Surprised by the way the Bolsheviks reformulated Broido’s proposal and knowing why they did so, the Mensheviks resolutely opposed the amendment. Defense of the city was the responsibility of the government and its Military Staff. But the Plenum preferred the Bolshevik version and voted for the formation of a “Revolutionary Committee of Defense”
to gather in its hands all the forces participating in the defense of Petrograd and its approaches [as well as] to take all measures to arm the workers, in this manner ensuring both the revolutionary defense of Petrograd and the security of the people against the openly prepared assault of the military and civilian Kornilovites.144
This extraordinary resolution adroitly combined the newly formed committee’s responsibility for meeting the real threat posed by the German armies with the imaginary one from the supporters of Kornilov, who were nowhere in sight. The Mensheviks and SRs now reaped the harvest of their demagoguery, their insistence on the “bourgeois” character of the Provisional Government and their obsessive concern with the counterrevolution.
The vote had decisive importance. Trotsky later claimed that it sealed the fate of the Provisional Government: it represented, in his words, a “silent” or “dry” revolution that gained the Bolsheviks “three-quarters if not nine-tenths” of the victory consummated on October 25–26.145
The matter was still not completely settled, however, because the decision of the Plenum required the approval of the Ispolkom and the entire Soviet. At a closed session of the Ispolkom on October 12, the two Menshevik representatives assailed the Bolshevik resolution, but they again suffered defeat, the body backing the Plenum’s decision unanimously, against their two votes. The Ispolkom renamed the new organization the Military-Revolutionary Committee (Voenno-Revoliutsionnyi Komitet, or Milrevkom for short) and empowered it to take charge of the defenses of the city.146
The issue was formally sealed at the meeting of the Soviet on October 16. To deflect attention from themselves, the Bolsheviks nominated as drafter of the resolution establishing the Milrevkom an unknown young paramedic, the Left SR P. E. Lazimir. The SRs, who belatedly awoke to the significance of the Bolshevik maneuver, sought, without success, to obtain a delay in the vote, probably to assemble their absent delegates; when this motion failed, they abstained. Broido once again warned that the Milrevkom was a deception, its true mission being not to defend Petrograd but to carry out a seizure of power. Trotsky diverted the attention of the Soviet by citing passages from a newspaper interview with Rodzianko, which he chose to interpret to mean that the onetime chairman of the Duma (who in any event held no post in the government) would welcome a German occupation of Petrograd.147 The Bolsheviks nominated Lazimir to chair the Milrevkom, with Podvoiskii as his deputy (on the eve of the October coup Podvoiskii would formally assume leadership of the organization).* The remaining members of the Milrevkom are difficult to ascertain: they seem to have been exclusively Bolsheviks and Left SRs.† But it did not much matter who was on the Milrevkom since it was only a flag of convenience for the true organizer of the coup, the Bolshevik Military Organization.
Trotsky now launched a war of nerves. When Dan requested the Bolsheviks to state clearly in the Soviet whether or not they were preparing an uprising, as rumored, Trotsky maliciously asked whether he wanted this information for the benefit of Kerensky and his counterintelligence. “We are told that we are organizing a staff for the seizure of power. We make no secret of this.…”148 Two days later, however, he asserted that if an insurrection were to take place, the Petrograd Soviet would make the decision: “We still have not decided on an insurrection.”149
The deliberate ambivalence of these statements notwithstanding, the Soviet had been put on notice. The socialists either did not hear what Trotsky was saying or resigned themselves to the inevitability of a Bolshevik “adventure.” They feared Bolshevik actions much less than possible right-wing responses, which would sweep them along with Lenin’s followers. On the eve of the Bolshevik coup (October 19), the Military Organization of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party in Petrograd adopted a “neutral” position on the anticipated uprising. A circular note sent to its members and sympathizers in the garrison urged them to stay away from demonstrations and to be “fully prepared for the merciless suppression … of possible assaults by the Black Hundreds, pogromists, and counterrevolutionaries.”150 This left no doubt where the SR leaders saw the main threat to democracy.
Trotsky kept Petrograd in a state of constant tension, promising, warning, threatening, cajoling, inspiring. Sukhanov describes a typical scene he witnessed during those days:
The mood of the audience of over three thousand, filling the hall, was definitely one of excitement; their hush indicated expectation. The public, of course, consisted mainly of workers and soldiers, though it had not a few typical petty bourgeois figures, male and female.
63. The Military-Revolutionary Committee (Milrevkom), which staged the Bolshevik coup in October 1917. In center, Chairman Podvoiskii. On his right, Nevskii. On the extreme right, Raskolnikov.
The ovation given Trotsky seemed to have been cut short out of curiosity and impatience: what was he going to say? Trotsky at once began to heat up the atmosphere with his skill and brilliance. I recall that he depicted for a long time and with extraordinary force the difficult … picture of suffering in the trenches. Through my mind flashed thoughts about the unavoidable contradictions between the parts of this rhetorical whole. But Trotsky knew what he was doing. The essential thing was the mood. The political conclusions had been familiar for a long time …
Soviet power [Trotsky said] was destined not only to put an end to the suffering in the trenches. It would provide land and stop internal disorder. Once again resounded the old recipes against hunger: how the soldiers, sailors, and working girls would requisition the bread from the propertied, and send it free of charge to the front.… But on this decisive “Day of the Petrograd Soviet” [October 22] Trotsky went further:
“The Soviet government will give everything the country has to the poor and to the soldiers at the front. You, bourgeois, own two coats? Give one to the soldier freezing in the trenches. You have warm boots? Stay at home. Your boots are needed by a worker …”
The mood around me verged on ecstasy. It seemed that the mob would at any moment, spontaneously and unasked, burst into some kind of religious hymn. Trotsky formulated a short general resolution or proclaimed some general formula, on the order of: “We will defend the cause of the workers and peasants to the last drop of blood.”
Who is in favor? The crowd of thousands raised its hands like one man. I saw the uplifted hands and burning eyes of men, women, adolescents, workers, soldiers, peasants, and typical petty bourgeois figures …
[They] agreed. [They] vowed … I watched this truly grandiose spectacle with an unusually heavy heart.151
By October 16, the Bolsheviks had at their disposal two organizations, each nominally subject to the Soviet: the Military-Revolutionary Committee to carry out the coup and the forthcoming Second Congress of Soviets to legitimize it. They had by now effectively superseded the authority of the Provisional Government in the Military Staff and that of the Ispolkom in the soviets. The Milrevkom and the Congress of Soviets were to carry out the Bolshevik decision, taken in deep secrecy on October 10, to seize power.