CHAPTER 12
JUNE-JULY 1917: LENIN’S FOLLIES
Though Lenin's retreat on June 10 averted a political defeat, it did nothing to
resolve the conflicts that plagued his revolutionary tactics. The slogans "All Power to the
Soviets!" and "Down with the Ten Capitalist Ministers!" still encouraged soldiers and
workers to look to the Bolsheviks for decisive action against the Provisional Government.
But, ostensibly worried that power could not be held for long if seized, Lenin continued to
preach patience and discipline. These qualities were strained, however, even among
seasoned Party members, let alone among the many new recruits and the mass following
the Party had gained since the February Revolution—gained largely because Lenin's
militancy had inspired hopes for action against the regime. Fanning the flames of
discontent while appealing for patience was not an effective way to manage an
increasingly impatient popular mood. To make matters worse, in mid-June Lenin reversed
and then reversed again his position on the use of violence. His authority had already
suffered as a consequence of his June 10 retreat, which caused many Party activists to
1
question his leadership. His continuing arbitrariness and contradictions did nothing to
restore their confidence.
The situation facing the Bolsheviks demanded unusually clear and firm leadership.
In Petrograd, worsening food shortages and other economic problems combined with
mounting unrest among garrison soldiers to create strong pressures from below pushing
the Bolsheviks toward a dangerous confrontation with the Provisional Government and
the Soviets. Indeed, these pressures intensified until they erupted in a new crisis known
as the July Days—a crisis so severe that Stalin later claimed it had “put the Party in
2
immediate danger of being wrecked.” Popular unrest was an asset to the Bolsheviks if
they could control it; if they could not, it was a serious liability for them. Weakened and
vacillating, Lenin failed to provide capable leadership in the developing crisis. Indeed, in
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2
the crucial days as the crisis reached its climax, he was absent from the capital, getting "a
few days' rest" at a country villa across the Finnish border.
3
And Stalin? Though present in Petrograd, he does not appear to have played any
meaningful role in the unfolding of the crisis. From the time he tried to resign from the
Central Committee to the closing stages of the July crisis he left but scant signs of his
presence, for once justifying Sukhanov's famous description of him in 1917 as only "a grey
4
blur, looming up now and then dimly and not leaving any trace." Stalin appears to have
withdrawn, in essence, from active participation in the leadership group. Withdrawal was
a characteristic way he reacted to conflict with Lenin. Moreover, troubled by Lenin's
stumbling leadership and unable to correct it, Stalin probably wanted to wash his hands of
it. After the failure of the 1905 Revolution, he had criticized the Party leadership for having
behaved dishonorably toward the revolutionary workers, by which he presumably meant
that the leaders had deserted the workers after urging them to action. Whether or not
Stalin felt Lenin's shrinking from confrontation in June 1917 was similarly dishonorable, he
evidently wanted to keep his conscience clean of responsibility for the results of Lenin's
bungling. Disgusted and dispirited, he chose to sit on the sidelines while Lenin played at
revolution.
On June 12, two days after Lenin backed down from the June 10 demonstration,
the Provisional Government and the Congress of Soviets went on the attack. Minister of
War Kerensky received the Congress's approval, albeit lukewarm, for a new military
offensive, which he hoped would bring about a patriotic upsurge of support for the
government. Later that day, the Congress of Soviets voted to hold a demonstration on
June 18 to show the strength of mass support for the Soviets; garrison units were ordered
to take part unarmed, and worker groups were encouraged to participate, all hopefully
under pro-Soviet banners.
On June 13 the Bolshevik Central Committee seized upon this plan as an
opportunity to turn the tables on the Soviet leaders. It resolved that all Bolshevik forces
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should march on June 18 under Bolshevik slogans, in order to show the strength of
popular support for transferring all power to the Soviets. After the debacle on June 10, the
top Bolshevik leaders evidently desired to recapture momentum—and respect. Even
Zinoviev, who had voted against holding the June 10 demonstration, boldly declared at a
session of the Petersburg Committee on June 13 that the time had come to transfer power
to the Soviets despite themselves.
5
Addressing the Conference of Bolshevik Military Organizations on the morning of
the 18th, the day of the demonstration, Zinoviev went further, hinting at insurrection: "We
are now faced with death either in the trenches in the name of interests that are foreign to
6
us or on the barricades for our own cause." Proclaimed to a group that desired quick and
decisive action against the government, Zinoviev's message was particularly
inflammatory. That Bolsheviks expected the demonstration to bring down the Provisional
Government was indicated more directly by a somewhat skeptical Kamenev. Asked by
Sukhanov during the demonstration whether the Bolsheviks would be "going into a
Cabinet" with the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, Kamenev, looking "more
perplexed than triumphant," replied, "'We are,' … but somehow without real assurance.
The programme of action in the minds of the Bolshevik leaders was evidently completely
vague," Sukhanov concluded. Though Sukhanov described Kamenev as "vacillation
7
incarnate," Kamenev's indecisiveness in this instance probably owed primarily to lack of
clarity within the top ranks of the Party about what would constitute a successful
demonstration and what would follow it.
This confusion owed much to Lenin. For Lenin evidently wanted no part of joining
a coalition government with the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries. Since
representatives of the two dominant Soviet parties had entered into a coalition with the
Cadets on May 5—creating a government of six socialists and ten ”capitalist" ministers—
8
Lenin had repeatedly excoriated the coalition and its socialist members. (Stalin,
9
incidentally, did not take notice of the coalition in his writings until June 13.) More
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4
important, on May 12 Lenin had declared his opposition to working together with the
"defencist" parties in an international socialist conference.
10
And two weeks later he
reminded Pravda's readers of a statement he had made in 1915, when he had said
If the revolutionary chauvinists won in Russia, we would be opposed to a
defense of their "fatherland" in the present war. Our slogan is: against the
chauvinists, even if they are revolutionary and republican—against them,
and for an alliance of the international proletariat for the socialist
11
revolution.
Lenin's evident purpose in dredging up the past was to advertise indirectly his ongoing
opposition to cooperation with the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries as long as
the war continued. He would not work with them.
If the Soviet parties refused to be pushed into toppling the Provisional Government
and taking power into their own hands, and if Lenin ruled out joining them in an allsocialist coalition, what practical steps did Lenin think the Bolsheviks should take? How
would he cut the Gordian Knot he had helped to tie? A statement he made just before the
June 18 demonstration indicate that he was scrapping his gradual approach and coming to
favor an armed revolt. In an article in Pravda the day before the demonstration, Lenin
pointed out that some bourgeois newspapers had claimed he had said, "The Bolsheviks
will not organize an armed uprising." He then declared, "The word not should be taken
out."
12
Coming in public and on the eve of a peaceful demonstration, this short statement
constitutes a sudden and remarkable reversal of his policy of non-violence, patience and
gradual education of the masses. He no longer seemed willing to wait until the Bolsheviks
might obtain majority support in the Soviets through democratic means. Yet he apparently
did nothing to translate his new thinking into action, with the result that presumptive
leaders of the demonstration remained uncertain about what their goals and unprepared to
achieve them. The only barricades the Bolsheviks manned on June 18 were built of empty
words, and the demonstration went off peacefully—without effecting change in the
government.
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An article Stalin published on June 13 in Soldatskaya Pravda suggested that he
thought what should result from the demonstration would actually be achieved.
Presenting a long and sober summary of the government's efforts to restore discipline in
the armed forces, launch a new military offensive and crush anti-war forces within Russia,
Stalin said that the record showed that "the Provisional Government is steadily slipping
into the embrace of the counter-revolutionaries" and even "definitely taking the path of
outright counter-revolution." Offering his familiar choice—"Either forward against the
bourgeoisie … Or backward with the bourgeoisie"—Stalin dryly concluded that "It is the
duty of revolutionaries to close their ranks and drive the revolution forward."
13
As a
chronicle and indictment of the government's foreign and domestic policies, the article
was doubtless effective, and its statement of revolutionary duty was clear enough. But it
did not exhort, inflame, or incite. It did not call for immediate action and voiced no
expectation that such action could succeed. Instead, it suggested that disunity among
revolutionaries was an obstacle to moving forward.
The next day, after the Central Committee had decided to take part in the June 18
demonstration, another article, entitled "Against Isolated Demonstrations," appeared over
Stalin's name in the morning's Pravda. After sarcastically noting that "by our attempt to
demonstrate on June 10 we got the [Soviet leaders] to recognize the need for
demonstrations," Stalin encouraged workers and soldiers to take part in the demonstration
on June 18 "with banners inscribed with the slogans of the revolutionary proletariat." His
primary purpose, however, was to urge that "anarchic demonstrations" be avoided,
principally a separate protest being organized by the Anarchist-Communists. Indeed,
Stalin showed more interest in attacking the Anarchists' planned march—calling it "illconsidered," "reckless," "impermissible," "criminal," "doomed to failure beforehand," and
"disastrous to the cause of the workers' revolution"—than in touting participation in the
June 18 demonstration. Evidently his concern that the Anarchists might give the
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Provisional Government an excuse for repressive action was much greater than his
enthusiasm for the June 18 demonstration.
Stalin's articles of June 13 and 14 can be read as supportive of Lenin's call for
patience and discipline. They clearly do urge these qualities. But the important question
is: why? Had Stalin abandoned his radicalism and swung into line behind the still
temporizing Lenin? Or had he concluded—given Lenin's unreliable leadership—that there
was no hope of effective action for the time being and, therefore, that exercising patience,
marking time and avoiding mistakes was the only feasible course for the Party? The blunt
statement of revolutionary duty and the contrasting lack of enthusiasm in Stalin's articles
suggests that the latter explanation is more likely. That he avoided making incendiary
calls prior to both the June 18 demonstration and the July Days—indeed, that he was
14
nearly silent during this three-week period —provides a further indication of his sense of
resignation.
The demonstration on June 18 produced a strong show of support for the
Bolsheviks. Seeing column after column of Bolshevik marchers, the Menshevik memoirist
Sukhanov called it a procession "on a magnificent scale," with "all worker and soldier
Petersburg" taking part. "In this sturdy and weighty way," he observed,
worker-peasant Petersburg, the vanguard of the Russian and the world
revolution, expressed its will. The situation was absolutely unambiguous.
Here and there the chain of Bolshevik flags and columns was interrupted
by specifically SR and official Soviet slogans. But they were submerged in
the mass; they seemed to be exceptions, intentionally confirming the rule.
Again and again, like the unchanging summons of the very depths of the
revolutionary capital, like fate itself, like the fatal Birnam wood—there
advanced towards us: 'All Power to the Soviets!' 'Down with the Ten
Capitalist Ministers!' …
At the sight of the measured advance of the fighting columns of the
revolutionary army, it seemed that the Coalition [government] was already
formally liquidated and that Messrs. the Ministers, in view of the manifest
popular mistrust, would quit their places that very day without waiting to be
urged by more imposing means.
Sukhanov noted, however, that
there was something peculiar about this demonstration. On the faces, in
the movements, in the whole appearance of the demonstrators—there was
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no sign of lively participation in what they were doing. There was no sign
of enthusiasm, or holiday spirits, or political indignation. The masses had
been called and they had come. They all came—to do what was required
and then go back.
Perhaps the workers wondered about the purpose of demonstrating unarmed when the
Bolsheviks had called off the armed march a week earlier. Nonetheless, Sukhanov
interpreted the display of popular support for the Bolshevik line as "a stinging flick of the
whip in the face of the Soviet majority and the bourgeoisie."
15
Stalin, too, left an account of the demonstration, but he energized the characters in
his telling. Estimating that close to half a million marched on this "bright and sunny" day,
Stalin reported that
The column of demonstrators is endless. From morn to eve the procession
files… An endless forest of banners. All factories and establishments are
closed. Traffic is at a standstill. The demonstrators march past … The air
reverberates to the roar of voices. Every now and then resound the cries:
"Down with the ten capitalist ministers!" "All power to the Soviet of
Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies!" And in response loud and approving
cheers ring out from all sides.
Stalin 's account stressed "the absence of bourgeois and fellow travelers." The
"bourgeois not only refrained from participating" in the demonstration, but "they literally
hid themselves away." It "was really a proletarian demonstration, a demonstration of the
revolutionary workers, leading the revolutionary soldiers. An alliance of the workers and
the soldiers," he continued, "against the bourgeois."
But what struck Stalin most vividly about the demonstration was that "not a single
factory and not a single regiment displayed the slogan: 'Confidence in the Provisional
Government!' Even the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries forgot (or, rather,
did not dare!) to display it." "The overwhelming majority of the demonstrators revealed
their solidarity with our Party" by carrying Bolshevik slogans. The very few groups
carrying pro-government banners were harassed by the anti-government forces. The
"overwhelming majority … expressed downright lack of confidence in the policy of
compromise with the bourgeoisie," Stalin said, "The demonstration marched under the
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revolutionary slogans of our Party." Those who charged that Bolshevism was a
conspiracy of "plotters" against the government were disproved, he concluded: "A party
which enjoys the confidence of the overwhelming majority of the workers and soldiers of
the capital has no need for 'plots.'"
Stalin claimed that the march constituted "a mighty demonstration of pressure
upon the government." "It was a demonstration of protest, a demonstration of the virile
forces of the revolution calculated to change the balance of forces. It is extremely
characteristic," he continued, "that the demonstrators did not confine themselves to
proclaiming their will, but demanded the release of Comrade Khaustov."
16
Khaustov, a
writer of Bolshevik propaganda for front-line troops, had been arrested a few days before
the march. Stalin pointed out that Chkheidze, speaking for the Executive Committee of the
Petrograd Soviet, promised to see to Khaustov's immediate release. But it is significant
that this is the only example Stalin gave of demonstrators making demands. About
whether the "mighty demonstration of pressure upon the government" had achieved its
"calculated" goal of changing "the balance of forces," Stalin was silent.
Stalin’s pre-demonstration article of June 13 can be read as a statement of what he
thought should happen—taking power to advance the revolution before the growing
counter-revolution became too strong—as well as of resignation that this would not
happen because of disunity within the leadership. His post-demonstration report subtly
voiced a similar regret. By portraying the demonstration as an immensely powerful one
which was virtually united behind the Bolsheviks, pointing out that there were
spontaneous calls from the masses for action against the Provisional Government, noting
that the bourgeoisie feared to come out, and reporting that the representative of the
Petrograd Soviet had acceded to the (only) demand of the marchers, Stalin seems to have
been insinuating that the demonstration could have swept away the Provisional
Government and achieved the transfer of power to the soviets. About why it had not done
so he was silent, but the obvious reason was lack of leadership from the Bolshevik high
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9
command. Conscious of Lenin’s failings, Stalin presumably had anticipated that a
demonstration that lacked determined leadership and a clear purpose could achieve
nothing, and thus he had refrained on June 13 from urging action on the masses
At the Sixth Party Congress in August, Stalin credited the demonstration of June 18
with achieving “a moral victory” for the Bolsheviks. More important, thinly veiled
disappointment again surfaced in Stalin’s presentation of the Central Committee’s report.
The demonstration, he said, had provided “proof positive of how great the strength and
influence of our Party was. It was the general conviction that the demonstration of June 18,
which was more imposing than the demonstration of April 21, was bound to have its effect.
And it should have had its effect.” Even the rightist press expected “that in all probability
there would be important changes in the government, because the policy of the Soviets
was not approved by the masses.” Yet in the end, he concluded, “The Provisional
Government remained in power.”
17
Two days after the demonstration, Lenin also commented on it, employing an
arsenal of hyperbole to make it appear to be a great victory. June 18 was "a turning point
in the history of the Russian revolution," he claimed, and he ventured the opinion that
The mutual position of the classes, their correlation in the struggle
against each other, their strength, particularly in comparison with the
strength of the parties, were all revealed so distinctly, so strikingly, so
impressively by last Sunday's demonstration that, whatever the course and
pace of further development, the gain in political awareness and clarity has
been tremendous.
Lenin saw in the demonstration of June 18, unlike earlier ones, "tremendous historical
significance" because it was "a demonstration of the strength and policy of the
revolutionary proletariat." It showed "the direction of the revolution" and "how the various
classes act, how they want to and will act in order to further the revolution." It showed,
Lenin wrote, that "the policy of trust in the capitalists … is a hopeless policy" that would
soon collapse, bringing down "the ruling parties, the Socialist Revolutionaries and the
Mensheviks," and bringing "economic disruption … nearer. There is no escaping it except
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10
by the revolutionary measures of the revolutionary class which has taken power." But
"We do not know," Lenin acknowledged, "whether the people will grasp this lesson soon
or how they will put it into effect."
18
Thus did Lenin once again wash his hands of
responsibility for his Party’s confusion about the demonstration’s goals and its failure to
provide clear and effective leadership.
The day before the demonstration Lenin—recklessly—had abruptly jettisoned the
gradualist line he had been espousing and publicly signaled that he favored violence. At a
Central Committee meeting held a couple of hours after the demonstration ended, Lenin
reiterated his new, insurrectionist thinking. Pointing out that the masses, having felt their
power, would demand action, N. I. Podvoisky, a leader of the Bolshevik Military
Organization, asked Lenin what should be done. Lenin replied (with unusual honesty) that
the demonstration had gained the workers nothing. He went on to say that the proletariat
must bury the illusion of the peaceful possibility of transferring power to
the soviets. Power is not transferred: it is taken with guns. The chain of
events will be like this: the bourgeoisie, recognizing the strength of our
organizations, taking into account the colossal speed with which the
masses are gaining control, will not give us the opportunity finally to
control them, and will employ all its power to provoke these masses into
demonstrations that will arouse repressions, that will break and divide
them. Therefore we must be engaged with organizations in the most
intensive way, giving them a definite slogan—the slogan of the
impossibility of gaining power by peaceful means. It is necessary to give
the proletariat instructions that all organizations of its strength are, in the
final analysis, for an insurrection, if not in days, if not in the next few
19
weeks, then in any event in the very near future.
Podvoisky's report does not indicate that Lenin gave any reason for scrapping gradualism
in favor of an armed uprising. Perhaps Lenin finally had realized the futility of trying to
transfer power into the hands of people who did not want to take it. Whatever his reason,
a sea change had occurred in his concept of how to make the revolution.
Or had it? Two days later, on June 20, apparently alarmed that his words might
encourage hotheads who wanted to organize an insurrection right away, Lenin reversed
course yet again. Addressing the Conference of Bolshevik Military Organizations, he
counseled that caution was the order of the day, that a wrong move could ruin everything.
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Bolsheviks had to realize that they held only a tiny fraction of the seats in the Soviets and
that the majority of the masses still supported the Mensheviks and Socialist
Revolutionaries. The Bolsheviks were too weak, he stressed, either to hold power
themselves or to force the Soviet parties to take power. Counter-revolutionaries would try
to provoke rash acts that would justify repressive measures, he forecast, and the
Bolsheviks had to refuse to fall into this trap. To come into power "the proletarian party
must fight for influence inside the Soviet, patiently, unswervingly, explaining to the
masses from day to day the error of their petty bourgeois illusions. … And when the
masses see that the conciliatory government is deceiving them," Lenin assured, "they will
come to the Bolsheviks, the only party that has not compromised itself." "Events should
not be anticipated," he concluded, "Time is on our side."
20
Lenin sounded very much like
Stalin had in March.
Lenin repeated his call for caution and patience in articles in Pravda on June 21
and 22. "We shall keep up our efforts to expose government policy," he promised,
"resolutely warning the workers and soldiers, as in the past, against pinning their hopes
on uncoordinated and disorganized actions." But he also insisted that the current "phase"
of the revolution "must be brought to an end," and he called on Bolsheviks to "help to end
it as speedily and as painlessly as possible."
21
Thus did he try to straddle the gap between
his impatient desire for an insurrection to bring him to power and the present impossibility
of achieving it. A steady stream of articles exposing the sins of the government and the
Soviet parties flowed from his pen for the next week, but on June 29 he left Petrograd for a
rest.
On June 18, while the Bolsheviks' supporters were staging their "mighty
demonstration of pressure upon the government," the government was launching a mighty
demonstration of its own: a new military offensive against the armies of the Central
Powers. For a few days Russian forces enjoyed success, but the offensive quickly stalled.
Defeats followed. To reinforce the front and to weaken the pro-Bolshevik elements in the
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12
Petrograd garrison, the army command began to transfer troops from a unit heavily
influenced by the Bolsheviks, the First Machine Gun Regiment. All this was grist for the
mill of the Bolshevik Military Organization, which from the outset of the crisis agitated
among garrison troops for a demonstration. Radicals gained a significant advantage on
June 29 when, at a meeting of the Petersburg Committee, Military Organization leader M. I.
Latsis secured passage of a resolution calling on the Party to take control of
demonstrations when it proved impossible to restrain the masses. The Military
Organization took this as license to inflame the very masses that Lenin was trying to
restrain.
22
On June 30, an order for a large troop transfer heightened fears among the
soldiers, who quickly began to plan to rise up against the Provisional Government. By
July 2 Military Organization activists learned of the machine gunners' intentions and asked
for guidance from the Central Committee, which issued a categorical command that
Bolsheviks not participate in the uprising and do their utmost to prevent it. This order
seems to have meant little to the Military Organization or to the regiment, where
development of plans for an insurrection continued. By July 3, the machine gunners had
determined to come out. That afternoon, between three and five o'clock, they sent
delegations to other garrison regiments, military installations in the capital area, and
workers' organizations urging them to join the armed action in the streets on the following
day.
23
It is presumably at this juncture that a significant incident occurred—if in fact it did
occur—in which Stalin was centrally involved. According to a memoir by the poet Demian
Bedny on the occasion of Stalin's fiftieth birthday in 1929, he had been visiting with Stalin
in the Pravda offices "on the eve of the July days" when a phone call came from a sailor at
the Kronstadt naval base north of Petrograd. The sailor asked whether the Kronstadters
should bring their weapons with them to the demonstration that was soon to get underway
in the capital. After reflecting, Stalin reportedly replied, "We scribblers always carry our
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13
weapons—our pens—with us wherever we go. As to your weapons, comrade, you can be
the best judge of that." Bedny found Stalin's answer quite clever.
24
If the story is true,
Stalin played a noteworthy role in encouraging the militants to go forward with an armed
demonstration in July to bring down the Provisional Government. But is Bedny's
recollection true?
The only historian to consider the "pencil story" in detail, Robert Slusser, believes
that the story is false. It is known that when the First Machine Gun Regiment's delegates
(both of whom were Bolsheviks) arrived at Kronstadt, Ensign F. F. Raskolnikov, the senior
Bolshevik there, phoned Party headquarters at the Kshesinskaya mansion to ask for
guidance. Kamenev informed him in no uncertain terms that the Party opposed the
demonstration. For Slusser, this proves that Stalin received no call from Kronstadt, and
he speculates that Stalin himself fabricated the story to compensate for guilt feelings he
presumably felt for arranging the surrender of the sailors' weapons on July 6 after the
insurrection had collapsed.
25
Whatever the merits of Slusser's psychological guesswork,
26
the Raskolnikov-Kamenev conversation weighs against Bedny's story being true.
Nonetheless, it is conceivable that a phone call to Stalin was made from Kronstadt. For
after Party loyalist Raskolnikov had talked with Kamenev, a debate occurred between him
and more militant sailor-Bolsheviks about whether to follow Kamenev's directive.
27
It is
possible that one of these militants, wanting an answer from someone more likely to be
sympathetic to armed action than the conservative Kamenev, telephoned Stalin.
28
In the
end, the sailors did take their weapons.
But there are other reasons to doubt Bedny's recollection. First, the Provisional
Government's extensive investigation into the July crisis apparently failed to find evidence
of Stalin's involvement. Also, Stalin's own account at the Sixth Party Congress of the
events of July 3 suggests that during the hours in question he was at meetings of the
Bolshevik Petrograd City Conference and then the Central Committee (which, incidentally,
reaffirmed its opposition to supporting the machine gunners).
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29
Additionally, his apparent
14
lack of confidence in the Party leadership's willingness to support armed demonstrations
suggests that he would not have urged on the Kronstadters.
Compounding the problem is a recollection by Stalin's long-time Georgian
associate, Abel Yenukidze. Talking with American correspondent William Reswick in the
early 1930s, Yenukidze recalled that
On the day following the October rising in 1917, a group of sailors, drunk
and armed with rifles, came to the office of Pravda to volunteer their
services. Stalin, then editor of the paper, showed the sailors his pen,
saying: "This, comrades, is my weapon. You boys have rifles. It is up to
you to use them as you see fit." Before the day was over they perpetrated a
30
pogrom that shook the capital.
Obviously, Yenukidze's account and Bedny's are versions of the same story. Which is
correct? Or are they both fabrications?
At four o'clock, while the machine gunners' delegates were seeking support, the
Central Committee (with Stalin apparently in attendance) was meeting to reconsider its
stance in the mounting unrest. For the second time in two days it decided against
supporting the demonstration, and it sent word throughout the city urging workers and
soldiers not to participate. The Central Committee's reasoning was that a demonstration
"would be unwise," as Stalin later reported,
because it was clear that the offensive launched at the front on the
government's initiative was a gamble; that the soldiers, not knowing for
what aims they were being led to fight, would not go into action; and that if
we were to demonstrate in Petrograd the enemies of the revolution would
lay the blame on us for the collapse of the offensive at the front. We
wanted the blame for the collapse of the offensive to fall on those who were
really responsible for this gamble.
Stalin himself promptly transmitted news of the Central Committee's decision to the
Central Executive Committee of the Soviets.
31
Despite the orders of the Bolshevik Central Committee, many soldiers, workers and
many lower echelon Bolsheviks remained determined to demonstrate. On the evening of
July 3 a force of the First Machine Gun Regiment marched on Bolshevik headquarters to
demand that the Bolsheviks lead the demonstration. Urged by Sverdlov to return to their
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15
billets, they refused. Shooting had already broken out in the streets. Sympathetic to the
soldiers and workers and unwilling to abandon them, the Military Organization and the
Petersburg Bolsheviks agreed late in the evening to lead the demonstration on the
following day in order "to declare forcefully and resolutely that they are in favor of the
transfer of power to the Soviet." Upon learning of this, Bolsheviks in the Workers' Section
of the Petrograd Soviet won approval of a proposal affirming that it was "necessary to
insist on the All-Russian Congress of the Soviet … taking power into its hands," and also
to "try to give the movement a peaceful and organized character."
32
Later that night, faced with the impossibility of preventing the demonstration, the
Central Committee reversed itself and agreed to provide leadership for the march.
33
As
Stalin explained to the Sixth Party Congress in late July, the Central Committee
decides that at a time when the revolutionary worker and soldier masses
are demonstrating under the slogan "All Power to the Soviets!" the party of
the proletariat has no right to wash its hands of and stand aloof from the
movement; it cannot abandon the masses to the caprice of fate; it must
remain with the masses in order to lend the spontaneous movement a
conscious and organized character. The meeting decides to recommend to
the workers and soldiers to elect delegates … and through them declare
their wishes to the Executive Committee of the Soviets. An appeal for a
"peaceful and organized demonstration" is drawn up on the lines of this
decision.
It was the Central Committee's understanding, Stalin acknowledged, that the
demonstration would be armed, but that "the demonstrators will carry arms exclusively for
34
self-defense."
Accepting leadership of the demonstration was evidently a matter of honor—the
Party's honor—for Stalin. In a speech to an emergency session of the Petersburg
Committee on July 16, he employed the same "hand washing" motif that he subsequently
used in addressing the Sixth Party Congress. "The demonstration was under way," he
said. Then he asked,
Had the Party the right to wash its hands of it and stand aloof? In view of
the possibility of even more serious complications, we had no right to wash
our hands of it—as the party of the proletariat we had to intervene in the
Copyright © 2012 Robert Himmer
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16
demonstration and lend it a peaceful and organized character, while not
setting ourselves the aim of seizing power by force of arms.
Let me remind you of a similar incident in the history of our working
class movement. On January 9, 1905, when Gapon led the masses to the
tsar, our Party did not refuse to march with the masses, although it knew
they were marching the devil knows where. In the present case, when the
movement was marching not under Gapon's slogans, but under our
slogans, we had still less right to stand aloof from the movement. We were
35
obliged to intervene …
Stalin's description asserts not only a general obligation of the workers' Party to stand
with the workers, but a deeper, perhaps even a moral obligation of the Party to stand with
the workers when their actions were inspired by the Bolsheviks' own slogans. His
repeated emphasis on the Party's obligation to the workers suggests strongly that this was
his personal view, and perhaps even that he had successfully employed it to win Central
Committee approval of leading the demonstration.
At its meeting on the evening of July 3, the Central Committee also decided to
summon Lenin immediately back to Petrograd from his resting place in Finland.
36
The agent sent to retrieve Lenin reached him at six in the morning on July 4.
When he asked Lenin if "decisive operations" were beginning, Lenin, alarmed by the
events in the capital, said "this would be quite inopportune."
37
The Party's top leader
arrived at Bolshevik headquarters a little before noon, by which time thousands of sailors
were joining the many thousands of demonstrating soldiers and workers. "You should be
thrashed for this!" Lenin told several members of the Military Organization who were
present.
38
When asked to address the agitated throng outside, he initially declined, saying
that his refusal would signal his opposition to going forward with the demonstration.
Pressed harder, he finally agreed to speak briefly, only to throw cold water on his
audience. Excusing himself from extended remarks because of illness, Lenin assured his
listeners that power would eventually be transferred to the Soviets but urged them to
follow a disciplined, peaceful and vigilant path for now. After Lenin said his few words, his
loyalist, Sverdlov, told the crowd to go present their demands to the Soviet and that if the
Soviet leaders refused to take power—as they certainly would—the demonstrators should
Copyright © 2012 Robert Himmer
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17
wait for instructions.
39
Thus did Lenin palm off the workers, soldiers, and sailors who had
been stirred to action in large degree by his calls for the immediate transfer of power. He
apparently had no sense of honor and obligation toward them. Little wonder that he had
preferred not to face them.
Although the 400,000 or more demonstrators initially displayed remarkable
discipline, generally refraining from violence despite serious provocations from rightists,
by evening the demonstration had lost coherence and momentum. The lack of unified,
purposeful and determined leadership from the Bolsheviks contributed significantly to the
failure. As the demonstration dragged on without accomplishing anything, antidemonstration violence grew and incidents of random street violence increased,
dissipating the demonstration's energy and focus. Greatly undermining the demonstration
was the distribution, in the afternoon by agents of the Provisional Government, of
materials purporting to show that Lenin was a paid German agent and that the Bolsheviks
had launched the demonstration to sabotage the Soviets and the war effort. This confused
some of the soldier-demonstrators while it served to mobilize other regiments, previously
uninvolved, to come to the defense of the Soviets. A rainstorm toward midnight
dampened what was left of the protestors' spirits. But several hours earlier, at eight
o'clock, the Bolshevik Central Committee had already met and declared an end to the
demonstration. Having learned of the approach of army units loyal to the Soviets, the
Central Committee, according to Stalin's report to the Sixth Party Congress,
decided that now that the revolutionary workers and soldiers have
demonstrated their will, the action should be stopped. An appeal is drawn
up on these lines: "The demonstration is over … Our watchword is
Staunchness, restraint, calm." The appeal was sent to Pravda but could not
th
appear on July 5, because on the night of the 4 the Pravda offices were
40
wrecked by military cadets and secret agents.
The wrecking of the Pravda offices was the beginning of a wave of repression that
rolled over the Bolsheviks in the next few days. The Bolsheviks' other newspapers and
their printing plant were shut down; workers, soldiers, and sailors were disarmed and
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18
rebellious units dissolved; the Kshesinskaya mansion was seized and the Bolsheviks
ousted from their headquarters; local Party offices were raided and closed; persecution
and sometimes fatal violence befell Party members in the streets; and late on July 6 arrest
orders were issued for Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, other Bolsheviks, and other radicals,
including Trotsky. Stalin was spared arrest—probably because of his good personal
relations with the Menshevik leaders of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets
and because of his relative non-involvement in the demonstration—and thus he was able
to engage in damage control. He managed the disarming of the Kronstadt sailors at the
Peter-Paul Fortress and the surrender of the Kshesinskaya mansion, all without
bloodshed. He also figured prominently in re-establishing the Bolshevik press in the form
of the newspaper Rabochii i Soldat, which came out on July 23.
41
Stalin also made an attempt to forestall the emerging alliance between the majority
Soviet parties and the forces of the right. At a session of the Soviet Central Executive
Committee on July 5, he told the leaders of the Mensheviks and the Socialist
Revolutionaries that the counter-revolution was on the march, "strangling" Bolsheviks.
Arguing that it would be coming for them next, he pleaded that they should join with the
Bolsheviks to combat the counter-revolution. They laughed at him, he later recalled. This
response made it "perfectly clear" to him that they were in the camp of the counterrevolutionaries. Moreover, the ridicule visited upon him by the Menshevik and Socialist
Revolutionary leaders must have stung him and confirmed in him an indelible hostility
toward them. It also made an impression on him, this time a favorable one, that in these
circumstances the Left Menshevik-Internationalist Yuri Martov spoke out against the
majority leaders.
42
Perhaps the most interesting—and potentially dangerous—challenge facing Stalin,
and the whole Bolshevik leadership in the days after the collapse of the July
demonstration was the charge that Lenin was a German agent. On July 4, when the
Bolshevik leadership learned that the government was starting to spread the accusation of
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19
Lenin's German connection, Stalin approached his fellow Georgian Chkheidze and asked
him to ban publication of the story. The Soviet leader agreed, but a rightist tabloid printed
the incriminating materials the next day. Nonetheless, Stalin had done Lenin a
considerable service—though whether he was motivated by concern for Lenin or for the
Party's reputation is an open question.
43
With the issuance of an arrest warrant for Lenin late in the evening of July 6, the
question of whether he should surrender or go underground became paramount.
44
Though the day before he supposedly expressed concern to Trotsky that "they [are]
getting ready to shoot us all,”
45
Lenin was inclined to turn himself in to the authorities. On
the afternoon of July 7 he declared, in a letter sent to the Soviet Central Executive
Committee, that if the order for his arrest was "endorsed by the C.E.C., I shall present
myself for arrest at the place indicated to me by the C.E.C."
46
Also that day, he argued with
his wife and sister about "the necessity of making his appearance in court." In what
Krupskaya calls "a moment of vacillation," he told her that he and Zinoviev "have decided
to appear."
47
A meeting of several ranking Bolsheviks ensued—the Muscovite Nogin,
Ordzhonikidze, Stalin, long-time Party secretary Elena Stasova, Krupskaya, Lenin, and
perhaps others were involved. Opinion was divided, but the decision finally was taken
against surrender.
48
Where did Stalin stand in this discussion? Krupskaya states: "In the evening
Stalin and others persuaded Ilyich not to appear in court, and by so doing, saved his life."
Ordzhonikidze, reports that Stalin "decisively” opposed Lenin surrendering himself on the
grounds that he would be murdered before trial.
suspect,
50
Trotsky accepts and repeats them.
51
49
Though both these accounts are
Stalin's recent biographer Dmitri
Volkogonov agrees and disagrees. In the original 1988 Russian publication of his study of
Stalin, he claimed that "Stalin—one must give him his due—from the very beginning never
vacillated. Categorically, as is his nature, he said simply" that Lenin would be killed before
reaching the courtroom. However, in the English-language version of his book (1991),
Copyright © 2012 Robert Himmer
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20
Volkogonov says that "At first Stalin took no position, but then he came out strongly
against Lenin's surrender to the court."
52
The discrepancy might be explained as a
translator's error, and no source to support the latter claim of Stalin's initial neutrality is
provided.
Another discrepancy further confuses matters. Ordzhonikidze claims that he and
Nogin went to the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets in an attempt to secure a
guarantee of safe-conduct for Lenin should he surrender, but failed. But Trotsky quotes
Stalin "at the Petrograd Conference" as saying, "I personally posed the question of making
a declaration [of Lenin's safety] to Liber and Anissimov [Menshevik members of the
Central Executive Committee], and they replied that they could not give guarantees of any
kind."
53
One will search Stalin's collected works for this sentence in vain, however.
54
It
does appear, though, exactly as Trotsky quoted it, in the original 1927 publication of the
minutes of the emergency conference of the Bolshevik Petersburg Organization on July
55
16.
Because Stalin's original statement suggests a valuable—if fruitless—personal effort
by him on Lenin's behalf, its exclusion from his Works is difficult to explain, unless he
feared that it might be disproved. But Stalin's collected writings do contain this statement
made in late July at the Sixth Party Congress:
There is no guarantee that if [Lenin and Zinoviev] do appear they will not be
subjected to brutal violence. If the court were democratically organized
and if a guarantee were given that violence would not be committed, it
would be a different matter. In reply to our inquiries at the Central
Executive Committee we were told, "We cannot say what may happen."
Consequently, so long as the situation remains unclear, … there is no
sense in our comrades appearing in "court."
Stalin's phrasing insinuates—encourages the belief—that it was he himself who made "our
inquiries," though this is not stated forthrightly. To complicate matters further, he went on
to say that "If, however, there will be a power in charge which can guarantee our comrades
against violence, they will appear."
56
One must wonder why Stalin raised the previously
57
settled question of whether Lenin would surrender —especially when he knew from
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21
recent, personal experience that the "Central Executive Committee of the Soviets … did
not keep a single one of its promises."
58
One must wonder, too, what to make of an incident related by Anna Alliluyeva in
memoirs published in 1946. To illustrate how Stalin's “humor precisely and vividly
portrayed people and events,” Alliluyeva recalled that “in our apartment he frequently
described the Central Committee session at which the question of whether Lenin should
submit to arrest was discussed. Stalin mimicked how the temperamental Sergo
Ordzhonikidze seized an imaginary dagger and exclaimed, ‘'With this dagger I'll run
through anyone who wants Ilyich arrested.'”
59
What did Stalin find so funny in this? Was
it his fellow Georgian's flamboyance? Or was it the idea that keeping Lenin from arrest
was a cause worth fighting for? Perhaps the answer is that Stalin found both laughable.
It is Lenin himself, however, who has provided perhaps the strongest indication
that Stalin favored surrendering him to the mercies of the counter-revolution. In "The
Question of the Bolshevik Leaders Appearing in Court," an article written on July 8, the
day after the decisive Central Committee session, he revealed that
Judging by private conversations, there are two opinions on this
question,
Comrades succumbing to the "Soviet atmosphere" often incline
toward appearing in court.
Those closer to the workers apparently incline toward not
appearing.
In principle, the question chiefly boils down to an estimation of
what is usually called constitutional illusions.
Anyone who thinks that a regular government and a regular court
exist or can exist in Russia … may arrive at a conclusion in favor of
appearing.
That idea is completely erroneous, however. It is the latest events,
after July 4, that have most vividly shown … that neither a regular
government nor a regular court exists or can exist in Russia (at present).
The court is an organ of power. The liberals sometimes forget this,
but it is a sin for a Marxist to do so …
… It is not a question of "courts," but of an episode in the civil war.
This is what those in favor of appearing in court unfortunately do not want
60
to understand.
Lenin's reference to comrades in the "Soviet atmosphere" seems to point at Stalin.
Certainly no one in the July 7 meeting, and perhaps no Bolshevik, was as closely
Copyright © 2012 Robert Himmer
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22
associated with the "Soviet atmosphere" as was he, a member of the Petrograd Soviet
Executive Committee and of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviets.
Even as late as July 5 he had tried to reach an accommodation with the leaders of the
Soviets. Events in the next few weeks and months, moreover, would show that he
remained firmly attached to the Soviets as the organs of revolutionary power. And
certainly the man who raised the possibility at the Sixth Party Congress of Lenin
surrendering to the police did "not want to understand" anything that Lenin—since his
initial "vacillation"— had said about the issue.
It seems reasonable to conclude, then, that at the meeting on July 7, though Stalin
may in the end have come out against Lenin surrendering once it was clear that this was
the majority view, he would have preferred to see Lenin in the hands of the class enemy.
If Lenin would not be removing himself from the scene, he would have to remain in
hiding. And because Petrograd could not provide him a safe haven for long—a fact made
61
clear when his quarters were raided on July 7 —he prepared to remove himself from the
city. Stalin assisted in this, and he was doubtless happy to do so. His relative good
standing with the Soviets provided a cover of sorts for Lenin. Stalin arranged for his longtime friend, the metalworker Sergei Alliluyev, to shelter the fugitive temporarily in his
apartment while arrangements for his escape were made. Stalin helped Lenin disguise
62
himself as a common worker—even shaved off his beard —and escorted him during the
night of July 9-10 to his new hiding place in the village of Razliv, where he would take
shelter with the family of an actual workingman, N. Yemelyanov. Thus, though the Party
faced difficult times ahead, Stalin could take a measure of satisfaction in knowing that
Lenin was at least physically removed from Petrograd and from direct, day-to-day
management of Bolshevik affairs. This would create an opportunity for new leadership to
assert itself and set the Party on a sensible and consistent course.
Copyright © 2012 Robert Himmer
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23
1
Rabinowitch, Prelude, 88-89, believes that the June 11 meeting of the Petersburg
Committee shows that activists thought "that at best the party leadership had acted
irresponsibly and incompetently and was seriously out of touch with reality."
2
SW, 5:78. For detail of the events of July 3-5 see the excellent coverage in Rabinowitch,
Prelude, chapters 5-7.
3
Krupskaya, 364.
4
Sukhanov, 1:230.
5
Rabinowitch, Prelude, 97-98.
6
Quoted in Rabinowitch, Prelude, 112.
7
Sukhanov, 2:416.
8
See LCW, 24:349, 357-59, 360-66, 372-73, 384, 445-48, 529-30, 556-57, 569, and (on June 8)
25:60-62.
9
SW, 3:84-91. On this occasion Stalin attacked the socialists in the coalition government
as supporters of repression and counter-revolution.
10
LCW, 24:388.
11
LCW, 24:393. The emphases are Lenin's.
12
13
LCW, 25:104. Lenin's emphasis.
SW, 3:84-91, emphases in the original.
14
In addition to the two articles already noted and an article commenting on the June 18
demonstration, discussed below, during this period Stalin published only an analysis of
the results of the Petrograd municipal elections, not in the daily press but in the Bulletin of
the Press Bureau of the Central Committee on June 15; see SW, 3:95-100. In the piece on
election results, Stalin did hint at his disagreement with Lenin. He questioned the
legitimacy of the Provisional Government because the Cadet Party, which received only 20
per cent of Petrograders' votes, constituted a majority of the ministers in the government.
This reading was more in line with the local sensitivity of the radical Petrograd Committee
than with the viewpoint of Lenin, who argued against action on the grounds of the
opposition's strength outside the capital. Stalin also delivered a speech about nationality
issues to the Conference of Bolshevik Military Organizations on June 21, but no text of his
remarks survives.
Stalin's Works attribute to him authorship of an appeal in Pravda on June 17 to "all
toilers" to come into the streets for the June 18th demonstration (SW, 3:101-4). Stalin's
claim of authorship of this document has a basis in fact, but it is misleading. The appeal
published on June 17 is a revised version of the leaflet Stalin had written for the June 10
demonstration. As a detailed comparative analysis of the two texts by Robert Slusser has
shown, the revisions indicate Lenin's hand (Slusser, 125-27). For the sake of convenience
Lenin evidently took Stalin's original text, which had been slated for publication on June
10, and modified it for use on June 17, deleting Stalin's original reference to the "All-
Copyright © 2012 Robert Himmer
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24
Russian Soviet" in the process. There is no reason to think that Stalin had a hand in
crafting the final version. His claim of authorship of the June 17 text is thus deceptive.
Why, then, did Stalin include the June 17 version in his collected works instead of
the earlier version? One possible reason is that the first version—but not the June 17
text—included among the sponsoring organizations the Menshevik-dominated Executive
Committee of the Central Bureau of Trade Unions; the original version could thus have
been embarrassing politically for Stalin. Another possible reason is that the second
version had been published in Pravda, whereas the original version had been pulled; thus
it would be editorially and politically cleaner just to republish the second version and
ignore the first. A note in Stalin's Works gives a history of the document that encourages
readers to conclude that there is but one version of the appeal, not two substantially
different variants (SW, 3:425, note 32). Only the publication of the original text after
Stalin's death made possible the comparison that reveals Lenin's hand in rewriting the
version published on June 17.
15
Sukhanov, 2:416-18. Emphasis in the original.
16
This article is at SW, 3:105-9. Emphasis in the original.
17
SW, 3:170.
18
LCW, 25:110-12. Emphasis in the original. Lenin also claimed that that "The
demonstration in a few hours scattered to the winds, like a handful of dust, the empty talk
about Bolshevik conspirators."
19
N. Podvoisky, "Voennaia organizatsiia Ts. K. R. S.-D. R. P. (bol'shevikov) i voennorevoliutsionnyi komitet 1917 g." Krasnaia letopis' (1923), no. 6: 76. Quoted also by
Rabinowitch, Prelude, 114-15.
20
See the excellent discussion in Rabinowitch, Prelude, 121-22; the quotations are from an
account of Lenin's speech by M. Kedrov in Velikaia oktiabr'skaia sotsialisticheskaia
revoliutsiia: Sbornik vospominanii (Moscow, 1957), 77-78, as translated by Rabinowitch,
Prelude, 114-15.
21
LCW, 25:113-15; also 118-20.
22
See Rabinowitch, Prelude, 127-28, and Service, Lenin, 2:192.
23
For details, see Rabinowitch, Prelude, 135-54.
24
D. Bedny, "Shtrikhi," Pravda, December 21, 1929.
25
See the extended discussion in Slusser, 155-62.
26
Slusser's argument holds water only if Stalin had in fact urged the sailors to carry
weapons, thus giving him something to feel guilty about. But Stalin's usual respect for
Party discipline and his quietude during the developmental stage of the crisis do not
encourage a belief that he gave such advice. Because Bedny's story is the only evidence
that Stalin in any way egged on the sailors, it points a finger at Stalin more than absolves
him of guilt. One must wonder, too, why Stalin would invent a story—for no apparent gain
whatever—that portrayed him as violating the spirit, though not the letter, of Party
Copyright © 2012 Robert Himmer
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25
discipline in order to encourage the Kronstadters to undertake an action that turned out to
be an utter failure.
27
Rabinowitch, Prelude, 151-52.
28
Of the nine members of the Central Committee, only Stalin and Smilga could reasonably
be expected to support the militants' position. Nogin, Miliutin, Fedorov and Kamenev were
on the Party Right; Zinoviev, for all his bluster, had voted against holding the June 10
demonstration; Lenin and Sverdlov (a Lenin loyalist) completed the membership.
29
SW, 3:171-72. Stalin's presence at the Central Committee meeting from 4 to 5 o'clock is
virtually certain, because he transmitted news of the Committee's decision to a joint
meeting of the Soviets' Executive Committees at 5.
30
William Reswick, I Dreamt Revolution (Chicago, 1952), 163. Because Yenukidze went on
to give Reswick examples of Stalin's persecution of Jews after 1917, he evidently intended
to insinuate that Stalin had encouraged the sailors to anti-Jewish violence.
31
SW, 3:114-15, 172. See also I. G. Tsereteli, Vospominaniia o fevral'skoi revoliutsii, 2 vols.
(Paris, 1958), 2:26-67; and Victor Chernov, The Great Russian Revolution (New Haven,
Conn., 1936), 423, where Stalin is said to have "warned" the Central Executive Committee
of the First Machine Gun Regiment's intentions.
32
Rabinowitch, Prelude, 159-70, where the resolutions are quoted. See also Trotsky,
History, 2:24-26.
33
Rabinowitch, Prelude, 174; RDCPSU, 1:239-241, which includes the text of the Central
Committee's appeal for a "peaceful and organized" demonstration. The decision was
taken, however, only after 30,000 workers from the Putilov factory had arrived and
Raskolnikov had informed Zinoviev that the Kronstadt sailors would come out the next
morning regardless of what the Central Committee did.
34
SW, 3:174. The text of the appeal to which Stalin referred is included in a note to his
Works (SW, 3:431-32, note 53), but he does not explicitly claim authorship of it.
Rabinowitch (Prelude, 175) believes Stalin was the writer, but Slusser (144-45) is skeptical.
The style of the leaflet and Stalin's inclusion of the complete text in his collected writings
strongly indicate his authorship. The leaflet twice appeals for a peaceful and organized
demonstration. It was distributed on the streets of Petrograd during the pre-dawn hours of
July 4.
35
SW, 3:115-16.
36
Rabinowitch, Prelude, 174. Interestingly, Stalin did not mention this in his later accounts
of the meeting.
37
Quoted in ibid., 181.
38
Memoir of M. Kedrov quoted in Rabinowitch, Power, 10.
39
Ibid., 184; LCW, 25:213 (where Lenin describes what he had said); and Sukhanov, 2:44142, an eyewitness who calls Lenin's remarks "extremely ambiguous." An approximation
of what Lenin probably said can be found in an article he wrote on July 4 for publication in
Copyright © 2012 Robert Himmer
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26
the next morning's Pravda. He titled it, with unintended irony, "All Power To the Soviets!"
Saying that the democratic "will of the majority … has found expression in … the Soviets,"
Lenin claimed that opposing the transfer of all power to the Soviets "means nothing but
renouncing democracy!" By tolerating the bourgeois-dominated government, he
continued, the Soviet parties—which claimed to be revolutionary democrats—had
challenged democracy itself. But Lenin assured that, despite the present instability,
"Things are moving by fits and starts toward a point where power will be transferred to the
Soviets, which is what our Party called for long ago." (LCW, 25:155-56.) It is remarkable
and important that in the midst of the chaos of July 4, when his followers needed
leadership more than ever, Lenin retreated to his writing desk to scribble so utterly evasive
and pointless an article.
40
SW, 3:175-76. Omission in the original. The appeal was printed on July 6 in a single
issue replacement for Pravda known as Listok Pravdy; the text is in RDCPSU, 1:241-42.
41
Established by the Military Organization, Rabochy i Soldat was named the central organ
of the Party with Stalin as editor-in-chief. SW, 3:419.
42
Vtoraia i tret'ia petrogradskie obshchegorodskie konferentsii bol'shevikov v iiule i
oktiabre 1917 goda: Protokoly (Moscow, 1927), 68. (Hereafter cited as VTPOKB.)
43
The next day Lenin acknowledged Stalin's intervention in an article published in Listok
Pravdy on July 6. Slusser (146) refers to this as showing "the depth of Lenin's publicly
expressed gratitude," which seems a heavy burden to place on Lenin's straightforward
mention of Stalin's role.
44
At this time Lenin was already hiding at a worker's apartment in the Vyborg district of
Petrograd (Krupskaya, 365). A good summary of events subsequent to the issuance of the
warrant for Lenin's arrest can be found in Rabinowitch, Power, 32-35.
45
Trotsky, History, 2:93; also Trotsky, My Life, 313.
46
LCW, 43:636.
47
Krupskaya, 366. Lenin subsequently confirmed that he had changed his mind about
submitting to arrest; see LCW, 25:183-84.
48
Rabinowitch, Prelude, 217, and Slusser, 151, both posit a Central Committee decision
against surrender on July 6; Rabinowitch even speculates that such a decision was taken
on July 5. Because the arrest warrant was not issued until very late on July 6, these
undocumented claims appear erroneous. Moreover, the fact that inquiries about
guarantees of Lenin's safety were not made until July 7 essentially precludes an earlier
decision. The Central Committee did issue a statement on July 6 condemning the
accusations against Lenin and calling for legal action against "the slanderers." Text in
RDCPSU, 1:242-43.
49
S. Ordzhonikidze, "Ilych v iul’skie dni,” Pravda, March 28, 1924; Krupskaya, 366.
50
Ordzhonikidze was a long-time and close friend of Stalin; Krupskaya's memoir, first
published in 1933, may have been doctored to placate Stalin.
51
Trotsky, Stalin, 211.
Copyright © 2012 Robert Himmer
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27
52
Dmitrii Volkogonov, "Triumf i tragediia. Politicheskii portret I. V. Stalina," Oktiabr' (1988),
no. 10: 25; Volkogonov, Stalin, 25-26.
53
Trotsky, Stalin, 211.
54
Indeed, Matlock's Index to Stalin's Sochineniia reports no reference to Anissimov
anywhere.
55
VTPOKB, 56.
56
SW, 3:182.
57
See also Slusser, 153.
58
Taken from Stalin's assessment of promises made to him on July 5 by Liber in
connection with the surrender of the Kshesinskaya mansion—but subsequently not
honored (SW, 3:117).
59
Allilueva, Vospominaniia, 190.
60
LCW, 25:176 (emphasis in the original). The letter was first published in 1925.
61
Krupskaya, 366-67.
62One
may wonder why it was necessary for Stalin to shave Lenin’s beard. Perhaps the
story insinuates that Lenin was shaking so badly with fear that he could not shave his
own beard.
Copyright © 2012 Robert Himmer
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