ABSTRACT

It is no exaggeration to say that without Trotsky there would have been no successful Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. As the power of Kerensky and the Provisional Government visibly crumbled in September and October of that year, it was Trotsky who understood how an insurrection could be staged without provoking violent counter-measures. Both Lenin and Trotsky had been consistently calling for insurrection since the defeat of General Kornilov’s attempted military coup at the end of August, but the two men had understood that insurrection differently. Lenin had in mind a classic military operation staged by the Bolshevik Party’s own Military Organisation; Trotsky felt that, for all the popularity of the Bolshevik Party among workers and soldiers, they were far more responsive to what they saw as their own organisation, the Petrograd Soviet. Therefore, for the insurrection to be successful, its organiser had to be the soviet, not the Bolshevik Party. It was Trotsky, once he had become the soviet’s president in September, who realised that organisation’s potential for forming a Military Revolutionary Committee. Then it would be the committee’s task both to organise resistance to Kerensky’s orders and to start making the preparations to overthrow him. In Trotsky’s own jargon, he realised that a successful revolution had to begin on the defensive and only gradually move on to the offensive.