13) The July Days

“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”

Shots on the Nevsky - the 'July Days'

Petrograd reaches boiling point

“The future contained no glimmer of hope. This was not what the workers had expected from the revolution” (1).

Four months after the February Revolution, the patience of the workers and soldiers was wearing thin. War and hunger continued while the Soviet leaders that they had entrusted with their hopes seemed unable or unwilling to take action.

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

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

The situation at the front was even more desperate. The soldiers had no wish to fight and Kerensky’s “June offensive” was collapsing.

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

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

“Finding no channel, the aroused energy of the masses spent itself in self-dependent activities, guerrilla manifestations, sporadic seizures. The workers, soldiers and peasants were trying to solve in a partial way those problems which the power created by them had refused to solve” (2).

“Even the more disciplined layers of the workers - even broad circles of the party - were beginning to lose patience or at least listen to those who had lost it. The manifestation of June 18 had revealed to everybody that the government was without support. ‘Why don’t they get busy up there ?’ the soldiers and workers would ask, having in mind not only the compromise leaders, but also the governing bodies of the Bolsheviks” (3).

“In general the soldiers were more impatient than the workers - both because they were more directly threatened with a transfer to the front, and because it was much harder for them to understand considerations of political strategy. Moreover, each had his own rifle; and ever since February the soldier had been inclined to over-estimate the independent power of a rifle” (4).

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

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

House of Kshesinskaia in 2012

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

“The danger was growing every minute that Petrograd, lacking the support of the front and the provinces, would be broken down bit by bit. On the 21st of June, Lenin appealed in Pravda to the Petrograd workers and soldiers to wait until events should bring over the heavy reserves to the side of Petrograd. ‘We understand your bitterness, we understand the excitement of the Petersburg workers, but we say to them: Comrades, an immediate attack would be inexpedient” (5). However, despite the Bolsheviks’ appeals, it was clear to all sides that the head of steam building up in Petrograd was heading for some kind of explosion.

Meetings in the barracks were getting more and more heated. Resolutions were being adopted criticising the Provisional Government and demanding the transfer of power to the soviets. For example, “a meeting of the Grenadier regiment on July 1st was signalised by the arrest of the president of the committee, and by the obstructive heckling of the Menshevik orators: ‘Down with the offensive! Down with Kerensky!’ ” (6).

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

The mass of the workers and soldiers in Petrograd had, of course, made no careful analysis, no “calculation of the changes of mass consciousness” (7), not even arrived at any clear practical plan as to what their demonstration should try and achieve. They just knew something had to change.

They were ready to defend the revolution with their blood against any resistance from the bourgeoisie if necessary. But few would have said that their aim was an insurrection. No, their aim was, to them, quite simple - they just wanted to persuade the Soviet leaders to take charge of affairs.

But the workers and soldiers had yet to learn that the attitude of the Compromisers made this apparently straightforward wish far from simple - “The July demonstrators wanted to turn over the power to the soviets, but for this the soviets had to agree to take it” (8). “These gentlemen of the democracy preferred a civil war against the people to a bloodless transfer of power into their own hands” (9).

“The people did not trust the Liberals, but they trusted the Compromisers. The Compromisers, however, did not trust themselves. And in a way they were right. Even in turning over the whole power to the bourgeoisie, the democrats had continued to be somebody. But once they had power in their own hands, they would have become nothing at all. From the democrats the power would almost automatically have slid into the hands of the Bolsheviks” (10).

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

This contradiction was rooted in the fact that, while the workers and soldiers thought the E.C. was an instrument of their rule, the bourgeoisie saw it as a way of giving the possessing classes the power. “Contradictory class tendencies were intersecting in the Tauride Palace and they both covered themselves with the name of the Executive Committee - the one through unconscious trustfulness, the other with cold-blooded calculation. The struggle was about nothing more or less than the question who was to rule the country, the bourgeoisie or the proletariat?” (11).

This is why the Bolsheviks tried at the very beginning of the July Days to persuade the soldiers to hold back, to explain that, in these circumstances, “it is impossible to talk of a manifestation at this moment unless we want a new revolution” (12). But this was a lesson that the Petrograd workers and soldiers were going to have to learn for themselves.

Why not call for a July insurrection?

To an ultra-left with no understanding of the careful considerations needed to lead a revolutionary struggle, the Bolsheviks’ appeals for calm might be hard to understand. After all, the mood of the Petrograd garrison was such that a successful insurrection probably could have been organised in the city at that moment. “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” (13).

But as Trotsky emphasised: “Nevertheless, the leadership of the party was completely right in not taking the road of armed insurrection. It is not enough to seize the power - you have to hold it. When in October the Bolsheviks did decide that their hour had struck, the most difficult days came after the seizure of power. It requires the highest tension of the forces of the working class to sustain the innumerable attacks of an enemy. In July even the Petrograd workers did not yet possess that preparedness for infinite struggle” (14).

As events subsequently proved, an armed insurrection in July would not have been able to hold out. “The workers and the 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 understood or accepted the revolution. The railroads and the telegraphs would have served the Compromisers against the Bolsheviks. 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 the Petrograd Commune” (15). (Trotsky is referring to the defeat of the heroic but isolated Paris Commune of 1871 where the workers of Paris briefly took power before being crushed.)

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

“ The state of the popular consciousness - decisive factor in a revolutionary policy - made impossible the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in July. At the same time the offensive on the front impelled the party to oppose the demonstration. The collapse of the offensive was absolutely inevitable. As a fact it had already begun, but the country did not yet know it. The danger was that if the party were incautious, the government might lay the blame upon the Bolsheviks for the consequences of its own madness. The offensive must be given time to exhaust itself ” (16).

“The masses take part in events, however, not at the bidding of doctrinaires, 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 Petrograd workers and soldiers had to test the situation with their own experience. And their armed demonstration 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. 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” (17).

The July Days begin

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

Miliukov hoped that this would leave the Compromisers to face the music alone and, so weakened, to open the way to counter-revolution. “The rumour of the resignation of the Kadets immediately spread through the capital, and generalised all the existing conflicts politically in one slogan - or rather, one cry to heaven: ‘Let us have an end of this coalition rigmarole!’ ” (18).

“On the morning of July 3rd, several thousand machine-gunners, after breaking up a meeting of the company and regimental committees of their regiment, elected a chairman of their own and demanded immediate consideration of the question of an armed manifestation” (19).

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

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

The longest debate took place at the huge Putilov factory where ten thousand men assembled to listen to the delegation from the machine-gunners. “To shouts of encouragement, the machine-gunners told how they received an order to go to the front on the 4th of July, but they decided ‘to go not to the German front, against the German proletariat, but against their own capitalist ministers’ ... the secretary of the factory committee, a Bolshevik, objected, suggesting that they ask instructions from the party. Protests from all sides: ‘Down with it! Again you want to postpone things. We can’t live that way any longer...’ ” (20). The worker-Bolsheviks, unable to do anything further to restrain their colleagues, knew that they had to go with them to the demonstration.

“The masses had no intention of breaking with the Soviet; on the contrary, they wanted the Soviet to seize the power. Still less did the masses intend to break with the Bolshevik party. But they did feel that the party was irresolute. They wanted to get their shoulder under it - shake a fist at the Executive Committee, give the Bolsheviks a little shove” (21).

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

“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 whole 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 workers’ revolution, the anarchists did not see, or did not understand ” (22).

“By seven o’clock the industrial life of the capital was at a complete standstill. Factory after factory came out, lined up and armed its detachment of the Red Guard. Samsonevsky Prospect, the chief artery of the Vyborg Side, was packed full of people. To the right and left of it stood solid columns of workers. In the middle of the Prospect marched the Machine Gun Regiment, the spinal column of the procession. At the head of each company went an automobile truck with its Maxims (machine-guns). After the Machine Gun Regiment came the workers. Covering the manifestation as a rear guard, came detachments of the Moscow Regiment. Over every detachment streamed a banner: ‘All Power to the Soviets!’ … The funeral procession in March and the First of May demonstration were probably more numerous, but the July procession was incomparably more eager, more threatening. Under the red banners marched only workers and soldiers ... the cockades of the officials, the shiny buttons of the students, the hats of ‘lady sympathisers’ were not to be seen. All that belonged to four months ago, to February” (23).

“Automobiles flew through the streets in all directions full of armed workers and soldiers. By nine o’clock seven regiments were already moving towards the Tauride Palace. They were joined on the way by columns from the factories and by new military detachments. The movement of the Machine Gun Regiment developed a colossal power of contagion. The ‘July Days’ had begun” (24).

The Bolsheviks adopt new tactics

By late evening of July 3rd, regiments and entire factories were pouring, first to the palace of Kshesinskaia, and then marching on to the Tauride Palace. “Both spiritually and physically the movement revolved around those two antagonistic centres: It came to the house of Kshesinskaia for instructions, leadership, inspirational speeches; to the Tauride Palace it came to present demands and even to threaten a little with its power” (25).

That afternoon, a Petrograd conference of the Bolsheviks had resolved once again to appeal to the machine-gunners to hold back: “We must at all costs postpone the final conflict. The offensive at the front is holding the whole country at high tension. Its failure is inevitable - as also the determination of the government to throw all responsibility for the defeat upon the Bolsheviks. We must give the Compromisers time to ruin themselves completely” (26). The C.C. confirmed the decision and prepared an appeal to go out on the front page of Pravda the next morning.

But when the Machine Gun Regiment, at the front of the demonstration, first reached the place of Kshesinskaia, the appeals from the Bolshevik speakers on the balcony were shouted down with cries of ‘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?” (27).

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

The Petrograd committee, along with the delegates to the conference and representatives from regiments and factories, met and agreed to change course. With the endorsement of the Central Committee, the Bolsheviks agreed “to end all fruitless attempts to restrain the masses and guide the developing movement in such a way that the governmental crisis may be decided in the interests of the people; with this goal, to appeal to the soldiers and workers to go peacefully to the Tauride Palace, elect delegates, and through them present their demands to the Executive Committee” (28). To the relief of the machine-gunners and, no doubt, many rank-and-file Bolsheviks, the movement had now been endorsed by the party.

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

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

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

“This fact of the election of the Bolshevik commission signified both to friends and enemies that the workers’ section of the Petrograd Soviet would henceforth become a Bolshevik base. A vast step forward! In April the influence of the Bolsheviks had extended to approximately a third of the Petrograd workers; in the Soviet of those days they occupied a wholly insignificant sector. Now, at the beginning of July, the Bolsheviks were sending to the workers’ section about two-thirds of its members. That meant that among the masses their influence had become decisive” (29).

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

As the Menshevik given the unenviable task of gathering troops later reported: “On the first day of the demonstration we had at our disposal only a hundred men - we had no other forces. We sent out commissars to all the regiments ... but each regiment looked to the next to see what it was going to do. We were compelled ... to summon troops from the front” (30).

As Trotsky adds: “It would be difficult, even with malice aforethought, to devise a more vicious satire upon the Compromisers. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators were demanding the transfer of power to the soviets. Cheidze, standing at the head of the soviet system and thus the logical candidate for premier, was hunting for armed forces to employ against the demonstrators. This colossal movement in favour of power to the democracy was denounced by the democratic leaders as an attack upon the democracy by an armed gang” (31).

By now, the demonstrators surrounded the Tauride Palace on all sides. Izvestia, the official paper of the Soviet, describes how “the troops elected a deputation to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee which presented in their name the following demands: Removal of the ten bourgeois ministers, all power to the soviets, cessation of the offensive, confiscation of the printing plants of the bourgeois press, the land to be state property, state control of production” (32).

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

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

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

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

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

Instead, a Bolshevik leaflet was issued summoning the workers and soldiers “by way of a peaceful and organised demonstration to bring their will to the attention of the Executive Committee now in session” (33).

The 4th of July

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

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

"They elected leaders for the demonstration and delegates to present their demands to the Executive Committee. Again hundreds of thousands moved in radii toward the Tauride Palace, and again tens of thousands turned aside on their way there to the palace of Kshesinskaia. Today’s movement was more impressive and organised than yesterday’s: the guiding hand of the party was evident. But the feeling too was hotter today. The soldiers and workers were out for a solution to the crisis" (34).

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

Sverdlov, Lunacharsky and other Bolsheviks speaking from the balcony were stormily applauded. But that was nothing compared to the joyous outburst from the Kronstadt men that greeted the appearance of Lenin. He had arrived that morning from his temporary refuge in Finland. “His speech ... consisted of a few simple phrases: a greeting to the demonstrators; an expression of confidence that the slogan, ‘All Power to the Soviets’, would conquer in the end, an appeal for firmness and self-restraint.” (35).

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

The holiday mood of the march was, however, soon to change. The Petrograd military commanders had been unable to gather together more than a few small detachments of Cossacks and junkers (students at the officers’ schools) - “powerless to put down the movement, but adequate for purposes of provocation” (36).

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

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

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

So when the demonstration, over half a million strong, arrived to besiege the Tauride Palace, there was now an angry and tense mood. The leading Social Revolutionary Minister, Chernov, was brought out to address the Kronstadt men. Sensing the mood, he spoke briefly, directing his fire at the Kadets. But “Miliukov even relates how ‘a husky worker, shaking his fist in the face of the minister, shouted furiously: “Take the power, you son of a bitch, when they give it to you.” ’ Even though nothing more than an anecdote, this expresses with crude accuracy the essence of the July situation” (37). Miliukov of courese knew full well that the Compromisers did not want to take that power.

“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” (38).

It was agreed that a delegation from the demonstrators could address the joint session of the E.C., beginning at 6 p.m. that evening. The orators protested against being described as counter-revolutionists and again outlined their demands: “ ‘We have confidence in the Soviet, but not in those whom the Soviet has confidence. At this time when the Kadets have refused to work with you, we ask you with whom further you want to dicker. We demand that the power pass to the soviets’. The propaganda slogans of the manifestation of June 18th had now become an armed ultimatum of the masses” (39).

The Soviet leaders, of course, would have none of it. Frustrated and angry, the mood of the crowd was turning nasty. A typically powerful speech from Zinoviev played a key role in encouraging the marchers to disperse.

Trotsky relates that, while having his political weaknesses: “Under the walls of the Tauride Palace in the July Days, Zinoviev was extraordinarily active, ingenious and strong. He raised the excitement of the masses to its highest note - not in order to summon them to decisive action, but, on the contrary, in order to restrain them. This corresponded to the moment and to the policy of the party. Zinoviev was wholly in his element ” (40).

Compromisers seize their chance

Isolated fights and disturbances continued throughout the nights of July 4th and 5th. “Skirmishes, victims, fruitlessness of the struggle, and indefiniteness of practical aim - that describes the movement. The Central Committee of the Bolsheviks passed a resolution: to call on the workers and soldiers to end the demonstration. This time that appeal, which was immediately brought to the attention of the Executive Committee, met hardly any opposition at all in the lower ranks. The masses ebbed back into the suburbs, and they cherished no intention of renewing the struggle on the following day. They felt that the problem of ‘Power to the Soviets’ was considerably more complicated than had appeared” (41).

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

Then suddenly, around 4 a.m., the moment that they had been waiting for arrived. Marching into the building behind a band playing the “Marseillaise”, the E.C.’s long-awaited ‘reliable troops’ were finally at hand. Their commander, a Menshevik Lieutenant, stepped onto the tribune, while the triumphant E.C. leaders embraced and sang. “A classic picture of the beginning of a counter-revolution” (42), muttered the left Menshevik Martov, accurately enough.

These troops had not marched to Petrograd from the front. They had been finally gathered together from some of the most politically backward battalions in the capital who, up to then, had obstinately remained neutral. “Only in the afternoon of July 4th did the authorities at last discover an effective means of influencing them. They showed the Preobrazhentsi documents demonstrating as plain as 2+2=4 that Lenin was a German spy. That moved them. The news flew round the regiments. Officers, members of the regimental committee, agitators of the E.C., were active everywhere. The mood of the neutral battalions changed. By dawn, when there was no longer any need of them, it became possible to assemble them and lead them through the deserted streets to the empty Tauride Palace” (43).

Now the counter-revolution felt its strength to go on its own offensive. Troops were sent out to arrest workers’ leaders. The story was spread far and wide that all Bolsheviks were German spies. Of course, while saying they did not want the power, the Soviet leaders were, in fact, having to take control of the deployment of the Petrograd garrison. “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” (44).

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

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

On the 6th, the workers went back to work. More and more regiments were arriving from the front in aggressive mood. Some were deliberately shot at by provocateurs. “It was clear that experienced provocateurs were greeting the soldiers with lead with a view to anti-Bolshevik inoculation. The workers were eager to explain this to the arriving soldiers, but they were denied access to them. For the first time since the February days the junker or the officer stood between the worker and soldier” (45).

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

A balance sheet of the ‘July Days’

A sharp struggle had developed in Petrograd. Lenin later described it as: “An anti-government demonstration - that would be the most formally accurate description of the events. But the point is that this was no ordinary demonstration. It was something considerably more than a demonstration and less than a revolution” (46).

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

“The principal cause of this weak and unfavourable reaction of the country lay in the fact that the provinces, having received the February revolution from the hands of Petrograd without a struggle, were far slower than the capital in digesting new facts and ideas. An additional period was necessary before the vanguard could draw up to its own position the heavy reserves” (47).

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

However, far from strengthening the Bolsheviks, the defeat of the “July Days” meant now that “the wave of indignation and despair rolling back from the front fell in with the wave of shattered hopes radiating from Petrograd. The lesson received by the masses in the capital was too severe for anyone to think of an immediate renewal of the struggle. Moreover the bitter feelings caused by the meaningless defeat sought expression, and the patriots succeeded to a certain extent in directing it against the Bolsheviks” (48).

“A prototype of the July Days is to be found in all the old revolutions - with various, but generally speaking unfavourable, and frequently catastrophic, results”. (Trotsky makes a comparison to events in France in July 1791 and June 1848, Germany in January 1919, as well as the Paris Commune of 1871.) “This stage is involved in the inner mechanics of a bourgeois revolution, inasmuch as the class that sacrifices most for the success of the revolution, and hopes the most from it, receives the least of all. The possessing class which is brought to power by the revolution is inclined to think that with this the revolution has accomplished its mission, and is therefore most of all concerned to demonstrate its reliability to the forces of the reaction. The disappointment of the masses follows very quickly; it follows even before their vanguard has cooled off after the revolutionary struggle. The people imagine that with a new blow they can carry through, or correct, that which they did not accomplish decisively enough before. Hence the impulse to a new revolution, a revolution without preparation, without programme, without estimation of the reserves, without calculation of consequences ” (49).

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

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

“Thanks to the party’s taking its place boldly at the head of the movement, it was able to stop the masses at the moment when the demonstration began to turn into a test of armed strength. The blow struck at the masses and the party in July was very considerable, but it was not a decisive blow. The victims were counted by tens and not by tens of thousands. The working class ... fully preserved its fighting cadres, and these cadres had learned much” (50).

The experience of the July Days had made clear that there was no question of persuading the Compromisers to peacefully stand aside. “In July… the Petrograd workers … although able to seize the power … nevertheless offered it to the Executive Committee. Many still cherished the illusion that everything could be obtained by words and demonstrations - that by frightening the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries you could get them to carry out a common policy with the Bolsheviks. Even the advanced sections of the class had no clear idea by which roads it was possible to arrive at the power. Lenin wrote soon after: ‘The real mistake of our party on the 3rd and 4th of July, as events now reveal, was only this … that the party still considered possible a peaceful development of the political transformation by way of a change of policy on the part of the soviets. In reality the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries had already tangled and bound themselves up by compromism with the bourgeoisie, and the bourgeoisie had become so counter-revolutionary, that there was no longer any use talking about a peaceful development’ ” (51).

“But before making use of these July lessons, the party had to go through some heavy weeks, during which it seemed to the short-sighted enemy that the power of Bolshevism was conclusively broken” (52).