[Petrograd in 1917 was the I the ears…]

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Petrograd in 1917 was the I the ears, the alert rous system of the revolm, its workers and soldiers political vanguard of the ntry.

the capital especially, tration with the inability of the talist Provisional Government olve the problems which had ed the February Revolution felt ever more keenly by the res of workers and soldiers. In June 24th a demonstration d by the first All-Russian press of Soviets to support the et majority, (which detended coalition with capitalists in the isional Government) carried tad banner after banner declarBolshevik policies: 'Down with len capitalist ministers!', 'Down ! the offensive!" ; 'All power to Soviets!"

CLOSED there was plenty to cause this tration. Factories that promised • trouble than profits were • closed down - metal produc: 575 down 40°, textiles 20% -porters fought for control of laction both in order to control i rich were rising apace, and Efend jobs. minding food supplies threatI tamine. The offensive at the K. announced by Kerensky in Joze with great pomp and Dry. was dying in convulsions. : soldiers did not want to fight. lee soremment seemed to have izi Edension and waverings as The counter-revoluLizag quite openi! protected by E-.: 350:33 :::= had expected of the February Sections of workers, condemned to fruitless waiting, gave in to despair and tried to solve themselves those problems which the power created by them refused even to deal with.

DISBANDED

While whole divisions at the front were disbanded for disobedience, on June 21st a strike of skilled workers broke out in the giant Putilov works in Petrograd, where 36,000 men worked. They demanded wage rises and the control of production, seen as vital in the face of the ever-rising cost of living.

The Bolsheviks, recognising that the solution to these problems was national and political, that 1s, the taking of power by the Soviets, appealed to the Putilov workers through a meeting of factory representatives to 'restrain their legitimate indignation'.

A mass movement could easily mushroom in Petrograd but, lacking the support as yet of the rest of the country, might suffer drastic defeats, with sections being broken one by one.

UNCHECKED

But the mood could not be held in check. A report of the railways trade union to the Minister declared:

"For the last time we announce: patience has its limit; we simply cannot live in such conditions" and protested at the "endless exhorting of us to the duties of a citizer in: to self-restraint 113 Startes"

Advice TUC : 20-02: • 328:001: 1 : = : the left. On the 22nd June a Soviet Executive Committee car drove through the Vyborg workers district with a placard pleading 'Forward for Kerensky!' Men of the Moscow Regiment stopped them, tore up the placard and turned the car over to the Bolshevik-sympathising Machine Gun Regiment.

This regiment had stormed into the capital in March on its own initiative for "the defence of the The Executive Committee immediately resolved to send them back with thanks but they refused: "Counter-revolution might attack the Soviet and restore the old regime"

The Bolsheviks undertook their case and secured provisions, beginning what was to be an indestructable friendship.

DISSOLVE On 21st June they resolved they would in future only go to the front when the war has a revolutionary character" . If forced, the regiment stated it would not hesitate to "dissolve by armed force the Provisional Government and the organisations that support it"

On Sunday July 2nd four Kadet ministers exploded the coalition by withdrawing from the government because the 'socialist" ministers would not confront the workers.

The immediate response of the workers was for an end to this coalition farce, it was the final nudge pushing frustration past breaking point.

Or Monday July 3rd a meeting - : Stera thousand machine ¿amanded an armed : - -aling on the Kamenev movement, fearing it would be isolated and followed by repression.

But the soldiers were determined to put their shoulders under the Soviet compromisers and get them moving. After all, in March the eight-hour day had been won by action from below.

At 7 pm. they were still resolved to come out, delegates already making the rounds of factories and regiments for support.

Petrograd was straining at the leash, not even glancing round at the provinces or the front.

MACHINE GUNS

Motor trucks were demanded and got from the factories and fitted with machine guns. On the shop floors workers stopped instantly as if expecting the call.

In the Putilov works, 10,000 men assembled in the early afternoon and could be restrained =3 longer when 03heaving a • sigh of relief at this sanction from the party, into the Nevsky, the artery of the bourgeoisie.

Clashes break out with the students, officials, bureaucrats, officers who parade there on home ground. Shots ring out. Rifles in the streets give a volley in return. The July days have begun.

At 10.30 pm. a meeting on the square in front of the Tauride elected its deputation to the Executive Committee which was then in session.

Its demands: removal of the ten bourgeois ministers; all power to the Soviets; a halt to the offensive; confiscation of the bourgeois press and printing plants; the land to be state property and state control of RHETORIC But inside the Tauride they had their own ideas of the revolution. Ideas which reflected little outside its walls except perhaps the rhetoric of the Government.

That day both Executive Committees, the workers and soldiers, and the peasants had been debating the proposals of the Minister Tseretelli on how to save coalition politics without the other half of the coalition.

When news of the proposals of the masses on how to solve this difficult question reached them, they proclaimed any demonstration an act of treachery to the revolution. The question of the cabinet could be left to another meeting, only the struggle against the masses was urgent.

The Menshevik Voitinsky relates: "we sent out commissars to all the regiments with a request to give us soldiers to form a patrol. But each regiment looked to the next to see what it was going to do"

No wonder the soldiers looked about them. The Committee was asking for defence against a colossal demonstration asking it to take P=we=25 the democrac of the -÷÷: ine see

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LUVENS. FREDS, Wedresdej "I 1, 1970 July 1917 - Premature turn to arms by the working class by Trotsky, the election of 25 delegates to lead the movement outside.

The Bolsheviks had been steadily increasing their number of delegates in the last two months, and during the discussion, the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries, convinced they only had one third of the assembly, left the hall.

As soon as they were thrust by events into a minority, they were beginning to boycott meetings. We can only comment from OUr experience in the trade unions today that the undemocratic practices of the right-wing have changed I very little in the last sixty yeals.

The workers' soviet passed a resolution calling on the Executive Committee to take the power and elected 15 for leadership of the movement. This showed the masses outside that the workers section was a fighting ally, a Bolshevik base.

This was a vast step forward from April, when their representation was tiny. It signified that now among the masses their influence was decisive.

By now the streets and square in front of the Tauride Palace were thronged. Going. to talk to the demonstrators Chkeidze the Soviet president, and Voitinsky were met with an unfriendly silence but Trotsky received loud applause, reporting the SECON decision but saying it was not yet time to seize the power.

The joint session of the Executives met again. Delegates from ate into the stagnant atmosphere of that parliament of compromise he leaders had but one thought ow quickest to get rid of the winvited guests. In the gallery.

listening with amazement the evolving to gain fine. The compromisers regiments"

The speeches became ever more incomprehensible to their audience. Tseretelli told confused listeners "to "emand All Power to thes sore the is that to support the soviets? If the soviets so desired, the power could ass to them. There is no obstacle anywhere to the will of the soviets......Such a manifestation is not along the road of revolution, but of counter-revolution"

80,000 At 3 am the Putilov factory approached the Tauride, a mass of eighty thousand workers with wives and children. A delegation was admitted to the Executives and the tired throng of workers lay down in the street and the garden, waiting for an answer.

But the leaders were waiting for troops from the front, and no answer came before 5 am when the meeting adjourned.

A night session of the Bolsheviks and Mezhrayontsi (inter-district organisations close to the Bolsheviks of which Trotsky was a member) was also thinking of the next day. The masses had posed the question of power, and tomorrow would go for the decision, and no force could stop them.

They received news that the sailors from the Kronstadt fortress just down the river from Petrograd would also march in the morning, and decided to issue a leaflet calling on the masses:

"by way of a peaceful and organised demonstration to bring their will to the attention of the Executive Committees now in session"

The party and its Military Organisation had assumed direct leadership of the movement. Before continuing it is worth saying a little about Kronstadt, as this illustrates the political base the masses had, and their need to defend their gains through their own, soviet government.

Throughout Russia, isolated soviets had refused to recognise the authority of the Provisional Government and Kronstadt had done so on May 17th.

The Guardian correspondent, Philips Price, relates how the President of the Soviet told him in June:

"We are simply putting this place in order after the tyranny and chaos of the late Tsarist regime. That is why we have declared the Kronstadt soviet the supreme authority on the island. We recognise the fact that the coalition government exists in Petrograd, just as I recognise the fact that you are sitting in that chair; but that does not mean that we recognise its authority over us"

FACTORY COMMITTEES Price goes on: "I found that the first results of the revolution had been to call into being the factory committees... Those were the elementary industrial units upon which the Soviet idea was based. They were formed by men of all grades, skilled and unskilled, who met for half an hour after the day's work. Delegates went forth to the Soviet. from which also went forth delegates, who were in direct control of industrial affairs. They claimed and exercised the right to inspect the accounts and books of the management, saw to it that no materials left the premises without good reason, and in general ways looked after the welfare of the industry and its members. The work of the State officials was subject to rigid scrutiny for the men were fully alive to the fact that in a capitalist state the bureaucracy is only the agent of big business* The chief private concern, the cable tactoty, "was already under the control of the factory committee. The owner, who had tried to close down the works and sell some of the machinery to a foreign bank was arrested and the whole business requisitioned in the name of the Kronstadt Political Soviet"*.

Small wonder that the sailors and workers there failed to understand why the Executive Committee refused to take the power, and that these men were in the vanguard on July 4th.

The demonstrators assembled at 11 am on Tuesday 4th July. All the factories struck and held meetings where delegates were elected to present their demands to the Executive Committee.

Hundreds of thousands marched to the Tauride, many stopping at the palace of Kshesinskaia on the way for guidance, for inspiration. The movement was more organised, more determined, and the government more forlorn in its powerlessness than the day before.

Loyal troops were called on, only to be found to be not only hostile, but marching on Petrograd to join the demonstration.

On Palace square, for the defence of headquarters, were to be found only war invalids and a few hundred Cossacks.

This after General Polovtsev, Commander of all Petrograd troops had announced he would, cleanse the capital' of armed hordes.

The government was living only by authorisation of the Executive Committee, and this power came from the masses who hoped it would at last come to its senses and take power itself.

The Kronstadt garrison, to be on the safe side, took 2½ tons of arms and ammunition from the stores grad at noon.

Crowds round the palace of Kshesinskaia shouted for Lenin, just arrived from Finland, who expressed confidence in the siogan 'All Power to the Soviets' and appealed for restraint.

Marching to the Tauride, the rear of the demonstration was again fired upon, and disorderly riring began return, leaving several killed and wounded. There was undoubtedly provocation, as government troops tried to panic the marchers, powerless to suppress them.

All the were later excesses were later of course to be blamed on the Bolsheviks.

MOOD

In front of the Tauride, Chernov, the Social Revolutionary Minister of Agriculture, was brought out to the demonstrators. Sensing the mood, he cried out good riddance to the Kadets who had resigned. Miliukov 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!""

Chernov was forced into a car suspicious-looking group of men who had kept aloof from the crowd" and was only saved by Trotsky's personal intervention.

This provocation, together with Kerensky, second from right, with friends a rumour of the attempted arrest of Kerensky were made out afterwards by the hostle press to be proof of an armed insurrection organised by the Bolsheviks.

Delegation after delegation went to the Executive Committee. Trotsky reports one as saying:

"You see what is written on our standards. Such are the decision adopted by the workers.....We demand the resignation of the ten minister-capitalists. We have confidence in the Soviet, but not in those in whom the Soviet has confidence".

Trotsky continues:

"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... "The present circumstances' said Tseretelli, 'make it impossible in the Petrograd atmosphere to carry out any new decisions whatever"

Cossack squadrons supposed to defend the Tauride had 'disappeared. The 176th Regiment from Krasnoe Selo summoned by the Compromisers arrived, but in response to the call from the Bolsheviks!

The repressive forces brushed aside, workers thought the way was clear, but the biggest was sitting in the Palace. obstacle According to the French Ambassador, the government had even sent in its resignation during the afternoon but the Executive had refused and given it a vote of confidence.

Towards seven in the evening, the Executive:

"issued a proclamation to the comrade soldiers asking them to postpone their demands and help the government keep order in the town, while their brothers are doing their duty at the front. But the motorcars carrying these proclamations were stopped by the demonstrators and the proclamations destroyed.

When I returned to the Embassy under a very black and stormy sky, the river Neva was covered with thousands of sheets of white (From the diary of Comte de Robien).

Eventually the Bolshevik Central Committee sent a resolution to the workers to end the demonstration. With little opposition from the ranks, the masses ebbed back to the suburbs, feeling that the problem of 'All Power to the Soviets' was considerably more complicated than it appeared.

But the Executive meeting continued, waiting. At 4 am on the Sth July, reliable troops arrived at last, hand picked irom the most backward guard battalions.

They had been neutral until shown documents supposedly 'proving' that Lenin was a German spy. This accusation was to be the basis for the protracted witch-hunt that the Bolsheviks had feared.

The soldiers were received with glee by the compromisers, and immediately arrested the few workers left in the palace. With the masses gone, the government Tseretelli arrested workers' representatives, seized weapons and isolated the districts of the suburbs.

At 6 am. a group of junkers and soldiers smashed the Pravda offices and arrested all the occupants. A still more violent attack was made on the Bolshevik printing plant for which the workers had been collecting money for the last three months.

ARRESTS

In the morning Cossacks and officers arrested anyone on the streets who defended the Bolsheviks. Everyone was talking about German money which the Bolsheviks were supposed to have received.

Commited came be thesinald n the afternoon to persuade the Bolsheviks to make the Kronstadt demonstrators return and to withdraw the machine gunners from the Peter-Paul fortress, in return for the promise of no pogroms and the liberation of all arrested persons.

But the German money rumours spread, loyal troops were discovered . arrived from the front, Cossack divisions being greeted with machine-gun fire from provocateurs eager to give their aggressive mood an anti-Bolshevik bite.

Lieber declared "the correlation of forces has now changed" and the Bolsheviks had to advise the Kronstadt - demonstrators to go home.

Sailors from the Baltic Fleet who had sailed to Petrograd to arrest the Assistant Minister of the Navy for ordering them to prevent ships going to Petrograd were themselves arrested.

On the morning of the 6th the workers went back to work and a crowd of loyal troops obtained the surrender of Kshesinskaia, thus concluding the July movement.

Lenin was in hiding. On the fifth he had told Trotsky "Now they will shoot us down one by one. This is the right time for them" . They could not in fact go so far, but on the 10th Trotsky too was arrested. The next few weeks was to see a period of mobilization of the counter-revolution.

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the demonstration demanded "Their fervent appeals, in which

and 10,000 of them crowded into tugs and steamers, arriving in Petro-