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then, the masses had realized that their limited aims ("Bread, Peace and Land"), were unachievable while the old order stood. But confidence? In Petrograd the prevailing mood was bitter disillusion not revolution. From differing political perspectives Sukhanov3, Chernov4 and Uritsky5 all describe the apathy. The revolution in Petrograd had already received it's fatal wound in July, when the workers had risen demanding that the Soviets take power and set up an all socialist government, only to be suppressed with troops raised by the Soviet itself. Even in Moscow there was little enthusiasm for a seizure of power.6 There was none of the burning necessity of October 1905 (when there was a general strike throughout Russia demanding a democratic constitution) or the enthusiasm of February 1917. Just a dull inevitability. Even Trotsky quotes Anet with approval who describes October as a "quiet revolution".7 The Bolsheviks were certainly able to whip up support as can be seen by the mass meeting they held in Petrograd at 'Peoples House' just before the October insurrection. But the atmosphere there was one of faith rather than the revolutionary spontaneity of a people discovering their own power.
October was the result of one man, Lenin, who had to drag not merely the toilers but his own party into a battle that few had enthusiasm for. The masses did not take action for themselves but under the control of an elite, albeit an elite bitterly opposed to the old order.
Though less than a revolution October was more than a coup. The proletariat and the soldiers did support the seizure if often only passively. But the peasantry, the largest section of the toilers, were still loyal to the Socialist Revolutionaries, though they hated Kerensky's government.
Popular support for the Bolsheviks did not necessarily mean popular support for a Bolshevik seizure of power. The Bolsheviks in Petrograd seemed to have been counting on a provocation by Kerensky because they feared there was insufficient support for a seizure except for defensive reasons.9 What the workers wished for was not a Bolshevik dictatorship but a government including all socialist parties from the popular socialists to the Bolsheviks.
I quote from Sukhanov a strong opponent of the war and of Kerensky's government but highly critical of the Bolsheviks.
A new revolution was admissible, an uprising was legitimate, the liquidation of the existing regime was indispensable. But all this was so - on condition of a united democratic front. That meant an armed struggle only against big capital and imperialism. It meant only the liquidation of the political and economic rule of the bourgeoisie and the landowners. It did not mean the definitive destruction of the old state and the rejection of its heritage. It meant the plenipotentiary participation of the petty-bourgeois, Menshevik-SR groups in the construction of a new state together with the proletariat and the peasantry. These were all unconditionally essential elements of the new society that was springing up on the ruins of the empire of the exploiting minority. And in [next page]