Semashko and his associates, several of whom belonged to the Military Organization, sent out patrols to learn whether the government was taking countermeasures and to confiscate automobiles. They also dispatched emissaries to factories and barracks and to Kronshtadt.
The emissaries met with a mixed reception. A few units of the garrison agreed to join: mainly elements of the 1st, 3rd, 176th, and 180th Infantry Regiments.141 The others refused. The Preobrazhenskii, Semenovskii, and Izmailovskii Guard Regiments declared “neutrality.”142 In the Machine Gun Regiment itself, despite threats of physical violence, many companies voted to stay on the sidelines: in the end only one-half of the regiment, some 5,000 men, participated in the putsch. Many factory workers also refused to take part.
For lack of adequate documentation, it is difficult to determine the attitude of the Bolsheviks toward these developments. In his report to the Sixth Congress of the Bolshevik Party later that month, Stalin claimed that at 4:00 p.m. on July 3 the Central Committee took a stand against an armed demonstration.143 Trotsky confirms Stalin’s claim.144 It is not inconceivable that the Bolshevik leaders, without Lenin to encourage them and afraid that a mutiny under their slogans but without their guidance could end in disaster, initially opposed it, but one would feel more confident of this judgment if the protocols of the Central Committee for that day were made available.
As soon as it learned of the proposed demonstration the Ispolkom appealed to the troops to desist:145 it had no desire to bring down the government and to assume the power that the Bolsheviks were so insistently thrusting into its hands.
That afternoon there appeared before the Executive Committee of the Kronshtadt Soviet two anarchist deputies from the Machine Gun Regiment, wild in appearance and seemingly illiterate.146 They let it be known that their regiment, along with other military units and factory workers, was taking to the streets to demand the transfer of power to the Soviet. They needed armed support. The chairman of the Executive Committee responded that the sailors would take part in no demonstration which the Petrograd Ispolkom had not authorized. In that event, the emissaries said, they would appeal directly to the sailors. Word went out and 8,000 to 10,000 sailors assembled to hear a hysterical speech about the government’s persecution of anarchists.147 The sailors prepared to embark for Petrograd: it was unclear to what purpose, but beating up the
Delegates from the Machine Gunners appeared also before the workers of Putilov, many of whom they won over to their cause.148
Around 7 p.m. those units of the Machine Gun Regiment that had voted in favor of a demonstration assembled in their barracks. Advance elements, riding in confiscated automobiles with mounted machine guns, were already dispersed in the central parts of Petrograd. At 8 p.m. the soldiers marched to Troitskii Bridge, where mutinous troops from other regiments joined them. At 10 p.m. the mutineers crossed the bridge. Nabokov observed them at this instant: “They had the same dull, vacant, brutal faces that we all remembered from the February days.”149 Having made their way across the river, the troops divided into two columns, one of which went to Taurida, the other to Mariinskii, the seats of the Soviet and the government, respectively. There was some desultory shooting, mostly in the air, and a bit of looting.
The Bolshevik high command—Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Trotsky—appears to have decided on involving the party in these riots around midday on July 3—that is, as the troops of the Machine Gun Regiment were adopting resolutions to demonstrate. At the time, the three were in Taurida. Their plan was to take control of the Workers’ Section of the Soviet, proclaim in its name the passage of power to the Soviet, and present the Ispolkom as well as the Soldiers’ Section and the Plenum with an accomplished fact. The pretext was to have been the irresistible pressure of the masses.150
