The hour of decisive action had arrived. By this time, the rank-and-file Bolshevik workers were themselves growing impatient at the lack of decisive action from the top. On 19 October (1 November), at a secret meeting of the amplified CC, Lenin again read out a written statement on the need for an immediate insurrection. With only two votes against – Kamenev and Zinoviev – it was decided that the only way to save the revolution from destruction was an armed uprising. Convinced that an insurrection would be disastrous for the party and the revolution, Lenin’s two old comrades-in-arms opened up a frantic campaign to stop it. On 18 October, they went to the extreme of publishing an article in a non-party paper, Gorky’s Novaya Zhizn’, which publicly opposed the organising of an insurrection as “an act of desperation” which would bring “the most ruinous consequences for the party, for the proletariat, for the fate of the revolution”. Significantly, the letter, which appeared under Kamenev’s signature, claimed to speak not only in the name of two members of the CC, but of a large number of (unnamed) “party practical workers”:

Not only myself and Comrade Zinoviev, but a number of practical party comrades think that to take upon ourselves the initiative to mount an armed uprising at the present time, under the present correlation of social forces, independently of the Soviet Congress, and a few days before it, would be an inadmissible step, disastrous for the proletariat. (Protokoly Tsentral’nogo Komitera RSDRP b, p. 116.)

This was, to put it mildly, a most serious breach of discipline. In presenting their arguments against the armed uprising, Kamenev and Zinoviev had given away to the enemy key party decisions on the insurrection, which were clearly meant to be top secret. Furious at this action, Lenin, in an uncharacteristic action, wrote an angry letter to the CC denouncing Kamenev and Zinoviev as strike-breakers and demanding their expulsion from the party. (See LCW, Letter to the CC of the RSDLP(B), vol. 26, pp. 223-27.) In fact, the Central Committee did not carry out Lenin’s proposal. Kamenev (but not Zinoviev) resigned from the CC, and both men were forbidden to make any further statements contrary to CC decisions. But they were neither expelled nor asked to recant their actions. The day of Stalinist confessions and forced recantations had not yet arrived. Despite the serious nature of their misdemeanour, it was not held against them. The day after the insurrection, Kamenev and Zinoviev presented themselves at the Bolshevik HQ and were given responsible positions in the party and the Soviet state.

The Kamenev-Zinoviev affair did not do lasting damage. The tide was already flowing strongly in the direction of an insurrection. In such conditions, the mistakes of the revolutionaries can normally be rectified by an intelligent leadership that keeps its head. But the converse is true in the camp of reaction. Beset with problems on all sides, trapped in a welter of contradictions, the politicians who yesterday could do no wrong, suddenly find they can do nothing right. That is the explanation of the oft-repeated comments about the ‘incapacity’, ‘obstinacy’, and ‘stupidity’ of Kerensky, Tsar Nicholas, King Louis, Marie Antoinette and Charles I, and a long list of other, similar figures. The ancient Greeks used to say: “Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.” But, on closer observation, this madness is rooted in the objective situation. A doomed social system results in a regime of crisis. In such regimes, the options are limited and the scope for error is multiplied a thousandfold. Given a favourable historical conjuncture, even fools and mediocrities can rule successfully (and frequently do). But when a regime and a social system is sick unto death, the talents of even the most able minister will not necessarily be enough to save it. Such regimes are inevitably riven with internal crises and splits at the top. One section of the ruling class tries to stave off disaster through concessions, while another tries to halt the rising tide of revolt by repression. The result is the appearance (and reality) of vacillation and incompetence. All of which does not mean that the quality of the revolutionary leadership is not important. Even the most favourable circumstances can be thrown away in wars and revolutions. Had Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Stalin stood at the head of the Bolshevik Party instead of Lenin and Trotsky, the opportunity would undoubtedly have been thrown away. Then all those clever historians who now pontificate on the stupidity of Kerensky and Nicholas for not doing this or that would be writing their doctoral theses on how intelligent and far-sighted they were, and how utopian were Lenin and Trotsky for imagining that the workers could have assumed power.

Accidents can certainly play a role in history, including mistakes, and a regime that is poised on the brink of an abyss is highly prone to making mistakes. The Provisional Government committed a first-class error in demanding the dispatch of two-thirds of the Petrograd garrison to the front. This was a clumsy attempt to weaken the revolutionary garrison in the capital, but instead it was a godsend to the Bolsheviks, for two reasons. Firstly, it caused a wave of indignation in the barracks, pushing even the most backward layers towards the Bolsheviks. Even those regiments that had participated in suppressing the July demonstrations passed resolutions condemning the Provisional Government and calling on the Soviets to take power. Secondly, it showed that the government was preparing to go onto the offensive against Red Petrograd. The revolution was entitled to take action in its own self-defence. This was something that every worker and soldier could understand. And it silenced the waverers in the ranks of the Bolsheviks. Even the reformist leaders, in spite of themselves, were being forced into semi-opposition to the government.

The Soviet Executive itself was forced to refuse to give its signature to this demand. The Bolsheviks led the agitation against it, and demanded the setting up of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee, an official Soviet body which soon acquired enormous power and became practically the cutting edge of the October Revolution. The MRC appointed commissars to every store and arms depot without opposition. From then on, no arms could be moved without the permission of the Committee. Trotsky’s order to the Sestroretsky Small Arms factory for the issue of 5,000 rifles to the Red Guard provoked something like panic in bourgeois circles, which raised a hue and cry about the Bolsheviks massacring the bourgeois; but the rifles were issued anyway. Thus, the preparations for the insurrection were taking place under the very noses of the authorities who were powerless to prevent them.

Yet the number of Red Guards in Petrograd was very small. Estimates vary from 23,000 to as few as 12,000. Such a small force could never have defeated the full might of the old state apparatus. But the essence of the matter was the fact that the political work of the Bolsheviks in the nine months prior to October had succeeded in winning over the masses, and thereby also the decisive sections of the army. As the leading figure of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee, Trotsky was personally responsible for winning over the Petrograd garrison, as Marcel Liebman points out:

On 23 October the leaders of the insurrection learned that the garrison of the fortress refused to recognise the authority of the Military Revolutionary Committee. Antonov-Ovseyenko proposed to send in a revolutionary battalion to disarm the garrison and take its place. Trotsky, however, urged that, instead of this risky operation, a more typically Bolshevik and socialist method be employed, that of political agitation. He went in person to the fortress, called a general meeting of the soldiers, addressed them, won them over, and persuaded them to pass a resolution announcing their readiness to overthrow the Provisional Government.

While the military preparation of the rising left much to be desired, its political preparation, during the last few days and hours before it began, was intense and exemplary. The regiments stationed in the capital rallied to the insurrection after listening to fiery speeches by Bolshevik delegates; the great meeting halls of Petrograd, such as the Modern Circus, were never empty, and Bolshevik speakers (Trotsky outstandingly) used them to maintain or revive the revolutionary ardour of the workers, sailors, and soldiers. The whole of October was, in Petrograd and in the provinces alike, a period of ceaseless political activity: the Soviets of the various regions assembled in conferences and congresses; the Bolshevik Party, which had been obliged to postpone an extraordinary congress fixed for the end of the month, did the same. In October 1917 the permanent revolution took concrete form in a permanent debate. And if the masses took no direct part in the insurrection, this was, in the last analysis, because there was no need for them to do so. Their rallying to the Bolsheviks’ policy had been able to find other means of expression, appropriate to the proletarian and democratic character of the enterprise, and to socialist tradition. (M. Liebman, Leninism Under Lenin, pp. 179-80.)

It seems a paradox that, compared to all the preparatory work that went on before, the actual seizure of power seems almost like an afterthought. In his monumental work, The History of the Russian Revolution, Trotsky describes in detail the ease in which Petrograd was taken. The peaceful nature of the revolution was ensured by the fact that the Bolsheviks, under Trotsky’s leadership, had already won over the Petrograd garrison. In the chapter “The Conquest of the Capital”, he explains the manner in which the workers took control of the key Peter and Paul fortress:

All the troops of the fortress garrison accepted the arrest of the commandant with complete satisfaction, but the bicycle men bore themselves evasively. What lay concealed behind their sulky silence: a hidden hostility or the last waverings? “We decided to hold a special meeting for the bicycle men,” writes Blagonravov, “and invite our best agitational forces, and above all Trotsky, who had enormous authority and influence over the soldier masses.” At four o’clock in the afternoon the whole battalion met in the neighbouring building of the Cirque Moderne. As governmental opponent, Quartermaster-General Poradelov, considered to be a Social-Revolutionary, took the floor. His objections were so cautious as to seem equivocal; and so much the more destructive was the attack of the Committee’s representatives. This supplementary oratorical battle for the Peter and Paul fortress ended as might have been foreseen: by all voices except thirty the battalion supported the resolution of Trotsky. One more of the potential bloody conflicts was settled before the fighting and without bloodshed. That was the October insurrection. Such was its style. (L. Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, vol. 3, pp. 211-12, my emphasis.)

From the beginning Lenin insisted that the insurrection must take place on the basis of the mass movement. Shortly before the October Revolution he wrote that the “insurrection must rely not upon conspiracy and not upon a party, but upon the advanced class… Insurrection must rely upon a revolutionary upsurge of the people”. (LCW, Marxism and Insurrection, vol. 26, p. 22.)