uld return home in peace. These proposals resonated deeply with the Russian people in mid-1917, and they hastened the political transformation of the soviets from institutions supporting liberal parliamentarianism into institutions promoting revolutionary socialism. In July, massive Bolshevik-inspired demonstrations that called for the overthrow of the Provisional Government were brutally suppressed by loyal army troops. Lenin and much of the Bolshevik leadership went into hiding. They recovered when an army under General Lavr Kornilov (1870–1918) moved to attack Petrograd, and Kerensky offered amnesty and arms to those who would defend the city. Bolsheviks recruited a militia of 25,000 to defend Petrograd and persuaded Kornilov’s troops to desert and join the revolution. As a consequence, the Bolsheviks’ prestige with the citizenry grew, and they and their allies in the military were well armed and in a stronger position than ever before.
In early October, after much internal debate, the Bolshevik Central Committee decided to seize control of the state apparatus by means of an insurrection directed against the Provisional Government and so end the situation of dual power. Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) and others made preparations for the uprising, however, a date was not set. Kerensky was also interested in ending the situation of dual power and moved against the Bolsheviks on October 22, ordering the arrest of their Military Revolutionary Committee, banning their press, and cutting the telephone lines to their headquarters at the Smolny Institute. The Bolshevik Central Committee decided to put its plan to overthrow the government into action on October 24. Bolshevik Red Guards occupied key locations in the city and surrounded the Winter Palace, where the Provisional Government had its headquarters. Sailors on warships in the harbor supported the Bolsheviks’ land forces, and the Provisional Government collapsed. The uprising was a success, and Bolshevik-led forces were in control of Russia’s capital by October 26. The Russian Revolution was over, but it took the Bolsheviks 3 more years and a bloody civil war to consolidate their power in the former Russian Empire.
Bolsheviks; Lenin, V. I.; Marx, Karl; Marxist Theory; Trotsky, Leon
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