The Rise of Soviet Russia

Revolution in Russia, 1917
The 'October Revolt', Lenin - Leader of Revolution

 D The 'October Revolt'

  i   Kerensky's government decided to strike back and closed the newspaper offices run by Stalin in Petrograd.  'A piece of official sealing wax on the door of the Bolshevik editorial room as a military measure - this was not much.  But what a superb signal for battle!' (Trotsky - History of the Russian Revolution, quoted by Deutscher).  All strategic points, bridges, railway stations and post offices were occupied without a shot by troops under Trotsky's command.  It was all rather unreal.  Even the bombardment of the Winter Palace, the seat of the Provisional government, was carried out with dud shells from the rebel cruiser Aurora.  The revolt occurred on the night of November 6-7, or, as the Russians date it, October 24-25. 

  ii   The day after the seizure of the capital by the Bolsheviks an all-Russian Congress of Soviets gave full authority to a Council of People's Commissars with Lenin:as its President and Trotsky in charge of foreign affairs.  Kerensky sent General Krasnov to recapture Petrograd but the Kronstadt naval base stood firm for the Communists.  General Krasnov had to retreat and Kerensky went into exile. 

  iii   The Bolsheviks captured the Russian captial of Petrograd with surprising ease.  The traditional Czarist government had broken down and Kerensky's government never obtained a real grip on the country.  Russian governments had always depended on the army to crush revolution.  The best troops were dead.  The raw country levies were more interested in the redistribution of the land than in defending Kerensky's government.  The Bolsheviks were well organized and well led.  Trotsky and Stalin had been leaders of strikes, demonstrations and revolt for many years while Lenin provided the programme which the masses had been waiting for.  Peace for the soldiers, land for the peasants, and political and economic control for the town worker in the dictatorship of the proletariat, this was indeed a popular policy in all senses. 

 E Lenin - Leader of Revolution, 1870-1924

  i   Born of middle class parents, Lenin had studied at St.  Petersburg University.  He became a Socialist leader and was exiled to Siberia in 1897.  He left Russia and lived abroad for somes years until his dramatic journey in a sealed train across Europe from Switzerland in 1917 brought him back to Petrograd.  He quickly became the accepted leader of the Bolsheviks and a key figure in shaping their policy.  It was Lenin who decided that 'We don't need any bourgeois democracy.  We don't need any government except the Soviet of workers', soldiers' and farmhands' deputies' (Lenin, quoted by Lipson). 

  ii   Lenin lost no time in making the most of the Bolshevik victory.  As President of the Council of People's Commissars and with the power of the Russian Soviets behind him, he ended the war by making the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany.  He cancelled the landlords' rights of ownership to their land and handed their estates over to the peasants without compensation.  The old Czarist machinery of government was wiped out and replaced by workers' councils.  The Czar and his family were killed.