Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/317

 immediate uprising. Thus, for example, in one of the issues containing the first of a series of these proclamations, Ulyanov-Lenin wrote: 'On the i6th of October, in the morning, I learned that at a very important Bolshevist meeting in Petrograd the question of the uprising was being discussed in detail. At that meeting were present all who were prominent in the Bolshevist activities in the Capital, and only a negligible minority—two comrades—disapproved of the uprising. It is necessary to analyze their arguments and expose the grounds for their hesitation in order to prove how disgraceful they are.' I shall not expatiate on the arguments in favor of an immediate armed uprising, but I must say that this same proclamation ends in the following way: 'What are you going to wait for? Are you waiting for a miracle? Are you waiting for the Constitutional Assembly? Are you waiting, you who are hungry! Kerensky has promised to call the Constitutional Assembly.' In the next appeal the very same Ulyanov definitely puts the question of an immediate uprising, and says that procrastination in this matter is equivalent to death.

"Simultaneously with these appeals, a series of statements were issued by other leaders of the Bolsheviki at a number of meetings at which they called for an immediate armed uprising. In this respect, especially noteworthy are the speeches made by the President of the Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Delegates of Petrograd, Mr. Bronstein-Trotzky, and by some other organizers of the revolt.

"Thus, before the Preliminary Parliament I must state that a certain part of the population of Petrograd is now in a state of insurrection. (Remarks from the Right: "Is that what we have come to!") I have already proposed that a judicial investigation be started at once. (A noise.) I have ordered that arrests be made." (Disturbance on the extreme Left.)

After this speech, the Preliminary Parliament passed a vote of confidence in Kerensky by the small majority of I23 to 102. That night Kerensky ordered the suppression of the extreme radical and the extreme conservative papers, and reactionary soldiers seized the offices of Bolshevist papers. But that was all. The storm broke the next day, November 7, and the insurrection of the revolutionary masses, directed by the Military Revolutionary Committee, dispersed the Preliminary Parliament and swept the Provisional Government into oblivion. There was some bitter fighting; the Bolsheviki seized the telephone and telegraph wires, and besieged the members of the Provisional Government in the Winter Palace;