On June 6, four days before the projected Bolshevik demonstration, the Bolshevik high command met to make final preparations. The proceedings of this conference are known to us only from truncated minutes, in which the most important entry, Lenin’s remarks, have been severely cut.109 The idea of a putsch ran into stiff resistance. Kamenev, who had criticized Lenin’s “adventurism” in April, again took the lead. The operation, he said, was certain to faiclass="underline" the issue of the soviets assuming power was best left to the Congress. V. P. Nogin, from the Moscow branch of the Central Committee, was still more outspoken: “Lenin proposes a revolution,” he said. “Can we do it? We are a minority in the country. One cannot prepare an offensive in two days.” Zinoviev also joined the opposition, arguing that the projected action placed the party at great risk. Stalin, E. D. Stasova, the secretary of the Central Committee, and Nevskii vigorously supported Lenin’s proposal. Lenin’s arguments are not known, but judging from Nogin’s remarks it is obvious what he wanted.
The Petrograd Soviet and the Congress of Soviets, on behalf of which the demonstration was to take place, were kept completely in the dark.
On June 9, Bolshevik agitators appeared in the barracks and factories and informed the soldiers and workers of the demonstration scheduled for next day. The organ of the Military Organization, Soldatskaia Pravda, issued detailed instructions to the demonstrators. Its editorial ended with the words: “War to a victorious conclusion against the capitalists!”110
The congress, which was in session at this time, was so spellbound by its rhetoric that it did not even know of the Bolsheviks’ preparations until almost too late. It first learned what the Bolsheviks were up to in the afternoon of June 9 from Bolshevik posters. All the parties present—the Bolsheviks, of course, excepted—voted immediately to order a cancellation of the demonstration, and sent out agitators to workers’ quarters and barracks to spread the message. The Bolsheviks met later that day to deal with new developments. Following discussions, of which no published record exists, they decided to bow to the will of the congress and cancel their demonstration. They further agreed to participate in a peaceful (i.e., unarmed) manifestation scheduled by the Soviet for June 18. Apparently the Bolshevik high command felt it inopportune as yet to challenge the soviets head on.
A Bolshevik coup had been averted, but the Soviet gained a victory of dubious value because it lacked the moral courage to draw from this incident the proper conclusions. On June 11, some 100 socialist intellectuals representing all the parties in the Soviet, the Bolsheviks included, met to discuss the events of the preceding two days. The Menshevik spokesman, Theodore Dan, criticized the Bolsheviks and moved that no party be allowed to hold demonstrations without the Soviet’s approval and that armed units be brought out only in demonstrations sponsored by the Soviet. The penalty for violating these rules would be expulsion. Lenin chose to absent himself, and the Bolshevik case was defended by Trotsky, who had recently arrived in Russia and though not, as yet, formally a member, had drawn very close to the Bolshevik party. In the midst of the discussion, Tsereteli asked for the floor to oppose Dan’s motion which he thought too timid. Pale, his voice quivering from excitement, he shouted:
That which has happened … was nothing but a conspiracy—a conspiracy to overthrow the government and have the Bolsheviks take power, power which they know they will never obtain in any other way. The conspiracy was rendered harmless as soon as we discovered it. But it can recur tomorrow. It is said that the counterrevolution has raised its head. This is untrue. The counterrevolution has not raised its head; it has lowered its head. The counterrevolution can penetrate only by one door: the Bolsheviks. What the Bolsheviks are doing now is not propaganda of ideas but conspiracy. The weapon of criticism is replaced by the criticism of weapons. May the Bolsheviks forgive us, but we shall now adopt different methods of struggle. Revolutionaries unworthy of holding weapons must be deprived of them. The Bolsheviks must be disarmed. One must not leave in their hands those excessive technical means which they have had at their disposal until now. We must not leave them machine guns and weapons. We shall not tolerate conspiracies …*
Tsereteli received some support but the majority was against him. What proof had he of a Bolshevik conspiracy? Why disarm the Bolsheviks who represented a genuine mass movement? Did he really want to render the “proletariat” defenseless?111 Martov denounced Tsereteli with particular vehemence. The next day, the socialists voted in favor of Dan’s milder motion, which meant that they refused to disarm the Bolsheviks and dismantle their subversive apparatus. It was a critical failure of nerve. Lenin had directly challenged the Soviet, and the Soviet averted its eyes. The majority preferred to make believe that the Bolsheviks were a genuine socialist party using questionable tactics rather than, as Tsereteli argued, a counterrevolutionary party bent on seizing power. The socialists thus lost the opportunity to delegitimize the Bolsheviks, to deprive them of a powerful political weapon, the claim that they acted on behalf and in the interest of the soviets against alleged enemies.
This cravenness was not lost on the Bolsheviks. The day after the defeat of Tsereteli’s motion, Pravda put the Soviet on notice that the Bolsheviks had no intention, now or in the future, of submitting to its orders:
We find it imperative to declare that, in having joined the Soviet and struggling to have it assume full power, we did not renounce for an instant for the benefit of the Soviet, which is in principle hostile to us, the right, separately and independently, to take advantage of all the freedoms to mobilize the working masses under the banner of our proletarian class party. We also categorically refuse henceforth to submit to such anti-democratic restrictions. Even if state authority were to pass entirely into the hands of the Soviet—and this we favor—and the Soviet would try to place fetters on our agitation, we would not submit passively, but risk prison and other punishments in the name of the idea of international socialism …112
This was a declaration of war on the Soviet, an assertion of the right to act in defiance of it if and when the Soviet became the government.
On June 16, the Russian army, generously supplied with guns and shells by the Allies, opened a two-day artillery barrage, following which it charged. The brunt of the Russian assault fell on the Southern Front and aimed at Lwow, the capital of Galicia. The Eighth Army, commanded by Kornilov, distinguished itself. Secondary offensive operations were launched on the Central and Northern Fronts. As the government had hoped, the offensive inspired patriotic manifestations. In this atmosphere, the Bolsheviks did not dare to oppose the campaign: at the Congress of Soviets in June, neither Lenin nor Trotsky opposed motions in its support.113
52. Russian soldiers fleeing Germans: July 1917.
The Russian operation against the Austrians made good progress for two days, and then it ground to a halt as the troops, feeling they had done their duty, refused to obey orders to attack. They were soon in headlong flight. On July 6, the Germans, having once again come to the assistance of their hard-pressed Austrian allies, counterattacked. At the sight of German uniforms, the Russians took to their heels, looting and spreading panic. The June offensive was the dying gasp of the old Russian army.