Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
On 3 April, Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin arrived at the Finland Station from
exile in Switzerland. Lenin's passage across enemy lines had been arranged by Ger-
man generals, who hoped that he would stir things up at home, and thus distract Rus-
sia from its participation in the war. As expected, Lenin upset the political status quo
as soon as he arrived. His rabid revolutionary rhetoric polarised Petrograd. In the
Soviet, the Bolshevik faction went from cooperative to confrontational. But even his
radical pals dismissed Lenin as a stinging gadfly, rather than a serious foe. By sum-
mer's end, Lenin had proved them wrong.
The Provisional Government not only refused to withdraw from the war but, at the
instigation of the allies, launched a new offensive - prompting mass desertions at the
front. Meanwhile, the economic situation continued to deteriorate. The same anarchic
anger that fuelled the February Revolution was felt on the streets again. Lenin's
Bolsheviks were the only political party in sync with the public mood. September
elections in the Petrograd Soviet gave the Bolsheviks a majority.
Lenin had spent his entire adult life waiting for this moment. For 20 years he did
little else than read, write and rant about revolution. He enjoyed Beethoven, but
avoided listening to his music from concern that the sentiment it evoked would make
him lose his revolutionary edge. A successful revolution, Lenin observed, had two
preconditions: first, the oppressed classes were politically mobilised and ready to act;
and, second, the ruling class was internally divided and questioned its will to contin-
ue. This politically explosive combination now existed. If the Bolsheviks waited any
longer, he feared, the Provisional Government would get its act together and impose a
new bourgeois political order, ending his dream of socialist revolution in Russia. On
25 October the Bolsheviks staged their coup. According to Lenin's chief accomplice
and coup organiser, Leon Trotsky, 'power was lying in the streets, waiting for
someone to pick it up'. Bolshevik Red Guards seized a few buildings and strategic
points. The Provisional Government was holed up in the tsar's private dining room in
the Winter Palace, protected by a few Cossacks, the Petrograd chapter of the Women's
Battalion of Death, and a one-legged commander of a bicycle regiment. Before
dessert could be served, their dodgy defences cracked. Mutinous mariners fired a
the assault; and the Red Guards - led by Lenin - moved in on the Winter Palace.
Three shells struck the building, bullet holes riddled the square side of the palace and
a window was shattered on the 3rd floor before the Provisional Government was ar-
