ABSTRACT
Late evening, 24 October 1917 (6 November, New Style). Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov-Lenin is fuming in the Petrograd apartment where he has been hiding from the police of the Provisional Government. His Bolshevik lieutenants in the Smolny Institute, the former school for aristocratic girls commandeered by the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies to serve as its headquarters, have been dragging their feet in the face of the stream of messages he has been sending them urging them to seize power. They have preferred to wait for the impending Congress of Soviets, representing local Soviets all over the country, to vote itself into power in place of Alexander Kerensky’s shaky regime.
