105. “This was a profound mistake, for it implanted pacifist illusions, added grist to the mill of defensism and hindered the revolutionary propagandizing of the masses.” Sochineniia, VI: 333.
106. Reprinted in Volin, Sed’maia, ix–x.
107. Stalin, “Zemliu krest’ianam,” Pravda, April 14, 1917, reprinted in Sochineniia, III: 34–6.
108. Service, Stalin, 128; Service, Lenin, II: 223–8.
109. VII aprel’skaia vserossiiskaia konferentsiia, 225–8, 323.
110. Chuev, Molotov, 216–7, 297. This is a slightly enlarged version of Chuev, Sto sorok. Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 93.
111. Allilueva, Vospominaniia, 185–90.
112. Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 90–4; Tutaev, Alliluyev Memoirs, 131–45, 168–75, 211–15.
113. Vasileva, Kremlin Wives, 56–8; Allilueva, Vospominaniia, 183–91; Kun, Unknown Portrait, 211–5; Montefiore, Young Stalin, ch. 40.
114. Trotsky, Stalin, 207–9. Elsewhere Trotsky called Stalin “a strong, but theoretically and politically primitive, organizer.” Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, I: 288.
115. VII aprel’skaia vserossiiskaia konferentsiia; Petrogradskaia obshchegorodskaia konferentsiia RSDRP (bol'shevikov), 324; Pravda, April 24–May 2, 1917. Word of the figure of Sverdlov had reached Lenin in exile, and the Bolshevik leader tried to correspond with him and bring him to party gatherings outside tsarist Russia, but the two did not meet until 1917. Duvall, “The Bolshevik Secretariat,” 47 (citing L. D. Trotsky, Selected Works, II: 292).
116. “Iz perepiski Sverdlova,” Pechat’ i revoliutsiia, 1924, no. 2: 64; Trotsky, Stalin, 173; Wolfe, Three Who Made a Revolution, 623; Iakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov (1926).
117. Perepiska sekretariata TsK RSDRP (b), I: v–ix; S. Pestkovskii, “Vospominaniia o rabote v Narkomnatse,” 126; Trotskii, Sochineniia, VIII: 251, XXI: 336; N. Bukharin, “Tovarishch Sverdlov,” Pravda, March 18, 1919: 1.
118. White, Socialist Alternative to Bolshevik Russia, 15.
119. Oskar Anweiler, “The Political Ideology of the Leaders of the Petrograd Soviet in the Spring of 1917,” in Pipes, Revolutionary Russia, 114–28; Anin, “The February Revolution.” On coalition government, see Tsereteli, Vospominaniia, II: 401–17.
120. Broido, Lenin and the Mensheviks, 14–5. Leonard Schapiro saw the moderate socialist weakness in terms of having scruples: Origin of the Communist Autocracy [1956]. Orlando Figes sees the clinging to a bourgeois revolution strategy as destructive of a lost democratic socialist outcome, rather than as tilting at the wrong windmill: A People’s Tragedy, 331.
121. Miliukov, Istoriia vtoroi, I/iii: 3–6; Miliukov, The Russian Revolution, III: 1–4. On May 22, Kerensky told the Petrograd Soviet, “parties do not exist for me at the present moment because I am a Russian minister; for me only the people exist and one sacred law—to obey the majority will.” Radkey, Agrarian Foes, 225. In the provinces, “coalition” worked only briefly: local committees of public organizations arose under liberal auspices and recognized the place, and sometimes the supremacy, of organizations representing workers, soldiers, and peasants, but soon the committees succumbed to governance and economic chaos. Class-based suspicions assumed free rein. Rosenberg, Liberals, 59–66; White, “Civil Rights,” 290–3 (citing GARF, f. 1788, op. 2, d. 64).
122. Figes and Kolonitskii, Interpreting the Russian Revolution, 102.
123. Mel’gunov, Martovskie dni, 105–13; Anin, “The February Revolution,” 441.
124. Kerensky would recall the “spirit of unity, fraternity, mutual confidence and self-sacrifice” in the Tauride during the early days, lamenting that “afterwards . . . more and more among us turned out to be men with personal ambitions, men with an eye to the main chance, or mere adventurers.” In fact, while Karlo Chkheidze followed the Soviet’s policy and refused to be considered for a Provisional Government portfolio, Kerensky, after the central executive committee denied his request to serve in the Provisional Government, burst into the Soviet meeting on March 2 and exclaimed, “Comrades! Do you trust me?” He pretended to faint and elicited an ovation, which appeared to bless his acceptance of the post of justice minister. Thus did Kerensky become the only person in both the Soviet and the Provisional Government. The leadership of the Petrograd Soviet never forgave Kerensky for his manipulation bordering on blackmail. Izvestiia revoliutsionnoi nedeli, March 3, 1917; Sverchkov, Kerenskii, 21; Kerensky, The Catastrophe, 21, 52–61.
125. Keep, “1917.”
126. Browder and Kerensky, Russian Provisional Government, III: 1305. Majorities at the June Congress of Soviets voted for the Soviet’s policy of support for the Provisional Government and for the war. Irakli Tsereteli, by then Minister of Posts and Telegraph, observed that there was no party prepared to assume the responsibilities of governing by itself. “There is!” Lenin rebutted him. The hall erupted in laughter. PSS, XXXI: 267; Service, Lenin, II: 181.
127. Chamberlin, Russian Revolution, I: 159; Keep, Russian Revolution, 131–2.
128. The fact that the socialists were pro-peace helped make peace unpalatable to Russia’s liberals. It would be “absurd and criminal to renounce the biggest prize of the war . . . in the name of some humanitarian and cosmopolitan idea of international socialism,” Miliukov remarked. Richard Stites, “Miliukov and the Russian Revolution,” foreword to Miliukov and Stites, The Russian Revolution, xii. As Clausewitz observed, war and classical liberalism did not mix well. Von Clausewitz, On War, 85.
129. Miliukov behaved as his usual self-defeatingly stubborn self, but Kerensky admitted his own role in bringing “the whole matter to a head.” Kerensky, The Kerensky Memoirs, 246. Prime Minister Prince Lvov formed a “coalition,” that is, he took some leaders of the Soviet (besides Kerensky) into the Provisional Government, prompting Guchkov to resign in protest, and fatefully allowing Kerensky to assume the war portfolio. Browder and Kerensky, Russian Provisional Government, III: 1045 (Rech’, March 28, 1917: 2), III: 1098 (Rech’, April 20, 1917: 4); Sukhanov, Zapiski, III: 254–443 (esp. 304–7); Miliukov, Istoriia vtoroi, I/i: 91–117; Wade, Russian Search for Peace, 38–48. Prince L’vov, Rech’, March 28, 1917: 2, in Browder and Kerensky, Russian Provisional Government, III: 1045. Russkie vedomosti, May 2, 1917: 5, in Browder and Kerensky, III: 1267. “There was no end of disputes between Kerensky and myself at the Cabinet sessions, as to the line to be taken in foreign policy and in general policies,” Miliukov wrote of his two months as foreign minister. Miliukov, “From Nicholas II to Stalin.”
130. Heenan, Russian Democracy’s Fatal Blunder, 11–21. See also Rutherford, The Tsar’s War.
131. Pedroncini, Les mutineries de 1917; Smith, Between Mutiny and Obedience. Those who blame the Allies for Bolshevism, because of their insistence on Russia mounting an offensive, are partly correct. Wheeler-Bennet, Forgotten Peace, 51–2, 292.
132. In mid-April, General Alexeyev had returned from the front to brief the Provisional Government (the meeting took place in War Minister Guchkov’s private apartment, because he was ill), and told a story of the anarchic mood of the army and the collapse of discipline. Medlin and Powers, V. D. Nabokov, 135, 140.
133. Shliapnikov, Semnadtsatyi god, III: 291–3 (March 30, 1917, to Guchkov).
134. Brusilov, Soldier’s Note-book. See also “The Diary of General Boldyrev,” in Vulliamy, From the Red Archives, 189–26.
135. Heenan, Russian Democracy’s Fatal Blunder, 51–2.
136. In one version of his memoirs, Kerensky conceded that when he visited the front in 1917, he sensed that “after three years of bitter suffering, millions of war-weary soldiers were asking themselves: ‘Why should I have to die now when at home a new, freer life is only just beginning?’” He also claimed to have found “a healthy patriotism” among some, which he wanted to encourage. Kerensky, The Kerensky Memoirs, 276–7. For Kerensky’s effo
rts to balance inevitable concessions to “democracy” in the army with maintaining fighting capacity, see Browder and Kerensky, Russian Provisional Government, II: 882.
137. Stankevich, Vospominaniia, 246. See also Heenan, Russian Democracy’s Fatal Blunder, 54; and Wilcox, Russia’s Ruin, 196–7.
138. Pethybridge, Spread of the Russian Revolution, 154–70 (esp. 161).
139. Wildman, End of the Russian Imperial Army, II: 53 (Radko-Dmitriev, Commander of the Twelfth Army).
140. Lewis, Eyewitness World War I, 279.
141. Viktor Shklovsky, a commissar to the army for the Provisional Government, wrote of an escape from reality into “trench Bolshevism.” Shklovsky, Sentimental Journey, 60. “The magnitude of the Bolshevik achievement at the front,” one historian has written, “was truly spectacular.” Wildman, End of the Russian Imperial Army, II: 264. See also Ferro, “The Russian Soldier in 1917.”
142. Tsereteli, Vospominaniia, I: 364–681. On March 14, 1917, the Petrograd Soviet had passed “An appeal to all peoples of the world” denouncing the imperialist war and annexationist aims. Izvestiia, March 15, 1917: 1, in Browder and Kerensky, Russian Provisional Government, III: 1077.
143. Fainsod, International Socialism; Forster, Failures of the Peace, 113–25; Wade, Russian Search for Peace, 17–25; Wade, “Argonauts of Peace”; Kirby, War, Peace, and Revolution; Sukhanov, Zapiski, II: 336–42. Sukhanov gives a portrait of Tsereteli (Zapiski, III: 131–8).
144. Pravda, April 29, 1917. See also Wildman, End of the Russian Imperial Army, I: 38.
145. The Soviet had compelled the Provisional Government to promise not to remove troops from the capital and send them to the front (so as to dampen the revolution). Brusilov, A Soldier’s Note-book, 291.
146. Wade, “Why October?,” 42–3.
147. Browder and Kerensky, Russian Provisional Government, II: 1120–1; Getzler, Martov, 149–52. It remains unclear how sincerely the Provisional Government intended its June 3, 1917, public profession of a desire to organize an inter-Allied conference to review the war treaties.
148. Ignat’ev, Russko-angliiskie otnosheniia nakanune), 42, 48, 50–1; Berner Tagwacht [Bern], October 11, 13, 14, 1916. See also Heenan, Russian Democracy’s Fatal Blunder, 8–9. The German side had indicated a willingness to cede Habsburg Galicia and Bukovina and the Turkish Straits, provided the Russian army managed to occupy them, but in return Germany sought Courland (Latvia) and a protectorate over predominantly Polish-speaking territories. By contrast, Allied victory over Germany promised Russia all that and more—Bukovina, Turkish Armenia, parts of Persia—for nothing in exchange.
149. Browder and Kerensky, Russian Provisional Government, II: 967; Feldman, “The Russian General Staff.” As in 1916, Brusilov, now supreme commander, used “shock troops” to spearhead the assault, trailed by conscript peasant infantry.
150. Fuller, Foe Within, 237–8; Knox, With the Russian Army, II: 462.
151. Sir Alfred Knox wrote of the July offensive that Russia’s army was “irretrievably lost as a fighting organization.” Knox, With the Russian Army, II: 648.
152. “The worst thing about the committees was that in no time at all they lost contact with those who elected them,” wrote the Provisional Government front commissar Viktor Shklovsky. He added that “the [frontline] delegates to the Soviet did not show up in their units for months at a time. The soldiers were left completely ignorant of what was happening in the Soviets.” Shklovsky, Sentimental Journey, 18.
153. Figes, A People’s Tragedy, 380. British media tycoon Lord Beaverbrook asked Kerensky in June 1931, “Would you have mastered the Bolsheviks if you had made a separate peace?” Kerensky replied, “Of course, we should be in Moscow right now.” Beaverbrook posed the logical follow-up: “Then why didn’t you do it?” “We were too naive,” Kerensky answered. Lockhart, British Agent, 177.
154. David Bronstein would be expropriated during revolution; Trotsky had set him up as the manager of a requisitioned flour mill near Moscow, but in 1922 he would die of typhus.
155. Ziv, Trotskii, 12. See also Carr, Socialism in One Country, I: 163; and Volkogonov, Trotsky, 5.
156. “Terrorizim i kommunizm,” reprinted in Trotskii, Sochineniia, XII: at 59.
157. Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, II: 120–1.
158. Reed, Ten Days [1919], 21. “Trotsky entered the history of our party somewhat unexpectedly and with instant brilliance,” Anatoly Lunacharsky would write. Revolutiuonary Silhouettes, 59.
159. Trotsky, My Life, 295–6.
160. Moisei Uritsky, quoted in Lunacharskii, Revoliutsionnye siluety, 24.
161. Leninskii sbornik, IV: 303; Balabanoff, Impressions of Lenin, 127–8; Sukhanov, Zapiski, VII: 44; Raskol’nikov, “V tiur’me Kerenskogo,” 150–2; Slusser, Stalin in October, 108–14; Liberman, Building Lenin’s Russia, 76.
162. Frenkin, Zakhvat vlasti bol'shevikami; Stankevich, Vospominaniia, 147–8; Denikin, Ocherki russkoi smuty, II: 127ff; Pipes, Formation of the Soviet Union, 52–6; Shankowsky, “Disintegration of the Imperial Russian Army,” esp. 321–2.
163. The crowd bundled Chernov into a vehicle and declared him “arrested.” Trotsky rushed outside and got Chernov released. Miliukov, Istoriia vtoroi, I/i: 243–4; Sukhanov, Zapiski, IV: 444–7; Vladimirovna, “Iiul’skie dni,” 34–5; Raskol’nikov, “V iiul’skie dni,” 69–71; Rabinowitch, Prelude, 188. The regiment from nearby Tsarskoe Selo, sent to arrest the Soviet leadership, is said to have instead decided to guard the Tauride. Sukhanov, Zapiski, IV: 448–9.
164. Sukhanov, Zapiski, IV: 511–2; Nikitin, Rokovye gody, 148; Zinoviev, Proletarskaia revoliutsiia, 1927, no. 8–9: 62; Pravda, July 17, 1927: 3 (F. F. Raskol’nilov); Krasnaia gazeta, July 16, 1920: 2 (Mikhail Kalinin); Petrogradskaia Pravda, July 17, 1921: 3 (G. Veinberg); VI s”ezed RSDRP, 17 (Stalin); Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, II: 13; PSS, XXXII: 408–9; Drachkovitch and Lazitch, Lenin and the Comintern, I: 95 (citing Trotsky, Bulletin Communiste, May 20, 1920: 6); Buchanan, Petrograd, 131–46 (Buchanan was the daughter of the British ambassador). See also Rabinowitch, Prelude, 174–5.
165. Between July 7 and July 24, the Bolsheviks could not publish their daily newspaper in Petrograd. Budnikov, Bol’shevistskaia partiinaia; Volkogonov, Trotsky, 197; Kolonitskii, “Anti-Bourgeois Propaganda,” 184. Lenin is said to have had the Provisional Government dossier on Bolshevik high treason destroyed. Be that as it may, surviving German documents prove German financing beyond a shadow of a doubt. Zeman, Germany and the Revolution in Russia, 94; Latyshev, Rassekrechennyi Lenin; Volkogonov, Lenin: politicheskii portret, I: 220–2; Hahlweg, Lenins Ruckkehr nach Russland. That said, the sixty-six telegrams between Petrograd and Stockholm gathered by the Provisional Government’s justice ministry for the trial in July 1917 have been debunked as forgeries (by former okhranka operatives). Semyon Lyandres, “The Bolsheviks’ ‘German Gold’ Revisited: An Inquiry into the 1917 Accusations,” Carl Beck Papers, 1995; Kennan, “The Sisson Documents”; Stone, “Another Look”; Hill, Go Spy the Land, 200–1.
166. Trotskii, O Lenine, 58; Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, III: 127. The Provisional Government supposedly saved the most sensational documents for a public trial.
167. Nikitin, Rokovye gody, 115–6, 122-3; Vaksberg, Stalin’s Prosecutor, 13–27. For the specific charges, see Rech’, July 22, 1917, translated in Browder and Kerensky, Russian Provisional Government, III: 1370–7.
168. Allilueva, Vospominaniia, 181–90; Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 24–6; Slusser, Stalin in October, 162–78, 139–50; Service, Lenin, 283–91; Kerensky, The Catastrophe, 229–44. Many Mensheviks pressed for Bolshevik release, with the reasoning that today it would be the Bolsheviks, tomorrow the whole Soviet.
169. Polan, Lenin and the End of Politics.
170. After the public accusations o
f taking German money, which Lenin denied as lies, he did become more careful. Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 116–21. The case against Lenin in the Provisional Government was managed by Pavel A. Aleksandrov, who would be arrested in April 1939 (and held in Butyrka). He supposedly testified that he had worked closely with Kerensky on the Lenin case of “state treason” and “espionage.” NKVD investigators deemed Aleksandrov’s investigative work against Bolshevism “a fabrication,” and it is said Beria had his men retrieve archival documents of the Provisional Government to incriminate Aleksandrov for his work. Hoover Institution Archives, Volkogonov papers, container 3, Postanovlenie from Kobulov, April 16, 1939.
171. Novaia zhizn’, August 5, 1917 (A. S. Zarudnyi); Zhivoe slovo, July 6, 1917: 1; Avdeev, Revoliutsiia 1917 goda, III: 167; Polovtsoff, Glory and Downfall, 256–8.
172. Pol’ner, Zhiznennyi put’ kniazia Georgiia Evgenevicha L’vova, 258. That same day, Kerensky ordered Nicholas II and the royal family transferred to detention in Siberia (the actual move would be carried out July 31). On July 15, the Provisional Government asserted authority over the “political commissars” that the Soviet sent to frontline units would be parallel to those of the government.
173. Sanborn, “Genesis of Russian Warlordism,” 205–6.
174. The general staff conference called for reintroducing the death penalty in the rear, limiting the soldiers’ committees to economic and educational functions, and restricting the powers of political commissars in the military. Browder and Kerensky, Russian Provisional Government, II: 989–1010.
175. Denikin, Ocherki russkoi smuti, 446–7; Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, II 570; Sukhanov, Zapiski, IV: 469–70.
176. Russkoe slovo, July 21, 1917: 2.
177. Kerensky finally gave approval for the draft decrees to be submitted for cabinet action on August 17. Martynov, Kornilov, 74–5, 100; Kerensky, Prelude to Bolshevism, 27. Kornilov was in the capital twice, on August 3 and August 10. On August 3, he held discussions with Kerensky and the Provisional Government (one newspaper reported that “Kerensky took a deep bow before General Kornilov”), but evidently, when Kornilov began to discuss war plans, Kerensky and Savinkov, sotto voce, told him to be careful. The implication was that Russia’s secret war plans would be leaked by some government ministers, as if by enemy agents. Savinkov, K delu, 12–3; Lukomskii, Vospominaniia, I: 227; Loukomsky, Memoirs of the Russian Revolution, 99; Russkoe slovo, August 4, 1917: 2. The Soviet denounced Kornilov and his visit to the capital. Izvestiia, August 4, 1917.
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