As the discussions drew to a close, the Central Committee divided into three factions: (1) a faction of one, consisting of Lenin, who alone favored an immediate seizure of power, without regard to the Congress of Soviets and the Constituent Assembly; (2) Zinoviev and Kamenev, supported by Nogin, Vladimir Miliutin, and Aleksei Rykov, who opposed a coup d’état for the time being; and (3) the rest of the participants, six in number, who agreed on a coup but followed Trotsky in preferring that it be carried out in conjunction with the Congress of Soviets and under its formal sponsorship—that is, in two weeks. A majority of ten voted in favor of an armed rising as “unavoidable and fully matured.”156 The timing was left open. Judging by ensuing events, it was to precede the Second Congress of Soviets by one or more days. Lenin had to acquiesce to this compromise, having gained his main point that the congress merely be asked to ratify the coup.
65. L. B. Kamenev.
The formation of the Military-Revolutionary Committee and the convocation of the Congress of Northern Soviets which, in turn, initiated the Second Congress of Soviets, described previously, implemented the decision of the Central Committee on October 10.
Kamenev found this decision unacceptable. He resigned from the Central Committee and a week later explained his stand in an interview with
The Central Committee held three more meetings before the coup: October 20, 21, and 24.158 The first of these had on its agenda the alleged breach of party discipline committed by Kamenev and Zinoviev in making public their opposition to an armed uprising.* Lenin wrote the committee two angry letters in which he demanded the expulsion of the “strikebreakers”: “We cannot tell the capitalists the truth, namely that we have
The minutes of these three meetings appear so truncated as to render them virtually useless: if one were to take them at face value, one would gather that the coup, by then already in progress, was not even on the agenda.
The Central Committee’s tactic called for provoking the government into retaliatory measures which would make it possible to launch the coup disguised as a defense of the Revolution. The tactic was no secret. As summarized by the SR organ,
In essence, our strategy was offensive. We prepared to assault the government, but our agitation rested on the claim that the enemy was getting ready to disperse the Congress of Soviets and it was necessary mercilessly to repulse him.161
And according to Stalin:
The Revolution [read: the Bolshevik Party] disguised its offensive actions behind a smoke screen of defenses in order to make it easier to attract into its orbit uncertain, hesitating elements.162
Curzio Malaparte describes the bewilderment of the English novelist, Israel Zangwill, who happened to be visiting Italy as the Fascists were taking power. Struck by the absence of “barricades, street fighting and corpses on the pavement,” Zangwill refused to believe that he was witnessing a revolution.163 But, according to Malaparte, the characteristic quality of modern revolutions is precisely the bloodless, almost silent seizure of strategic points by small detachments of trained shock troops. The assault is carried out with such surgical precision that the public at large has no inkling of what is happening.
