We term the uprising “legal” in the sense that it grew out of the “normal” conditions of dual power. When the appeasers [SRs and Mensheviks] were in charge of the Petrograd Soviet it happened more than once that the Soviet checked and corrected the government’s decisions. This [practice], as it were, formed part of the constitution of the regime known to history as “Kerenskyism.” We Bolsheviks, having taken power in the Petrograd Soviet, merely expanded and deepened the methods of dual power. We took it upon ourselves to check the order concerning the dispatch of the garrison [to the front]. In this manner, we concealed behind the traditions and practices of dual power what was a de facto rising of the Petrograd garrison. Moreover, by formally timing in our agitation the question of power to coincide with the moment of the Second Congress of Soviets, we developed and deepened the established traditions of dual power, preparing the framework of Soviet legality for the Bolshevik uprising on an all-Russian scale.230
Part of the deception was to keep hidden the socialist objective of the October coup: no official document issued in the first week of the new regime, when it felt still very unsure of itself, used the word “socialism.” That this was deliberate practice and not oversight may be seen from the fact that in the original draft of the October 25 announcement declaring the Provisional Government deposed, Lenin had written the slogan “Long Live Socialism!” but then thought better of it and crossed it out.231 The earliest official use of “socialism” occurred in a document written by Lenin and dated November 2, which stated that “the Central Committee has complete faith in the triumph of the socialist revolution.”232
All this had the effect of lulling the sense that something drastic had happened, allaying public apprehension and inhibiting active resistance. How prevalent was ignorance of the meaning of the October coup may be illustrated by the reaction of the Petrograd Stock Exchange. According to the contemporary press, the Stock Exchange was “entirely unimpressed” by the change of regimes or even the subsequent announcement that Russia had had a socialist revolution. Although in the days immediately following the coup there was little trading in securities, prices held firm. The only indication of nervousness was the sharp fall in the value of the ruble: between October 23 and November 4, the ruble lost one-half of its foreign exchange value, declining from 6.20 to 12–14 to the U.S. dollar.233
The fall of the Provisional Government caused few regrets: eyewitnesses report that the population reacted to it with complete indifference. This was true even in Moscow, where the Bolsheviks had to overcome stiff opposition: here the disappearance of the government is said to have gone unnoticed. The man on the street seemed to feel that it made no difference who was in charge since things could not possibly get any worse.234
*Few subjects have aroused such interest among historians of the Russian Revolution, and the literature on it is correspondingly voluminous. The principal source materials have been published in D. A. Chugaev, ed., Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v Rossii v avguste 1917g.: Razgrom Kornilov-skogo miatezha (Moscow, 1959), esp. 419–72, and Revoliutsiia, IV, passim. Kerensky’s account is in Deh Kornilova (Ekaterinoslav, 1918) (in English: The Prelude to Bolshevism, New York, 1919); Boris Savinkov’s, in K delu Kornilova (Paris, 1919). Of the secondary literature, especially informative are: E. I. Martynov’s partisan but richly documented Kornilov (Leningrad, 1927), P. N. Miliukov’s Istoriia Vtoroi Russkoi Revoliutsii, I, Pt. 2 (Sofia, 1921), and George Katkov’s The Kornilov Affair (London-New York, 1980).
*This is also the opinion of General Martynov, who observed these events at close range and studied the archival evidence: Kornilov, 100. Cf. N. N. Golovin, Rossiiskaia kontr-revoliutsiia v 1917–1918 gg., I, pt. 2 (Tallinn, 1937), 37.
*His conviction that the government was riddled with disloyal elements and possibly enemy agents was reinforced by the leak to the press of a confidential memorandum which he had submitted to the government at this time. The left-wing press published excerpts from it and launched against Kornilov a campaign of vilification: Martynov, Kornilov, 48.
*In private conversation with the author, Kerensky conceded that his actions in 1917 had been strongly influenced by the lessons of the French Revolution.
*According to the paper (No. 189, p. 3), the government believed this would be an all-out Bolshevik effort.
*The original deposition of Lvov, drawn up on September 14, 1917, is reproduced in Chugaev, ed., Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v avguste, 425–28. His recollections, published in PN in November and December 1920, are reprinted in A. Kerensky and R. Browder, eds., The Russian Provisional Government 1917, III (Stanford, Calif., 1961), 1558–68. After Vladimir Nabokov père wrote a letter to Poslednie novosti dismissing Lvov’s account of a conversation with him as “nonsense” (PN, No. 199, December 15, 1920, 3), their publication was terminated. Lvov returned to Russia in 1921 or 1922 and joined the renegate “Living Church.”
†Kerensky gave an account of his exchanges with Lvov to the commission investigating the Kornilov Affair on October 8, 1917. He later published it, with commentaries, in Delo Kornilova, 83–86.
‡This is the opinion of Golovin: Kontr-revoliutsiia, I, Pt. 2, 25. Lvov later claimed that he had requested and received from Kerensky authority to negotiate with his associates provided he acted with great discretion and in utmost secrecy: PN, No. 190 (December 4, 1920), 2. Given Kerensky’s subsequent activities, such behavior would not have been out of character. Even more likely is the connivance of Nekrasov, Kerensky’s closest adviser, who played a major role in exacerbating the conflict between the two men.
*Martynov, Kornilov, 84–85. In his deposition, Lvov said that Aladin’s memorandum represented “not my positions but Aladin’s conclusions from my words”: Chugaev, Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v avguste, 426.
*Accounts of this meeting: Kerensky, Delo Kornilova, 132–36, and Miliukov, Istoriia I, Pt. 2, 204–5. Miliukov talked to Lvov immediately before and after his meeting with the Prime Minister.
*Miliukov, Istoriia, I, Pt. 2, 213. Unlike Kerensky, Kornilov later admitted that he had acted thoughtlessly in not asking Kerensky to spell out what Lvov had conveyed to him on his behalf: A. S. Lukomskii, Vospominaniia, I (Berlin, 1922), 240.
†He spent the night in a room adjoining the Alexander III suite occupied by the Prime Minister, who kept him awake bellowing operatic arias. He was later placed under house arrest and treated by a psychiatrist: Izvestiia, No. 201 (October 19, 1917), 5.