WITH the leaking of the information that Bolsheviks were preparing for the takeover of power leaked, the ruling classes led provincial government began all preparations to forestall it. A secret meeting of the provincial government was held to decide on the measures to combat the Bolsheviks and defeat the working class. Troops were summoned from the front to Petrograd. Huge number of armed forces were mobilised even in Moscow. On the other hand, Kerensky was prepared to surrender Petrograd to Germans and withdraw to Moscow. He felt that this would weaken the Bolsheviks and deal a death blow to the revolutionary forces. Officers of the army formed a counter-revolutionary organisation know as the Officers League. Shock battalions were set up.

The working class led by the Bolsheviks too made their preparations. Party representatives were sent to Urals, Helsingfors, Kronstadt, the South-Western Front and other places to organise the uprising in provinces. Members of the central committee were assigned the task of detailing the plan of the uprising to the leading members of the Bolshevik organisations in the provinces. They were prepared to be ready for mobilising in support of the uprising in Petrograd.

A revolutionary military committee of the Petrograd Soviet was set up. This was to act as the functioning headquarters of the uprising. The enlarged meeting of the central committee of the Bolsheviks elected a Party Centre to direct the uprising. Stalin was made the head. This was to act as the core of the revolutionary military committee. The Second Congress of the All Soviets was called in Smolny institute to meet on October 25.

On October 21, Bolshevik commissars of the revolutionary military committee were sent to all revolutionary army units. Preparations for action were made in these army units, among workers in factories and mills. Detailed and definite instructions were issued. Warships Aurora and Zarya Svobody were put under alert.

Lenin wrote to the central committee on October 24 warning them that to delay an uprising any more would be fatal. “We must not wait. We must at all costs, this very evening, this very night, arrest the government, having first disarmed the officer cadets (defeating them if they resist), and so on….The government is tottering. It must be given the death blow at all costs. To delay action is fatal”.

On October 24, Kerensky ordered the suppression of the organ of Bolshevik Party, Rabochy Put (Workers’ Path). Armoured cars were dispatched to the editorial premises and the printing plant. Red Guards and revolutionary soldiers repelled the advance of the armoured cars and forced them to withdraw. At around 11 am, the Rabochy Put came out with the call for the overthrow of the provincial government. Detachments of revolutionary soldiers were rushed to the Smolny, upon the instructions of the Party Centre.

The uprising had begun.

Lenin arrived at the Smolny institute on the night of October 24 and assumed personal direction of the uprising. Units of the revolutionary army started arriving at the Smolny and were directed to the tasks designated for them. Winter Palace, the place where the provincial government sat was asked to be surrounded.

On October 25, the State Bank, telegraph, railway stations, post offices and the ministries were occupied by the Red Guards and revolutionary army. Directions were given to the naval forces to remain on standby. The discipline of the working class and the training they had in all these revolutionary days proved to be of extreme use. The war cruiser, Aurora trained its guns on the Winter Palace and fired its canon, thundering the advent of a new era – the era of socialist revolution. On the night of October 25, Red Guards, revolutionary workers and army surrounded the Winter Palace where the provincial government that had taken refuge, under the protection of the shock troops and cadets. The ministers of the provincial government were arrested, while Kerensky managed to escape under disguise.

Bolsheviks issued a manifesto, ‘To the Citizens of Russia’ announcing the deposition of the provincial government and the assumption of State power by the Soviets. In a meeting of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers and Soldiers’ Deputies on October 25, Lenin explained the significance of the revolution thus: “its significance is, first of all, that we shall have a Soviet government, our own organ of power, in which the bourgeoisie will have no share whatsoever. The oppressed masses will themselves create a power. The old State apparatus will be shattered to its foundations and a new administrative apparatus set up in the form of Soviets. From now on a new phase in the history of Russia begins, and this, the third Russian revolution, should in the end lead to the victory of socialism….We must now set about building a proletarian socialist State in Russia”.

The Second Congress of the Soviets of Workers and Peasants Deputies started its session on the night of October 25 and issued various decrees on peace, land and workers’ control over factories. It was also decided to immediately make known to the world all the secret treaties concluded by the tsarist government in connivance with other imperialist powers.

On October 26, a provisional workers’ and peasants’ government, known as the Council of Peoples’ Commissars was convened. Lenin was elected the Chairman of the Council, Stalin as the Chairman of the Nationalities Affairs and Trotsky as the Foreign Affairs Commissar along with others to look after the various affairs of the State like, education, agriculture, labour, commerce and industry, finance, food, justice, postal and army and naval affairs.

During the course of Great October Socialist Revolution, i.e., from January 1917 to October 25, 1917, Lenin wrote 1447 pages in print. Imagine how many pages he had read to write those lines! It is a lesson for all of us, not to postpone our study in the name of ‘work pressure’ – an important lesson for all of us to learn from the Great October Socialist Revolution and its master tactician – Vladmir Ilyich Ullyanov, Lenin.

Lenin taught us to:

1. Always have faith in people; Lenin said: “the pulse of life is in the factories and barracks”. But do not tail them. “The Party could not be guided by the temper of the masses because it was changeable and incalculable; the Party must be guided by an objective analysis and an appraisal of the revolution”.
2. Be objective in our analysis and not let our subjective feelings determine tactics. “To base proletarian tactics on subjective desires means to condemn it to failure”.
3. Evolve tactics with the changing situation, but based on principles. “Like every sharp turn, it calls for a revision and change of tactics. And as with every revision, we must be extra-cautious not to become unprincipled”.
4. Accept mistakes and be truthful. “The fighting party of the advanced class need not fear mistakes. What it should fear is persistence in a mistake, refusal to admit and correct a mistake out of a false sense of shame”.
5. Never compromise with the bourgeoisie. “The Russian revolution is experiencing so abrupt and original a turn that we, as a party, may offer a voluntary compromise – true not to our direct and main class enemy, the bourgeoisie, but to our nearest adversaries, the ruling petty-bourgeois democratic parties, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks”.
6. Expose the conciliatory nature of the petty-bourgeois and their representative parties. “The petty-bourgeois democrats, especially their leaders, tend to trail after the bourgeoisie. The leaders of the petty-bourgeois democrats console their people with promises and assurances about the possibility of reaching the agreement with the big capitalists at best; and for a very brief period, they obtain certain minor concessions from the capitalists for a small upper section of the working people; but on every decisive issue, on every important matter, the petty-bourgeois democrats have always tailed after the bourgeoisie as a feeble appendage to them, as an obedient tool in the hands of the financial magnates”. And, “We must immediately cement the Bolshevik group, without striving after numbers, and without fearing to leave the waverers in the waverers camp. They are more useful to the cause of revolution there than in the camp of the resolute and devoted fighters….people are worn out by the vacillations, that they are fed up with the irresolution of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks; and that they are definitely breaking with these parties because they have betrayed the revolution”.
7. Never procrastinate. “History will not forgive revolutionaries for procrastinating when they could be victorious today (and they certainly will be victorious today), while they risk losing much tomorrow, in fact, they risk losing everything”.
8. Be true to internationalism. “For internationalism consists of deeds and not phrases, not expressions of solidarity, not resolutions”. And, “There is one and only one kind of real internationalism, and that is – working whole-heartedly for the development of the revolutionary movement and the revolutionary struggle in one’s own country, and supporting (by propaganda, sympathy and material aid) this struggle, this, and only this, line, in every country without exception”.