Because of the indisposition of Guchkov, the cabinet at this moment was meeting not in Mariinskii Palace but in Guchkov’s office at the Ministry of War. Before it now appeared General Kornilov, who, as commander of the Petrograd Military District, bore responsibility for the capital’s security. He requested permission to have troops disperse the mutineers. According to Kerensky, the cabinet unanimously denied this request: “We were all confident of the wisdom of our course and felt certain that the population would not permit any acts of violence against the Government.”59 It was the first, but not the last time that the Provisional Government, faced with an open challenge to its authority, flinched from using force—a fact that escaped neither Kornilov nor Lenin.
Up to this point, the Bolsheviks had nothing to do with the disturbance: indeed, it seems to have caught them by surprise. But they lost no time in exploiting it.
The activities of the Bolshevik high command at this time are far from clear, because most of the relevant documents remain unpublished. The official Communist version of the events holds that the party’s Central Committee did not authorize the anti-government demonstrations which took place in Petrograd in the evening of April 20 and throughout April 21: the Bolsheviks who took to the streets carrying banners reading “Down with the Provisional Government” and “All Power to the Soviets” are said to have acted on instructions of second-rank Bolsheviks, including one S. Ia. Bagdaev.* But it is quite unthinkable that in a centralized party like the Bolsheviks, a minor functionary would have taken it upon himself to authorize revolutionary slogans in defiance of the Central Committee—a charge rendered the more preposterous by Bagdaev’s documented opposition to Lenin’s confrontational stance against the Provisional Government.60 This misleading account of the events of April 20–21, 1917, has been made up in order to conceal the fact that the first Bolshevik attempt at a putsch ended in ignominious failure. To confuse the picture further, Communist historians have gone to the lengths of citing resolutions adopted by the party after the event as indicative of its intentions before it had taken place, and attributing directives written by Lenin to “unidentified sources.”
In the afternoon of April 20, as the troops called out by Linde were converging on Mariinskii Square, the Bolshevik Central Committee convened an emergency session. It passed a resolution, which Lenin had drafted earlier in the day upon reading Miliukov’s note, which provided the rationale for the Bolshevik-sponsored demonstrations that followed. Early editions of Lenin’s writings denied his authorship; it has been finally acknowledged as his in the fifth edition of Lenin’s works, published in 1962.61 Lenin described the Provisional Government as “thoroughly imperialist” and dominated by domestic as well as Anglo-French capital. A regime of this kind was by its very nature incapable of renouncing annexations. Lenin criticized the Soviet for supporting the government and called on it to assume full power. This was not, as yet, an overt appeal for the overthrow of the government, but it required no deep reflection to draw such a conclusion from Lenin’s words. It certainly entitled Bolshevik demonstrators to carry banners reading “Down with the Provisional Government” and “All Power to the Soviets,” from which Lenin would later disassociate himself.
What tactical decisions the Central Committee adopted at this meeting are not known: the published version of the minutes of the Petrograd Committee, which often joined in the meetings of the Central Committee, records only organizational trivia. It omits all subsequent sessions until May 3.62 Two things, however, are reasonably certain. Lenin seems to have been the main advocate of aggressive action and to have run into strong opposition: this much is known from the aftermath, when he came under criticism from his associates, notably Kamenev. Second, the demonstrations were intended as a full-scale putsch, a reenactment of February 26–27 when rioting workers and mutinous soldiers brought down the tsarist government.
Already in the evening of April 20, after the troops that took part in the afternoon demonstration had returned to their barracks, fresh groups of soldiers and workers appeared on the streets with anti-government banners: they were the advance troop of the Bolshevik-led rioters. Before long, a counter-demonstration took place carrying banners reading “Down with Lenin!” On Nevsky, the demonstrators clashed. Following the intervention of the Ispolkom, the crowds were pacified.
The Bolshevik Central Committee reconvened in the morning of April 21 to adopt directives for the day’s operations.63 One directive ordered the dispatch of agitators to factories and barracks to inform workers and soldiers about the demonstration planned for that day and urge them to join in.64 Such agitators appeared during the noontime lunch break in many factories of the Vyborg District, whose workers were the most radicalized in Petrograd. Appeals to the workers to take the afternoon off and participate in an anti-government protest met with a disappointing response, most likely because SR and Menshevik agents from the Ispolkom were on hand to neutralize them. Workers in only three small plants passed Bolshevik resolutions: they numbered a mere one thousand,65 less than .5 of 1 percent of Petrograd’s labor force. Putilov, Obukhov, and the other large enterprises ignored the Bolsheviks. That the Bolsheviks planned armed action is indicated by the fact that on April 21, N. I. Podvoiskii, the head of their Military Organization, called on the Kronshtadt naval base to dispatch to Petrograd a detachment of reliable sailors.66 The Kronshtadt sailors were the roughest, most violence-prone element in the city: heavily influenced by anarchists, they needed little encouragement to beat up and rob the burzhui. Bringing them into the city was almost certain to result in pogroms. To have invited them gives lie to Lenin’s claim that on April 21 the Bolsheviks had intended a “peaceful reconnaissance.”
In the early afternoon, a column bearing anti-government banners, preceded by units of the Bolshevik “Factory Militia” armed with guns, advanced along Nevsky toward the city center. Although a sorry performance, in which neither soldiers nor sailors took part, it was the first armed challenge to the democratic government. As the demonstrators approached the Kazan Cathedral, they ran into a counterprocession that shouted “Long Live the Provisional Government.” A melee ensued and some random shooting, in which three persons died. It was the first street violence in Petrograd since February.
While his followers were on the streets, Lenin thought it prudent to stay at home.67
Kornilov, seeking again to restore order, instructed artillery units and troops to be brought out. This time he ran into the defiance of the Ispolkom, which insisted it could calm the crowds by persuasion. It phoned the Military Staff to countermand Kornilov’s instructions. Kornilov then met with Ispolkom’s representatives. They assumed responsibility for stopping the disorders, whereupon he revoked his instructions and ordered the troops to stay in the barracks. To make certain that neither the government nor the Bolsheviks resorted to arms, the Ispolkom issued a proclamation to the Petrograd garrison:
Comrade Soldiers! During these troubled days do not come out with weapons unless called by the Executive Committee [Ispolkom]. The Executive Committee alone has the right to dispose of you. Every order concerning the appearance of military units on the street (except for routine detail duty) must be issued on the blank of the Executive Committee, bear its seal and the signatures of at least two of the following: Chkheidze, Skobelev, Binasik, Sokolov, Goldman, Filippovskii, Bogdanov. Every order must be confirmed by telephoning 104–06.68