Russia, Lenin and the Failed July Offensive

After the overthrow of the tsar, Russia's new government abolished the death penalty and ended discrimination based on religious or ethnic affiliation. The government assured freedom of association and assembly. The new government promised Poland that after the war ended it would be independent. Finland – which had been ruled by Russia’s tsar – was guaranteed restoration of its constitutional rights. And the government proclaimed that full civil rights were extended to Russia’s soldiers. But across the new Russia the dissolved police departments and the hated tsarist government administrators were not being replaced. Few people were paying attention to laws. In the countryside, deserters from the military and criminals released from prisons were leading land seizures and attacking isolated estates. Peasants were cutting down trees for wood or stealing seed grain. And peasant soldiers were still deserting, rushing home to get their share.

In the capital, meanwhile, the Provisional Government believed that it could stay in the war. The United States and Britain hoped that the new Russian democracy would contribute to the war effort against Germany and Austria-Hungary, and early after the United States entered the war the Wilson administration told Russia’s Provisional Government that aid would be given to Russia only if it pursued a new offensive. Members of Russia’s Provisional Government were hoping for the benefits to Russia that they believed would come with an Allied victory, and they were especially interested in continuing the war against Germany’s wartime ally, Turkey. Russia’s Eastern Orthodox clergy looked forward to Turkey’s defeat and to Russia winning back Constantinople (Istanbul) for Eastern Orthodox Christianity (Constantinople having been taken by the Ottoman Turks and Islam in 1453).

The Provisional Government laid plans for an offensive in July, 1917. Its Minister of War, Alexander Kerensky, was among those applying "lessons" of history. He believed that the overthrow of the tsar made possible a new morale among Russia’s military, as had happened among the French during its revolution and when ancient Athens became a democracy. Circumstances were working against Russia that were different from those faced by revolutionary France or the democracy of ancient Athens, but Kerensky remained hopeful. He made speeches to the troops, calling them his comrades in revolution and telling them they could turn things around on the Eastern Front.

In preparing for the July offensive, the Minister of War, Kerensky, was trying to restore discipline in the army, which led many soldiers to lose faith in the new government. Russia’s armies were still no match for Germany’s defensive line in the east, and all Kerensky’s work came to naught. Russia’s July offensive began with gains against the Austrians, but the offensive fell apart under a German counter offensive.

In violation of the agreements made when the tsar was overthrown, regiments in Petrograd were ordered to the front to help the failed offensive. Soldiers in Petrograd took to the streets, and the revolt was joined by 6,000 sailors from the nearby Kronstadt naval base. Soldiers repeated the Bolshevik’s call for "all power to the Soviets," and the Bolsheviks supported their revolt. The Provisional Government announced evidence they had of Bolshevik dealings with the Germans, which stunned the soldiers. Then what had not happened for the tsar happened for the Provisional Government: troops loyal to the government entered Petrograd and quelled the rising there. Numerous Bolsheviks were arrested, and some soldiers from Petrograd were sent to the front. The office of the Bolshevik newspaper, Pravda, was wrecked, and an order went out for the arrest of Lenin, who went into hiding.

After the failed Russian offensive, the Germans began a slow advance that appeared to the Provisional Government as a threat to Petrograd. Kerensky was elevated to Prime Minister, and he wanted to make a separate peace with Germany, but he yielded to objections from the United States, Britain and France.

Kerensky began sending forces into the countryside to restore order there – a reasonable endeavor for a Prime Minister, except that it needed more manpower than he was willing or able to apply. Then Kerensky accused one of his generals, Lvar Kornilov, of plotting a coup. Kerensky feared a general overthrowing the Russian revolution just as Napoleon had ended the French Revolution. He charged Kornilov with treason. Kornilov, who had been loyal and somewhat progressive, was outraged and made true Kerensky’s accusation: he called for the people of Russia to rally behind him to save the country from Kerensky and the Germans.

Some who believed that Kerensky was not using strong enough measures to reestablish order sided with Kornilov. Others began joining forces against what they saw as an attempt at counter-revolution. Fearing counter-revolution, Kerensky sought as much help as he could get from those who supported the revolution against the Tsar, including the Bolsheviks. The government released Bolsheviks from prison, and it released from prison an ally of the Bolsheviks, Leon Trotsky, a skilled writer and orator, a revolutionary who had been a leading figure in the popular rising in 1905.

Trotsky and the Bolsheviks armed all of those they could who were sympathetic to preventing counter-revolution. Kerensky’s government arrested prominent generals for conspiring with Kornilov. Military officers abandoned any support they had had for the Provisional Government and Kerensky. Kornilov sent an army of Cossacks under General Krymov toward Petrograd. Workers and soldiers met Krymov’s army and talked many in Krymov’s army into abandoning their drive on Petrograd. Defeated, Kornilov and some other generals were arrested and jailed, and General Krymov killed himself with his revolver.

By now opinion in the Soviets had shifted in favor of an immediate end of the war and taking governmental power away from the Provisional Government. The swing in sentiment in the Petrograd Soviet elevated Leon Trotsky to chairman. Then, on September 18, the Bolsheviks won a majority in the Moscow Soviet. And on September 23 they won a majority in the Petrograd Soviet.

Still in hiding, Lenin was aware that the Provisional Government had lost effective power. With the Bolsheviks having majority support in the Petrograd Soviet, it was time, he believed, to take power on behalf of the soviets. Bolshevik leaders around Lenin, namely Kamenev and Zinoviev, feared another premature attempted coup like the one in July, and they opposed such a move. Trotsky supported Lenin. Lenin won enough of his fellow Bolshevik leaders to his side to make his move. And joining the Bolsheviks and Trotsky were their allies in the Soviets, an agrarian political party favoring social revolution known as the Left SRs.

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