With Trotsky at the head of the Petrograd Soviet, and with the Bolshevik Party in control of a growing majority of other soviets, the Bolsheviks are now the most powerful party in the Russian Revolution. However, significant differences have emerged within the party’s leadership regarding what course to take.
Petrograd: Lenin urges seizure of power
As working class support for the Bolsheviks surges, and the Provisional Government makes military preparations to crush the Revolution, Lenin, who remains in hiding in Finland, becomes convinced that a uniquely favorable opportunity is slipping away. On October 10, he writes an exasperated letter to Ivar Smilga:
The general political situation causes me great anxiety. The Petrograd Soviet and the Bolsheviks have declared war on the government. But the government has an army, and is preparing systematically. . . And what are we doing? We are only passing resolutions. We are losing time. We set “dates” (October 20, the Congress of Soviets—is it not ridiculous to put it off so long? Is it not ridiculous to rely on that?). The Bolsheviks are not conducting regular work to prepare their own military forces for the overthrow of Kerensky.
It is my opinion that inside the Party we must agitate for an earnest attitude towards the armed uprising, for which reason this letter should be typed and delivered to the Petrograd and Moscow comrades. . . .
Lenin emphasizes that Smilga should make what preparations he can for the uprising among the troops in Finland and the Baltic fleet: “If we fail to do this, we may turn out to be consummate idiots, the owners of beautiful resolutions and of Soviets, but no power!” Meanwhile , peasant unrest surges in the countryside. The conflicts on the land seized by the peasants from the nobility are especially bitter and violent….