THE OCTOBER DAYS 1917

THE STORY OF THE ESTABLISHMENT OF SOVIET POWER
BY I. MINTZ
Published by Workers Library Publishers, Inc.
October, 1940

CONTENTS
The Second Kornilov Plot 
The New Phase of Struggle
Toward Soviet Power
Preparations for Insurrection
Preparations in the Provinces
The International Situation
The Revolutionary Military Committee Is Formed
The Zinoviev-Kamenev Treachery
The Arming of the Workers
The Decisive Hours
Lenin at Smolny
Kerensky’s Flight
Power Passes to the Soviets
Why the Revolution Was Victorious

On September 15, 1917,[1] the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, the headquarters of which were then in Petrograd, received two letters from Lenin through the usual secret channels. The leader of the Revolution, who had been obliged to go into hiding, insisted that the Bolsheviks take state power into their own hands.

What were the circumstances that gave rise to this demand? What changes in class relationships impelled the Bolsheviks to raise the question of capturing power at that particular moment?

The Kornilov revolt in August, 1917, had been suppressed, and General Kornilov himself with his confreres – Generals Denikin, Lukomsky, Erdeli, Markov, et al – were under arrest. But General Alexeyev, who had been a party to the Kornilov plot, had been appointed Chief of Staff of General Headquarters. As for the proceedings against Kornilov himself, they were being conducted in such a manner that the General appeared as accuser rather than accused. He was given free access to all secret documents, and through the medium of proxies was able to publish whatever he found necessary about the trial. His “jail” was the building of the Girls’ School in Bykhov, and his guard the Tekinsky Regiment, which had but recently been his personal bodyguard.

Under such a “prison” regime and with so “watchful” a guard, Kornilov, who had the advantage of being freed from the difficult and arduous task of commanding an army, could analyze his defeat at leisure and elaborate new plans. Dispatch riders were constantly scurrying between Bykhov and General Headquarters of the Russian army; officers visited Kornilov freely, supplying him with important information and news. Influential bankers and representatives of foreign powers visited him in “jail.” All this afforded Kornilov the opportunity of elaborating a new plan of attack on the revolution – the second Kornilov plot. This time Kornilov and the counter-revolutionary forces that were back of him endeavored to concoct a much more thorough-going plan of action involving incomparably greater forces. In August it had been planned to throw a mere corps of from 15,000 to 20,000 men against Petrograd. Now all plans were based on hundreds of thousands, to include, in the first place, the Shock Battalions, consisting of approximately 50,000 picked men recommended by their officers, the Junker Schools, the Officers’ Training Schools and the senior grades of the Cadet Corps, numbering from 45,000 to 50,000 excellently equipped men, and the cavalry divisions, mainly Cossack units. In addition particular attention was accorded the Czechoslovak Corps, which the tsarist government had begun to form, but which had actually been fully organized under the Provisional Government. By October this Corps numbered over 30,000 men trained on the French model and commanded by picked officers. The Corps was disposed on the right bank of the Dnieper, so that it could easily occupy all the railroad junctions and cut off the southwestern front from Petrograd and Moscow, which were preparing to rise.

Besides these forces, there was the Polish Corps, under General Dowber-Musnicki. This corps was made up of Poles who had seen regular service in the old army and had been recommended by two Polish officers. There were three times as many officers in it as in any regular army corps. It is not difficult to understand what side the Polish Corps was on under these circumstances. The Corps was stationed in Byelorussia. In the event of an uprising in Petrograd, it could quickly cut off the western front and hold up any troop trains that attempted to go to the assistance of the insurgent workers.

[1] September 28, 1917, New Style. All dates in this book are Old Style, a difference of thirteen days (in the twentieth century) from the now universal Gregorian calendar. – Ed.

The Second Kornilov Plot