Yet for all this display of determination, the Provisional Government did not dare take the one step that would have destroyed the Bolshevik Party: a public trial at which all the evidence in its possession of treasonous activity would have been laid out. A commission was appointed under the new Minister of Justice, A. S. Zarudnyi, to prepare the case against the Bolsheviks. It assiduously collected materials—by early October, eighty thick volumes—yet no legal proceedings were ever instituted. The reason for this failure was twofold: fear of “counterrevolution” and the wish not to antagonize the Ispolkom.
The July putsch imbued Kerensky with an obsessive fear that the right would exploit the Bolshevik threat to stage a monarchist coup. Addressing the Ispolkom on July 13, he urged it to distance itself from the elements which “with their actions inspire the forces of the counterrevolution” and pledged that “any attempt to restore the Russian monarchic regime will be suppressed in the most decisive, pitiless manner.”199 Like many socialists, he is said to have been alarmed rather than gratified by the zeal with which loyal troops had crushed the July riots.200 In his eyes, the Bolsheviks were a threat only to the extent that their slogans and behavior encouraged the monarchists. It is almost certainly from the same consideration that he decided on July 7 to ship the Imperial family to Siberia. The departure was carried out in utmost secrecy during the night of July 31. Accompanied by an entourage of fifty attendants and servants, the Romanovs left for Tobolsk, a town which had no railroad and therefore offered fewer opportunities for escape.201 The timing of the decision—three days after the Bolshevik putsch and the day after Kerensky’s return to Petrograd—indicates that Kerensky’s motive was to prevent right-wing elements from exploiting the situation to restore Nicholas to the throne. Such was the opinion of the British envoy.202
A related consideration was the desire to curry favor with the Ispolkom, which continued to regard the Bolsheviks as members in good standing and to treat all attacks against them as machinations of the “counterrevolution.” The Mensheviks and SRs in the Soviet repeatedly assailed the government for its “campaign of vilification” against Lenin, demanding that the charges be dropped and the detained Bolsheviks released.
Kerensky’s tolerant treatment of the Bolsheviks, who had almost overthrown him and his government, contrasted sharply with the impetuous manner he would reveal in dealing with General Kornilov the following month.
As a result of the inaction of both the government and the Ispolkom the fury against the Bolsheviks, which Pereverzev’s initiative had unleashed, dissipated. The two lost a unique opportunity to liquidate the genuine “counterrevolution” from the left out of fear of an imaginary “counterrevolution” from the right. The Bolsheviks soon recovered and resumed their bid for power. Trotsky later wrote that when, at the Third Congress of the Comintern in 1921, Lenin admitted the party had committed mistakes in its dealings with the enemy, “he had in mind our hasty uprising” in July 1917. “Fortunately,” Trotsky added, “our enemies had neither sufficient logical consistency nor determination.”203
*This apparently refers to an offer made to Lenin by Parvus at their 1915 meeting.
*N. F. Kudelli,
†The records of this conference, which have not been published in Russia, can be found in Leon Trotskii,
*As an Austrian subject, Radek was considered an enemy alien by the Provisional Government. Refused an entry visa to Russia, he remained in Stockholm until October 1917 working for Lenin. Subsequently, several more parties of Russian émigrés crossed Germany en route to Russia.
†Subsequently, several more parties of Russian émigrés crossed Germany en route to Russia.
*There is no stenographic record of this speech, but the notes which Lenin used have been published:
*Iu. Kamenev in
