the two warring camps." He won the game by giving it
away. The Compromisers threw themselves upon "Comrade Ker-
ensky" with suppressed curses and public prayers. Both sides, the
Kadets and the socialists, easily persuaded the headless ministry
to abolish itself, empowering Kerensky to form the government
anew and at his sole personal discretion.

In order to drive out of their wits the already frightened mem-
bers of the Executive Committees, the latest news was handed to
them of the deteriorating situation at the front. The Germans

124

THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION LIFTS ITS HEAD

were driving the Russian troops, the Liberals were driving Keren-
sky, Kerensky was driving the Compromisers. The Menshevik and
Social Revolutionary factions were in session all night on July
24. "Wearied out with their own helplessness, the Executive Com-
mittees, by a majority o 147 votes against 46, with 42 abstaining
unprecedented opposition! finally ratified the turning over of
unconditional and unlimited powers to Kerensky. At the Kadet
Congress, sitting simultaneously, voices were raised for the over-
throw of Kerensky, but Miliukov curbed this impatience, sug-
gesting that they limit themselves for the present to bringing
pressure to bear. This does not mean that Miliukov had any il-
lusions about Kerensky, but he saw in him a point of application
for the power of the possessing classes. Once having freed the
government from the Soviets, it would be no labor to free it from
Kerensky.

In those days the gods of the Coalition remained athirst. The
decree demanding the arrest of Lenin had preceded the formation
of the transitional government of July 7. Now some firm act
was needed to signalize the resurrection of the Coalition. Already
on the 13th of July there had appeared in Maxim Gorky's paper
the Bolshevik press no longer existing an open letter from
Trotsky to the Provisional Government which read: "You can
have no logical foundation for excepting me from the implica-
tions of the decree under which Lenin, Zinoviev and Kamenev
are liable to arrest. So far as concerns the political side of the
question, you can have no reason to doubt that I am as implacable
an enemy of the general policy of the Provisional Government as
the above-named comrades." On the night when the new ministry
was created, Trotsky and Lunacharsky were arrested in Petrograd,
and ensign Krylenko, the future Bolshevik commander-in-chief ,
on the front.

The new government, having got born into the world after
a three-day crisis, had the appearance of a runt. It consisted of
second and third-rate figures selected on the basis of a choice
between evils. The Vice-President turned out to be the engineer
Nekrasov, a left Kadet who on February 27 had proposed that
they put down the revolution by turning over the power to one
of the tzarist generals. A writer without party and without per-

125

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

sonality, Prokopovich, a man who had been dwelling on the
borderland between Kadets and Mensheviks, became Minister of
Trade and Industry. A former attorney general, afterward a
radical lawyer, Zarudny, son of a "liberal" minister of Alexander
II, was called to the Ministry of Justice. The president of the
Executive Committee of the peasant soviet, Avksentiev, received
the portfolio of the Interior. The Menshevik, Skobelev, remained
Minister of Labor, and the People's Socialist, Peshekhonov, be-
came Minister of Provisions. The Liberals supplied equally sec-
ondary figures, men who played a leading role neither before nor
after their appointment. Chernov somewhat unexpectedly re-
turned to his post as Minister of Agriculture. In the four days
between his resignation and this new appointment he had had
time to rehabilitate himself. Miliukov in his "History" dispas-
sionately remarks that the nature of the relation between Chernov
and the German authorities "remained unexplained." "It is pos-
sible," he adds, "that the testimony of the Russian Intelligence
Service and the suspicions of Kerensky, Tereshchenko and others
went a little too far in this matter." The reappointment of Cher-
nov to the post of Minister of Agriculture was nothing more
than a tribute paid to the prestige of the ruling party of the
Social Revolutionaries in which, by the way, Chernov was
steadily losing influence. Finally, Tseretelli had the foresight to
remain outside the ministry. In May he had thought that he
would be useful to the revolution in the staff of the government;
now he intended to be useful to the government in the staff of
the Soviet. From this time on Tseretelli actually fulfilled the
duties of a commissar of the bourgeoisie in the system of the
Soviets. "If the interests of the country should be transgressed by
the Coalition," he said at a session of the Petrograd soviet, "our
duty would be to withdraw our comrades from the government."
It was no longer a question then as Dan had not long ago vouch-
safed of crowding out the Liberals after using them up; it was
a question of retiring in good season upon finding out that you
had been used up. Tseretelli was preparing a complete surrender
of power to the bourgeoisie.

In the first Coalition, formed on May 6, the socialists had been
in the minority, but they were in fact masters of the situation.

THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION LIFTS ITS HEAD

In the ministry of July 24, the socialists were in a majority, but
they were mere shadows of the Liberals. "With a slight nominal
predominance of socialists," writes Miliukov, "the actual pre-
dominance in the cabinet unquestionably belonged to the con-
vinced partisans of bourgeois democracy." It would be more ac-
curate to say bourgeois property. In the matter of democracy
the thing was much less definite. In the same spirit, although with
an unexpected motivation, Minister Peshekhonov compared the
July with the May Coalition: At that time, he said, the bourgeoisie
needed support from the left; now when counter-revolution
threatens it needs support from the right. "The more forces we
attract from the right, the fewer will remain of those who wish to
make an attack upon the government." This suggests a superb
rule for political strategy: In order to raise the siege of a fortress,
the best method is to open the gates from the inside. That was
the formula of the new Coalition.

The reaction was on the offensive, the democracy in retreat.
Classes and groups which had retired in fright during the first
days of the revolution began to lift their heads. Interest which
yesterday had lain concealed, today came into the open. Mer-
chants and speculators demanded the extermination of the Bol-
sheviks and freedom of trade. They raised their voice against
all restrictions upon trade whatsoever, even those which had been
introduced under tzarism. The food commissions which had tried
to struggle with speculation were declared to blame for the lack
of the necessities of life. From the commissions, hatred was trans-
ferred to the Soviets. The Menshevik economist Grohman has
reported that the campaign of the merchants "became especially
strong after the events of July 3-4." The Soviets were held re-
sponsible for the defeat, the high cost of living and nocturnal
burglaries.

Alarmed by monarchist intrigues and fearing some answer-
ing explosion from the left, the government on August 7 sent
Nicholas Romanov and his family to Tobolsk. On the following
day the new Bolshevik paper, Worker and Soldiery was suppressed.
News was arriving from all sides of the mass arrests of the soldier
committees. The Bolsheviks were able to assemble their congress
at the end of July only semi-legally. Army congresses were for-

127

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bidden. Congresses were now held by all who had been sitting
at home: landlords, merchants, industrialists, Cossack chiefs, the
clergy, the Cavaliers o St. George. Their voices sounded alike,
distinguished only in the degree of boldness. The indubitable, al-
though not always open, conductor of the symphony was the
Kadet party.

At a Congress of Trade and Industry which early in August
assembled about three hundred representatives of the most im-
portant industrial and stock-exchange organizations, the open-
ing speech was made by the textile king, Riabushinsky, and he
did not hide his light under a bushel. "The Provisional Govern-
ment," he said, "possesses only the shadow of power. . . . Actu-
ally a gang of political charlatans are in control. . . . The gov-
ernment is concentrating on taxes, imposing them primarily and
cruelly upon the merchant and industrial class. ... Is it ex-
pedient to give to the spendthrifts? Would it not be better in
the name of the salvation of the fatherland to appoint a guardian
over the spendthrifts?" And then a concluding threat: "The
bony hand of hunger and national destitution will seize by the
throat the friends of the people!" That phrase about the bony
hand of hunger, generalizing the policy of lock-outs, entered
from that time forth into the political dictionary of the revolu-
tion. It cost the capitalists dear.

There was held in Petrograd a congress of commissars of the
provinces. These agents of the Provisional Government, who were
supposed to stand like a wall around it, virtually united against
it, and under the leadership of their Kadet nucleus took in hand
the unhappy Minister of the Interior, Avksentiev. "You can't sit
down between two chairs: a government ought to govern and
not be a puppet." The Compromisers defended themselves and
protested half-heartedly, fearing lest Bolsheviks overhear their
quarrel with their ally. Avksentiev walked out of the congress as
though he had got burnt.

The Social Revolutionary and Menshevik press gradually
began to adopt the language of injury and complaint. Unexpected
revelations began to appear on its pages. On August 6, the Social
Revolutionary paper Dyelo Naroda, published a letter from a
group of left junkers, mailed by them while on the road to the

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front. They were "surprised by the role being played by the
junkers. . . . Systematic striking of people in the face, participa-
tion in punitive expeditions characterized by executions without
trial or investigation at a mere order from the battalion com-
mander. . . . Embittered soldiers have begun to snipe isolated
junkers from hiding-places. . ." Thus looked the business of
restoring health to the army.

The reaction was on the offensive, the government in retreat.
On August 7, the most popular Black Hundred agents, partisans
of the Rasputin circles and of Jewish pogroms, were liberated
from prison. The Bolsheviks remained in the Kresty Prison, where
a hunger strike of arrested soldiers and sailors was impending.
The workers' section of the Petrograd soviet sent greetings on
that day to Trotsky, Lunacharsky, Kollontay and other prisoners.
The industrialists, the commissars of the provinces, the Cos-
sack congress in Novocherkassk, the patriotic press, the gen-
erals, the liberals, everybody, thought it would be impossible to
hold the elections for the Constituent Assembly in September
best of all to postpone them to the end of the war. To this, how-
ever, the government would not agree. A compromise was found.
The convocation of the Constituent Assembly was deferred to the
28th of November. The Kadets accepted this postponement, al-
though not without grumblings. They were firmly counting on
certain decisive events happening during the three remaining
months, which would shift the whole question of the Constituent
Assembly to a different level. These hopes were being more and
more openly connected with the name of Kornilov.

The reclame surrounding the figure of this new "chief" hence-
forth occupied the center of the bourgeois policy. A biography
of the "First People's Commander-in-chief was distributed in
enormous quantities with the active co-operation of headquarters.
"When Savinkov, speaking as general administrator of the War
Ministry, would say to the journalists, "We assume, etc." his
"we" did not mean Savinkov and Kerensky, but Savinkov and
Kornilov. The noise surrounding the name of Kornilov put
Kerensky on his guard. Rumors were spreading more and more
persistently about a conspiracy centering in the League of Officers
at headquarters. Personal meetings between the heads of the gov-

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THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

ernment and the chiefs of the army in the first days of August
only fanned the fires of their mutual antipathy. "Does that
lightweight elocutionist think he can give orders to me?"
Kornilov doubtless said to himself. "Does that dull and ignorant
Cossack expect to save Russia?" Kerensky could not but think.
And they were both right in their way. Kornilov's program,
which included the militarisation of the factories and railroads,
the extension of the death penalty to the rear, and the subordina-
tion of the Petrograd military district and therewith the garrison
of the capital to headquarters, became known in those days to
the compromisist circles. Behind this official program another
program unexpressed but no less actual could easily be guessed
at. The left press sounded the alarm. The Executive Committee
advanced a new candidate for commander-in-chief in the person
of General Cheremissov. There was open talk of the impending
retirement of Kornilov. The reaction became alarmed.

On the 6th of August, the council of the Union of Twelve
Cossack Armies the Don, the Kuban, the Tver, etc. passed a
resolution, not without help from Savinkov, to bring it "loudly
and forcibly" to the attention of the government and the people
that they would not be responsible for the behavior of Cossack
troops at the front or rear in case of the removal of the "hero-
chief," General Kornilov. A conference of the League of Cavaliers
of St. George even more forcibly threatened the government. If
Kornilov was removed the League would immediately issue "a
war-cry to all the Knights of St. George, summoning them to
united action with the Cossacks/' Not one of the generals pro-
tested against this active insubordination, and the press of the
existing order printed with delight this resolution which con-
tained the threat of civil war. The head committee of the League
of Officers of the Army and Fleet sent out telegrams in which it
placed all its hopes in "our dear leader, General Kornilov," and
summoned "all honest people" to express their confidence in him.
A conference of "Public Men" of the right camp, sitting in Mos-
cow during those days, sent Kornilov a telegram in which it joined
its voice with those of the officers, the Georgian Cavaliers and the
Cossacks: "All thinking Russia looks with hope and confidence
to you." It would be impossible to speak more clearly. The

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THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION LIFTS ITS HEAD

conference was attended by industrialists and bankers like
Riabushinsky and Tretiakov, generals Alexeiev and Brussilov,
representatives of the clergy, professors, and leaders of the Kadet
party with Miliukov at their head. In the character of a smoke
screen, representatives were present from a semi-fictitious "peas-
ant union," designed to give the Kadets some support among the
peasant leaders. In the president's chair loomed the monumental
figure of Rodzianko, offering public thanks to the delegation of
a Cossack regiment for putting down the Bolsheviks. The can-
didacy of Kornilov for the role of savior of the country was thus
openly advanced by the most authoritative representatives of the
possessing and educated classes of Russia.

After these preparations the high commander-in-chief ap-
peared for a second time at the "War Ministry for negotiations as
to his program for the salvation of the country. "Upon his arrival
in Petrograd," says his chief of staff, General Lukomsky, de-
scribing this visit of Kornilov, "he went to the Winter Palace
escorted by Tekintsi x with two machine guns. These machine
guns were taken from the automobile after General Kornilov
entered the Winter Palace, and the Tekintsi stood guard at the
palace gate in order in case of need to come to the aid of the
commander-in-chief." It was assumed that the commander-in-
chief might require military aid against the Minister-President.
The machine guns of the Tekintsi were machine guns of the
bourgeoisie aimed at the Compromisers who kept getting under
their feet. Such was the position of this government of salvation
so independent of the Soviets!

Shortly after Kornilov's visit a member of the Provisional
Government, Kokoshkin, announced to Kerensky that the Kadets
would resign "if Kornilov's program is not accepted today/* Al-
though without the machine guns, the Kadets were now talking
to the government in the same ultimative language as Kornilov.
And that was a help. The Provisional Government hastened to
examine the report of the supreme commander, and to recognize
in principle the possibility of adopting the measures proposed by
him, "including the restoration of the death penalty at the rear."

In this mobilization of the forces of reaction there was nat-

1 Caucasian native cavalry.

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THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

urally included the All-Russian Council of Churches, which had
for its official aim to complete the emancipation of the orthodox
church from bureaucratic activities, but whose real aim was to
protect it from the revolution. With the overthrow of the mon-
archy the church had been deprived of its official head. Its rela-
tion to the state, which had been its defense and protector from
time immemorial, was now left hanging in the air. To be sure,
the Holy Synod, in an epistle of March 9, had hastened to extend
its blessing to the accomplished revolution and summon the peo-
ple to "place their trust in the Provisional Government." How-
ever, the future contained a menace. The government had kept
silent on the church question as on all others. The clergy were
completely at a loss. Occasionally from some far-off region
from the city of Verny on the borders of China a telegram
would come from a local cleric assuring Prince Lvov that his
policy fully corresponded to the Testament of the Evangelists.
Although thus tuning in on the revolution, the church had not
dared to interfere in events. This was plainest of all at the front,
where the influence of the clergy had evaporated along with the
discipline of fear. Denikin acknowledges this: "Whereas the offi-
cers' corps did for a long time fight for its military authority and
power to command, the voice of the pastors was silent from the
first days of the revolution and their every participation in the
life of the soldiers came to an end." The congresses of the clergy
at headquarters and in the staffs of the army went by without
leaving a trace.

The Council of Churches, although primarily a caste affair of
the clergy itself, and especially of its upper tiers, nevertheless did
not remain confined within the limits of the church bureaucracy.
Liberal society tried with might and main to get hold of it. The
Kadet party, having found no political roots among the people,
fancied that a reformed church might serve as a transmitting
mechanism between it and the masses. In the preparations for the
meeting of the Council, an active role was played side by side
with princes of the church, and even ahead of them, by tem-
poral politicians of various tints, such as Prince Troubetskoy,
Count Olsufiev, Rodzianko, Samarin, and by liberal profes-
sors and writers. The Kadet party tried in vain to create around

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THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION LIFTS ITS HEAD

the Council an atmosphere of church reform, stepping softly
the while, lest some incautious motion might shake down the
whole rotting structure. Not a word was said about the sep-
aration of church and state, either among the clergy or among
the temporal reformers. The princes of the church were nat-
urally inclined to weaken the control of the state over their
inner affairs, but at the same time they desired that in the future
the state should not only guarantee their privileged situation,
their lands and income, but also continue to carry the lion's share
of their expenses. In their turn the liberal bourgeoisie were will-
ing to guarantee to the orthodox church a continuance of its
dominant position, but on the condition that it learn to serve the
interests of the ruling class among the masses in the new style.

But just here the chief difficulties began. Denikin himself re-
marks with sorrow that the Russian revolution "did not create
one single popular religious movement worth remarking upon."
It would be truer to say that in proportion as new layers of the
people were drawn into the revolution, they almost automatically
turned their backs on the church, even where they had formerly
been attached to it. In the country individual priests may still
have had some personal influence, dependent upon their behavior
in regard to the land question; in the cities it occurred to nobody,
either among the workers or the petty bourgeoisie, to turn to
the clergy for the solution of any problem raised by the revolu-
tion. The preparations for the Council of Churches were met
with complete indifference by the people. The interests and pas-
sions of the masses were finding their expression in socialist slo-
gans, not in theological texts. Belated Russia enacted her history
in an abridged edition: she found herself obliged to step over,
not only the epoch of the reformation, but that of bourgeois
parliamentarism as well.

Although planned for in the months of the flood-tide of the
revolution, the Church Council took place during the weeks of
its ebb. This still further thickened its reactionary coloring. The
constitution of the Council, the circle of problems it touched
upon, even the ceremony of its opening all testified to radical
changes in the attitude of the different classes toward the church*
At the divine services in the Uspensky Cathedral, side by side

133

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

with Rodzianko and the Kadets, sat Kerensky and Avksentiev.
The burgomaster of Moscow, the Social Revolutionary Rudner,
said in his speech of greeting: "So long as the Russian people shall
live, the Christian faith will burn in its soul." Only yesterday
those people had considered themselves the direct descendants of
the prophet of the Russian Enlightenment, Chernishevsky.

The Council distributed printed appeals in all directions,
prayed for a strong government, denounced the Bolsheviks, and
adjured the workers in concert with the Minister of Labor,
Skobelev: "Laborers, do your work, sparing no efforts, and sub-
ject your own needs to the welfare of the fatherland." But the
Council gave its more special attention to the land question.
The metropolitans and bishops were no less frightened and em-
bittered than the landlords by the scope of the peasant movement;
fear for the church and monastery lands had seized hold of their
souls more firmly than the question of the democratization of
the parish. With threats of the wrath of God and excommunica-
tion from the church, the epistles of the Council demanded "an
immediate restoration to the churches, monasteries, parishes, and
private proprietors, of the land, forests and harvests of which
they have been robbed." Here it is appropriate to recall the voice
crying in the wilderness! The Council dragged along from week
to week, and arrived at the high point of its labors the re-
establishment of patriarchism * abolished by Peter two hundred
years before only after the October revolution.

At the end of July the government decided to call a State
Conference of all classes and social institutions of the country
to meet in Moscow August 13. Membership in the conference
was to be determined by the government itself. In direct con-
tradiction to the results of all democratic elections which had
taken place in the country without a single exception, the gov-
ernment took care to make sure in advance that the conference
should contain an equal number of representatives from the pos-
sessing classes and the people. Only by means of this artificial

1 Before Peter the Great the Beads of the church had called themselves patriarchs
and had their own court, their own administration were in effect a second order
of tzars. He abolished this title and reduced the church to a department in his own
administration. Trans.

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THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION LIFTS ITS HEAD

equilibrium could the government of the salvation of the revolu-
tion still hope to save itself. This national congress did not possess
any definite rights. To quote Miliukov: "The conference . . .
received at the most a merely advisory voice." The possessing
classes wished to give the people an example of self-abnegation,
in order afterward the more surely to seize the power as a whole.
Officially the goal of the conference was "a rapprochement be-
tween the state power and all the organized forces of the coun-
try/ 5 The press talked about the necessity of solidarity, reconcilia-
tion, encouragement and of raising everybody's spirits. In other
words, they did not wish to say, and others were incapable of
saying, for just what purpose the conference had been called.
Here again, giving things their true names became the task of the
Bolsheviks.

135

CHAPTER VI
KERENSKY AND KORNILOV

(Elements of Bonapartism in the Russian Revolution)

A GOOD deal has been written to the effect that subse-
quent misfortunes, including the advent of the Bolshe-
viks, might have been avoided if instead of Kerensky a
man of clear head and strong character had stood at the helm of
the government, It is indubitable that Kerensky possessed neither
of these attributes. But the question is, why did certain well-
defined social classes find themselves obliged to lift up just this
man, Kerensky, upon their shoulders?

As though to freshen our historic memory, events in Spain
are now again showing us how a revolution, washing away the
customary political boundary lines, surrounds everybody and
everything during its first days with a rosy mist. At this stage
even its enemies try to tint themselves with its color. This mim-
icry expresses a semi-instinctive desire of the conservative classes
to accommodate themselves to the changes impending, so as to
suffer from them as little as possible. This solidarity of the nation,
founded upon loose phrases, makes of compromisism an indis-
pensable political function. Petty bourgeois idealists, overlooking
class distinctions, thinking in stereotyped phrases, not knowing
what they want, and wishing well to everybody, are at this stage
the sole conceivable leaders of the majority. If Kerensky had pos-
sessed clear thoughts and a strong will, he would have been com-
pletely unfit for his historic role. This is not a retrospective esti-
mate. The Bolsheviks so judged the matter in the heat of the
events. "An attorney for the defense in political cases, a Social
Revolutionary who became leader of the Trudoviks, a radical
without any socialist schooling whatever, Kerensky has expressed
more completely than anyone else the first epoch of the revolu-
tion, its 'national' formlessness, the idealism of its hopes and ex-

136

KERENSKY AND KORNILOV

pectations": thus wrote the author of these lines while locked up
in Kerensky's prison after the July Days. "Kerensky made
speeches about land and freedom, about law and order, about
peace among nations, about the defense of the fatherland, the
heroism of Liebknecht, about how the Russian revolution ought
to astonish the world with its magnanimity waving the while a
little red silk handkerchief. The everyday man who was just
beginning to wake up politically listened to these speeches with
rapture: it seemed to him that he himself was speaking from
the tribune. The army greeted Kerensky as their savior from
Guchkov. The peasants heard about him as a Trudovik, as a
muzhik's deputy. The Liberals were won over by the ex-
treme moderateness of idea under his formless radicalism of
phrase. . . ."

But the period of universal and indiscriminate embraces does
not last long. The class struggle dies down at the beginning of a
revolution only to come to life afterward in the form of civil
war. In the faery-like rise of compromisism is contained the seed
of its inevitable fall. The official French journalist, Claude Anet,
explained Kerensky's swift loss of popularity by a lack of tact
which impelled the socialist politician to actions "little harmoniz-
ing" with his role. "He frequents the imperial loges, he lives in
the Winter Palace or at Tsarskoe Selo, he sleeps in the bed of
Russian emperors. A little too much vanity and vanity a little
too noticeable that is shocking in a country which is the simplest
in the world." Tact implies, in the small as well as the great, an
understanding of the situation and of one's place in it. Of this
understanding Kerensky had not a trace. Lifted up by the trust-
ful masses, he was completely alien to them, did not understand,
and was not the least interested in, the question of how the revolu-
tion looked to them and what inferences they were drawing from
it. The masses expected bold action from him, but he demanded
from the masses that they should not interfere with his magna-
nimity and eloquence. Once when Kerensky was paying a the-
atrical visit to the arrested family of the tzar, the soldiers on
duty around the palace said to their commandant: "We sleep on
boards, we have bad food, but Nicholashka even after he is ar-
rested has meat to throw in the pail." Those were not "magnan-

137

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

imous" words, but they expressed what the soldiers were feeling.

Breaking free of their age-old chains, the people were trans-
gressing at every step those boundaries which educated leaders
wanted to lay down for them. Towards the end of April Kerensky
voiced a lament upon this subject: "Can it be that the Russian
Free State is a state of slaves in revolt? ... I regret that I did
not die two months ago. I should have died with the great dream/*
etc. etc. With this bad rhetoric he hoped to exert an influence on
the workers, soldiers, sailors, and peasants. Admiral Kolchak re-
lated subsequently before a soviet tribunal how in May the radical
War Minister made the rounds of the Black Sea Fleet in order to
reconcile the sailors with their officers. It seemed to the orator
after each speech that the goal had been attained: "There, you
see, admiral, everything is fixed. . . ." But nothing at all was
fixed. The disintegration of the fleet was only beginning.

As time went on Kerensky's affectations, insolence, and brag-
gadoccio more and more keenly offended the masses. During his
journey around the front he once cried out irascibly to his adju-
tant in the railroad car perhaps on purpose to be heard by a
general: "Kick all those damned committees to hell!" Arriving
on a visit to the Baltic fleet, Kerensky ordered the Sailors' Cen-
tral Committee to appear before him on the admiral's warship.
The Centrobalt, being a soviet body, was not under the war
ministry and considered the order offensive. The president of the
committee, the sailor Dybenko, answered: "If Kerensky wants
to talk to the Centrobalt, let him come to us." "Wasn't that an
intolerable act of impudence! On the vessels where Kerensky
did enter into conversation with the sailors, it went no better
especially on the* warship Republic whose mood was Bolshevik.
Here they questioned the minister on the following points:
Why had he voted for war in the State Duma? Why had he put
his signature to the imperialist note of Miliukov on the 21st of
April? Why had he given the tzarist senators a pension of six
thousand rubles a year? Kerensky refused to answer these "crafty"
questions put to him by "foes," The crew dryly declared the
minister's explanations "unsatisfactory." In a silence like the
tomb Kerensky withdrew from the ship. "Slaves in revolt!"
muttered the radical lawyer, grinding his teeth. But the sailors

138

KERENSKY AND KORNILOV

were experiencing an emotion of pride: "Yes, we were slaves and
we have revolted!"

Kerensky's high-handed treatment of democratic social opin-
ion called out at every step semi-conflicts with the soviet leaders,
who were traveling the same road but with more of a disposition
to look round at the masses. Already on the 8th of March, the
Executive Committee, frightened by protests from below, had
warned Kerensky of the impossibility of liberating arrested
policemen. A few days later the Compromisers found themselves
obliged to protest against the plan of the Minister of Justice to
export the tzar's family to England. Again in two or three weeks,
the Executive Committee raised the general question of a "regula-
tion of their relations" with Kerensky, but those relations never
were and never could be regulated. The same difficulties arose
about his party relations. At a Social Revolutionary congress
early in June, Kerensky was voted down in the elections to the
party central committee, receiving 135 votes out of 270. And
how the leaders did squirm in their effort to explain, both to right
and left, that "many did not vote for Comrade Kerensky because
he is already overloaded with work." The fact is that, while the
staff and departmental Social Revolutionaries adored Kerensky
as the source of all good things, the old Social Revolutionaries
bound up with the masses regarded him without confidence and
without respect. But neither the Executive Committee nor the
Social Revolutionary party could get along without Kerensky:
He was necessary to them as the connecting link of the coalition.

In the Soviet bloc the leading role belonged to the Mensheviks.
They invented the decisions that is, the methods by which to
avoid doing anything. But in the state apparatus the Narodniks
clearly outbalanced the Mensheviks a fact which was most ob-
viously expressed in the dominating position of Kerensky. Half
Kadet and half Social Revolutionary, Kerensky was not a rep-
resentative of the Soviets in the government, like Tseretelli or
Chernov, but a living tie between the bourgeoisie and the de-
mocracy. Tseretelli and Chernov formed one side of the Coalition.
Kerensky was a personal incarnation of the Coalition itself.
Tseretelli complained of the predominance in Kerensky of "per-
sonal motives," not understanding that these were inseparable

139

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

from his political function. Tseretelli himself as Minister of the
Interior issued a circular to the effect that the commissars of the
provinces ought to rely upon all the "living forces" of their lo-
cality that is, upon the bourgeoisie and upon the Soviets and
carry out the policies of the Provisional Government without
surrendering to "party influences." That ideal commissar, rising
above all hostile classes and parties in order to find his whole duty
in himself and in a circular that is Kerensky on a provincial or
a county scale. As a crown to this system there was needed one
independent all-Russian commissar in the Winter Palace. With-
out Kerensky compromisism would have been like a church
steeple without a cross.

The history of Kerensky's rise is full of lessons. He became
Minister of Justice thanks to the February revolution which he
feared. The April demonstration of "slaves in revolt" made him
Minister of War and Marine. The July struggle, caused by "Ger-
man agents," put him at the head of the government. At the be-
ginning of September a movement of the masses will make this
head of the government supreme commander-in-chief as well.
The dialectic of the compromise regime, and its malicious irony,
lie in the fact that the masses had to lift Kerensky to the very
highest height before they could topple him over.

While contemptuously drawing away his skirts from the peo-
ple who had given him power, Kerensky the more thirstily grabbed
after any sign of encouragement from educated society. In the
very first days of the revolution the leader of the Moscow Kadets,
Doctor Kishkin, said, upon returning from Petrograd: "If it were
not for Kerensky, we should not have what we have. His name
will be written in golden letters on the tablets of history." The
praise of these Liberals became one of the most important political
criteria for Kerensky, but he could not, and did not wish to, lay
his popularity in a simple way at the feet of the bourgeoisie. On
the contrary, he more and more acquired a taste for seeing all
classes at his own feet. "The thought of setting off and balancing
against each other the government of the bourgeoisie and the
democracy," testifies Miliukov, "was not foreign to Kerensky
from the very beginning of the revolution." This course was the
natural outcome of his whole life's journey, which had run be-

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KERENSKY AND KORNILOV

tween the functions o a liberal lawyer and the underground
circles. While respectfully assuring Buchanan that "the Soviet
will die a natural death," Kerensky was frightening his bourgeois
colleagues at every step with the wrath of the Soviet. And on
those frequent occasions when the leaders of the Executive Com-
mittee disagreed with Kerensky, he dismayed them by mention-
ing the most horrible of catastrophes, the resignation of the
Liberals.

When Kerensky reiterated that he did not wish to be the
Marat of the Russian revolution, that meant that he would re-
fuse to take severe measures against the reaction, but not so
against "anarchy." Generally speaking, by the way, that is the
moral of the opponents of violence in politics: they renounce
violence when it comes to introducing changes in what already
exists, but in defense of the existing order they will not stop at
the most ruthless acts.

In the period of preparation for the offensive, Kerensky be-
came the especially beloved figure of the possessing classes.
Tereshchenko kept telling each and everybody how highly our
Allies esteem "the labors of Kerensky," The Kadet paper, Recb,
while severe with the Compromisers, continually emphasized its
favorable attitude to the War Minister. Rodzianko himself recog-
nized that "this young man ... is reborn each day with re-
doubled strength for creative labor and the welfare of the
fatherland." With such remarks the Liberals were, of course,
deliberately flattering Kerensky, but also they could not help
seeing that in the essence he was working for them. "Imagine
how it would have been," remarked Lenin, "if Guchkov had
attempted to issue orders for an offensive, to disband regiments,
to arrest soldiers, to forbid congresses, to shout 'thou* at the sol-
diers, to call the soldiers 'cowards* etc. But Kerensky could permit
himself this luxury* only, it is true, until he had squandered
that incredibly quick-melting confidence which the people had
placed to his credit. . . ."

The offensive, while elevating Kerensky's reputation in the
ranks of the bourgeoisie, completely undermined his popularity
with the people. The collapse of the offensive was in essence a
collapse of Kerensky in both camps. But the striking thing is that

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THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

exactly this two-sided loss of standing rendered him henceforth
"irreplaceable. 35 As to the role of Kerensky in creating the second
Coalition, Miliukov expresses himself thus: "the only possible
man/' Not, alas: "the only man needed." This leading liberal
politician, be it remarked, never took Kerensky any too seriously,
and broad circles of the bourgeoisie were more and more inclined
to lay the blame on him for all the blows of fate. "The impatience
of patriotically inclined groups" impelled them, according to
Miliukov, to search for a strong man. At one time Admiral
Kolchak was suggested for this role. Moreover, this installing of a
strong man at the helm was "thought of in different terms from
those of negotiation and compromise." That we may easily be-
lieve. "Hopes of democracy, of the will of the people, of the
Constituent Assembly/' writes Stankevich of the Kadet party,
"were already thrown overboard. The municipal elections
throughout aU Russia had given an overwhelming majority to
the socialists . . . and there were beginning to be convulsive
Teachings out for a power which should not persuade but only
command/' More accurately speaking, a power which should take
the revolution by the throat.

IN the biography of Kornilov, and in his personal attributes, it
is easy to distinguish the traits which justified his candidacy for
the post of national savior. General Martynov, who had been
Kornilov's superior in peace time, and in war time had shared his
captivity in an Austrian fortress, characterizes Kornilov as fol-
lows: "Distinguished by a sustained love of work and great self-
confidence, he was in his intellectual faculties an ordinary and
mediocre man, not possessed of any broad outlook/' Martynov
places to the credit of Kornilov two traits: personal bravery and
disinterestedness. In those circles where most people were thieving
and worrying about their own skin, these qualities were striking.
Of strategic ability above all the ability to estimate a situation
as a whole, both in its material and moral elements Kornilov
hadn't a trace. "Moreover he lacked organizing ability," says
Martynov, "and with his violent temper and lack of equilibrium

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KERENSKY AND KORNILOV

was little fitted for planned activity." Brussilov, who observed
the entire military activity of his subordinate during the World
War, spoke of him with supreme contempt: "The chief of a bold
guerrilla band and nothing more. . . ." The official legend
created around the Kornilov division was dictated by the demand
of patriotic social opinion for some bright spot on the dark back-
ground of events. "The forty-eighth division," writes Martynov,
"was destroyed thanks to the abominable administration . . .
of Kornilov himself, who ... did not know how to organize a
retreat, and worst of all kept continually changing his mind and
losing time. . . ." At the last moment Kornilov abandoned to
their fate the division he had led into a trap, and tried himself to
escape capture. However, after four days and nights of wander-
ing the unlucky general surrendered to the Austrians, and he
only escaped some time later. "Upon his return to Russia
Kornilov, in conversing with various newspaper correspondents,
touched up the story of his escape with bright colors supplied by
his own imagination." We need not pause upon the prosaic cor-
rections which well-informed witnesses have introduced into his
legend. It is evident that from that moment on Kornilov began to
acquire a taste for newspaper reclame.

Before the revolution Kornilov had been a monarchist of the
Black Hundred tint. In captivity when reading the papers, he
would frequently remark that "he would gladly hang all those
Guchkovs and Miliukovs." But political ideas occupied him, as is
usual with people of his mould, only insofar as they directly
affected his own person. After the February revolution Kornilov
found it easy to declare himself a republican. "He was very little
acquainted," according to the report of Martynov, "with the in-
terlacing interests of the different strata of Russian society, knew
nothing either of party groups or of individual political leaders."
Mensheviks, Social Revolutionaries, and Bolsheviks constituted
for him one hostile mass which hindered the officers from com-
manding, the landlord from enjoying his estate, the merchant
from trading, and the factory owner from producing goods.

Already on the 2nd of March, the committee of the State
Duma laid hold upon General Kornilov, and over the signature
of Rodzianko demanded of headquarters that this "valiant hero

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THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

known to all Russia" be appointed commander-in-chief of the
troops of the Petrograd district. The tzar, who had already ceased
to be a tzar, wrote on Rodzianko's telegram: "Carry out." Thus
the revolutionary capital acquired its first red general. In a re-
port of the Executive Committee dated March 10, this phrase is
applied to Kornilov: "A general of the old stripe who wants to
put an end to the revolution." In those early days, however, the
general tried to put his best foot forward, and even carried out
without grumbling the ritual of arresting the tzarina. That was
placed to his credit. In the memoirs of Colonel Kobylinsky, how-
ever the commander of Tzarskoe Selo appointed by him it be-
comes known that Kornilov was here playing a double game.
After his presentation to the tzarina, Kobylinsky guardedly re-
lates: "Kornilov said to me: 'Colonel, leave us alone. Go and stand
outside the door.' I went out. After about five minutes Kornilov
called me. I entered. The Empress extended her hand. . . ." It is
clear that Kornilov had recommended the colonel as a friend.
Later on we shall hear of the embraces exchanged between the
tzar and his "jailer" Kobylinsky. As an administrator Kornilov
in his new position proved unspeakably bad. "His closest asso-
ciates in Petrograd," writes Stankevich, "continually complained
of his incapacity to do the work or to direct it." Kornilov lingered
in the capital, however, only a short time. In the April days he
attempted, not without a hint from Miliukov, to inaugurate the
first blood-letting of the revolution, but ran into the opposition
of the Executive Committee, resigned, was given command of an
army, and afterward of the southwestern front. Without waiting
for the legal introduction of the death penalty, Kornilov here
gave orders to shoot deserters and set up their corpses on the road
with an inscription, threatened the peasants with severe penalties
for violating the proprietory rights of landlords, created shock
battalions, and on every appropriate occasion shook his fist at
Petrograd. This immediately surrounded his name with a halo
in the eyes of the officers and the possessing classes. But many of
Kerensky's commissars, too, would say to themselves: there is no
hope left but in Kornilov. In a few weeks this gallant general
with a mournful experience as commander of a division, became
the supreme commander-in-chief of those disintegrating armies

144

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ffi

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KERENSKY AND KORNILOV

of millions which the Entente was trying to make wage a war to
complete victory.

It made Kornilov's head swim. His narrow horizon and po-
litical ignorance rendered him an easy prey for seekers of adven-
ture. While wilfully defending his personal prerogative, this
"man with a lion's heart and the brain of a sheep/' as Kornilov
was described by General Alexeiev, and after him by Verkhovsky,
submitted very easily to personal influences, if only they fell in
with the voice of his ambition. Miliukov, who was friendly to
Kornilov, remarks in him a "childish trust in people who knew
how to flatter him." The closest inspirer of the supreme com-
mander was a certain Zavoiko, who followed the modest calling
of orderly an obscure figure from among the former land-
lords, an oil speculator, an adventurer, who especially impressed
Kornilov with his pen. Zavoiko did indeed have the brisk style
of the swindler who will stop at nothing. This orderly became
Kornilov's press agent, author of the "People's Biography,"
drawer-up of reports, ultimatums, and all those documents for
which there was needed in the words of the general "a strong
artistic style." To Zavoiko was added another seeker of adventure,
Alladin, a former deputy of the first Duma, who had spent some
years abroad, who never removed an English pipe from his mouth,
and therefore considered himself a specialist upon international
affairs. These two men stood at Kornilov's right hand, keeping
him in touch with the centers of the counter-revolution. His left
flank was covered by Savinkov and Filomenko, who employed
every means to hold up the generaFs exaggerated opinion of him-
self, and at the same time keep him from taking any premature
step which might make him impossible in the eyes of the democ-
racy. "To him came the honest and the dishonest, the sincere and
the intriguing, political leaders, and military leaders, and adven-
turers," writes the unctuous General Denikin, "and all with one
voice cried: Save us!" It would be difficult to determine the exact
proportion of the honest and the dishonest. At any rate Kornilov
seriously considered himself called to "save" the situation, and
thus became a direct rival of Kerensky.

145

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

THE rivals quite sincerely hated each other. "Kerensky," accord-
ing to Martynov, "assumed a high-and-mighty tone in his re-
lations with the old generals. A humble hard worker like Alexeiev,
or the diplomatically-inclined Brussilov, could permit this treat-
ment. But such tactics would not go down with the self-
complacent and touchy Kornilov, who . . . for his part looked
down upon the lawyer, Kerensky." The weaker of the two was
prepared to yield, and did make serious advances. At least
Kornilov told Denikin towards the end of July that a proposal
had come to him from governmental circles to enter the ministry.
"No sir! Those gentlemen are too bound up with the Soviets. . . .
I said to them: give me the power and then I will make a decisive
fight."

The ground was quaking under Kerensky's feet like a peat
bog. He sought a way out, as always, in the sphere of verbal im-
provisations: call meetings, announce, proclaim! His personal
success on the 21st of July, when he had risen above the hostile
camps of the democracy and the bourgeoisie in the character of
an irreplaceable personality, suggested to Kerensky the idea of a
state conference in Moscow. That which had taken place in a
closed chamber of the Winter Palace would now be brought out
in the open. Let the country see with its own eyes that everything
will go to pieces if Kerensky does not take in his hands the reins
and the whip.

According to the official list, the State Conference was to in-
clude "representatives of political, social, democratic, national,
commercial, industrial, and co-operative organizations, leaders
of the institutions of the democracy, the higher representatives
of the army, scientific institutions, universities, and members
of the four State Dumas." About 1500 conferees were indi-
cated, but more than 2500 assembled the number having been
enlarged wholly in the interests of the right wing. The Moscow
Journal of the Social Revolutionaries wrote reproachfully about
its own government: "As against 150 representatives of labor,
there are 120 representatives of trade and industry; against 100
peasant deputies, 100 representatives of the landlords have been
invited; against 100 representatives of the Soviet, there will be
300 members of the State Duma. . . ." This official paper of

146

KERENSKY AND KORNILOV

Kerensk/s party expressed a doubt as to whether such a con-
ference would be able to give the government "that support
which it seeks."

The Compromisers went to the Conference gritting their
teeth: We must make an honest effort, they were saying to each
other, to come to an agreement. But how about the Bolsheviks?
We must at whatever cost prevent them from interfering in this
dialogue between the democracy and the possessing classes. By a
special resolution of the Executive Committee, party factions
were deprived of the right to take the floor without the consent
of the praesidium. The Bolsheviks decided to make a declaration
in the name of the party and walk out of the conference. The
praesidium, watchful of their every movement, demanded that
they abandon this criminal plan. Then the Bolsheviks unhesi-
tatingly handed back their cards of admission. They were pre-
paring another and more significant answer: Proletarian Moscow
was to speak its word.

Almost from the first days of the revolution the partisans of
law and order had on all possible occasions contrasted the peaceful
"country" against tumultuous Petrograd. The convocation of
the Constituent Assembly in Moscow had been one of the slogans
of the bourgeoisie. The National-Liberal "Marxist," Potressov,
had sent curses to Petrograd for imagining itself to be "a new
Paris." As though the Girondists had not threatened the old Paris
with thunder and lightning had not proposed that it reduce its
role to %s of what it was! A provincial Menshevik said in June
at the congress of Soviets: "Some sort of place like Novocherkassk
far better reflects the conditions of life in Russia than Petrograd/'
In the essence of the matter the Compromisers like the bourgeoisie
were seeking support, not in the actual moods of "the country,"
but in consoling illusions which they themselves created. Now,
when it came time to feel the actual political pulse of Moscow, a
cruel disappointment awaited the initiators of the conference.

Those counter-revolutionary conferences which had followed
each other in Moscow from the first days of August, beginning
with a congress of landlords and ending with the Church Council,
had not only mobilized the possessing circles, but had also brought
the workers and soldiers to their feet. The threats of Riabushinsky,

147

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

the appeals of Rodzianko, the fraternization of Kadets with
Cossack generals all this had taken place before the eyes of the
lower ranks in Moscow. All this had been interpreted by Bolshe-
vik agitators hot on the trail of the news-stories. But the danger of
'a counter-revolution had now taken a palpable, even a personal
form. A wave of indignation ran through the shops and factories.
"If the Soviets are powerless," wrote the Moscow Bolshevik paper,
"the workers must unite round their own living organizations/'
In the first rank of these organizations were named the trade-
unions, a majority of them already under Bolshevik leadership.
The mood of the factories was so hostile to the State Conference
that the idea of a general strike, suggested from below, was
adopted almost without opposition at a meeting of representatives
of all the Moscow nuclei of the Bolshevik organization. The trade-
unions had taken the initiative. The Moscow soviet by a majority
of 364 against 304 voted against the strike. But since at the caucus
of their factions the Menshevik and Social Revolutionary workers
had voted for the strike, and were now merely submitting to
party discipline, this decision of a soviet elected long ago, adopted
moreover against the will of its actual majority, was far from
stopping the Moscow workers. A meeting of the officers of 41
trade unions passed a resolution to call a one-day strike of protest.
The district Soviets, a majority of them, came out on the side of
the party and the trade-unions. The factories here advanced a
demand for re-elections to the Moscow soviet, which was not
only lagging behind the masses, but coming into sharp conflict
with them. In the Zamoskvoretsky district soviet, which met
jointly with the factory committees, a demand for the recall of
those deputies who had "gone against the will of the working-
class" received 175 votes against 4, with 19 abstaining!

The night before the strike was, nevertheless, a bad night for
the Moscow Bolsheviks. The country was indeed following in the
steps of Petrograd, but lagging behind. The July demonstration
had been unsuccessful in Moscow: a majority, not only of the
garrison, but also of the workers had feared to go into the streets
against the voice of the Soviet. How would it be this time? Morn-
ing brought the answer. The counter-efforts of the Compromisers
did not prevent the strike from becoming a powerful demonstra-

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KERENSKY AND KORNILOV

tion of hostility to the Coalition and the government. Two days
before, the newspaper of the Moscow industrialists had con-
fidently declared: "Let the Petrograd government come soon to
Moscow. Let them listen to the voice of the holy places, the bells
and sacred towers of the Kremlin. . . ." Today the voice of the
sacred places was drowned by an ominous stillness.

A member of the Moscow committee of the Bolsheviks,
Piatnitsky, subsequently wrote: "The strike came off magnifi-
cently. There were no lights, no tramcars; the factories and shops
were closed and the railroad yards and stations; even the waiters
in the restaurants had gone on strike." Miliukov adds a sharp
light to this picture: "The delegates coming to the Conference
. . . could not ride on the tramways, nor lunch in the restau-
rants." This permitted them, as the liberal historian acknowl-
edges, the better to estimate the strength of the Bolsheviks, who
had not been admitted to the Conference. The Izvestia of the
Moscow soviet adequately described the significance of this
manifestation of August 12th: "In spite of the resolutions of the
Soviets . . . the masses followed the Bolsheviks." 400,000 work-
ers went on strike in Moscow and the suburbs upon the summons
of a party which for five weeks had been under continual blows,
and whose leaders were still in hiding or in prison. The new
Petrograd organ of the party, The Proletarian, managed before it
was shut down to put a question to the Compromisers: "From
Petrograd you went to Moscow where will you go from there?"

Even the masters of the situation must have put this question
to themselves. In Kiev, Kostroma, Tzaritzyn, similar one-day
strikes of protest occurred, general or partial. The agitation cov-
ered the whole country. Everywhere, in the remotest corners, the
Bolsheviks gave warning that the State Conference bore the
"clearly marked imprint of a counter-revolutionary conspiracy."
By the end of August the meaning of this formula was disclosed
before the eyes of the whole people.

The delegates to the Conference, as well as bourgeois Moscow,
expected a coming-out of the masses with arms, expected clashes,
battles, "August days." But for the workers to go into the street,
would have meant for them to offer themselves to the blows of
the Cavaliers of St. George, the officer detachments, junkers, in-

149

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

dividual cavalry units, burning with the desire to take revenge
for the strike. To summon the garrison to the street would
have introduced a split, and lightened the task of the counter-
revolution which stood ready with its hand on the trigger. The
party did not summon them to the street, and the workers them-
selves, guided by a correct strategic sense, avoided any open en-
counter. The one-day strike perfectly corresponded to the situa-
tion. It could not be hid under a bushel, as was the declaration of
the Bolsheviks at the Conference. When the city was plunged in
darkness, all Russia saw the hand of the Bolsheviks at the switch-
board. No, Petrograd was not isolated. "In Moscow, upon whose
patriarchal humbleness so many had set their hopes, the workers*
districts suddenly showed their teeth." Thus Sukhanov describes
the significance of that day. In the absence of the Bolsheviks, but
under the sign of the unfleshed teeth of the proletarian revolu-
tion, the Coalition conferees had to take their seats.

Moscow wits were saying that Kerensky had come there "to
be crowned." But the next day Kornilov arrived from head-
quarters with the same purpose, and was met by innumerable
delegates among them those from the Church Council. The
Tekintsi leapt from the approaching train in their bright red long
coats, with their naked curved swords, and drew up in two files
on the platform. Ecstatic ladies sprinkled the hero with flowers
as he reviewed this body-guard and the deputations. The Kadet,
Rodichev, concluded his speech of greeting with the cry: "Save
Russia, and a grateful people will reward you 1 /' Patriotic sob-
bings were heard. Morozova, a millionaire merchant's wife, went
down on her knees. Officers carried Kornilov out to the people
on their shoulders. While the commander-in-chief was reviewing
the Cavaliers of St. George, the cadets, the officers' schools, and
the Cossack squadron drawn up on the square before the station,
Kerensky, in his character as rival and Minister of War, was re-
viewing a parade of the troops of the Moscow garrison. From the
station Kornilov took his way in the steps of the tzars to the
Ivarsky shrine, where a service was held in the presence of his
escort of Mussulmen Tekintsi in their gigantic fur hats. "This
circumstance/' writes the Cossack officer Grekov, "disposed be-
lieving Moscow still more favorably to Kornilov/* The counter-

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KERENSKY AND KORNILOV

revolution was meanwhile trying to capture the street. Kornilov's
biography, together with his portrait, was generously scattered
from automobiles. The walls were covered with posters summon-
ing the people to the aid of the hero. Like a sovereign, Kornilov
received in his private car statesmen, industrialists, financiers.
Representatives of the banks made reports to him about the finan-
cial condition of the country. The Octobrist Shidlovsky signifi-
cantly writes: "The only one of all the members of the Duma to
visit Kornilov in his train was Miliukov, who had a conversation
with him, the matter of which is unknown to me." We shall hear
later from Miliukov as much about this conversation as he him-
self thinks it necessary to relate.

During this time the preparations for a military insurrection
were in full swing. Several days before the conference Kornilov
had given orders, under pretext of going to the help of Riga, to
prepare four cavalry divisions for a movement on Petrograd. The
Orenburg Cossack regiment had been sent by headquarters to
Moscow "to preserve order," but at Kerensky's command it had
been held up on the way. In his subsequent testimony before an
Inquiry Commission on the Kornilov affair, Kerensky said: "We
were informed that during the Moscow conference a dictatorship
would be declared." Thus in those triumphant days of national
unity, the War Minister and the commander-in-chief were en-
gaged in strategic counter-maneuvers. So far as possible, however,
decorum was observed. The relations between the two camps
oscillated between officially friendly assurances and civil war.

In Petrograd, notwithstanding the self-restraint of the
masses the July experience having left its lesson rumors kept
coming down from above, from the staffs and editorial offices,
furiously insisting upon an impending insurrection of the Bol-
sheviks. The Petrograd organizations of the party warned the
masses in an open manifesto against possible provocatory appeals
upon the part of the enemy. The Moscow soviet meanwhile took
its own measures. A secret revolutionary committee was formed,
consisting of six people, two from each of the soviet parties, in-
cluding the Bolsheviks. A secret order was issued forbidding the
formation. of cordons of Cavaliers of St. George, officers, and
junkers, along the line of march of Kornilov. The Bolsheviks, who

151

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

had been forbidden entry into the barracks since the July Days,
were now freely admitted: without them it was impossible to win
over the soldiers. "While in the open arena the Mensheviks and
Social Revolutionaries were negotiating with the bourgeoisie for
the creation of a strong power against the masses led by the Bol-
sheviks, behind the scenes these same Mensheviks and Social Rev-
olutionaries in co-operation with the Bolsheviks, whom they
would not admit to the conference, were preparing the masses
for a struggle against the conspiracy of the bourgeoisie. Although
yesterday they had opposed the protest strike, today they were
summoning the workers and soldiers to prepare for a struggle.
The contemptuous indignation of the masses did not prevent
them from responding to the summons with a fighting eagerness
which frightened the Compromisers more than it pleased them.
This arrant duplicity, almost amounting to an open treachery
in two directions, would have been incomprehensible if the Com-
promisers had still been consciously carrying out their policy; as
a matter of fact they were merely suffering its consequences.

Big events were clearly in the air. But apparently nobody had
settled upon the days of the Conference for an overturn. At any
rate no confirmation of the rumors to which Kerensky subse-
quently referred has been found either in documents, or in the
compromisist literature, or in the memoirs of the Right Wing. It
was still merely a matter of getting ready. According to Miliukov
and his testimony coincides with the further development of
events Kornilov himself, had already before the Conference
chosen the date for his action: August 27. This date of course was
known to but few. The half -informed, however, as always in
such circumstances, kept advancing the day of the great event,
and rumors forerunning it poured in upon the authorities from
all sides. It seemed from moment to moment as though the blow
would fall.

Indeed, the very mood of excitement among the bourgeois
and officer circles in Moscow might have led, if not to an at-
tempted overturn, at least to counter-revolutionary manifesta-
tions designed as a test of power. Still more probable would have
been an attempt to create out of the members of the Conference
some sort of center for the salvation of the fatherland in competi-

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KERENSKY AND KORNILOV

tion with the Soviets. The right press had spoken openly of this.
But things did not even go that far: the masses prevented it.
Even if perhaps some had cherished the thought of hastening the
decisive hour, the strike compelled them to pause and say to them-
selves: We cannot catch the revolution unawares; the workers
and soldiers are on their guard; we must postpone action. Even
that universal popular procession to the Ivarsky shrine which had
been planned by the priests and Liberals in agreement with
Kornilov, was called off.

As soon as it became clear that there was no immediate danger,
the Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks hastened to pretend
that nothing special had happened. They even refused to con-
tinue admitting Bolsheviks into the barracks, although the bar-
racks insistently continued to demand Bolshevik orators. "The
Moor has done his duty," Tseretelli and Dan and Khinchuk,
president of the Moscow soviet, must have said to each other with
a foxy smile. But the Bolsheviks had not the slightest intention of
falling into the position of the Moor. They were still only intend-
ing to carry their work through to the end.

EVERY class society has need of unity in the governmental will.
The dual power is in its essence a regime of social crisis signifying
an utter dividedness of the nation. It contains within itself po-
tential or actual civil war. Nobody any longer wanted the dual
power. On the contrary, all were searching for a strong, single-
minded, "iron" government. The July government of Kerensky
had been endowed with unlimited powers. The design had been
by common consent to establish above the democracy and the
bourgeoisie, who were paralyzing each other, a "real" sovereign
power. This idea of a master of destiny rising above all classes, is
nothing but Bonapartism. If you stick two forks into a cork
symmetrically, it will, under very great oscillations from side to
side, keep its balance even on a pin point: that is the mechanical
model of the Bonapartist superarbiter. The degree of solidity of
such a power, setting aside international conditions, is determined
by the stability of equilibrium of the two antagonistic classes

153

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

within the country. In the middle of May at a session of the
Petersburg soviet, Trotsky had defined Kerensky as "the mathe-
matical center of Russian Bonapartism." The immateriality of
this description shows that it was not a question of personality but
of function. At the beginning of July, as you will remember, all
the ministers, acting upon instructions from their parties, had
resigned in order to permit Kerensky to form a government. On
the 21st of July this experiment was repeated in a more demon-
strative form. The two hostile camps invoked Kerensky, each see-
ing in him a part of itself, and both swearing fealty to him.
Trotsky wrote while in prison: "Led by politicians who are afraid
of their own shadow, the Soviet did not dare take the power. The
Kadet party, representing all the propertied cliques, could not
yet seize the power. It remained to find a great conciliator, a
mediator, a court of arbitration."

In a manifesto to the people issued by Kerensky in his own
name, he declared: "I, as head of the government . . , consider
that I have no right to hesitate if the changes (in the structure
of the government) . . . increase my responsibility in the mat-
ters of supreme administration/* That is the unadulterated
phraseology of Bonapartism. But nevertheless, although sup-
ported from both right and left, it never got beyond phraseology.
What is the reason for this?

In order that the Little Corsican might lift himself above a
young bourgeois nation, it was necessary that the revolution
should already have accomplished its fundamental task the
transfer of land to the peasants and that a victorious army
should have been created on the new social foundation. In the
18th century a revolution had no farther to go: it could only
from that point recoil and go backward. In this recoil, however,
its fundamental conquests were in danger. They must be de-
fended at any cost. The deepening but still very immature an-
tagonism between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat kept the
nation, shaken as it was to its foundations, in a state of extreme
tension. A national "judge" was in those conditions indispensable.
Napoleon guaranteed to the big bourgeois the possibility to get
rich, to the peasants their pieces of land, to the sons of peasants

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KERENSKY AND KORNILOV

and the hoboes a chance for looting in the wars. The judge held
a sword in his hand and himself also fulfilled the duties of bailiff.
The Bonapartism of the first Bonaparte was solidly founded.

The revolution of 1848 did not give the peasants the land,
and could not do so. That was not a great revolution, replacing
one social regime with another, but a political re-shuffle within
the framework of the same social regime. Napoleon III did not
have under him a victorious army. The two chief elements of
classical Bonapartism were thus lacking. But there were other
favorable conditions, and no less real. The proletariat, which had
been maturing for half a century, showed its threatening force in
June, but was incapable of seizing the power. The bourgeoisie
feared the proletariat and its own bloody victory over them. The
peasant proprietors feared the June insurrection, and wanted the
state to protect them from those who wished to divide the land.
And finally a powerful industrial boom, extending with slight
moments of lull over two decades, had opened before the bour-
geoisie unheard of sources of wealth. These conditions proved
sufficient for an epigone Bonapartism.

In the policies of Bismarck, who also stood "above classes,"
there were, as has been often pointed out, indubitable Bonapartist
elements, although disguised by legitimism. The stability of the
Bismarck regime was guaranteed by the fact that, having arisen
after an impotent revolution, it offered a solution, or a half-
solution, of such a mighty national problem as the unification of
Germany. It brought victory in three wars, indemnities, and a
mighty up-growth of capitalism. That was enough to last several
decades.

The misfortune of the Russian candidates for Bonaparte lay
not at all in their dissimilarity to the first Napoleon, or even to
Bismarck. History knows how to make use of substitutes. But
they were confronted by a great revolution which had not yet
solved its problems or exhausted its force. The bourgeoisie was
trying to compel the peasant, still without land, to fight for the
estates of the landlords. The war had given nothing but defeats.
There was not the shadow of an industrial boom; on the contrary
the breakdown of industry was producing ever new devastations.

155

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

If the proletariat had retreated, it was only to close up its ranks.
The peasantry were only drawing back for their last assault upon
the lords. The oppressed nationalities were assuming the offen-
sive against a Russifying despotism. In search of peace, the army
was coming closer and closer to the workers and their party. The
lower ranks were uniting, the upper weakening. There was no
equilibrium. The revolution was still full-blooded. No wonder
Bonapartism proved anemic.

Marx and Engels compared the role of a Bonapartist regime in
the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, with
the role of the old absolute monarchy in the struggle between the
feudal lords and the bourgeoisie. Traits of similarity are indubi-
table, but they stop just where the social content of the power
begins to appear. The role of court of arbitration between the
elements of the old and the new society was possible at a certain
period owing to the fact that the two exploiting regimes both
needed defense against the exploited. But between feudal lords
and peasant serfs no "impartial" mediation was possible. While
reconciling the interests of the landlords to those of a youthful
capitalism, the tzarist autocracy functioned in relation to the
peasants, not as a mediator, but as an authorized representative of
the exploiting classes.

Similarly Bonapartism was not a court of arbitration between
the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. It was in reality the most con-
centrated dominion of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat. Hav-
ing climbed up with his boots on the neck of the people, whatever
Bonaparte happened to come along could not fail to adopt a policy
of protection of property, rent and profits. The peculiarities of a
regime do not go beyond. its means of defense. The watchman
does not now stand at the gate, but sits on the roof of the house,
yet his function is the same. The independence of Bonapartism is
to an enormous degree external, decorative, a matter of show.
Its appropriate symbol was the mantle of the emperor.

While skilfully exploiting the fear of the bourgeoisie before
the workers, Bismarck remained in all his political and social
reforms the unchanging plenipotentiary of the possessing classes,
whom he never betrayed. Nevertheless, the growing pressure of
the proletariat indubitably permitted him to rise above the

156

KERENSKY AND KORNILOV

Junkerdom, and the capitalists in the quality of a weighty
bureaucratic arbiter: that was his essential function.

The soviet regime permits a very considerable independence
of the government in relation to proletariat and peasantry, and
consequently a "mediation" between them insofar as their inter-
ests, although giving rise to debates and conflicts, remain funda-
mentally reconcilable. But it would not be easy to find an "im-
partial" court of arbitration between the soviet state and a
bourgeois state, at least so far as concerns the fundamental in-
terests of each. On the international arena the Soviet Union is
prevented from adhering to the League of Nations by those same
social causes which within the national borders make impossible
anything but a pretended "impartiality" of any government in
the struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat.

While lacking the force of Bonapartism, Kerenskyism had all
its vices. It lifted itself above the nation only to demoralize the
nation with its own impotence. Whereas in words the leaders of
the bourgeoisie and the democracy promised to "obey" Kerensky,
in reality Kerensky, the omnipotent arbiter, obeyed Miliukov
and more especially Buchanan. Kerensky waged the imperialist
war, protected the landlord's property from attack, and post-
poned social reforms to happier days. If his government was
weak, this was for the same reason that the bourgeoisie in general
could not get its people into power. However, with all the insig-
nificance of the "government of salvation" its conservatively
capitalistic character grew manifestly with the growth of its
"independence."

Their understanding that the regime of Kerensky was the in-
evitable form of bourgeois rulership for the given period, did not
prevent the bourgeois politicians from being extremely dissatis-
fied with Kerensky, nor from preparing to get rid of him as
quickly as possible. There was no disagreement among the pos-
sessing classes that the national arbiter put forward by the petty
bourgeois democracy must be opposed by a figure from their own
ranks. But why Kornilov, exactly? Because the candidate for
Bonaparte must correspond to the character of the Russian bour-
geoisie. He must be backward, isolated from the people, un-
gifted, and on the decline. In an army which had seen almost

157

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

nothing but humiliating defeats, it was not easy to find a popular
general. Kornilov was arrived at by a process of elimination of
other candidates still less suitable.

Thus the Compromisers and Liberals could neither seriously
unite in a coalition, nor agree upon a single candidate for savior.
They were prevented from doing so by the uncompleted tasks of
the revolution. The Liberals did not trust the democrats, the
democrats did not trust the Liberals. Kerensky, it is true, opened
his arms wide to the bourgeoisie, but Kornilov made it clearly
understood that at the first opportunity he would twist the neck
of the democracy. The clash between Kornilov and Kerensky,
inevitably resulting from the preceding development, was a trans-
lation of the contradictions of the dual power into the explosive
language of personal ambition.

Just as in the midst of the Petrograd proletariat and garrison
there was formed, toward the beginning of July, an impatient
wing dissatisfied with the too cautious policy of the Bolsheviks,
so among the possessing classes there accumulated, towards the
beginning of August, an impatience of the watchful-waiting pol-
icy of the Kadet leaders. This mood expressed itself, for example,
at the Kadet congress, where demands were voiced for the over-
throw of Kerensky. A still keener political impatience was to be
seen outside the framework of the Kadet party in the military
staffs where they lived in continual dread of the soldiers, in the
banks where they were drowning in the waters of inflation, in
the manors of the landlords where the roofs were burning over
the heads of the nobility. "Long live Kornilov!" became a slogan
of hope, of despair, and of thirst for revenge.

While agreeing throughout to the program of Kornilov,
Kerensky quarreled about the date: "We cannot do everything at
once." While recognizing the necessity of getting rid of Kerensky,
Miliukov answered his impatient followers: "It is still, I suggest,
a little too soon. 3 ' Just as out of the eagerness of the Petrograd
masses arose the semi-insurrection of July, so out of the impa-
tience of the property owners arose the Kornilov insurrection of
August. And just as the Bolsheviks found themselves obliged to
take the side of an armed insurrection, in order if possible to
guarantee its success, and in any case to prevent its extermination,

15S

KERENSKY AND KORNILOV

so the Kadets found themselves obliged, for like purposes, to take
part in the Kornilov insurrection. Within these limits, there
is an astonishing symmetry in the two situations. But inside this
symmetrical framework there is a complete contrast of goals,
methods and results* It will develop fully in the course of the
coming events.

CHAPTER VII
THE STATE CONFERENCE IN MOSCOW

IF a symbol is a concentrated image, then a revolution is the
master-builder of symbols, for it presents all -phenomena

and all relations in concentrated form. The trouble is that
the symbolism of a revolution is too grandiose; it fits in badly
with the creative work of individuals. For this reason artistic
reproductions of the greatest mass dramas of humanity are so
poor.

The Moscow State Conference ended in the failure assured
in advance* It created nothing and decided nothing. However, it
has left to the historian an invaluable impression of the revolution
although a negative impression, one in which light appears as
shadow, weakness parades as strength, greed as disinterestedness,
treachery as the highest valor. The mightiest party of the revolu-
tion, which in only ten weeks was to arrive at the power, was left
outside the wall? of the Conference as a magnitude not worth
noticing. At the same time the "party of evolutionary socialism/'
unknown to anybody, was taken seriously. Kerensky stepped
forth as the incarnation of force and will. The Coalition, wholly
exhausted in the past, was spoken of as a means of future sal-
vation, Kornilov, hated by the soldier millions, was greeted as
the beloved leader of the army and the people. Monarchists and
Black Hundred men registered their love for the Constituent
Assembly. All those who were about to retire from the political
arena behaved as though they had agreed for one last time to
play their best roles on the stage of a theater. They were all eager
to shout with all their might: Here is what we wanted to be!
Here is what we would have been, if they had not prevented us!
What prevented them was the workers, the soldiers, the peasants,
the oppressed nationalities. Tens of millions of "slaves in revolt"
prevented them from demonstrating their loyalty to the revolu-
tion. In Moscow where they had gone for shelter a strike fol-

160

THE STATE CONFERENCE IN MOSCOW

lowed on their heels. Harried by "dark elements/' by "igno-
rance/ 5 by "demagoguism," these two and a half thousand people,
having crowded into a theater, tacitly agreed together not to
violate the histrionic illusion. Not a word was spoken about the
strike. They tried never to mention the Bolsheviks by name.
Plekhanov recalled "the unhappy memory of Lenin" just in pass-
ing, and as though he were talking of an enemy completely
routed. The impression thus bore the character of a negative to
the last detail: in this kingdom of half -buried shades, giving
themselves out for "the living forces of the nation," the authentic
people's leader could not possibly figure otherwise than as a
political cadaver.

"The brilliant auditorium," writes Sukhanov, "was quite
sharply divided into two halves: to the right sat the bourgeoisie,
to the left the democracy. In the orchestra and loges to the right
many uniforms of generals were to be seen, and to the left ensigns
and soldiers. Opposite the stage in the former imperial loge were
seated the higher diplomatic representatives of the Allied and
friendly powers. . . . Our group, the extreme Left, occupied a
small corner of the orchestra." The extreme Left, in the absence
of the Bolsheviks, were the followers of Martov.

Towards four o'clock Kerensky appeared on the stage accom-
panied by two young officers, a soldier and a sailor, symbolizing
the power of the revolutionary government. They stood stock
still as though rooted in the ground behind the back of the
Minister-President. In order not to irritate the Right Wing with
the word republic so it was agreed in advance Kerensky
greeted "the representatives of the Russian land" in the name of
the government of the "Russian state." "The general tone
of the speech," writes our liberal historian, "instead of
being one of dignity and confidence, was, as a result of the influ-
ence of recent days . . . one of badly concealed fright, which
the orator seemed to be trying to suppress within himself by
adopting the high notes of a threat." "Without directly naming
the Bolsheviks, Kerensky began with a fist-shake in their direc-
tion. Any new attempts against the government "will be put
down with blood and iron." Both wings of the conference joined
ia a stormy applause. Then a supplementary threat in the direc-

161

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

tion of Kornilov, who had not yet arrived: "Whatever ultima-
tums no matter who may present to me, I will know how to sub-
due him to the will of the supreme power, and to me, its supreme
head." Although this evoked ecstatical applause, the applause
came only from the left half of the Conference. Kerensky kept
coming back again and again to himself as the "supreme head":
he had need of that thought. "To you here who have come from
the front, to you say I, your War Minister and supreme leader
. . . there is no will and no power in the army higher than the
will and power of the Provisional Government.'*' The democrats
were in rapture at these blank cartridges. They believed that in
this way they could avoid the resort to lead.

"All the best forces of the people and the army," affirms the
head of the government, "associated the triumph of the Russian
revolution with the triumph of our arms on the front, but our
hopes have been trampled in the mud and our faith spat upon."
Such is his lyrical summing up of the June offensive. He himself,
Kerensky, intends in any case to wage the war to complete vic-
tory. Speaking of the danger of a peace at the expense of Russia's
interests that course having been suggested in the peace pro-
posals of the Pope on August 4 Kerensky pays a tribute of
praise to the noble loyalty of our Allies. To which he adds: "And
I, in the name of the mighty Russian people, say only one thing:
We have expected nothing else and we can expect nothing else."
An ovation addressed to the loges of the Allied diplomats brings
all to their feet except a few internationalists and those solitary
Bolsheviks who have come as delegates from the trade unions.
From the officers' loge somebody shouts: "Martov, get up!"
Martov, to his honor be it said, had the force not to offer homage
to the disinterestedness of the Entente.

To the oppressed nationalities of Russia striving to rebuild
their destiny, Kerensky offers a Sunday school lesson interwoven
with threats. "When languishing and dying in the chains of the
tzarist autocracy" thus he boasts of chains that others have
worn "we poured out our blood in the name of the welfare of
all the peoples." Out of a feeling of gratitude, he suggests to the
oppressed nationalities, they ought now to endure a regime which
deprives them of rights.

162

THE STATE CONFERENCE IN MOSCOW

Where lies the way out? "Do you not feel it in you, this
mighty flame? ... Do you not feel within you the strength
and the will to discipline, self-sacrifice and labor? . . . Do you
not offer here a spectacle of the united strength of the nation?"
These words were pronounced on the day of the Moscow strike,
and during the hours of the mysterious movements of Kornilov's
cavalry. "We will destroy our souls, but we will save the state/*
That was all the government of the revolution had to offer the
people.

"Many provincials," writes Miliukov, "saw Kerensky in this
hall for the first time, and they went out half disappointed and
half indignant. Before them had stood a young man with a tor-
tured pale face, and a pose like an actor speaking his lines. . . .
This man seemed to be trying to frighten somebody and create
upon all an impression of power and force of will in the old style.
In reality he evoked only a feeling of pity."

The speeches of the other members of the government ex-
posed not so much a personal bankruptcy, as the bankruptcy of
the compromise system. The grand idea which the Minister of the
Interior, Avksentiev, submitted to the judgment of the country*
was the institution of "travelling commissars.'* The Minister of
Industry advised the capitalists to content themselves with a
modest profit. The Minister of Finance promised to lower the
direct tax upon the possessing classes by increasing indirect taxa-
tion. The Right Wing was incautious enough to greet these words
with a stormy applause, in which Tseretelli afterward, with some
embarrassment, pointed out a lack of eagerness for self-sacrifice.
The Minister of Agriculture, Chernov, had been told to keep
still entirely, in order not to irritate the Allies on the right with
the specter of land expropriation. In the interests of national
unity it had been decided to pretend that the agrarian question
did not exist. The Compromisers had no objection. The authentic
voice of the muzhik never once sounded from the tribune. Never-
theless in those very weeks of August the agrarian movement was
billowing throughout the whole country, getting ready to break
loose in autumn in the form of an unconquerable peasant war.

After a day's intermission a day passed in reconnoitering
and mobilizing of forces on both sides the session of the 14th

163

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

opened in an atmosphere of extreme tension. "When Kornilov ap-
peared in his loge, the right half of the Conference gave him a
stormy ovation, the left remained seated almost as a body. Cries
of "get up!" from the officers' loges were followed with coarse
abuse. When the government appeared, the left section gave
Kerensky a prolonged ovation, in which, as Miliukov testifies,
"the right just as demonstratively refused to participate, remain-
ing in their seats." In those hostile clashing waves of applause were
heard the close approaching battles of the civil war. Meanwhile
upon the stage representatives of both halves of the divided hall
continued to sit with the title of government; and the president,
who had secretly taken military measures against the commander-
in-chief, did not for a moment forget to incarnate in his figure
"the unity of the Russian people." In pursuance of this role,
Kerensky announced: "I propose to all that in the person of the
supreme commander-in-chief who is present here, we should all
greet our army, courageously dying for freedom and the father-
land/' On the subject of that army he had said at the first ses-
sion: "Our hopes have been trampled in the mud, and our faith
spat upon." But never mind! A saving phrase had been found.
The hall rose and stormily applauded Kornilov and Kerensky.
The unity of the nation was once more preserved!

The ruling classes, whom historic necessity had seized by the
throat, resorted to the method of historic masquerade. It evidently
seemed to them that if they could once more stand before the
people in all their transformations, this would make them more
significant and stronger. In the character of experts on the na-
tional conscience, they brought out on the stage all the represen-
tatives of all the four state Dumas. Their mutual disagreements,
once so sharp, had disappeared. All the parties of the bourgeoisie
now united without difficulty upon the "extra-party and extra-
class program" of those public men who a few days back had
sent a telegram of greeting to Kornilov. In the name of the first
Duma of the year 1906! the Kadet Nabokov renounced "the
very intimation of the possibility of a separate peace." This did
not prevent the liberal politician from subsequently relating in
his memoirs how he, and with him many of the leading Kadets,
saw in a separate peace the only way to salvation. In the same

164

THE STATE CONFERENCE IN MOSCOW

way representatives of the other tzarist Dumas demanded of the
revolution first of all a tribute of blood.

"General! you have the floor!" The session has now arrived
at its critical moment. What will the high commander-in-chief
have to say, after Kerensky has insistently but vainly urged him
to limit himself to a mere outline of the military situation? Mi-
liukov writes as an eye-witness: "The short, stumpy but strong
figure of a man with Kalmuck features, appeared up the stage,
darting sharp piercing glances from his small black eyes in which
there was a vicious glint. The hall rocked with applause. All
leapt to their feet with the exception of ... the soldiers/'
Shouts of indignation mingled with abuse were addressed from
the right to the delegates who did not stand: "You roughnecks,
get up!" From the delegates not standing the answer comes back:
"Serfs!" The uproar turns into a storm. Kerensky demands that
they all quietly listen to the "first soldier of the Provisional Gov-
ernment." In the sharp, fragmentary, imperious tone appropriate
to a general who intends to save the country, Kornilov read a
manuscript written for him by the adventurer Zavoiko at the
dictation of the adventurer Filomenko. But the program proffered
in the manuscript was considerably more moderate than the de-
sign to which it formed an introduction. Kornilov did not hes-
itate to paint the condition of the army and the situation at the
front in the blackest colors, and with an obvious intent to cause
fright. The central point in his speech was a military prognosis:
"The enemy is already knocking at the gates of Riga, and if the
instability of our army does not make it possible to restrain him
on the shores of the Gulf of Riga, then the road to Petrograd is
open." Here Kornilov hauls off and deals a blow to the govern-
ment: "By a whole series of legislative measures introduced after
the revolution by people strange to the spirit and understanding
of an army, the army has been converted into a crazy mob
trembling only for its own life." The inference is obvious: There
is no hope for Riga, and the commander-in-chief openly and
challengingly says so before the whole world, as though inviting
the Germans to seize the defenseless city. And Petrograd? Korni-
lov's thought was this: If I am empowered to carry out my pro-
gram, Petrograd may still be saved, but hurry up! The Moscow

165

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

Bolshevik paper wrote: "What is this, a warning or a threat? The
Tarnopol defeat made Kornilov commander-in-chief, the sur-
render of Riga might make him dictator/' That suggestion ac-
corded far more accurately with the designs of the conspirators
than could have been guessed by the most suspicious Bolshevik.
The Church Council, having participated in the gorgeous wel-
come of Kornilov, now sent to the support of the commander-in-
chief one of its most reactionary members, the Archbishop Platon.
"You have just seen the deadly picture of our army," says this
representative of the living forces, "and I have come here in
order from this platform to say to Russia: Do not be troubled,
dear one. Have no fear, my own one. . * . If a miracle is neces-
sary for the salvation of Russia, then in answer to the prayers of
his church, God will accomplish this miracle. . . .*' For the pro-
tection of the church lands, however, the orthodox prelates pre-
ferred some good Cossack troops. The point of the speech was not
there, though. The Archbishop complained that in the speeches
of the members of the government, he "had not once heard even
by a slip of the tongue the word God." Just as Kornilov had ac-
cused the revolutionary government of demoralizing the army,
so Platon accused "those who now stand at the head of our God-
loving people" of criminal unbelief. These churchmen who had
been squirming in the dust at the feet of Rasputin were now bold
enough publicly to confess the revolutionary government.

A declaration of the 12th Cossack Army was read by Gen-
eral Kaledin, whose name was persistently mentioned during this
period among the strongest of those in the military party. "Kal-
edin," to quote one of his eulogists, "not desiring and not know-
ing how to please the mob, broke with General Brussilov on this
ground, and as not adaptable to the spirit of the times was re-
tired from the command/ 5 Returning to the Don at the begin-
ning of May, the Cossack general had soon been elected ataman
of the Don army, and so to him as chief of the oldest and strong-
est of the Cossack armies was allotted the task of presenting the
program of the privileged Cossack upper circles. Rejecting the
accusation of counter-revolutionism, his declaration ungraciously
reminded the minister-socialists how at the moment of danger
they had come to the Cossacks for help against the Bolsheviks.

166

THE STATE CONFERENCE IN MOSCOW

The gloomy general unexpectedly won the hearts of the demo-
crats by pronouncing in a thunderous voice the word which
Kerensky had not dared to speak out loud: Republic. The major-
ity of the hall, and with special zeal the minister Chernov, ap-
plauded this Cossack general, who was quite seriously demanding
of the republic that which the autocracy was no longer able to
give. Napoleon predicted that Europe would become either Cos-
sack or republican. Kaledin agreed to see Russia republican on
condition that she should not cease to be Cossack. Having read
the words: "There should be no place for defeatists in the gov-
ernment/' the ungrateful general roughly and impudently
turned in the direction of the unlucky Chernov. The report of
the liberal press remarks: "All eyes were fixed upon Chernov,
whose head was bowed low over the table." Being unretained by
any political position, Kaledin developed to the full the military
program of the reaction: abolish the committees, restore power
to the commanders, equalize the front and the rear, reconsider
the rights of the soldiers that is, reduce them to nothing. (Ap-
plause from the Right was here mingled with protests and even
whistling from the Left.) The Constituent Assembly "in the
interest of tranquil and deliberative labors" should be convoked
in Moscow. This speech, prepared in advance of the Conference,
was read by Kaledin the next day after a general strike which
made his phrase about "tranquil" labors in Moscow sound like a
joke. The speech of the Cossack republican finally raised the
temperature of the hall to the boiling point, and prompted Ker-
ensky to show his authority: "It is unbecoming for anybody in
the present assembly to address demands to the government."
But in that case why had he summoned the conference? Purish-
kevich, a popular member of the Black Hundreds, shouted from
his seat: "We are in the position of supers to the government!"
Two months before, this organizer of programs had not dared
show his face.

The official declaration of the democracy, an endless docu-
ment which tried to answer all questions and answered none, was
read by the president of the Executive Committee, Cheidze, who
received a warm greeting from the Left. Their cries of "Long
live the leader of the Russian revolution!" must have embar-

167

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

rassed this modest Caucasian, who was the last man in the world
to imagine himself a leader. In a tone of self -justification the
democracy announced that it "had not striven after the power,
and had not desired a monopoly for itself." It was prepared to
support any power capable of preserving the interests of the
country and the revolution. But you must not abolish the Soviets:
they alone have saved the country from anarchy. You must not
destroy the soldiers' committees: only they can guarantee the
continuation of the war. The privileged classes must in some
things act in the interests of the whole people. However, the
interests of the landlords must be protected from forcible seiz-
ures. The solution of nationality questions must be postponed to
the Constituent Assembly. It is necessary, on the other hand, to
carry out the more urgent reforms. Of an active policy of peace,
the declaration said not a word. In general the document seemed
to have been especially designed to provoke the indignation of the
masses without giving satisfaction to the bourgeoisie,

In an evasive and colorless speech, the representative of the
peasants* Executive Committee reminded his auditors of the
slogan "Land and Freedom,'* under which "our best fighters have
died." An account in a Moscow paper records an episode omitted
from the official stenographic report: "The whole hall rises and
gives a stormy ovation to the prisoners of Schliisselburg who are
seated in a loge/ J Astonishing grimace of the revolution! "The
whole'hall" does honor to those few of the former political hard-
labor convicts whom the monarchy of Alexeiev, Kornilov, Kale-
din, Archbishop Platon, Rodzianko, Guchkov, and in essence
also Miliukov, had not succeeded in strangling to death in its
prisons. These hangmen, or colleagues of hangmen, wanted to
decorate themselves with the martyr's aureole of their own
victims!

Fifteen years before that, the leaders of the right half of this
hall were celebrating the two hundredth anniversary of the
capture of Schliisselburg fortress by Peter the First. Iskra, the
journal of the revolutionary wing of the social democracy, wrote
during those days: "What indignation awakens in the breast at
the thought of this patriotic celebration on that accursed island

168

THE STATE CONFERENCE IN MOSCOW

which has been the place of execution of Minakov, Myshkin,
Rogachev, Stromberg, Ulianov, Generalov, Ossipanov, Chevyrev;
Andryushkin; within sight of those stone cages in which
Klimenko strangled himself with a rope, Grachevsky soaked him-
self with kerosene and set fire to his body, Sophia Ginsburg stabbed
herself with a pair of scissors; under the walls within which
Shchedrin, Yuvachev, Konashevich, Pokhitonov, Ignatius Ivanov,
Aronchik and Tikhonovich sank into the black night of mad-
ness, and scores of others died of exhaustion, scurvy and tubercu-
losis. Abandon yourself, then, to your patriotic bacchanal for
today you are still the lords in Schliisselburg!" The motto of
Iskra was a sentence from the letter of a Dekabrist hard-labor
convict to Pushkin: "The spark will kindle a flame." The flame
had been kindled. It had reduced to ashes the monarchy and its
Schliisselburg hard-labor prison, and now today in the hall of
this State Conference yesterday's jail-keepers were offering an
ovation to the victims torn from their clutches by the revolu-
tion. But most paradoxical of all was the fact that the jailers and
their prisoners had actually united together in a feeling of com-
mon hatred for the Bolsheviks for Lenin, the former chief-
editor of Iskra, for Trotsky, the author of the above-quoted
lines, for the rebelling workers and the unsubmissive soldiers who
now filled the prisons of the republic.

The National-Liberal, Guchkov, president of the third
Duma, who in his day had refused to admit the left deputies into
the Committees of Defense, and for this was named by the Com-
promisers first "War Minister of the revolution, made the most
interesting speech a speech, however, in which irony struggled
vainly with despair: "But why then . . ." he said, alluding to
the words of Kerensky, "why have the representatives of the
government come to us with 'mortal alarm* and in mortal ter-
ror* with a sort of morbid, I would even say, hysterical, cry of
despair? And why does this alarm, this terror and this cry, why
do they find in our souls a kindred piercing pain as of the an-
guish of those about to die?" In the name of those who had
lorded, commanded, and pardoned, and punished, the great
Moscow merchant publicly confesses to a feeling as of "the

169

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

anguish of those about to die." "This government," he said, "is
the shadow of a power." Guchkov was right. But he himself, too,
the former partner of Stolypin, was but a shadow of himself.

On the very day of the opening of the conference, there ap-
peared in Gorky's paper an account of how Rodzianko had got
rich by supplying worthless wood for rifle-stocks. This un-
timely revelation due to Karakhan, the future soviet diplomat,
then still unknown to anybody did not prevent the Lord
Chamberlain from speaking at the conference with dignity in
defense of the patriotic program of the manufacturers of mili-
tary supplies. All misfortunes, he said, flowed from the fact that
the Provisional Government did not go hand in hand with the
state Duma, "the sole, legal and absolutely all-national popular
representative assembly in Russia." That seemed a little too much.
There was laughter on the left. There were shouts: "The third
of June!" There had been a time when that date, the third of
June, 1907, the day of the trampling underfoot of the constitu-
tion they had granted, burned like the brand of a galley-slave on
the brow of the monarchy and the party supporting it. Now it
was only a pale memory. But Rodzianko himself, too, with his
thundering bass, ponderous and portentous, seemed as he stood
on the tribune rather a living monument of the past than a
political figure.

As against attacks from within, the government brought
forward some encouragements received a long time ago from
without. Kerensky read a telegram of greeting from the Amer-
ican president, Wilson, promising "every material and moral
support to the government of Russia for success in the common
cause uniting both peoples and in which they are pursuing no
selfish aims." The renewed applause addressed to the diplomatic
loge could not drown the alarm caused in the right half of the
assembly by this telegram from Washington. Praise for their
disinterestedness had too often meant to the Russian imperialists
the prescription of a starvation diet.

In the name of the compromisist democracy, Tseretelli, its
acknowledged leader, defended the Soviets and the army com-
mittees, as one defends for honor's sake a lost cause. "We cannot
yet remove these scaffoldings, when the temple of free revolu-

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tionary Russia is not yet completely built." After the revolu-
tion "the popular masses had trusted nobody in the essence of the
matter, but themselves"; only the efforts of the compromisist
Soviets had made it possible for the possessing classes to stay on
top at all, even though at first deprived of their comforts. Tsere-
telli placed it to the special credit of the Soviets that they "had
handed over all state functions to the Coalition Government."
Did this sacrifice, he asked, have to be "wrested from the de-
mocracy by force?" The orator was like the commander of a for-
tress who boasts publicly that he has surrendered the position
entrusted to him without a struggle. . . . And in the July days
""Who then came forward in defense of the country against an-
archy?" A voice resounded on the right: "The Cossacks and
junkers." Those short words cut like the blow of a whip through
the flow of democratic commonplaces. The bourgeois wing of
the conference perfectly understood the rescuing services done
them by the Compromisers; but gratitude is not a political feel-
ing. The bourgeoisie had promptly drawn their conclusion from
the services rendered them by the democracy. It was this: The
chapter of the Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks is at an
end, the Cossack and junker chapter is next in order.

Tseretelli approached the problem of power with special cau-
tion. During the recent months elections had been held to the
city dumas, in part also to the zemstvos, on a basis of universal
franchise and what had happened? The representatives of these
democratic, self-governing bodies had turned up at the State
Conference in the left group, side by side with the Soviets, under
the leadership of those same parties, the Social Revolutionaries
and Mensheviks. If the Kadets intend to insist upon their de-
mand: to abolish all dependence of the government upon the
democracy, then what will be the use of the Constituent As-
sembly? Tseretelli only just suggested the contours of this argu-
ment, for carried to its conclusion it would have condemned the
policy of coalition with the Kadets as standing in contradiction
even with formal democracy. They are accusing the revolution of
overdoing its speeches about peace, he said, but do not the pos-
sessing classes understand that the slogan of peace is now the sole
means by which the war can be continued? The bourgeoisie

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THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

understood this all right. They merely wished to take this means
of continuing the war, along with the power, into their own
hands. Tseretelli concluded with a hymn of praise to the Coali-
tion. In that divided assembly which saw no way out of its
problems, his compromisist commonplaces awakened for the last
time a ray of hope. But Tseretelli, too, was already in essence a
phantom of himself.

The democracy was answered in the name of the right half
of the hall by Miliukov, the hopelessly sober representative of
those classes for whom history had made a sober policy impos-
sible. In his "History" the leader of liberalism has expressly set
forth his own speech at the State Conference. "Miliukov made
... a brief factual survey of the mistakes of the 'revolutionary
democracy 3 and summarized them: . . . Capitulation on the
question of 'democratization of the army/ involving the retire-
ment of Guchkov; capitulation on the question of a 'Zimmer-
waldist* foreign policy, involving the retirement of the Minister
of Foreign Affairs (Miliukov) ; capitulation before the Utopian
demands of the working class, involving the retirement of Kon-
ovalov (Minister of Commerce and Industry) ; capitulation be-
fore the extreme demands of the national minorities, involving
the retirement of the rest of the Kadets. The fifth capitulation
before the tendency of the masses to direct action in the agrarian
problem . . . had caused the retirement of the first president
of the Provisional Government, Prince Lvov." That was no bad
history of the case. "When it came to suggesting a cure, however,
Miliukov's wisdom did not go beyond police measures: "We must
strangle the Bolsheviks. "Confronted by obvious facts," he re-
proached the Compromisers, "these more moderate groups have
been compelled to admit that there are criminals and traitors
among the Bolsheviks. But they have not yet acknowledged that
the very fundamental idea uniting these partisans of anarcho-
syndicalist militant action is criminal (applause)."

The extremely submissive Chernov still seemed to be the link
uniting the Coalition with the revolution. Almost all the orators
of the Right Wing, Kaledin, the Kadet Maklakov, the Kadet
Astrov, aimed a blow at Chernov, who had been ordered in ad-

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THE STATE CONFERENCE IN MOSCOW

vance to keep still, and whom no one undertook to defend.
Miliukov for his part called to mind the fact that the Minister of
Agriculture "had himself been at Zimmerwald and Kienthal,
and had there introduced the most extreme resolutions." That
was a blow straight to the jaw. Before becoming a minister the
minister of an imperialist war Chernov had actually placed his
signature under certain documents of the Zimmerwald Left
that is, of the faction of Lenin.

Miliukov did not conceal from the Conference the fact that
from the very beginning he had been opposed to the Coalition,
considering that it would be "not stronger but weaker than the
government which issued from the revolution" that is, the gov-
ernment of Guchkov and Miliukov. And now he "greatly fears
that the present staff of executives . . . cannot guarantee the
safety of persons and property." But however that may be, he,
Miliukov, promises to support the government, "voluntarily and
without any argument." The treachery of this magnanimous
promise will become adequately clear in two weeks. At the mo-
ment his speech did not evoke any enthusiasm nor occasion any
stormy protest. The orator was both greeted and dismissed with
a rather dry applause.

The second speech of Tseretelli reduced itself to promises,
asseverations, clamor: Don't you understand that it is all for
you Soviets, committees, democratic programs, slogans of paci-
fism all this is a protection for you? "Who is more capable of
setting in motion the troops of the Russian revolutionary state,
the war-minister Guchkov, or the war -minister Kerensky?"
Tseretelli was here repeating the words of Lenin almost verbatim,
although the leader of compromise regarded as a service what
the leader of revolution had branded as treachery. The orator even
apologized for his excessive mildness in relation to the Bolshe-
viks: "I tell you that the revolution was inexperienced in the
struggle with anarchy on the left (stormy applause from the
right) ." But after it had "received its first lessons" the revolution
corrected its mistake: "An exceptional law has already been
passed." During those very hours Moscow was in the secret control
of a committee of six two Mensheviks, two Social Revolution-

173

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

aries, two Bolsheviks defending it against a seizure of power by
those to whom the Compromisers were giving this promise to
shatter the Bolsheviks.

The high point of the last day was the speech of General
Alexeiev, in whose authority the mediocrity of the old military
chancelleries stood incarnate. To the wild enthusiasm of the
Right, this former chief -of -staff of Nicholas II and organizer
of defeats for the Russian army, talked about those destructive
characters "in whose pockets is to be heard the melodious clink of
German marks." For the restoration of the army, discipline is
necessary; for discipline, the authority of the commanders is
necessary; and for this again, discipline is necessary. "Call disci-
pline *iron,' call it 'conscious/ call it 'genuine 5 ... at bottom
these three kinds of discipline are one and the same." For Alexeiev
all history was comprised in the domestic service regulations. "Is
it so difficult, gentlemen, to sacrifice some imaginary advantage
the existence of these organizations (laughter on the left) for a
certain period of time? (uproar and shouts on the left) ." The
general urged them to give the disarmed revolution into his keep-
ing, not forever oh, God save us, no but only "for a certain
period of time!" Upon the conclusion of the war he promised
to return the goods undamaged. But Alexeiev concluded with
an aphorism that was not bad: "We need measures and not half-
measures." These words were a blow at the declaration of Cheidze,
the Provisional Government, the Coalition, the whole February
regime. Measures and not half -measures! To that the Bolsheviks
heartily subscribed.

General Alexeiev's speech was immediately offset by the
delegates of the Petrograd and Moscow left officers, who spoke
in support of "our supreme chief, the Minister of War." After
him Lieutenant Kuchin, an old Menshevik, spokesman of the
"representatives of the front at the State Conference" spoke in
the name of the soldier millions, who, however, would scarcely
have recognized themselves in the mirror of compromisism. "We
have all read the interview of General Lukomsky, printed in all
the papers, where he says that if the Allies do not help us, Riga
will be surrendered. . . " Why did the high commanding staff
which has heretofore always concealed its failures and defeats,

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consider it necessary to lay on these black colors? Cries of "For
shame I" from the left were aimed at Kornilov, who had expressed
the same thought at the conference the day before. Kuchin here
touched the possessing classes on their sorest point. The upper
circles of the bourgeoisie, the commanding staff, the whole right
half of the hall, were saturated with defeatist tendencies in all
three spheres, economic, political and military. The motto of
these respectable and cool-blooded patriots had become: the
worse it gets the better! But the compromisist orator hastened to
abandon a theme which would have mined the ground under his
own feet. ""Whether we shall save the army or not, we do not
know," said Kuchin. "But if we fail, the commanding staff will
not save it either. . . ." "It will!" cried a voice from the officers'
seats. Kuchin: "No, it won't!" A burst of applause from the
left. Thus the commanders and the committees, upon whose pre-
tended solidarity the whole program of the restoration of the
army was based, shouted their hostility across the hall and thus
likewise the two halves of the Conference, which was supposed
to constitute the foundation of "an honest coalition." These
clashes were merely a weak, smothered, parliamentarized echo
of those contradictions which were convulsing the country. Obey-
ing their Bonapartist stage directions, the orators from left and
right followed each other alternately, balancing each other off
as well as possible. If the hierarchs of the orthodox Church
Council supported Kornilov, then the evangelical Christian par-
sons sided with the Provisional Government. The delegates of
the zemstvos and the city dumas made speeches in pairs one
from the majority adhering to the declaration of Cheidze, the
other from the minority supporting the declaration of the State
Duma.

The representatives of the oppressed nationalities one after
another assured the government of their patriotism, but be-
seeched it to deceive them no longer: In the localities we have
the same officials, the same laws, the same oppression. "You must
not delay no people is able to live upon mere promises." Rev-
olutionary Russia must show that she is "mother and not step-
mother of all her peoples." These timid reproaches and humble
adjurations found hardly a sympathetic response even from the

175

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

left side of the hall. The spirit of an imperialist war is least of all
compatible with an honest policy upon the question of nation-
alities.

"Up to the present time the nationalities from beyond the
Caucasus have not made a single separative move," announced the
Menshevik, Chenkeli, in the name of the Georgians, "and they
will not make one in the future." This promise, which was
roundly applauded, was soon to prove false: from the moment of
the October revolution Chenkeli became one of the leaders of
separatism. There was no contradiction here, however: the pa-
triotism of democrats does not extend beyond the framework of
the bourgeois regime.

Meanwhile certain more tragic specters of the past are taking
their place upon the stage; the war cripples are going to lift their
voices. They too are not unanimous. The handless, the legless,
the blind, have also their aristocracy and their plebs. In the name
of the "immense and mighty League of the Cavaliers of St.
George, in the name of its 128 departments in all parts of Rus-
sia," a crippled officer, outraged in his patriotic feelings, sup-
ports Kornilov (applause from the right). The All-Russian
League of Crippled Warriors adheres through the voice of its
delegate to the declaration of Cheidze (applause from the left).

The Executive Committee of the recently organized union
of railroad workers destined under the abbreviated name of
Vikzhel to play an important role joins its voice to the declara-
tion of the Compromisers. The president of the Vikzhel, a mod-
erate democrat and an extreme patriot, paints a vivid picture of
counter-revolutionary intrigue among the railroad lines: mali-
cious attacks upon the workers, mass discharges, arbitrary viola-
tions of the eight-hour day, arrests and indictments. Under-
ground forces, he says, directed from hidden but influential
centers, are clearly trying to provoke the hungry railroad work-
ers to a fight. The enemy remains undiscovered. "The Intelligence
Service is dreaming, and the prosecuting attorney's inspectors
are fast asleep." And this most moderate of the moderates con-
cludes his speech with a threat: "If the Hydra of counter-revolu-
tion lifts its head, we will go out and we will choke htm with
our own hands."

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THE STATE CONFERENCE IN MOSCOW

Here one of the railroad magnates immediately takes the
floor with counter accusations: "The clear spring o the revolu-
tion has been poisoned/' Why? "Because the idealistic aims of the
revolution have been replaced by material aims (applause from
the right) ." In a similar spirit the Kadet landlord, Rodichev, de-
nounces the workers for having appropriated from France "the
shameful slogan: get rich!" The Bolsheviks will soon give extraor-
dinary success to the formula of Rodichev, although not quite
of the kind which the orator hoped for. Professor Ozerov, a man
of pure science and a delegate from the agricultural banks, ex-
claims: "The soldier in the trenches ought to be thinking of war,
not of dividing the land." This is not surprising: a confiscation of
privately owned land would mean a confiscation of bank capital.
On the first of January, 1915, the debts of the private land
owners amounted to more than 3 % billion rubles.

On the right spokesmen took the floor from the high staffs,
from the industrial league, from chambers of commerce and
banks, from the society of horse breeders, and other organizations
comprising hundreds of eminent people. On the left spokesmen
appeared for the Soviets, the army committees, the trade unions,
the democratic municipalities, and the cooperatives behind which
in the distant background stood nameless millions and tens of
millions. In normal times the advantage would have been with
the short arm of the lever. "It is impossible to deny," preached
Tseretelli, "especially at such a moment, the great relative weight
and significance of those who are strong through the possession
of property." But the whole point was that this weight was be-
coming more and more impossible to weigh. Just as weight is not
an inner attribute of individual objects, but an inter-relation be-
tween them, so social weight is not a natural property of people,
but only that class attribute which other classes are compelled to
recognize in them. The revolution, however, had come right up
to the point where it was refusing to recognize this most funda-
mental "attribute" of the ruling classes. It was for this reason
that the position of the eminent minority on the short arm of
the lever was becoming so uncomfortable. The Compromisers
were trying with might and main to preserve the equilibrium,
but they also were already without power: the masses were too

177

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

irresistibly pressing down on the long arm. How cautious were
the great agrarians, bankers, industrialists about coming out in
the defense of their interests! Did they indeed defend them at
all? Almost not at all. They spoke for the rights of idealism, the
interests of culture, the prerogatives of a future Constituent
Assembly. The leader of the heavy industries, Von Ditmar, even
concluded his speech with a hymn in honor of "liberty, equality,
fraternity." Where were the metallic baritones of profits, the
hoarse bass of land rents where were they hiding? Only the
over-sweet tenor melodies of disinterestedness filled the hall. But
listen for a moment: how much spleen and vinegar under all this
syrup! How unexpectedly these lyric roulades break into a spite-
ful falsetto! The president of the All-Russian Chamber of
Agriculture, Kapatsinsky, standing with all his heart for the com-
ing agrarian reform, does not forget to thank "our pure Tsere-
telli" for his circular in defense of law against anarchy. But the
land committees? They will straightway turn over the power to
the muzhik! To this "dark, semi-illiterate man, crazy with joy
that they have at last given him the land, it is proposed to turn
over the inauguration of justice in the country!" If in their
struggle with this dark muzhik, the landlords happen to be de-
fending property, it is not for their own sakes Oh no! but
only in order afterwards to lay it upon the altar of freedom.

The social symbolism would now seem to have been com-
pleted. But here Kerensky is blessed with a happy inspiration. He
proposes that they give the floor to one more group "a group
out of Russian history namely Breshko-Breshkovskaia, Kro-
potkin and Plekhanov/' Russian Narodnikism, Russian anarch-
ism, and Russian social democratism take the floor in the person
of the older generation anarchism and Marxism in the person
of their most eminent founders.

Kropotkin asked only to join his voice "to those voices which
are summoning the whole Russian people to break once for all
with Zimmerwaldism." The apostle of non-government promptly
gave his adherence to the right wing of the Conference. A defeat
threatens us, he cried, not only with the loss of vast territories
and the payment of indemnities: "You must know, comrades,
that there is something worse than all this that is the psychology

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THE [STATE CONFERENCE IN MOSCOW

of a defeated nation/' This ancient internationalist prefers to see
the psychology of a defeated nation on the other side of the
border. While recalling how a conquered France had humbled
herself before the Russian tzars, he did not foresee how a con-
quering France would humble herself before American bankers.
He exclaimed: "Are we going to live through the same thing?
Not by any means!' 3 He was applauded by the entire hall. And
then what rainbow prospects, he said, are opened by the war:
"All are beginning to understand that we must build a new life
on new socialist principles. . . . Lloyd George is making speeches
imbued with the socialist spirit. ... In England, in France and
in Italy, there is forming a new comprehension of life, imbued
with socialism unfortunately state socialism/* If Lloyd George
and Poincare have not yet "unfortunately" renounced the state
principle, at least Kropotkin has come over to it frankly enough.
"I think," he said, "that we will not be depriving the Constituent
Assembly of any of its rights I fully recognize that to it be-
longs the sovereign decision upon such questions if we, the
Council of the Russian land, loudly express our desire that Rus-
sia should be declared a republic." Kropotkin insisted upon a
confederative republic: "We need a federation such as they have
in the United States." That is what Bakunin's federation of free
communes had come down to! "Let us promise each other at
last," adjured Kropotkin in conclusion, "that we will no longer
be divided into the left and right halves of this theater. . . .
We all have one fatherland, and for her we ought all to stand
together, or to lie down together if need be, both Lefts and
Rights." Landlords, industrialists, generals, Cavaliers of St.
George, all those who did not recognize Zimmerwald, extended to
the apostle of anarchism a well-earned ovation.

The principles of liberalism can have a real existence only in
conjunction with a police system. Anarchism is an attempt to
cleanse liberalism of the police. But just as pure oxygen is impos-
sible to breathe, so liberalism without the police-principle means
the death of society. Being a shadow-caricature of liberalism,
anarchism as a whole has shared its fate. Having killed liberalism,
the development of class contradictions has also killed anarchism.
Like every sect which founds its teaching not upon the actual

179

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

development of human society, but upon the reduction to ab-
surdity of one of its features, anarchism explodes like a soap
bubble at that moment when the social contradictions arrive at
the point of war or revolution. Anarchism as represented by
Kropotkin was about the most spectral of all the specters at the
State Conference.

In Spain, the classic country of Bakuninism, the anarcho-
syndicalist and so-called "specific/' or pure anarchists, in abstain-
ing from politics, are really repeating the policy of the Russian
Mensheviks. These bombastic deniers of the state respectfully
bow down to force the moment it changes its skin. Having
warned the proletariat against the temptations of power, they
self-sacrificingly support the power of the "left" bourgeoisie.
Cursing the gangrene of parliamentarism, they secretly hand
their followers the election ballot of the vulgar republican. No
matter how the Spanish revolution develops, it will at least put
an end to anarchism once for all.

Plekhanov, who was greeted by the whole conference with
stormy applause the lefts were honoring their old leader, the
rights their new ally represented that early Russian Marxism
whose outlook had in the course of the decades become fixed
within the boundaries of political freedom. For the Bolsheviks the
revolution had only begun, for Plekhanov it was already finished.
Advising the industrialists to "seek a rapprochement with the
working class," Plekhanov suggested to the democrats: "It is
absolutely necessary for you to come to an agreement with the
representatives of the commercial and industrial class." As a
horrible example Plekhanov introduced the "unhappy memory
of Lenin," who had fallen to such a level that he was summoning
the proletariat to "an immediate seizure of political power." It
was just for this warning against a struggle for power that the
Conference had need of Plekhanov, who had abandoned the last
item of the armor of a revolutionist upon the threshold of the
revolution.

On the evening of the day that the delegates from "Russian
history" spoke, Kerensky gave the floor to a representative of the
Chamber of Agriculture and the Union of Horse Breeders, also
a Kropotkin, another member of the old princely family which

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THE STATE CONFERENCE IN MOSCOW

had, if you believe their genealogical tree, a better right than the
Romanovs to the Russian throne* "I'm not a Socialist," said this
feudal aristocrat ,, "though I have a respect for genuine socialism.
But when I see seizures, robberies and violence I am obliged to
say . . . the government ought to compel people who are at-
taching themselves to socialism to withdraw from the task of
reconstructing the country." This second Kropotkin, obviously
aiming his shot at Chernov, had no objection to such socialists as
Lloyd George or Poincare. Along with his family-opposite, the
anarchist, this monarchist Kropotkin condemned Zimmerwald,
the class struggle and the land seizures alas, he had been in the
habit of calling them ''anarchy" and also demanded union and
victory. Unfortunately the records do not state whether the two
Kropotkins applauded each other.

In this conference, corroded with hatred, they talked so much
about unity that unity simply had to materialize at least for one
second in the inevitable symbolic handshake. The Menshevik
paper tells of this incident in rapturous words: "During the
speech of Bublikov an incident occurred which made a deep im-
pression upon all the members of the Conference . . . 'Yester-
day,' said Bublikov, *a noble leader of the revolution, Tseretelli,
extended his hand to the business world, and I want him to know
that that hand is not left hanging in the air. . . .' " When Bub-
likov stopped speaking Tseretelli came up and shook hands with
him. Stormy ovations.

How many ovations! A little too many. A week before the
scene just described, this same Bublikov, a big railroad magnate,
attending a congress of industrialists, had bellowed against the
soviet leaders: "Away with the dishonest, the ignorant, all those
who have driven us toward destruction!" and his words were
still echoing in the atmosphere of Moscow. The old Marxist,
Riazanov, who attended the conference as a trade union delegate,
very appropriately recalled the kiss of the prelate of Lyon,
Lamourette "That kiss which was exchanged by two parts of
the National Assembly not the workers and the bourgeoisie,
but two parts of the bourgeoisie and you know that the strug-
gle never burst out more furiously than just after that kiss."
Miliukov acknowledges with unaccustomed frankness that this

181

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

union was, upon the side of the industrialists, "not sincere, but
practically necessary for a class which would have too much to
lose. The celebrated handshake of Bublikov was just such a
reconciliation, with mental reservations."

Did the majority of the members of the conference believe
in the force of handshakes and political kisses? Did they believe
in themselves? Their feelings were contradictory, like their plans.
To be sure, in certain individual speeches, especially from the
provinces, there was still to be heard the crackle of the first rap-
tures, hopes, illusions. But in a conference where the left half was
disappointed and demoralized, and the right enraged, these echoes
of the March days sounded like the correspondence of a betrothed
couple made public in their divorce trial. Having already de-
parted into the kingdom of shades, these politicians were saving
with spectral measures a spectral regime. A deathly cold breath
of hopelessness hung over this assembly of "living forces," this
final parade of the doomed.

Towards the very end of the conference an incident occurred
revealing the deep split even in that group which was considered
the model of unity and loyalty to the state, the Cossacks. Na-
gaiev, a young Cossack officer in the soviet delegation, declared
that the working Cossacks were not with Kaledin. The Cossacks
at the front, he said, do not trust the Cossack leaders. That was
true, and touched the conference upon its sorest point. The news-
paper accounts here report the stormiest of all the scenes at the
conference. The Left ecstatically applauded Nagaiev and shouts
were heard: "Hurrah for the revolutionary Cossacks!" Indignant
protests from the Right: "You will answer for this!" A voice
from the officers' benches: "German marks!" In spite of the in-
evitability of these words as the last argument of patriotism, they
produced an effect like an exploding bomb. The hall was filled
with a perfectly hellish noise. The soviet delegates jumped from
their seats, threatening the officers' benches with their fists. There
were cries of "Provocateurs!" The president's bell clanged con-
tinually. "Another moment and it seemed as though a fight would
begin."

After all that had taken place Kerensky declared in his con-
cluding speech: "I believe and I even know . . . that we have

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THE STATE CONFERENCE IN MOSCOW

achieved a better understanding of each other, that we have
achieved a greater respect for each other. . . /* Never before
had the duplicity of the February regime risen to such disgusting
and futile heights of falsity. Himself unable to sustain this tone,
the orator suddenly burst out in the midst of his concluding
phrases into a wail of threat and despair. As Miliukov describes
it: "With a broken voice which fell from a hysterical shriek to a
tragic whisper, Kerensky threatened an imaginary enemy, in-
tently searching for him throughout the hall with inflamed
eyes. . . ." Miliukov really knew better than anybody else that
this enemy was not imaginary. "Today citizens of the Russian
land, I will no longer dream. * . . May my heart become a
stone. . . ." Thus Kerensky raged "Let all those flowers and
dreams of humanity dry up. (A woman's voice from the gallery:
'You cannot do that. Your heart will not permit you.') I throw
far away the key of my heart, beloved people. I will think only
of the state."

The hall was stupefied, and this time both halves of it. The
social symbol of the State Conference wound up with an insuf-
ferable monologue from a melodrama. That woman^s voice raised
in defense of the flowers of the heart sounded like a cry for help,
like an S. O. S. from the peaceful, sunny, bloodless February
revolution. The curtain came down at last upon the State Con-
ference.

183

CHAPTER VIII
KERENSKY'S PLOT

Moscow Conference damaged the position of the
I government by revealing, as Miliukov correctly states,
"that the country was divided into two camps between
which there could be no essential reconciliation or agreement."
The Conference raised the spirits of the bourgeoisie and sharpened
their impatience. In the other hand it gave a new impulse to the
movement of the masses. The Moscow strike opened a period of
accelerated regrouping to leftward of the workers and soldiers.
Henceforth the Bolsheviks grew unconquerably. Among the
masses, only the Left Social Revolutionaries, and to some extent
the Left Mensheviks, held their own. The Petrograd organization
of the Mensheviks signalized its political shift leftward by ex-
cluding Tseretelli from the list of candidates for the city duma.
On the 16th of August, a Petrograd conference of the Social
Revolutionaries demanded, by 22 votes against 1, the dissolution
of the League of Officers at headquarters, and other decisive
measures against the counter-revolution. On August 18, the Pet-
rograd Soviet, over the objection of its president, Cheidze, placed
upon the order of the day the question of abolishing the death
penalty. Before the voting, Tseretelli put this challenging ques-
tion: "If as a consequence of your resolution, the death penalty is
not abolished, then will you bring the crowd into the street and
demand the overthrow of the government?" "Yes," shouted the
Bolsheviks in answer. "Yes, we will call out the crowd, and we
will try our best to overthrow the government." "You have
lifted your heads high these days," said Tseretelli. The Bolsheviks
had lifted their heads together with the masses. The Compromisers
had lowered their heads as the heads of the masses were lifted.
The demand for an abolition of the death penalty was adopted
by all votes about 900 against 4. Those four were Tseretelli,
Cheidze, Dan, Lieber! Four days later, at a joint session of

184

KERENSKY'S PLOT

Mensheviks and groups surrounding them, where upon funda-
mental questions a resolution of Tseretelli was adopted in opposi-
tion to that of Martov, the demand for an immediate abolition of
the death penalty was passed without debate, Tseretelli, no longer
able to resist the pressure, remained silent.

This thickening political atmosphere was pierced by events
at the front. On the 19th of August, the Germans broke through
the Russian line near Ikskul. On the 21st, they occupied Riga.
This fulfillment of Kornilov's prediction became, as though by
previous agreement, the signal for a political attack of the
bourgeoisie. The press multiplied tenfold its campaign against
"workers who will not work" and "soldiers who will not fight/'
The revolution had to answer for everything: it had surrendered
Riga; it was getting ready to surrender Petrograd. The slandering
of the army just as furious as two and a half months ago had
now not a shadow of justification. In June the soldiers had actually
refused to take the offensive: they had not wanted to stir up the
front, to break the passivity of the Germans, to renew the fight.
But before Riga the initiative was taken by the enemy, and the
soldiers behaved quite differently. It was, moreover, the most
thoroughly propagandized part of the 12th army which proved
least subject to panic.

The commander of the army, General Parsky, boasted, and
not without foundation, that the retreat was accomplished "in
model formation," and could not even be compared to the re-
treats from Galicia and East Prussia. Commissar Voitinsky re-
ported: "Our troops have carried out the tasks allotted to them
in the region of the breach honorably and irreproachably, but
they are not in a condition long to sustain the attack of the
enemy, and are retreating slowly, a step at a time, suffering
enormous losses. I consider it necessary to mention the extraor-
dinary valor of the Lettish sharpshooters, the remnant of whom,
in spite of complete exhaustion, has been sent again into the
battle. . . /' Still more enthusiastic was the report of the presi-
dent of the army committee, the Menshevik Kuchin: "The spirit
of the soldiers was astonishing. According to the testimony of
members of the committee and officers, their staunchness was
something never before seen." Another representative of the same

185

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

army reported a few days later at a session of the bureau of the
Executive Committee: "In the center of the point of attack was
a Lettish brigade consisting almost exclusively of Bolsheviks.
. . . Receiving orders to advance, the brigade went forward
with red banners and bands playing and fought with extraor-
dinary courage." Stankevich wrote later to the same effect, al-
though more restrainedly: "Even in the army headquarters which
contained people notoriously ready to lay the blame upon the
soldiers, they could not tell me one single concrete instance of
non-fulfillment, not only of fighting orders, but of any orders
whatever." The landing force of marines engaged in the Moon-
sund operation, as appears in the official documents, also showed
noticeable fortitude. A part was played in determining the
mood of the soldiers, especially the Lettish sharpshooters and
Baltic sailors, by the fact that it was a question this time of the
direct defense of two centers of the revolution, Riga and Petro-
grad. The more advanced troops had already got hold of the
Bolshevik idea that "to stick your bayonets in the ground does
not settle the question of the war," that the struggle for peace
was inseparable from the struggle for power, for a new revolu-
tion.

Even if certain individual commissars, frightened by the at-
tack of the generals, exaggerated the staunchness of the army,
the fact remains that the soldiers and sailors obeyed orders and
died. They could not do more. But nevertheless in the essence of
the matter there was no defense. Incredible as it may seem, the
twelfth army was caught wholly unprepared. Everything was
lacking: men, arms, military supplies, gas masks. The communica-
tions were unspeakably bad. Attacks were delayed because
Japanese cartridges had been supplied for Russian rifles. Yet this
was no incidental sector of the front. The significance of the loss
of Riga had been no secret to the high command. How then ex-
plain the extraordinarily miserable condition of the defense forces
and supplies of the twelfth army? "The Bolsheviks," writes
Stankevich, "had already begun to spread rumors that the city
was surrendered to the Germans on purpose, because the officers
wanted to get rid of that nest and nursery of Bolshevism. These
rumors could not but win belief in the army, which knew that

186

KERENSKY'S PLOT

essentially there had been no defense or resistance/' The fact is
that as early as December 1916, Generals Ruzsky and Brussilov
had complained that Riga was "the misfortune of the Northern
front," that it was "a nest of propaganda," which could only be
dealt with by the method of executions. To send the Riga work-
ers and soldiers to the training school of a German military oc-
cupation, must have been the secret dream of many generals of
the northern front. Nobody imagined of course that the
commander-in-chief had given an order for the surrender of
Riga. But all the commanders had -read the speech of Kornilov
and the interview of his chief -of -staff, Lukomsky. This made an
order entirely unnecessary. The commander-in-chief of the
northern front, General Klembovsky, belonged to the inside
clique of conspirators, and was consequently awaiting the sur-
render of Riga as a signal for the beginning of the movement to
save the country. Moreover, even in normal conditions these
Russian generals had a preference for surrender and retreat. On
this occasion, when they were relieved of responsibility in advance
by headquarters, and their political interests impelled them along
the road of defeatism, they did not even make the attempt at a
defense. Whether this or that general added some damaging action
to the passive sabotage of the defense, is a secondary question and
in its essence hard to solve. It would be naive to imagine, how-
ever, that the generals restrained themselves from lending what
help they could to destiny in those cases where their traitorous
activities would remain unpunished.

The American journalist, John Reed, who knew how to see and
hear, and who has left an immortal book of chronicler's notes of
the days of the October Revolution, testifies without hesitation
that a considerable part of the possessing classes of Russia pre-
ferred a German victory to the triumph of the revolution, and
did not hesitate to say so openly. "One evening I spent at the
house of a Moscow merchant," says Reed, among other examples.
"During tea we asked eleven people at the table whether they
preferred 'Wilhelm or the Bolsheviks.' The vote was ten to one
for Wilhelm." The same American writer conversed with officers
on the northern front, who "frankly preferred a military defeat
to working with the soldiers' committees/'

187

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

To sustain the political accusation made by the Bolsheviks
and not only by them it is wholly sufficient that the surrender
of Riga entered into the plans of the conspirators and occupied
a definite place in the calendar of their conspiracy. This was quite
clearly evident between the lines of the Moscow speech of
Kornilov. Subsequent events illumined that aspect of the matter
completely. But we have also a piece of direct testimony, to which,
in the given instance, the personality of the witness imparts an
irreproachable authority. Miliukov in his "History" says: "In
Moscow, Kornilov indicated in his speech that moment beyond
which he did not wish to postpone decisive steps for the 'salva-
tion of the country from ruin and the army from collapse/
That moment was the fall of Riga predicted by him. This event
in his opinion would evoke ... a flood of patriotic excitement.
... As Kornilov told me personally at a meeting in Moscow on
the 13th of August, he did not wish to let pass this opportunity.
And the moment of open conflict with the government of
Kerensky was completely determined in his mind even to the
point of settling in advance upon the date, August 27." Could
one possibly speak more clearly? In order to carry out the march
on Petrograd, Kornilov had need of the surrender of Riga sev-
eral days before the date settled upon. To strengthen the Riga
position, to take serious measures of defense, would have meant
to destroy the plan of another campaign immeasurably more im-
portant for Kornilov. If Paris is worth a mass, then Riga is a
small price to pay for power.

During the week which passed between the surrender of Riga
and the insurrection of Kornilov, headquarters became the cen-
tral reservoir of slander against the army. The communications
from the Russian staff printed in the Russian press found im-
mediate echo in the press of the Entente. The Russian patriotic
papers in their turn enthusiastically reprinted the taunts and
abuse addressed to the Russian army by The Times, Le Temps
and Le I/Latin. The soldiers' front quivered with resentment, in-
dignation and disgust. The commissars and committees, even the
compromisist and patriotic ones, felt injured to the quick. Pro-
tests poured in from all sides. Especially sharp was the letter of
the executive committee of the Rumanian front, the Odessa mili-

188

KERENSKY'S PLOT

tary district, and the Black Sea fleet the so-called Rumcherod
which demanded that the Executive Committee "establish before
all Russia the valor and devoted bravery of the soldiers who are
dying by the thousands every day in cruel battles for the defense
of revolutionary Russia. . . ." Under the influence of these pro-
tests from below, the compromisist leaders abandoned their
passivity. "It seems as if there exists no filth which the bourgeois
papers will not fling at the revolutionary army," wrote Izvestia
of its allies in a political bloc. But nothing had any effect. This
slandering of the army was a necessary part of the conspiracy
which had its center in headquarters.

Immediately after the abandonment of Riga, Kornilov gave
order by telegram to shoot a few soldiers on the road before the
eyes of others as an example. Commissar Voitinsky and General
Parsky reported that in their opinion the conduct of the soldiers
did not at all justify such measures. Kornilov, beside himself, de-
clared at a meeting of committee representatives at headquarters
that he would court-martial Voitinsky and Parsky for giving
untrue reports of the situation in the army which meant, as
Stankevich explains, "for not laying the blame on the soldiers."
To complete the picture, it is necessary to add that on the same
day Kornilov ordered the army staffs to supply a list of Bol-
shevik officers to the head committee of the League of Officers
that is, to the counter-revolutionary organization headed by the
Kadet Novosiltsev which was the chief center of the plot. Such
was this supreme commander-in- chief, "the first soldier of the
revolution!"

Having made up its mind to lift a tiny corner of the curtain,
Izvestia wrote: "Some mysterious clique extraordinarily close to
the high commanding circles is doing a monstrous work of pro-
vocation. . . ." Under the phrase "mysterious clique" they were
alluding to Kornilov and his staff. The heat lightnings of the
advancing civil war began to cast a new illumination not only
upon today's, but upon yesterday's doings. Under the head of
self-defense, the Compromisers began to uncover suspicious
activities of the commanding staff during the June offensive.
There appeared in the press more and more details of the malicious
slandering by the staffs of divisions and regiments. "Russia has

189

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

the right to demand," wrote hvestia, "that the whole truth be
laid bare to her about our July retreat." Those words were eagerly
read by soldiers, sailors, workers especially by those who, under
the pretense that they had been guilty of the catastrophe at the
front, were still keeping the prisons full. Two days later Izvestia
felt compelled to declare more openly that: "Headquarters with
its communiques is playing a definite political game against the
Provisional Government and the revolutionary democracy/' The
government is portrayed in these lines as an innocent victim
of the designs of headquarters, but it would seem as though the
government had every opportunity to pull up on the generals.
If it did not do so, that was because it did not want to.

In the above-mentioned protest against treacherous baitings of
the soldiers, Rumcherod spoke with especial indignation of the
fact that "the communiques from headquarters . . , while
emphasizing the gallantry of the officers seem deliberately to
belittle the devotion of the soldiers to the defense of the revolu-
tion.'* The protest of Rumcherod appeared in the press of August
22, and the next day a special order of Kerensky was published
devoted to the laudation of the officers, who "from the first
days of the revolution have had to endure a diminution of their
rights," and undeserved insults on the part of soldier masses "con-
cealing their cowardice under idealistic slogans." At a time when
his closest assistants, Stankevich, Voitinsky and others, were pro-
testing against the taunting of soldiers, Kerensky demonstratively
associated himself with this business, crowning it with a provoca-
tory order from the "War Minister and Head of the Government.
Kerensky subsequently acknowledged that as early as the end of
July he had in his hands "accurate information" as to an officers'
plot grouped around headquarters. "The head committee of the
League of Officers," to quote Kerensky, "appointed active con-
spirators from its midst, and its members were agents of the
conspiracy in various localities. They gave to the legal actions of
the League the necessary tone." That is perfectly correct. We
need only add that "the necessary tone" was a tone of slander
against the army, the committees, and the revolution that is,
the very tone of Kerensky's order of August 23.

How shall we explain this riddle? That Kerensky had no con-

190

KEKENSKY'S PLOT

sistent and thought-out policy is absolutely indubitable. But
he must needs have been altogether out of his senses, in order
with knowledge of an officer's plot to put his head under the
knife of the plotters and at the same time to help them disguise
themselves. The explanation of the conduct of Kerensky, in-
comprehensible at first glance, is in reality very simple: he was
himself at that time a party to the plot against the baffled regime
of the February revolution.

When the time came for revelations, Kerensky himself testi-
fied that from the Cossack circles, from officers, and from
bourgeois politicians, proposals of a personal dictatorship had
come to him more than once. "But they fell upon unfertile
soil. . . " The position of Kerensky was at any rate, then, such
'that the leaders of counter-revolution were able without risk to
exchange opinions with him about a coup d'etat. "The first con-
versations on the subject of a dictatorship, taking the form of a
slight feeling out of the ground," began according to Denikin
at the beginning of June, that is, during the preparations for
the offensive. Kerensky not infrequently participated in these
conversations, and in such cases it was assumed as a matter of
course, especially by Kerensky himself, that he would occupy the
center of the dictatorship. Sukhanov rightly says of Kerensky:
"He was a Kornilovist only on the condition that he himself
should stand at the head of the Kornilovists." During the collapse
of the offensive, Kerensky promised Kornilov and the other
generals far more than he could fulfil. "During his journeys on
the front, 3 * relates General Lukomsky, "Kerensky would often
pump up his courage and discuss with his companions the ques-
tion of creating a firm power, of forming a directory, or of turn-
ing over the power to a dictator." In conformity with his char-
acter, Kerensky would introduce into these conversations an
element of formlessness, a slovenly, dilettante element. The gen-
erals, on the other hand, would incline towards military precision.

These casual participations of Kerensky in the conversations
of the generals gave a certain legalization to the idea of a mili-
tary dictatorship, a thing which, out of cautiousness before the
not yet strangled revolution, they most often called by the name
of "directory." What role historic recollections about the gov-

191

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

ernment of France after the Thermidor played here, it would
be difficult to say. But aside from questions of mere verbal dis-
guise, the directory presented in the first place this indubitable
advantage, that it permitted a subordination of personal ambi-
tions. In a directory, places ought to be found not only for
Kerensky and Kornilov, but also for Savinkov, even for Filonenko
in general, for people of "iron will," as the candidates them-
selves expressed it. Each of them cherished in his own mind the
thought of passing over afterward from the collective to the single
dictatorship.

For a conspiratorial bargain with headquarters Kerensky
therefore did not have to make any abrupt change: it was suf-
ficient to develop and continue what he had already begun. He
assumed, moreover, that he could give to the conspiracy of the
generals a suitable direction, bringing it down not only on the
heads of the Bolsheviks, but also, within certain limits, upon
his allies and tiresome guardians, the Compromisers. Kerensky
maneuvered in such a way that, without exposing the con-
spirators completely, he could adequately frighten them and
involve them in his own design. In this he went to the very
limit beyond which the head of a government would become an
illegal conspirator. "Kerensky needed an energetic pressure upon
him from the right, from the capitalist cliques, .the Allied em-
bassies, and especially from headquarters," wrote Trotsky early
in September, "in order to enable him to get his own hands ab-
solutely free. Kerensky wanted to use the revolt of the generals in
order to reinforce his own dictatorship/'

The State Conference was the critical moment. Carrying
home from Moscow, along with the illusion of unlimited oppor-
tunities, a humiliating sense of his personal failure, Kerensky
finally decided to cast away all hesitations and show himself to
them in his full stature. But whom did he mean by "them" ? Every-
body but above all the Bolsheviks, who had placed the mine of
a general strike under his gorgeous national tableau. In doing
this he would also settle matters once for all with the Rights, with
all those Guchkovs and Miliukovs who would not take him seri-
ously, who made fun of his gestures and considered his power
the shadow of a power. And finally he would give a good repri-

192

KERENSKY'S PLOT

mand to "them," the comprornisist tutors, the hateful Tseretelli
who kept correcting and instructing him, Kerensky, the chosen
of the nation, even at the State Conference. Kerensky firmly and
finally decided to show the whole world that he was by no means
a "hysteric," a "juggler," a "ballerina," as the Guard and Cossack
officers were more and more openly calling him, but a man of iron
who had closed tight the doors of his heart and thrown the key
in the ocean in spite of the prayers of the beautiful unknown in
the loge at the theater.

Stankevich remarked in Kerensky in those days, "a desire to
speak some new word answering the universal alarm and con-
sternation of the country. Kerensky . . . decided to introduce
disciplinary punishments into the army; probably he was also
ready to propose other decisive measures to the government."
Stankevich knew only that part of his chief's intentions which the
latter deemed it timely to communicate to him. In reality the
designs of Kerensky at that time already went considerably
further. He had decided at one blow to cut the ground under
the feet of Kornilov by carrying out the latter's program, and
thus binding the bourgeoisie to himself. Guchkov had been un-
able to move the troops to an offensive; he, Kerensky, had done
it. Kornilov would not be able to carry out the program of
Kornilov; he, Kerensky, could. The Moscow strike had reminded
him, it is true, that there would be obstacles on this road, but
the July Days had shown that it was possible to overcome them.
Now again it was only necessary to carry the job through to the
end, not permitting the friends on the left to get hold of your
coat-tails. First of all it was necessary to change completely the
Petrograd garrison: the revolutionary regiments must be re-
placed by "healthy" detachments, who would not be always
glancing round at the Soviets. There would be no chance to talk
of this plan with the Executive Committee. And why indeed
should that be necessary? The government had been recognized
as independent and crowned under that banner in Moscow. To
be sure, the Compromisers understood independence only in a
formal sense, as a means of pacifying the Liberals. But he, Keren-
sky, would convert the formal into the material. Not for nothing
had he declared in Moscow that he was neither with the Rights

193

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

nor the Lefts, and that therein lay his strength. Now he would
prove this in action!

After the conference Kerensky's line and the line of the Ex-
ecutive Committee had continued to diverge: the Compromisers
were afraid of the masses, Kerensky of the possessing classes. The
popular masses were demanding the abolition of the death pen-
alty at the front; Kornilov, the Kadets, the embassies of the En-
tente, were demanding its introduction at the rear.

On August 19, Kornilov telegraphed the Minister-President:
"I insistently assert the necessity of subordinating to me the
Petrograd district." Headquarters was openly stretching its hand
toward the capital. On August 24, the Executive Committee
summoned the courage to demand vocally that the government
put an end to "counter-revolutionary methods," and undertake
"without delay and with all energy" the realization of the demo-
cratic transformation. This was a new language. Kerensky was
compelled to choose between accommodating himself to a demo-
cratic platform, which with all its meagerness might lead to a
split with the Liberals and generals, and the program of Kornilov
which would inexorably lead to a conflict with the Soviets. Ker-
ensky decided to extend his hand to Kornilov, to the Kadets, to
the Entente. He wanted to avoid an open conflict on the right at
any cost.

It is true that on August 21, the grand dukes Mikhail Alex-
androvich and Pavel Alexandrovich were put under house arrest,
and a few other persons at the same time placed under observa-
tion. But there was nothing serious in all that, and Kerensky was
compelled to liberate the arrestees immediately. "It seems," he
said in subsequent testimony on the Kornilov affair, "that we had
been consciously led off on a false scent." To this it is only neces-
sary to add "with our own co-operation." It was perfectly clear
that for serious conspirators that is, for the whole right wing of
the Moscow Conference it was not at all a question of restoring
monarchy, but of establishing the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie
over the people. It was in this sense that Kornilov and all his
colleagues rejected, not without indignation, the charge of
"counter-revolutionary" that is, monarchist designs. To be
sure, there were former officials, aides-de-camp, ladies-in-waiting,

194

KERENSKY'S PLOT

Black Hundred courtiers, witch-doctors, monks, ballerinas, whis-
pering here and there in the back yards. That was a thing of no
consequence whatever. The victory of the bourgeoisie could come
only in the form of a military dictatorship. The question of mon-
archy could rise only at some future stage, and then too on the
basis of a bourgeois counter-revolution, not of Rasputin's ladies-
in-waiting.

For the given period the real thing was the struggle of the
bourgeoisie against the people under the banner of Kornilov.
Seeking an alliance with this camp, Kerensky was all the more
willing to screen himself from the suspicions of the Left with a
fictitious arrest of grand dukes. The trick was so obvious that
the Moscow Bolshevik paper wrote at the time: "To arrest a
pair of brainless puppets from the Romanov family and leave at
liberty . . . the military clique of the army commanders with
Kornilov at the head that is to deceive the people. . . ." The
Bolsheviks were hated for this, too, that they saw everything, and
talked out loud about it. Kerensky's inspiration and guide in
those critical days had come to be Savinkov a mighty seeker of
adventures, a revolutionist of the sporting type, one who had
acquired a scorn for the masses in the school of the individual
terror, a man of talent and will qualities which had not, how-
ever, prevented him from becoming for a number of years an
instrument in the hands of the famous provocateur, Azef a
sceptic and a cynic, who believed, not without foundation, that
he had a right to look down upon Kerensky, and while holding
his right hand to his vizor respectfully to lead him by the nose
with his left. Savinkov imposed himself upon Kerensky as a man
of action, and upon Kornilov as a genuine revolutionist with a
historic name. Miliukov has a curious story of the first meeting
between the commissar and the general, as told by Savinkov.
"General/* said Savinkov, "I know that if conditions arise in
which you ought to shoot me, you will shoot me." After a pro-
longed pause he added: "But if conditions arise in which I have
to shoot you, I will do that too/* Savinkov was fond of literature,
knew Corneille and Hugo, and was inclined to the lofty genre.
Kornilov intended to get rid of the revolution without regard to
the formulae of pseudo-classicism and romanticism, but the gen-

195

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

eral, too, was not a stranger to the charm of a "strong artistic
style." The words of the former terrorist must have tickled
pleasantly the heroic principle buried in the breast of the former
member of the Black Hundreds.

In one of the later newspaper articles, obviously inspired and
perhaps also written by Savinkov, his own plans were quite
lucidly explained: "While still a commissar . . ." says the article,
"Savinkov came to the conclusion that the Provisional Govern-
ment was incapable of getting the country out of its difficult
situation* Here other forces must be brought into play. How-
ever, all the work in that direction could be done only under the
banner of the Provisional Government, and in particular of
Kerensky. It would have to be a revolutionary dictatorship estab-
lished by an kon hand. That iron hand Savinkov saw in General
Kornilov." Kerensky as a "revolutionary" screen, Kornilov as an
iron hand. As to the role of the third party, the article has nothing
to say, but there is no doubt that Savinkov, in reconciling the
commander-in-chief with the prime minister, had some thought
of crowding them both out. At one time this unspoken thought
came so close to the surface that Kerensky, just on the eve of the
Conference and against the protest of Kornilov, compelled Sav-
inkov to resign. However, like everything else that happened in
that sphere, the resignation was not conclusive. "On the 17th of
August it was announced, 5 * testified Filomenko, "that Savinkov
and I would keep our posts, and that the Minister-President had
accepted in principle the program expounded in the report pre-
sented by General Kornilov, Savinkov and me." Savinkov, to
whom Kerensky on August 17, "gave orders to draft a law for
measures to be adopted in the rear," created to this end a com-
mission under the presidency of General Apushkin. Although se-
riously fearing Savinkov, Kerensky definitely decided to use him
for his own great plan, and not only kept his place for him in
the war ministry but gave him one in the ministry of the navy
to boot. That meant, according to Miliukov, that for the gov-
ernment "the time had come to take some definite measures even
at the risk of bringing the Bolsheviks into the street. 99 Savinkov
on this subject "frankly stated that with two regiments it would

196

KERENSKY'S PLOT

be easy to put down a Bolshevik revolt and break up the Bol-
shevik organizations."

Both Kerensky and Savinkov perfectly understood, especially
after the Moscow Conference, that the compromisist Soviets
would in no case accept the program of Kornilov. The Petro-
grad soviet, having only yesterday demanded the abolition of the
death penalty at the front, would rise with redoubled strength
against the extension of the death penalty to the rear. The
danger, therefore, was that the movement against the coup
d'etat planned by Kerensky might be led, not by the Bolsheviks,
but by the Soviets. However, we must not stop for that of course:
it is a question of saving the country!

"On the 22nd of August," writes Kerensky, "Savinkov went
to headquarters at my direction in order, among other things (!)
to demand of General Kornilov that he place a cavalry corps at
the disposal of the government." Savinkov himself, when it came
his turn to justify himself before public opinion, described his
mission in the following terms: "To get from General Kornilov a
cavalry corps for the actual inauguration of martial law in
Petrograd and for the defense of the Provisional Government
against any attempt whatever, in particular (!) an attempt of the
Bolsheviks who . . , according to information received from a
foreign intelligence service, were again preparing an attack in
connection with a German siege and an insurrection in Fin-
land. . . ." The fantastic information of the Intelligence Serv-
ice was used simply to cover the fact that the government itself,
in the words of Miliukov, was assuming the "risk of bringing
the Bolsheviks into the street." That is, it was ready to provoke
an insurrection. And since the publication of the decree estab-
lishing a military dictatorship was designated for the last days
of August, Savinkov accommodated to that date the anticipated
insurrection.

On the 2Jth of August, the Bolshevik organ Proletarian was
suppressed without any external motive. The Worker, which came
out in its place, declared that its predecessor had been "closed the
day after it had summoned the workers and soldiers, in connection
with the breach on the Riga front, to self -restraint and tranquil-

197

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

ity. Whose hand is taking such care that the workers shall not
know that the party is warning them against provocation?" That
question was directly to the point. The fate of the Bolshevik press
was in the hands of Savinkov. The suppression of the paper gave
him two advantages: it irritated the masses and it prevented the
party from protecting them against a provocation which came
this time from governmental high places.

According to the minutes of headquarters perhaps a little
polished up, but in general fully corresponding to the situation
and the persons involved Savinkov informed Kornilov: "Your
demands, Lavr Georgievich, will be satisfied in a few days. But
the government fears that in connection with this, serious com-
plications may arise in Petrograd. . . . The publication of your
demands will be a signal for a coming-out of the Bolsheviks.
. . . It is not known what attitude the Soviets will take to the
new law. The latter may also oppose the government. . . .
Hence I request you to give an order that the third cavalry corps
be sent to Petrograd toward the end of August and placed at
the disposition of the Provisional Government. In case the mem-
bers of the Soviets as well as the Bolsheviks come out, we shall
have to take action against them." Kerensky's emissary added
that the action would have to be very decisive and ruthless to
which Kornilov answered that he "understands no other kind of
action." Afterward, when it became necessary to justify him-
self, Savinkov added, ". . . if at the moment of the insurrection
of the Bolsheviks, the Soviets should be Bolshevik. . . ." But that
is too crude a trick. The decree announcing the coup d'etat of
Kerensky was to come out in three or four days. It was thus not
a question of some future Soviets, but of those in existence at
the end of August. In order that there should be no misunder-
standing, and the Bolsheviks should not come out "before the
proper moment" the following sequence of actions was agreed
upon: First concentrate a cavalry corps in Petrograd, then de-
clare the capital under martial law, and only after that publish
the new laws which were to provoke a Bolshevik insurrection. In
the minutes of headquarters this plan is written down in black
and white. "In order that the Provisional Government shall know

198

KERENSKY'S PLOT

exactly when to declare the Petrograd military district tinder
martial law and when to publish the new law, it is necessary that
General Kornilov shall keep him (Savinkov) accurately informed
by telegraph of the time when the corps will approach Petro-
grad."

The conspiring generals understood, says Stankevich, "that
Savinkov and Kerensky . . . wanted to carry out some sort of
coup d'etat with the help of the staff. Only this was needed. They
hastily agreed about all demands and conditions. . . ." Stanke-
vich, who was loyal to Kerensky, makes the reservation that at
headquarters, they "mistakenly associated" Kerensky with Savin-
kov. But how could these two be dissociated, once Savinkov had
arrived with precisely formulated instructions from Kerensky?
Kerensky himself writes: "On the 2 Jth of August, Savinkov re-
turns from headquarters and reports to me that the troops to
be at the disposition of the Provisional Government will be sent
according to instructions." The evening of the 26th was desig-
nated for the adoption by the government of the law on meas-
ures for the rear, which was to be the prologue for decisive action
by the cavalry corps. Everything was ready it remained only to
press the button.

The events, the documents, the testimony of the participants,
and finally the confession of Kerensky himself, unanimously bear
witness that the Minister-President, without the knowledge of a
part of his own government, behind the back of the Soviets which
had given him the power, in secrecy from the party of which he
considered himself a member, had entered into agreement with
the highest generals of the army for a radical change in the state
regime with the help of armed forces. In the language of the
criminal law this kind of activity has a perfectly definite name
at least in those cases where the undertaking does not come off
victorious. The contradiction between the "democratic" char-
acter of Kerensky's policy and his plan of saving the government
with the help of the sword, can seem insoluble only to a superficial
view. In reality the cavalry plan flowed inevitably from the
compromisist policy. In explaining the law of this process it is
possible to abstract to a considerable extent, not only from the

199

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

personality of Kerensky, but even from the peculiarities of the
national milieu. It is a question of the objective logic of com-
promisism in the conditions of revolution.

Friedrich Ebert, the people's plenipotentiary of Germany, a
compromisist and a democrat, not only acted under the guidance
of the Hohenzollern generals behind the back of his own party,
but also at the beginning of December 1918 became a direct
participant in a military plot having as its goal the arrest of the
highest soviet body, and the declaration of Ebert himself as
President of the Republic. It is no accident that Kerensky subse-
quently declared Ebert the ideal statesman.

When all their schemes those of Kerensky, Savinkov, Kor-
nilov had gone to smash, Kerensky, to whom fell the none too
easy work of obliterating the tracks, testified as follows: "After
the Moscow Conference it was clear to me that the next attempt
against the government would be from the right and not the
left." It is not to be doubted that Kerensky feared headquarters,
and feared that sympathy with which the bourgeoisie surrounded
the military conspirators; but the point is that Kerensky thought
it necessary to struggle against headquarters, not with a cavalry
corps, but by carrying out in his own name the program of
Kornilov. The double-faced accomplice of the Prime Minister
was not merely fulfilling an ordinary mission for that a tele-
gram in code from the "Winter Palace to Moghiliev would have
been enough. No, he went as an intermediary to reconcile Kornilov
with Kerensky, to bring their plans, that is, into agreement, and
thus guarantee that the coup d'etat should proceed so far as pos-
sible legally. It was as though Kerensky said through Savinkov:
"Go ahead, but within the limits of my scheme. You will thus
avoid risk and get almost everything you want." Savinkov on his
own part added the hint: "Do not go prematurely beyond the
limits of Kerensky's plan." Such was that peculiar equation with
three unknown quantities. Only in this way is it possible to un-
derstand Kerensky's appealing to headquarters through Savinkov
for a cavalry corps. The conspirators were addressed by a highly
placed conspirator, preserving his legality, and himself aspiring to
stand at the head of the conspiracy.

Among the directions given to Savinkov, only one seemed a

200

KERENSKY'S PLOT

measure actually directed against the conspirators on the right:
it concerned the head committee of the League of Officers, whose
dissolution had been demanded by a Petrograd conference of
Kerensky's party. But here a remarkable thing is the very formu-
lation of the order: ". . . in so far as possible to dissolve the
League of Officers/* Still more remarkable is the fact that Sav-
inkov not only did not find any such possibility at all, but did not
seek it. The question was simply buried as untimely. The very or-
der had been given merely to have something on paper for justi-
fication before the Lefts. The words "so far as possible" meant
that the order was not to be carried out. As though to emphasize
the decorative character of this order, it was placed first on the
list.

Attempting at least to weaken a little the deadly meaning of
the fact that, in expectation of a blow from the right, he had re-
moved the revolutionary regiments from the capital, and simul-
taneously appealed to Kornilov for "reliable" troops, Kerensky
later referred to the three sacramental conditions with which he
had surrounded the summoning of the cavalry corps. Thus his
agreement to subordinate to Kornilov the Petrograd military dis-
trict Kerensky had conditioned upon the separation of the cap-
ital and its immediate suburbs from the district, so that the
government would not be wholly in the hands of headquarters.
For as Kerensky expressed himself among his own friends: "We
here would be eaten up." This condition merely shows that in his
dream of subordinating the generals to his own designs, Kerensky
had no weapon in his hands but impotent chicanery. Kerensky*s
desire not to be eaten alive can be credited without demonstration.
The two other conditions amounted to nothing more: Kornilov
was not to include in the expeditionary corps the so-called "Sav-
age Division" consisting of Caucasian mountaineers, and was not
to put General Krymov in command of the corps. So far as con-
cerned defending the interests of the democracy, that really
meant swallowing the camel and choking on the gnat. But so far
as concerned disguising a blow at the revolution, Kerensky's con-
ditions were incomparably more purposeful. To send against the
Petrograd workers Caucasian mountaineers who did not speak
Russian would have been too imprudent; even the tzar in his

201

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

day never made up his mind to that! The inconvenience of ap-
pointing General Krymov, about whom the Executive Commit-
tee possessed some rather definite information, Savinkov convinc-
ingly explained at headquarters on the ground of their common
interest: "It would be undesirable," he said, "in case of disturb-
ances in Petrograd that these disturbances should be put down
by General Krymov. Public opinion might perhaps connect with
his name motives by which he is not guided. . . *" Finally, the
very fact that the head of the government, in summoning a
military detachment to the capital, anticipated events with that
strange request: not to send the Savage Division and not to ap-
point Krymov, convicts Kerensky as clearly as he could be con-
victed of possessing advance knowledge, not only of the general
scheme of the conspiracy, but also of the constituent units of the
punitive expedition, and the candidates for its more important
executive positions.

Moreover, no matter how things had stood in these secondary
points, it was perfectly obvious that a cavalry corps of Kornilov
could not be of any use in defending "the democracy." On the
contrary, Kerensky could not possibly doubt that of all the units
in the army this corps would be the most reliable weapon against
the revolution. To be sure it might have been well to have a de-
tachment in Petrograd personally loyal to Kerensky, who was
elevating himself above the Rights and Lefts. However, as the
whole further course of events demonstrates, no such troops ex-
isted in nature. For the struggle against the revolution there was
nobody but Kornilov men, and to them Kerensky had recourse.
These military preparations only supplemented the political
ones. The general course of the Provisional Government during
the not quite two weeks separating the Moscow Conference from
the insurrection of Kornilov, would have been enough in itself
essentially to prove that Kerensky was getting ready, not for a
struggle against the Right, but for a united front with the Right
against the people. Ignoring the protests of the Executive Com-
mittee against this counter-revolutionary policy, the government
on August 26 took a bold step to meet the landlords with its un-
expected decree doubling the price of grain. The hatefulness of
this measure which was introduced, moreover, upon the spoken

202

KERENSKY'S PLOT

demand of Rodzianko, put the government almost in the po-
sition of consciously provoking the hungry masses. Kerensky was
clearly trying to win over the extreme right flank of the Moscow
Conference with an immense bribe. "I am yours!" he hastened to
cry to the landlords on the eve of a cavalry assault upon what was
left of the February revolution.

Kerensky's testimony before the commission of inquiry named
by himself , was disgraceful. Although appearing in the character
of a witness, the head of the government really felt himself to be
the chief of the accused, and moreover, one caught red-handed.
The experienced judiciary officials, who excellently well under-
stood the mechanics of the events, pretended to take seriously the
explanations of the head of the government, but all other mortals
among them the members of Kerensky's own party quite
frankly asked themselves how one and the same cavalry corps
might be useful both for accomplishing a coup d'etat and for
preventing it. It was just a little too reckless on the part of the
"Social Revolutionary' 5 to bring into the capital a force which
had been composed for the purpose of strangling it. The Trojans,
to be sure, did once bring a hostile detachment into the walls of
their city, but they were at least ignorant of what was inside the
belly of the wooden horse. And even so an ancient historian dis-
putes the story of the poet: in the opinion of Pausanius, you can
believe Homer only if you consider the Trojans to have been
"stupid men not possessed of a glimmer of reason." "What would
the old man have said of the testimony of Kerensky?

203

CHAPTER IX
KORNILOV'S INSURRECTION

A" early as the beginning of August, Kornilov had ordered
the transfer of the Savage Division and the Third Cavalry
Corps from the southwestern front to the sector of the
railroad triangle, Nevel-Novosokolniki-Velikie Luki, the most
advantageous base for an attack on Petrograd this under the
guise of reserves for the defense of Riga. At the same time the
commander-in-chief had concentrated one Cossack division in
the region between Vyborg and Byeloostrov. This fist thrust
into the very face of the capital from Byeloostrov to Petrograd
is only thirty kilometers! was given out as a preparation of re-
serves for possible operations in Finland. Thus even before the
Moscow Conference four cavalry divisions had been moved into
position for the attack on Petrograd, and these were the divisions
considered most useful against Bolsheviks. Of the Caucasian divi-
sion it was customary in* Kornilov's circle to remark: "Those
mountaineers don't care whom they slaughter." The strategic
plan was simple. The three divisions coming from the south were
to be transported by railroad to Tzarskoe Selo, Gatchina, and
Krasnoe Selo, in order from those points upon receiving informa-
tion of disorders beginning in Petrograd, and not later than the
morning of September 1" to advance on foot for the occupation
of the southern part of the capital on the left bank of the Neva.
The division quartered in Finland was at the same time to occupy
the northern part of the capital.

Through the mediation of the League of Officers Kornilov
had got in touch with Petrograd patriotic societies who had at
their disposal, according to their own words, 2000 men excel-
lently armed but requiring experienced officers to lead them.
Kornilov promised to supply commanders from the front under
the pretext of leave-of -absence. In order to keep watch of the

204

KORNILOV'S INSURRECTION

mood of the Petrograd workers and soldiers and the activity of
revolutionists, a secret intelligence service was formed, at the
head of which stood a colonel of the Savage Division, Heiman.
The affair was conducted within the framework of military regu-
lations. The conspiracy made use of the headquarters* apparatus.
The Moscow Conference merely fortified Kornilov in his
plans. Miliukov, to be sure, according to his own story, recom-
mended a delay on the ground that Kerensky still enjoyed a cer-
tain popularity in the provinces. But this kind of advice could
have no influence upon the impatient general. The question after
all was not about Kerensky, but about the Soviets. Moreover,
Miliukov was not a man of action, but a civilian, and still worse
a professor. Bankers, industrialists, Cossack generals were urging
him on. The metropolitans had given him their blessing. Orderly
Zavoiko offered to guarantee his success. Telegrams of greeting
were coming from all sides. The Allied embassies took an active
part in the mobilization of the counter-revolutionary forces. Sir
Buchanan held in his hands many of the threads of the plot. The
military attaches of the Allies at headquarters assured him of
their most cordial sympathies. "The British attache in particu-
lar," testifies Deniken, "did this in a touching form." Behind
the embassies stood their governments. In a telegram of August
23, a commissar of the Provisional Government abroad, Svatikov,
reported from Paris that in a farewell reception the Foreign Min-
ister Ribot had "inquired with extraordinary eagerness who
among those around Kerensky was a man of force and energy."
And President Poincare had "asked many questions . . . about
Kornilov." All this was known at headquarters. Kornilov saw
no reason to postpone and wait. On or about the 20th, two
cavalry divisions were advanced further in the direction of Petro-
grad. On the day Riga fell, four officers from each regiment of
the army were summoned to headquarters, about 4000 in all, "for
the study of English bomb-throwing." To the most reliable of
these officers it was immediately explained that the matter in
view was to put down "Bolshevik Petrograd" once for all. On the
same day an order was given from headquarters to supply two
of the cavalry divisions with several boxes of hand grenades:
they would be the most useful in street fighting. "It was agreed/'

205

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

writes the chief -of -staff , Lukomsky, "that everything should be
ready by the 26th of August."

As the troops of Kornilov approached Petrograd an inside
organization "was to come out in Petrograd, occupy Smolny In-
stitute and try to arrest the Bolshevik chiefs." To be sure in
Smolny Institute the Bolshevik chiefs appeared only at meetings,
whereas continually present there was the Executive Committee
which had appointed the ministers, and continued to number
Kerensky among its vice-presidents. But in a great cause it is
not possible or necessary to observe the fine points of things.
Kornilov at least did not bother about them. "It is time/' he said
to Lukomsky, "to hang the German agents and spies, Lenin first
of all, and disperse the Soviet of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies
yes, and disperse it so it will never get together again."

Kornilov firmly intended to give the command of the opera-
tions to Krymov, who in his own circles enjoyed the reputation
of a bold and resolute general. "Krymov was at that time happy
and full of the joy of life," says Denikin, "and looked with con-
fidence into the future." At headquarters they looked with con-
fidence upon Krymov. "I am convinced," said Kornilov, "that
he will not hesitate, if need arises, to hang the whole membership
of the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies." The choice of
this general, so happy and full of the joy of life, was consequently
most appropriate.

At the height of these labors, which drew attention from the
German front, Savinkov arrived at headquarters in order to dot
the i's of an old agreement, and introduce some secondary changes
into it. Savinkov named the same date for the blow against the
common enemy as that which Kornilov had long ago designated
for his action against Kerensky: the semi-anniversary of the
revolution. In spite of the fact that the conspiracy had split into
two halves, both sides were trying to operate with the common
elements of the plan Kornilov for the purpose of camouflage,
Kerensky in order to support his own illusions. The proposal of
Savinkov played perfectly into the hands of headquarters: the
government had presented its head, and Savinkov was ready to
slip the noose. The generals at headquarters rubbed their hands:
"He's biting!" they exclaimed like happy fishermen. Kornilov

206

KORNILOV'S INSURRECTION

was quite ready to make the proposed concessions, which cost
him nothing. What difference will the non-subordination of the
Petrograd garrison to headquarters make, once the Kornilov
troops have entered the capital? Having agreed to the other two
conditions, Kornilov immediately violated them: the Savage
Division was placed in the vanguard and Krymov at the head
of the whole operation. Kornilov did not consider it necessary to
choke on the gnats.

The Bolsheviks debated the fundamental problems of their
policy openly: a mass party cannot do otherwise. The govern-
ment and headquarters could not but know that the Bolsheviks
were restraining the masses, and not summoning them to action.
But as the wish is father to the thought, so political needs be-
come the basis for a prognosis. All the ruling classes were talking
about an impending insurrection because they were in desperate
need of one. The date of the insurrection would approach or re-
cede a few days from time to time. In the War Ministry that
is, in the office of Savinkov according to the press, the impend-
ing insurrection was regarded "very seriously." Recb stated that
the Bolshevik faction of the Petrograd soviet was assuming the .
responsibility for the attack. Miliukov was to such an extent in-
volved in this matter of the pretended insurrection of the Bol-
sheviks in his character of politician, that he has considered it
a matter of honor to support the tale in his character of historian.
"In subsequently published documents of the Intelligence Serv-
ice," he writes, "new assignments of German money for Trot-
sky's enterprise relate to exactly this period." The learned his-
torian, together with the Russian Intelligence Service, forgets
that Trotsky whom the German staff for the convenience of
the Russian patriots was kind enough to mention by name was
"exactly at this period," from the 23rd of July to the 4th of
September, locked up in prison. The fact that the earth's axis
is merely an imaginary line does not of course prevent the earth
from rotating on its axis. In like manner the Kornilov opera-
tions rotated round an imaginary insurrection of the Bolshe-
viks as round its own axis. That was amply sufficient for the
period of preparation. But for the denouement something a lit-
tle more substantial was needed.

207

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

One of the leading military conspirators, the officer Vinberg,
revealing in his interesting notes what was going on behind
the scenes in this business, wholly confirms the assertion o the
Bolsheviks that a vast work of military provocation was in
progress. Even Miliukov is obliged, under the whip of facts and
documents, to admit that "the suspicions of the extreme left
circles were correct: agitation in the factories was undoubtedly
one of the tasks which the officers' organizations were supposed
to fulfill." But even this did not help: "The Bolsheviks," com-
plains the same historian, decided "not to be put upon," and
the masses did not intend to go out without the Bolsheviks. How-
ever, even this obstacle had been taken into consideration in the
plan, and paralyzed as it were in advance. The "republican cen-
ter," as the leading body of the conspirators in Petrograd was
called, decided simply to replace the Bolsheviks. The business of
imitating a revolutionary insurrection was assigned to the Cos-
sack colonel, Dutov. In January 1918, Dutov, to a question from
his political friends: "What was to have happened on the 28th
of August, 1917?" answered as follows (the quotation is ver-
batim) : "Between the 28th of August and the 2nd of September
I was to take action in the form of a Bolshevik insurrection."
Everything had been foreseen. This plan had not been labored
over by the officers of the general staff for nothing.

Kerensky, on his side, after the return of Savinkov from
Moghiliev, was inclined to think that all misunderstandings had
been removed, and that headquarters was entirely drawn into
his plan. "There were times," writes Stankevich, **when all those
active not only believed they were all acting in the same direction,
but that they had a like conception of the very methods of ac-
tion." Those happy moments did not last long. An accident oc-
curred, which like all historic accidents opened the sluice-gates of
necessity. To Kerensky came the Octobrist, Lvov, a member of
the first Provisional Government that same Lvov who as the ex-
pansive Procurer of the Holy Synod had reported that this in-
stitution was filled with "idiots and scoundrels." Fate had allotted
to Lvov the task of discovering that under the appearance of a
single plan there were in reality two plans, one of which was
directed in a hostile manner against the other.

208

KOKNILOV'S INSURRECTION

In his character as an unemployed but word-loving politician,
Lvov had taken part in endless conversations about the trans-
formation of the government and the salvation of the country
now at headquarters, now in the "Winter Palace. This time he
appeared with a proposal that he be permitted to mediate in
the transformation of the cabinet along national lines, inciden-
tally frightening Kerensky in a friendly manner with the thun-
ders and lightnings of a discontented headquarters. The dis-
turbed Minister-President decided to make use of Lvov in order
to test the loyalty of the staff and at the same time, apparently,
that of his accomplice, Savinkov. Kerensky expressed his sym-
pathy for the plan of a dictatorship in which he was not hypo-
critical and encouraged Lvov to undertake further mediations
in which there was military trickery.

When Lvov again arrived at headquarters, weighed down
now with the credentials of Kerensky, the generals looked upon
his mission as a proof that the government was ripe for capitula-
tion. Only yesterday Kerensky through Savinkov had promised
to carry out the program of Kornilov if defended by a corps of
Cossacks; today Kerensky was already proposing to the staff a
co-operative transformation of the government. "It is time to
put a knee in his stomach," the generals justly decided. Kornilov
accordingly explained to Lvov that since the forthcoming insur-
rection of the Bolsheviks has as its aim "the overthrow of the
Provisional Government, peace with Germany, and the sur-
render to her by the Bolsheviks of the Baltic fleet," there remains
no other way out but "the immediate transfer of power by
the Provisional Government into the hands of the supreme
commander-in-chief." To this Kornilov added: cc . . . no mat-
ter who he may be" but he had no idea of surrendering his
place to anybody. His position had been fortified in advance by
the oath of the Cavaliers of St. George, the League of Officers and
the Council of the Cossack army. In order to make sure of the
"safety" of Kerensky and Savinkov from the hands of the Bol-
sheviks, Kornilov urgently requested them to come to head-
quarters and place themselves under his personal protection. The
orderly, Zavoiko, gave Lvov an unequivocal hint as to just what
this protection would consist of.

209

THE ATTEMPTED COUNTER-REVOLUTION

Returning to Moscow, Lvov fervently urged Kerensky, as a
"friend," to agree to the proposal of Kornilov "in order to save
the lives of the members of the Provisional Government, and
above all his own life." Kerensky could not but understand at
last that his political playing with the idea of dictatorship was
taking a serious turn, and might end most unfortunately for him.
Having decided to act, he first of all summoned Kornilov to the
wire in order to verify the facts: Had Lvov correctly conveyed
his message? Kerensky put his questions, not only in his own
name, but in the name of Lvov, although the latter was not
present during the conversation. "Such an action," remarks
Martynov, "appropriate for a detective, was of course improper
for the head of a government." Kerensky spoke of his arrival at
headquarters the next day as a thing already decided upon, This
whole dialogue on the direct wire seems incredible. The demo-
cratic head of the government and the "republican" general
converse about yielding the power the one to the other, as though
they were discussing a berth in a sleeping car!

Miliukov is entirely right when he sees in the demand of
Kornilov that the power be transferred to him, merely "a continu-
ation of all those conversations openly begun long ago about a
dictatorship, a re-organization of the government, etc." But
Miliukov goes too far when he tries upon this basis to present the
thing as though there had been in essence no conspiracy at head-
quarters. It is indubitable that Kornilov could not have pre-
sented his demand through Lvov, if he had not formerly been
in a conspiracy with Kerensky. But this does not alter the fact
that with one conspiracy the common one Kornilov was cov-
ering up another his own private one. At the same time that
Kerensky and Savinkov were intending to clean up the Bol-
sheviks, and in part the Soviets, Kornilov was intending also to
clean up the Provisional Government. It was just this that Ker-
ensky did not want.

For several hours on the evening of the 26th headquarters
was actually in a position to believe that the government was
going to capitulate without a struggle. But that does not mean
that there was no conspiracy; it merely means that the con-
spiracy seemed about to succeed. A victorious conspiracy always

210

KORNILOV'S INSURRECTION

finds ways of legalizing itself. "I saw General Kornilov after this
conversation," says Troubetskoy, a diplomat who represented the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs at headquarters. "A sigh of relief
lifted his breast, and to my question, 'This means that the gov-
ernment is coming to meet you all along the line?' he answered:
'Yes.' " Kornilov was mistaken. It was at that