All of which was true enough. But even though the SRs and Mensheviks had declared the forthcoming Second Congress illegal as well as unrepresentative, they allowed it to proceed. On October 17, the Bureau of the Ispolkom approved the convocation of the Second Congress on two conditions: that it be postponed by five days, to October 25, to give provincial delegates time to get to Petrograd, and that it confine its agenda to the discussion of the internal situation in the country, preparations for the Constituent Assembly, and reelection of the Ispolkom.134 It was an astonishing and inexplicable capitulation. Although aware of what the Bolsheviks had in mind, the Ispolkom gave them what they wanted: a handpicked body, filled with their adherents and allies, which was certain to legitimize a Bolshevik power seizure.
The gathering of pro-Bolshevik soviets, disguised as the Second Congress of Soviets, was to legitimize the Bolshevik coup. On Lenin’s insistence, however, the coup was to be carried out before the congress met, by shock troops under the command of the Military Organization. These troops were to seize strategic points in the capital city and declare the government overthrown, which would present the congress with an accomplished and irreversible fact. This action could not be carried out in the name of the Bolshevik Party. The instrument which the Bolsheviks used for this purpose was the Military-Revolutionary Committee, formed by the Petrograd Soviet in a moment of panic early in October to defend the city from an expected German assault.
The event was precipitated by German military operations in the Gulf of Riga. After Russian troops had evacuated Riga, the Germans sent reconnaissance units in the direction of Revel (Tallinn). These operations gave the Russian General Staff much concern because they posed a threat to Petrograd, only 300 kilometers away and unreliably defended.
The German threat to the capital grew more ominous in the middle of October. On September 6/19, the German High Command ordered the capture of the islands of Moon, Ösel, and Dago in the Gulf of Riga. A flotilla which sailed on September 28/October 11 soon cleared Russian minefields and after overcoming unexpectedly stiff resistance, on October 8/21 completed the occupation of the three islands.135 The enemy now was in a position to land behind Russian forces.
The Russian General Staff viewed this naval operation as preparatory to an assault on Petrograd. On October 3/16, it ordered the evacuation of Revel, the last major stronghold standing between the Germans and the capital. The next day Kerensky participated in discussions on ways to deal with the danger. The suggestion was made that since Petrograd could soon find itself in the combat zone, the government and the Constituent Assembly transfer to Moscow. The idea found general favor, the only disagreement being over the timing of the move, which Kerensky wanted to be done immediately while others argued for a delay. It was decided to evacuate after securing approval from the Pre-Parliament, a gathering of political leaders which the government scheduled on October 7 as a forum for soliciting broad public support. The question next arose of what to do about the Ispolkom. The consensus was that since it was a private body it should arrange for its own evacuation.* On October 5, government experts reported that the evacuation of the executive offices to Moscow would require two weeks. Plans were drawn up for the relocation inland of Petrograd industries.136
These precautions made good military and political sense: it was what the French had done in September 1914 as the Germans approached Paris and what the Bolsheviks would do in March 1918 under similar circumstances. But the socialist intelligentsia saw in them only a ploy of the “bourgeoisie” to turn over to the enemy “Red Petrograd,” the main bastion of “revolutionary democracy.” As soon as the press made public the government’s evacuation plans (October 6) the Bureau of the Ispolkom announced that no evacuation could take place without its approval. Trotsky addressed the Soldiers’ Section of the Soviet and persuaded it to adopt a resolution condemning the government for wanting to abandon the “capital of the Revolution”: if unable to defend Petrograd, his resolution said, it should either make peace or yield to another government.137 The Provisional Government at once capitulated. That same day it declared that in view of objections it would delay the evacuation for a month. Eventually it gave up the idea altogether.138
On October 9, the government ordered additional units of the garrison to the front to help stem the anticipated German assault. As could have been expected from past experience, the garrison resisted.139 The dispute was turned over to the Ispolkom for adjudication.
At its meeting later that day, Mark Broido, a worker affiliated with the Mensheviks, moved a resolution calling on the Petrograd garrison to prepare to defend the city and for the Soviet to form (or, rather, reconstitute) a “Committee of Revolutionary Defense” to “work out a plan” to this end.140 Caught by surprise, the Bolsheviks and Left SRs opposed Broido’s resolution on the grounds that it would strengthen the Provisional Government. It passed but with the barest majority (13–12). Following the vote, the Bolsheviks realized they had made a mistake. They had a Military Organization which they were grooming for armed insurrection: it was subordinated to the Bolshevik Central Committee and independent of the Soviet. This status was a mixed blessing: for while the Military Organization could be depended on faithfully to execute the orders of the Bolshevik high command, as the organ of one political party it could not act on behalf of the Soviet in whose name Bolsheviks intended to carry out their power seizure. A few years later, Trotsky would recall that the Bolsheviks, aware of this handicap, had decided already in September 1917 to avail themselves of any opportunity to create what he calls a “non-party ‘soviet’ organ to lead the uprising.”141 This is confirmed by K. A. Mekhonoshin, a member of the Military Organization, who says that the Bolsheviks felt it necessary “to transfer the center linking [them] with units of the garrison from the Military Organization of the party to the Soviet so as to be able, at the moment of action, to step forward in the name of the Soviet.”142 The organization proposed by the Mensheviks was ideally suited for this purpose.
That evening (October 9) when the Menshevik proposal came up for a vote at the Plenum of the Soviet, the Bolshevik deputies reversed their stand: they now agreed to the Soviet’s forming an organization to defend Petrograd from the Germans as long as it would defend it also from the “domestic” enemy. By the latter they meant the Provisional Government, which, in the words of one Bolshevik speaker, was conniving to surrender the “main bastion of the Revolution to the Kaiser, who, in turn, according to the Bolshevik resolution, was supported in his advance on Petrograd by the Allied Imperialists.”143 To this end, the Bolsheviks proposed that the “Military Defense Committee” should assume full charge of the city’s security against threats from the German “imperialists” as well as from Russian “counterrevolutionaries.”