ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the tactics adopted by the bolsheviks during the period of preparation for the October revolution. Thus it would appear that, as early as March 1917, the bolsheviks already had a political army of workers and peasants ready for action; and if these troops were not sent to the assault either in April, or in June, or in July of that year, this was because the scouts had nothing satisfactory to report. The bolsheviks had not, nay they could not have had in March 1917, a political army ready to put into the field. Thus, the policy of transforming the soviets into an organ of governmental power, in so far as it was the prime method for isolating the parties of the compromisers from the masses and led to the triumph of the dictatorship of the proletariat, was the third characteristic of the bolshevist tactic during the period of preparation for the October revolution.