The future historian will be unable, without deep emotion, to look through the Russian papers for May and June 1917, when the minds of the people were being prepared for the offensive. Almost all the articles, without exception, in all the official and semi-official organs were directed against the Bolsheviks. There was scarcely a charge, scarcely a calumny, that was not levelled against us in that period. Of course, the leading role in this campaign was played by the Cadet bourgeoisie, whose class instinct led it to recognise that the question at issue was not merely the offensive, but the entire further course of the Revolution and, in the first place, the form of government authority. The whole bourgeois machinery for manufacturing ‘public opinion’ was put into motion at full steam. All the government offices and institutions, publications, public platforms, and university chairs were drawn into the service of this one general aim: of making the Bolsheviks impossible as a political party. In this concentrated effort and in this dramatic newspaper campaign against the Bolsheviks were already contained the first germs of the civil war, which was bound to accompany the next phase of the Revolution. The sole aim of all this incitement and slander was to create an impenetrable wall of estrangement and enmity between the labouring masses on the one hand and ‘educated society’ on the other.
The liberal bourgeoisie understood that it could not win the support of the masses without the help of the lower middle-class democrats, who, as we pointed out above, had temporarily become the leaders of the revolutionary organisations. Consequently, the immediate aim of the political incitements against the Bolsheviks was to bring about an irreconcilable feeling of enmity between our party and the wide ranks of the socialist intellectuals, who, having broken away from the proletariat, could not but fall into political bondage to the liberal bourgeoisie.
It was during the first All-Russian Congress of the Soviets that the first alarming crash of thunder occurred, which warned of the coming storm. Our party had planned an armed demonstration at Petrograd for 23rd June. Its proximate object was to bring pressure to bear upon the Congress. “Take over the power in the State” – it was this that the Petrograd workers wanted to tell the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, who had come from all parts of the country. “Spurn the bourgeoisie! Have done with the idea of coalition, and take the reins of power into your own hands!” We were quite certain that if the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks broke with the liberal bourgeoisie, they would be compelled to seek support from the most energetic and most advanced elements of the proletariat, which would thus obtain the leading role in the Revolution. But that was just what frightened the lower middle-class leaders. In conjunction with the government, in which they had their own representatives, and shoulder to shoulder with the liberal and counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie, they opened a truly savage campaign against the planned demonstration as soon as they got wind of it. Everything possible was set in motion against us. We were at that time a small minority at the Congress, and we gave way; the demonstration did not take place. But all the same it left a very deep mark in the minds of the two contending parties, and made the gulf between them deeper and their mutual antagonism more acute. At the closed sitting of the Presidential Bureau of the Congress, in which also representatives of the various parties took part, Tsereteli, then a member of the Coalition Government, speaking with all the resoluteness of a narrow-minded lower middle-class doctrinaire, declared that the only danger threatening the Revolution was the Bolsheviks and the Petrograd workers who had been armed by them. He therefore argued that the people “who did not know how to use arms” must be disarmed. Of course, he had in mind the Petrograd workers and that portion of the Petrograd garrison that supported our party. However, no disarming took place, as the political and psychological conditions were not yet ripe enough for such an extreme measure.
To compensate the masses for the loss of their demonstration, the Congress of the Soviets itself organised an unarmed demonstration on 1st July. And that day became the day of our political triumph. The masses turned out in overwhelming numbers, but although they came out in answer to the call of the official Soviet authority – a sort of counter-blast to the miscarried demonstration of 23rd June – the workers and soldiers had inscribed on their banners and placards the demands and battle-cries of our party: “Down with the secret treaties!” “Down with the policy of strategical offensives!” “Long live an honourable peace!” “Down with the ten capitalist Ministers!” “All power for the Soviets!” There were only three placards with expressions of confidence in the Coalition Government: one from a Cossack regiment, another from the Plekhanov group, and a third from the Petrograd ‘Bund’, an organisation consisting largely of non-proletarian elements. This demonstration proved not only to our opponents, but also to ourselves, that we were far stronger in Petrograd than had been imagined.