ABSTRACT
The main beneficiaries of the Kornilov affair were the Bolsheviks. Their warnings against the threat of counter-revolution appeared to have been vindicated. Bolshevik majorities in the Petrograd Soviet on 31 August and the Moscow Soviet on 5 September testified to their rapidly growing support. At the very beginning of September, from his self-imposed exile in Finland, Lenin also resurrected the political strategy that he had persuaded the Party to abandon in the wake of the July Days, namely, ‘All Power to the Soviets!’ (see Document 4.8). More curiously, he also held out the prospect of the peaceful establishment of soviet power, provided the Mensheviks and SRs steeled themselves to form a government responsible to the Soviets.
