The only real piece of evidence in support of the ‘failed putsch’ thesis comes from Sukhanov’s memoirs, written in 1920. Sukhanov claimed that on 7 July Lunacharsky had told him that, on the night of 3–4 July:
Lenin was definitely planning a coup d’étât. The Government, which would in fact be in the hands of the Bolshevik Central Committee, would officially be embodied in a ‘Soviet’ Cabinet made up of eminent and popular Bolsheviks. For the time being three Ministers had been appointed: Lenin, Trotsky and Lunacharsky … The coup d’étât itself was to proceed in this way: the 176th Regiment … from Krasnoe Selofn4 was to arrest the [Soviet] Executive, and at about that time Lenin was to arrive on the scene of action and proclaim the new Government.
Sukhanov himself was the first to acknowledge that ‘some elementary facts’ told against this version — namely the Bolsheviks’ failure to carry through their seizure of power on 4 July, when there were ample opportunities for them to do so. On the face of the evidence, it does appear that the Central Committee had anything but a clear plan. In a manner underestimated by all historians, the events of 4 July were characterized by almost total confusion. The Bolshevik leaders made everything up as they went along. The mass turn-out of 3 July had caught them unprepared, with their leader on vacation in Finland. They were caught in two minds as to whether they should seek to transform the demonstration into the overthrow of the Provisional Government, or whether they should try to limit it to a political demonstration in order to pressurize the Soviet leaders into taking power themselves. When Lenin returned, in the small hours of the morning, the Bolsheviks badgered him for an answer to this question. According to Kalinin, Lenin’s tactics were to ‘wait and see what happened’, leaving open the option of ‘throwing regiments into the battle if the correlation of forces should prove favourable’. This may well have been so. But the Bolshevik leader proved utterly unable to make up his own mind if that moment had come. Zinoviev, who spent the whole of the 4th by his side, recalled a Lenin hopelessly paralysed by indecision. He kept asking himself if this was the occasion ‘to try for power’.39 Throughout the critical hours of the uprising the Bolshevik leaders continued to sit on the fence waiting to see what would happen. Yet the organized part of the crowd, which had been brought out by the local Bolshevik organizations, would not seize power themselves without specific instructions from them. It was because of this confusion that the demonstrations appeared so badly organized as an attempted putsch — and ended in fiasco.
Tuesday, 4 July, began with an eerie silence over the city. Heavy thunder clouds hung low over the city and the river was dark and sullen. The shops were shut and the streets deserted — a certain sign that trouble was brewing in the workers’ quarters. By mid-morning the centre of the city was once again taken over by crowds of workers and soldiers. A motley flotilla of tug-boats, trawlers, barges and gun-boats from the Kronstadt Naval Base was meanwhile mooring near the Nikolaevsky Bridge: 20,000 sailors disembarked, armed to the teeth with rifles and revolvers, along with their own medical teams and several marching bands. This was without doubt the Bolsheviks’ chief weapon, if they were planning to seize power. The sailors were spoiling for a fight with the Provisional Government. Ever since February they had been trying to set up their own semi-Anarchist version of Soviet power at Kronstadt. Raskolnikov, the Bolshevik leader of the sailors, said they had come to Petrograd ready ‘at any moment to turn the demonstration into an armed uprising’. It was clear, however, that the sailors had no strategic plan — and only a vague idea of what to do once they disembarked. Bernard Pares, who was on the scene, thought most of them had come for a holiday, to walk the streets with their girls, who were very much in evidence throughout the July Days. ‘Sailors with scantily-dressed and high-heeled ladies were seen everywhere.’40
