On the 4th, the Bolshevik left showed its strength. On Petrograd’s Mars Field, the party held a rally in honour of the fallen of February. Alongside the Kronstadt sailors, the MO had organised hundreds of troops from the Moskovsky, Grenadier, Pavlovsky, Finlyandsky, Sixth Engineer, 180th Infantry, and First Machine Gun regiments. In his speech on behalf of the MO, Semashko pointedly praised the radicalism of Kronstadt – to an audience that included Krylenko of the Bolshevik CC, which had chided the soldiers, and the caution of which was provoking such exasperation among radicals.
Two days later, at a joint meeting with the CC and executive of the Petersburg Comittee, the MO again proposed an armed demonstration. At this point Lenin was in favour; Kamenev, ever cautious, was against, as were several others on the Petersburg Committee, including Zinoviev. Even Krupskaya, unusually, took a different line from Lenin – in her view the demonstration was unlikely to be peaceful, so perhaps, given the risks of it escalating beyond the party’s control, it should not go ahead.
In the end the leadership made no decision. A decision would soon be made for them.
The Bolsheviks were the most organised and largest group on the far left, but they were not the only one. To their own left were groups of anarchists of various sizes, inclinations and degrees of influence. Decidedly a minority current, anarchism nonetheless enjoyed localised support across the empire, with various strongholds, such as Odessa – and Petrograd.
There in the capital, the most radical and influential were the Anarchist–Communists. Some of their leaders were held in esteem, like Iosif Bleikhman, a fiery, unkempt, charismatic figure who spoke his native Russian with what Trotsky described as a ‘Jewish-American accent’ which his audiences enjoyed, and Shlema Asnin, a respected militant with the First Machine Gun Regiment, a dark-bearded former thief who dressed like a gothic cowboy, wide-brimmed hat, guns and all.
In the same chaotic expropriatory post-February wave during which the Bolsheviks moved into the Kshesinskaya Mansion, revolutionaries had taken and retooled the Vyborg summer home of the official P. P. Durnovo. Its gardens were now a park, with facilities for local children, and the building was hung with black banners reading ‘Death to all capitalists’. The house was the headquarters of several groups including the district bakers’ union, some far-left SR-Maximalists, and an Anarchist–Bolshevik group grandly styling itself the Soviet of the Petrograd People’s Militia. This last, desiring better facilities to produce its leaflets, on 5 June decided with staggering chutzpah to send eighty gun-toting members to occupy the press of the right-wing Russkaya volia. After only a day, two regiments easily forced them out. But the authorities were ruffled. Up with these anarchists, they decided, they would not put.
On the 7th, Minister of Justice P. N. Perevezev issued them a deadline of twenty-four hours to vacate their villa. The anarchists appealed to Vyborg workers for protection. It is a measure of the moment, and of the respect these anarchists commanded, that the next day saw sizeable armed demonstrations in support. Several thousand workers came out on their behalf, closing twenty-eight factories.
The contradictions of the Soviet immediately resurfaced. The Ispolkom, the Executive Committee, lobbied by workers’ delegations, asked Perevezev to rescind his ultimatum while they looked into the matter: simultaneously, they drafted an appeal to the demonstrators to return to work. Meanwhile the delegates to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets overwhelmingly voted for full cooperation with and support for Lvov’s government, and prohibited armed demonstrations without Soviet authorisation.
Such a commitment to maintaining order was, to the Bolsheviks, an irresistible opportunity for agitation: the party hurriedly brought forward to the evening of that day, the 8th, a discussion between the CC, the Petersburg Committee, the MO, and representatives of regiments, trade unions and factories of the MO’s proposal. Now, by 131 votes to 6, with 22 abstentions, the meeting agreed that the moment was propitious for organising a demonstration.
The size of this majority, though, disguised unease. Asked to vote on whether there was a general inclination among people to come out, and also on whether the masses would do so against Soviet opposition, the results were much less clear-cut. To the first question, the ayes had it, but only by fifty-eight to thirty-seven, with almost as many abstentions – fifty-two – as voted yes. To the second question, the affirmative margin was tiny: forty-seven to forty-two. And this time, among a group of militants not renowned for sitting on their hands, there were almost as many abstained as voted for yes and no combined: eighty. This bespoke immense uncertainty about the demonstration’s chances in the face of Soviet disapproval.
Still, the decision was made. The demonstration would go ahead at 2 p.m. on Saturday 10 June, which left only one day to organise. The call was to go out the next morning. A special edition of the MO daily paper, Soldatskaya pravda – a starker, blunter publication than Pravda, with a less educated reader in mind – was quickly prepared, containing routes, instructions and slogans. The key demand would be the end of dvoevlastie, Dual Power, and the transfer of all power to the Soviet.
That night, in an unrelated crackdown against militants, the authorities arrested Khaustov, editor of the Bolshevik MO’s frontline paper, Okopnaya pravda, and charged him with treason for writing against a military offensive. His incarceration would not, as we shall see, be without consequence.
The Anarchist–Communists, of course, were fully behind the upcoming demonstration. Late in the afternoon, the Mezhraiontsy were informed of the plans, and with Trotsky supporting them and over the objections of Lunacharsky, they voted to join the preparations. Across the capital, within military units and factories, Bolshevik agitators tabled resolutions in favour of coming out – and, for the most part, they won them, not least because, given that they were a minority within it, their call for all power to the Soviet did not appear partisan.
However, one important group remained in the dark. Almost unbelievably, in what was either a lamentable oversight or some ill-thought-through machination, the party’s organisers failed to alert their own Bolshevik delegates to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets.
At around 3 p.m. on the 9th, Bolshevik leaflets about the demonstration hit the streets. At once, the Coalition Government appealed for law and order, and warned that force would be met by stern force. It was only now, as word spread, that the Bolshevik Congress delegates got wind of the plans. Tacking somewhat to the right of their Petrograd comrades in general, many had concerns at the politics behind the decision: besides which they were, unsurprisingly, incandescent at their treatment.