The demonstration of 2 and 3 July revealed many things. It showed that the reformist leaders had decisively lost their base in Petrograd. But it also showed, as the Bolsheviks had warned, that Petrograd was not Russia, that the Mensheviks and SRs still had huge reserves of support in the workers and peasants of the provinces. Even in Petrograd, the mood in the barracks was not uniform. Although a majority of the soldiers and still more of the sailors were with the Bolsheviks at this time, some units remained passive or were undecided. However, not a single unit of the Petrograd garrison was prepared to fight to defend the Provisional Government or even the Soviet leaders.
The workers and soldiers did not get off scot-free. Mistakes are always paid for. Some hundreds were killed. But if the Bolsheviks had not placed themselves at the head of the demonstration in order to give it an organised and peaceful character, there would undoubtedly have been a bloodbath. Moreover, the party’s influence over the most advanced workers would have been destroyed. At times it is necessary to go with the workers even when they are mistaken, in order that they should learn by experience and draw the conclusions. The experience of the July Days was a painful one, but the workers learned to trust the judgement of the Bolsheviks who had warned them in advance of what would happen, but then participated shoulder to shoulder with them.
On 2 July, as a result of the split on the Ukrainian question, three Cadet ministers had resigned from the government, followed later by Pereverzev and, on the 7th, by the Prime Minister, Prince Lvov. The remaining cabinet ministers appointed Kerensky and entrusted him with forming a new government – the Second Coalition. The attack on the left greatly strengthened the counter-revolutionaries who now felt that they had the initiative. After the suppression of the movement in Petrograd, the bourgeois felt that the time had come to ‘restore order’. The Cadets demanded that the Socialist ministers break their links with the Soviets. The left wing, in the person of the Bolsheviks, was to be crushed. Orlando Figes gives a flavour of the mood of anti-Bolshevik hysteria that existed at this time:
By the morning of the 5th, the capital was seized with anti-Bolshevik hysteria. The right-wing tabloids bayed for Bolshevik blood, instantly blaming the ‘German agents’ for the reverses at the Front. It seemed self-evident that the Bolsheviks had planned their uprising to coincide with the German advance. General Polovtsov, who was responsible for the repressions as the head of the Petrograd Military District, later acknowledged that the Bolshevik-baiting contained “a strong anti-Semitic tendency”; but in the usual way that Russians of his class justified pogroms he put it down “to the Jews themselves because among the Bolshevik leaders their percentage was not far from a hundred. It was beginning to annoy the soldiers to see that Jews ruled everything, and the remarks I heard in the barracks plainly showed what the soldiers thought about it”. (Ibid., p. 433.)
The day after the demonstrations, the press waged a hysterical campaign about Lenin and the ‘German agents’, while the SRs and Mensheviks, who knew that this was a pack of lies, maintained a cowardly silence. But their complicity with the counter-revolution did not end there. The Mensheviks and SRs called on Lenin and the other leaders to “hand themselves over to justice”. That was an open invitation to place their necks in the hangman’s noose. The reactionaries were now baying for blood.
On 6 July, the government issued an order for the arrest of Lenin, Kamenev, and Zinoviev. Some writers (among the most recent, Orlando Figes) try to accuse Lenin of personal cowardice. That is nonsense. The record shows that Lenin had decided to give himself up, and had to be talked out of it by other party leaders. The day after the order of arrest was issued, following a raid on his sister’s apartment, Lenin wrote a note, addressed to the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet, asking it to open an investigation and offering to give himself up to the authorities, on condition that the Soviet Executive sanctioned his arrest:
Only just now, at 3.15 p.m., 7 July, I learned that a search was made at my flat last night, despite the protests of my wife, by armed men who produced no warrant. I register my protest against this and ask the Bureau of the CEC to investigate this flagrant breach of the law.
At the same time I consider it my duty to confirm officially and in writing what, I am sure, not a single member of the CEC can doubt, namely that, in the event of the government ordering my arrest and this order being endorsed by the CEC, I shall present myself for arrest at the place indicated to me by the CEC.
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (N. Lenin), Member of the CEC. (LCW, To the Bureau of the Central Executive Committee, vol. 43, p. 636.)
In her memoirs of Lenin, Krupskaya recalls that:
He [Lenin] argued the necessity of making his appearance in court. Maria Ilyichna [Lenin’s sister] warmly protested against it. “Grigory [Zinoviev] and I have decided to appear – go and tell Kamenev,” Ilyich said to me. Kamenev was staying in another flat not far away. I got up hastily. “Let’s say good-bye,” Ilyich checked me. “We may not see each other again”. (N.K. Krupskaya, Reminiscences of Lenin, p. 366.)
Members of the CC tried to persuade Lenin that this course of action was out of the question. What finally made up Lenin’s mind was the decision of the Soviet Executive to cancel its promised inquiry into the July events. When Ordzhonikidze and Nogin were sent to the Tauride Palace carrying Lenin’s message and instructions to negotiate the terms of his imprisonment, the Soviet’s representative refused to give any assurances, but promised to ‘do what they could’. According to Ordzhonikidze, even the moderate Nogin was “uneasy about Lenin’s fate were he to turn himself in”. It was now quite clear that the Soviet was excluded from all influence over the government and that the judiciary, still dominated by tsarist elements, would act as the obedient servant of the counter-revolution. In a letter written for publication, Lenin explained:
We have changed our plan to submit to the government because… it is clear that the case regarding the espionage of Lenin and others has been intentionally constructed by the forces of counter-revolution… At this time there can be no guarantee of a fair trial. The Central Executive Committee… formed a commission to look into the espionage charges and under pressure from the counter-revolution this commission has been dissolved… To turn ourselves in to the authorities now would be to put ourselves into the hands of the Milyukovs, Aleksinskys, Pereverzevs – that is, into the hands of dyed-in-the-wool counter-revolutionaries for whom the charges against us are nothing more than an episode in the civil war. (A. Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks Come to Power, p. 34 in both quotes.)
The party leaders finally persuaded Lenin to go into hiding. That was undoubtedly the correct line of action. Lenin was more use to the revolution alive than dead or locked up. It is true that a section of the party was in favour of Lenin going on trial, with the idea of defending himself from the accused’s bench, as Trotsky had done in 1906. But such an idea would have been madness. Later, the majority of the Sixth Party Congress, which met in Petrograd at the end of July, considered the question correctly and concluded that Lenin would never have reached the courtroom, but would have fallen to some assassin’s bullet, ‘shot while trying to escape’. Even if that were only a possibility, the party had no right to risk the life of Lenin on a gambler’s throw.
There can be no doubt that Lenin’s life was in danger at this moment in time. The counter-revolution was rampant. In the Petrograd Soviet, a Menshevik deputy declared: “Citizens who look like workers or who are suspected of being Bolsheviks are in constant danger of being beaten.” Another added that “quite intelligent people are conducting ultra–anti-Semitic agitation”. (Ibid., p. 43.) Several Bolshevik Party offices were raided and smashed. This happened to the print shop of Trud, which printed a lot of material for the unions, as well as Bolshevik literature. Ivan Voinov, a 23-year old Bolshevik who helped out in the circulation department of Pravda, was arrested while distributing Listok Pravdy (Pravda Pamphlet), one of the many names under which the party paper appeared to get round the ban. While being ‘interrogated’, the prisoner was struck on the head with a sabre, killing him instantly. Given the general atmosphere of hysteria and the accusations directed personally against Lenin as a German agent, it would have been the height of irresponsibility to entrust him to the tender mercies of the ‘Law’ in a period of counter-revolution.
Two years later, during the Spartacist uprising in Berlin – a movement which was strikingly similar to the July Days – Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht failed to take the necessary precautions and were arrested by counter-revolutionary officers. They did not believe that they would be murdered in cold blood, but that is just what happened. The murder of the two most outstanding leaders of the German working class had a disastrous effect on the whole course of the German Revolution and the history of the world. Yes, they showed personal bravery. But what a terrible price was paid for that mistaken action! If they had gone underground, as Lenin did, the future of the German Revolution would have been in safe hands. Instead, it suffered an abortion. Not just the German working class, but the whole world paid for this catastrophe, with the rise of Hitler and all the subsequent horrors of fascism and war. Such considerations should make one pause for thought before making inane comments about ‘personal bravery’, and all the rest of it.
The Menshevik and SR leaders, to whom Lenin had looked for guarantees concerning his arrest, played a contemptible role. Dan proposed a crudely worded resolution which was supported by the majority of the reformist parties in the Soviet, accusing the Bolsheviks of crimes against the people and the revolution, and branding Lenin’s evasion of arrest as ‘intolerable’. In the same way, the German right-wing Social Democratic leaders Noske and Scheidemann in 1919 acted as accomplices to the general staff and the Freikorps in the murder of Liebknecht and Luxemburg. They demanded that the Bolsheviks open a discussion on Lenin’s conduct, and provided for the suspension of membership of the Soviet Executive of all persons under investigation. Nogin protested:
You are being asked to adopt a resolution regarding the Bolsheviks before they have been tried. You are asked to place outside the law the leaders of the fraction that prepared the revolution with you. (Ibid., p. 36.)
But the Soviet right wing was not interested in Nogin’s complaints. Dan’s resolution was passed by an overwhelming majority. From the floor the attacks on the Bolsheviks were even more hysterical.
Now that the appetite of the counter-revolutionaries had been whetted, they vented their fury against the workers’ movement in general, not caring to distinguish between left and right. At a meeting of the Provisional Committee of the Duma held on 5 July, right-wing Duma deputies like AM Maslenikov and Vladimir Purishkevich (best known for his part in the assassination of Rasputin) raged against the moderate Soviet leaders, who were described as “dreamers”, “lunatics passing themselves off as pacifists”, “petty careerists”, and “a group of fanatics, transients [that is, Jews], and traitors”. Maslenikov demanded that power be restored to the Duma and that the government be made responsible to it alone. This was a demand for the liquidation of dual power. The Soviets should play no role. Purishkevich went further, blurting out the real intentions of the counter-revolutionaries:
If a thousand, two thousand, perhaps five thousand scoundrels at the front and several dozen in the rear had been done away with, we would not have suffered such an unprecedented disgrace. (Ibid., p. 45.)
And he demanded the reintroduction of the death penalty, not only at the front, but in the rear also. This demand grew like a deafening crescendo in the weeks following the July defeat. Its meaning was clear. The bourgeoisie was striving to re-establish ‘order’ – that is, its control over the society and the state, which, as Lenin explained, in the last analysis, is armed bodies of men. The re-establishment of discipline in the army by the most brutal means, including the death penalty, was the prior condition for liquidating the dual power and reconstituting the old state. That could only mean dictatorship, as subsequent events proved.
The July defeat altered the class correlation of forces. With every step backwards taken by the revolution, the counter-revolution grew bolder. On the other hand, the mood of the workers and soldiers in the capital was depressed. They had learned a harsh lesson. The provinces were against them. A sense of isolation and impotence gripped the capital. The workers lowered their heads and waited for the next blow. In the midst of this carnival of reaction, when the Bolsheviks were being hounded and persecuted on all sides, one voice rang out bold and clear – the voice of Leon Trotsky, who, in an open letter to the Provisional Government, dated 10 (23) July, 1917, wrote:
Citizen Ministers:
I have learned that in connection with the events of 16-17 July, a warrant has been issued for the arrest of Lenin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev, but not for me. I should like, therefore, to call your attention to the following:
1. I agree with the main thesis of Lenin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev, and have advocated it in the journal Vperyod and in my public speeches.
2. My attitude toward the events of 16-17 July was the same as theirs.
(a) Kamenev, Zinoviev, and I first learned of the proposed plans of the Machine Gun and other regiments at the joint meeting of the Bureaus (Executive Committees) on 16 July. We took immediate steps to stop the soldiers from coming out. Zinoviev and Kamenev put themselves in touch with the Bolsheviks, and I with the ‘inter-ward’ organisation (i.e., Mezhraiontsy) to which I belong.
(b) When however, notwithstanding our efforts, the demonstration did take place, my comrade Bolsheviks and I made numerous speeches in front of the Tauride Palace, in which we came out in favour of the main slogan of the crowd: “All power to the Soviets”, but we, at the same time, called on those demonstrating, both the soldiers and civilians, to return to their homes and barracks in a peaceful and orderly manner.
(c) At a conference which took place at the Tauride Palace late in the night of 16-17 July between some Bolsheviks and ward organisations, I supported the motion of Kamenev that everything should be done to prevent a recurrence of the demonstration on 17 July. When, however, it was learned from the agitators, who arrived from the different wards, that the regiments and factory workers had already decided to come out, and that it was impossible to hold back the crowd until the government crisis was over, all those present agreed that the best thing to do was to direct the demonstration along peaceful lines and to ask the masses to leave their guns at home.
(d) In the course of the day of 17 July, which I spent in the Tauride Palace, I and the Bolshevik comrades more than once urged this course on the crowd.
3. The fact that I am not connected with Pravda and am not a member of the Bolshevik Party is not due to political differences, but to certain circumstances in our party history which have now lost all significance.
4. The attempt of the newspapers to convey the impression that I have ‘nothing to do’ with the Bolsheviks has about as much truth in it as the report that I have asked the authorities to protect me from the ‘violence of the mob’, of the hundreds of other false rumours of that same press.
5. From all that I have said, it is clear that you cannot logically exclude me from the warrant of arrest which you have made out for Lenin, Kamenev, and Zinoviev. There can also be no doubt in your minds that I am just as uncompromising a political opponent as the above-named comrades. Leaving me out merely emphasises the counter-revolutionary high-handedness that lies behind the attack on Lenin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev. (Reprinted in The Age of Permanent Revolution, pp. 98-99, my emphasis.)
The authorities obliged, and Trotsky was imprisoned in the Kresty Fortress.