Unable to tolerate what was going on, in agonies at his distance from the action, Lenin disobeyed a direct CC instruction. He decided to set out for the Finnish city of Vyborg (sharing its name with the district of the Russian capital), eighty miles from Petrograd. From there he would plot his way back into the heart of things.
He needed a disguise. Kustaa Rovio escorted him to a Helsingfors wigmaker, who threatened to scupper the pressing plan by insisting it would take a fortnight to personalise something suitable. The shopkeeper was flabbergasted to see Lenin impatiently fingering a ready-made grey hairpiece. Most buyers were attempting to rejuvenate themselves: this would have the opposite effect. But Lenin rebuffed all the man’s attempts to dissuade him. For a long time after that day, the wigmaker would tell the story of the youngish client who had wanted to look old.
In Vyborg, Lenin stayed a few weeks at 15 Alexanderinkatu, in the brick-making area of the city. He spent his days reading newspapers and writing, lodged in the shared dwelling of the socialist Latukka and Koikonen families. A solicitous and undemanding guest, the scourge of the established order quickly made himself popular. When at last – after more than one ferocious argument with the CC’s emissary, Shotman – he insisted on returning to Petrograd, the Latukkas and Koikonens were sad to see him go.
On the 19th, after four days of arguments about the future government and a gruelling five-hour roll call, the Democratic Conference at last voted on the principle of coalition with the bourgeoisie.
It was no surprise that the overrepresented moderates had it: the vote went 766 to 688 for coalition, with 38 abstentions. However, straight after this passed, delegates had to discuss two competing amendments.
The first insisted that those Kadets and others complicit in the Kornilov Affair be excluded from coalition; the second that the entirety of the Kadet party, as counterrevolutionaries, be excluded tout court.
The Bolsheviks, along with Martov, sensed an opportunity. They spoke for both amendments, no matter that they were not complementary.
There was tense, confused debate. But those who were deemed to have collaborated with Kornilov had come to be so roundly despised that when the votes came, both amendments passed. This meant the altered proposal had to be voted on anew. As doubly amended, it declared in favour of coalition with the bourgeoisie, but now on the basis that this should be without the participation of Kornilovites, including implicated Kadets; and, incoherently, that it should be without any Kadets at all.
The latter condition was unacceptable to the right moderates, who could not envisage any coalition without Kadets, and they therefore voted against. As, of course, did the left, because (though many had voted for at least one, if not both) these amendments were essentially irrelevant to them: they remained implacably opposed to any such coalition at all with the representatives of property. This absurd, temporary alliance of right and left in the conference ensured that the motion was overwhelmingly rejected.
No conclusion had been reached. Nothing was settled.
The man with whom the moderates urged coalition, Kerensky, remained pitifully weak, and growing weaker. He struggled, lashed out to shore up his authority. On 18 September he pronounced the dissolution of the Central Committee of the Baltic Fleet. The sailors responded simply that his order was ‘considered inoperative’.
The Democratic Conference, too, strained for relevance. After an exhausting all-day presidium session to deal with the unhelpful results of the vote on the 19th, a new presidium vote on coalition produced a split of fifty in favour and sixty against.
Almost unbelievably, with Beckettian comedy, faithful to some autotelic cycle of committee-generative committees, Tsereteli proposed establishing yet another body. This one, he said, would decide the make-up of a future cabinet, based on the Soviet’s political programme agreed on 14 August. The Bolsheviks (alone) had opposed this programme – but even their leadership, even now, still straining for the collaboration that Lenin had declared impossible, agreed to the formation of this ‘Democratic Council’, or Preparliament.
Which the presidium promptly voted must include propertied elements.
The previous day, Conference had approved coalition, but rejected coalition with Kadets. Now they rejected coalition, while mooting political cooperation with the bourgeoisie, including Kadets. The proceedings were outdoing their own absurdity.
The mechanisms, members and powers of the Preparliament were complicated and provisional, but that door did remain open to working with the right. A self-selecting team of moderates – since the left firmly opposed any such involvement of the bourgeoisie – were granted authority to meet with the government to decide a way forward.
And yet, despite all this, the Bolshevik CC decided on the 21st not to walk out of the Democratic Conference. They did vote among themselves against participating in the Preparliament, but so narrowly – by nine votes to eight – that they felt they must take the debate further, and convened an emergency meeting with delegates to discuss the issue.
Trotsky spoke for boycott, Rykov against. When after a stormy caucus the vote came, it was seventy-five to fifty in favour of taking part in the Preparliament.
Small wonder many Bolsheviks, particularly of the left, were sceptical of this decision. The very next day, as if to goad them, the unelected Preparliament commenced negotiations with Kerensky and his cabinet – and with representatives of the Kadets.
But the officials of the bourgeoisie with whom it negotiated would not accept the Soviet’s moderate 14 August programme. Nor would they agree to the Preparliament having any formal powers, insisting it should be merely consultative. In the face of this intransigence, Trotsky put to the newly inaugurated Preparliament a repudiation of their negotiations with the cabinet. But on the 23rd, this was easily defeated, and the negotiations themselves, albeit narrowly, were endorsed.
It was increasingly clear to Bolsheviks that other arenas of struggle might prove more congenial. They successfully demanded that the Soviet Central Executive Committee convene a nationwide Congress of Soviets in Petrograd, the next month. With what was surely relief, the party subordinated preparliamentary work to the tasks of building that October Congress, and of mobilising for the transfer of power to the soviets.