Tensions in Petrograd have reached the breaking point. As Kerensky’s military offensive collapses, Petrograd erupts. Despite the warnings by Bolshevik leaders that a premature insurrection would be isolated and defeated, hundreds of thousands of workers decide to take matters into their own hands. When the forces of reaction mobilize to crush the insurgent workers, the Bolsheviks are compelled to assume the leadership of the rebellion. This is the beginning of the “July Days.”
“The Bolshevik leadership saw clearly that the heavy reserves—the front and the provinces—needed time to make their own inferences from the adventure of the offensive,” Trotsky later wrote. “But the advanced ranks were rushing into the street under the influence of that same adventure. They combined a most radical understanding of the task with illusions as to its methods. The warnings of the Bolsheviks were ineffective. The Petrograd workers and soldiers had to test the situation with their own experience. And their armed demonstration was such a test. But the test might, against the will of the masses, have turned into a general battle and by the same token into a decisive defeat. In such a situation the party dared not stand aside. To wash one’s hands in the water of strategic morals would have meant simply to betray the workers and soldiers to their enemies. The party of the masses was compelled to stand on the same ground on which the masses stood, in order, while not in the least sharing their illusions, to help them make the necessary inferences with the least possible loss.”
Kerensky’s offensive smashed, Russian troops abandon the Austrian front
After slaughtering the advancing Russian soldiers en…