While the Decree on Peace did not refer to the Constituent Assembly, in his report on it to the Second Congress, Lenin promised: “We will submit all the peace proposals to the Constituent Assembly for decision.”218 The provisions of the Land Decree were conditional as well: “Only the all-national Constituent Assembly can resolve the land question in all its dimensions.”219 As concerned the new cabinet, the Sovnarkom, a resolution which Lenin drafted and the congress approved stated: “To form for the administration of the country, until the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, a Provisional Workers’ and Peasants’ Government to be called Council of People’s Commissars.”220 Hence, it was logical for the new government, on its first day in office (October 27), to affirm that the elections for the Constituent Assembly would proceed as scheduled on November 12.221 Hence, too, by dispersing the Assembly on its first day, before it had had a chance to legislate, the Bolsheviks delegitimized themselves, even by their own definition.
The Bolsheviks made their initial concessions to legality only because they could not be certain what the future held in store. They had to allow for the possibility of Kerensky arriving momentarily in Petrograd with troops, in which case they would need the support of the entire Soviet. They ventured to violate legal norms openly only a week or so later, after it had become apparent that no punitive expeditions would materialize.
The one armed clash between pro-Bolshevik and pro-government troops for control of the capital occurred on October 30 at Pulkovo, a hilly suburb. Krasnov’s Cossacks, discouraged by lack of support and confused by Bolshevik agitators, after wasting three precious days in Tsarskoe Selo were finally persuaded to advance. They opened operations along the Slavianka River: here, 600 Cossacks confronted a force of Red Guards, sailors, and soldiers at least ten times larger.222 The Red Guards and soldiers quickly fled, but the 3,000 sailors stood their ground and carried the day. Having lost their field commander, the Cossacks retreated to Gatchina. This ended the possibility of any further military intervention on behalf of the Provisional Government.
In Moscow, things went awry for the Bolsheviks from the start: they could have ended in disaster had the government representatives displayed greater determination.
Moscow’s Bolsheviks had not prepared themselves for a power seizure because they sided with Kamenev and Zinoviev rather than Lenin and Trotsky: Uritskii told the Central Committee on October 20 that the majority of the Moscow delegates opposed an uprising.223
Having learned of the events in Petrograd on October 25, the Bolsheviks had the Soviet pass a resolution setting up a Revolutionary Committee. But whereas in the capital city the equivalent organization was under Bolshevik control, in Moscow it was intended as a genuine interparty Soviet organ and the Mensheviks, SRs, and other socialists were invited to join. While the SRs declined, the Mensheviks accepted the invitation but posed several conditions; these were rejected, whereupon they withdrew.224 Emulating the Petrograd Milrevkom, the Moscow Revolutionary Committee issued at 10 p.m. an appeal to the city’s garrison to be ready for action and obey only orders issued by it or carrying its countersignature.225
The Moscow Revolutionary Committee made its first move in the morning of October 26 by sending two commissars to the Kremlin to take over the ancient fortress and distribute weapons in its arsenal to pro-Bolshevik Red Guards. Troops of the 56th Regiment guarding the Kremlin obeyed, confused by the fact that one of these commissars was its own officer. Even so, the Bolsheviks were unable to remove the weapons because the Kremlin was soon encircled by
