So when the leaders of the railwaymen’s union, Vikzhel, issued an ultimatum on 29 October demanding that the Bolsheviks begin talks with the other socialist parties for the formation of an all-Soviet government, they received a great deal of support. To the mass of the workers, it seemed that the whole point of the revolution, as expressed at the Soviet Congress, was the formation of a government of the working people as a whole and not just of one party. Hundreds of factories, garrisons, Front and Fleet assemblies sent petitions to Smolny in support of the Vikzhel plan. The Obukhovsky Factory in Petrograd threatened to ‘knock the heads of all the party leaders together’ if they failed to reach agreement. The workers in Moscow and other provincial cities, where party factionalism was much less pronounced than in the capital, also expressed strong support. There was a general sense that the party leaders, by squabbling between themselves, were betraying the ideals of the revolution and leading the country towards civil war. ‘Among the soldiers’, declared a petition from the 35th Division, ‘there are no Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, or SRs, but only Democrats.’35
There were powerful reasons, at least to begin with, for the Bolsheviks to respect Vikzhel’s demands. The union’s leaders had threatened to bring all the railways to a halt if the inter-party talks did not commence. If this happened the food and fuel supply in the capital, which had already declined to critical levels, would get even worse, looting and rioting would accelerate out of control, and thousands of workers would come out on strike. How long could the Bolsheviks last in this situation? The support of the railways was even more critical for the Bolshevik military campaign on two fronts: against Kerensky’s troops on the outskirts of the capital; and in Moscow, where the Bolshevik forces had to fight for power in the streets against loyalist forces.
After his hasty departure from Petrograd on the morning of the 25th, Kerensky had set up his headquarters at Gatchina, the old imperial residence just outside the city. Most of the army commanders, to whom he appealed for help, were reluctant to become involved in a military adventure against the Bolsheviks: it was bound to be seen by the soldiers as ‘counter-revolutionary’ and, like the Kornilov crisis, could only hasten the collapse of the army. General Cheremisov, Commander of the Northern Front, even cancelled Kerensky’s order for troops on the grounds that the Provisional Government no longer existed. Only General Krasnov put his forces — eighteen Cossack companies — at Kerensky’s disposal; while a small force of cadets and officers, organized around the SR-led Committee for the Salvation of Russia and the Revolution, was supposed to rise up in the capital in time for their arrival. The Bolsheviks, however, had even fewer troops prepared to fight than Kerensky. The Petrograd garrison quickly fell apart after the seizure of power, as the mass of the soldiers went on a drunken rampage or fled to their homes in the countryside. The Bolshevik leaders in Petrograd had no direct link with the revolutionary troops at the Front, and even if they had it was doubtful the troops would come out on their call. According to Reed, Lenin was fully prepared for defeat. His best chance lay with the hold-up of Krasnov’s troops, situated around Pskov, by the railway workers, as had happened during the Kornilov crisis. Hence the need to respond to the Vikzhel ultimatum.
