Preface to the Pamphlet May Days in Kharov | |
Auhtor: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin | |
| Language: english Published: 1917 Genres:political, revolutionary, social historyDownloads: 329 eBook size: 260Kb Review by Beth Cholette, November 2009 Rating: (****) Copyright: Public Domain in the U.S. Please check the copyright status in your country. | |
Summary of the Book 'Preface to the Pamphlet May Days in Kharov':
On 8th July 1917 Alexander Kerensky became the new leader of the Provisional Government. Kerensky was still the most popular man in the government because of his political past. In the Duma he had been leader of the moderate socialists and had been seen as the champion of the working-class. However Kerensky like George Lvov was unwilling to end the war. In fact soon after taking office he announced a new summer offensive.
Soldiers on the Eastern Front were dismayed at the news and regiments began to refuse to move to the front line. There was a rapid increase in the number of men deserting and by the autumn of 1917 an estimated 2 million men had unofficially left the army.
On 19th July Kerensky gave orders for the arrest of leading Bolsheviks who were campaigning against the war. This included Vladimir Lenin Gregory Zinoviev Lev Kamenev Anatoli Lunacharsky and Alexandra Kollontai. The Bolshevik headquarters at the Kshesinsky Palace was also occupied by government troops.
Lenin now returned to Petrograd but remained in hiding. On 25th September Kerensky attempted to recover his left-wing support by forming a new coalition that included more Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries. However with the Bolsheviks controlling the Soviets and now able to call on 25000 armed militia Kerenskys authority had been undermined.
The Bolsheviks set up their headquarters in the Smolny Institute. The former girls convent school also housed the Petrograd Soviet. Under pressure from the nobility and industrialists Alexander Kerensky was persuaded to take decisive action. On 22nd October he ordered the arrest of the Military Revolutionary Committee. The next day he closed down the Bolshevik newspapers and cut off the telephones to the Smolny Institute.
Leon Trotsky now urged the overthrow of the Provisional Government. Lenin agreed and on the evening of 24th October 1917 orders were given for the Bolsheviks began to occupy the railway stations the telephone exchange and the State Bank. The following day the Red Guards surrounded the Winter Palace. Inside was most of the countrys Cabinet although Kerensky had managed to escape from the city.
The Winter Palace was defended by Cossacks some junior army officers and the Womans Battalion. At 9 p.m. the Aurora and the Peter and Paul Fortress began to open fire on the palace. Little damage was done but the action persuaded most of those defending the building to surrender. The Red Guards led by Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko now entered the Winter Palace and arrested the Cabinet ministers.
Excerpts from the Book 'Preface to the Pamphlet May Days in Kharov':
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... the organised character and the class-consciousness the participants will display, in their determination to launch a resolute struggle for the political ...
... a working-class festival can become and ? what we lack to make these celebrations a really great all-Russian manifestation of the class-conscious ...
... the same time, revealed what we lack for the full development of these capacities. ? ? The Kharkov Social-Democrats tried to prepare for the May ...
... engage in a determined struggle against the present political system. It must combine within itself the socialist knowledge and revolutionary experience ...
... it is necessary either to agitate or remain in the rear, at such a time only organised revolutionary forces can seriously influence the progress of ...
... in this way that the approaching storm (to which the Kharkov worker also refers at the end of the pamphlet) is not an elemental outburst, but a ...
... which can quite easily be achieved even under the present political system - wage increases, reduction of hours, removal of abuses. Included among these ...
... not to individual employers, but to the state authorities as the representative of the entire present-day social and political system, to the ...
... if the workers, who wage a struggle against the election of creatures of the management or who strongly attack the management and expose its tyranny, ...
... of the person of the workers, i.e., that they will not be arrested arbitrarily by the po}ice or the gendarmerie. This demand to guarantee the ...
... system there can be no inviolability of the person citizens' associations, and particularly working-class associations, cannot be free. For that reason, ...
... its significance. We must make sure that all advanced workers understand clearly the necessity for this demand and spread it, not only among the masses ...
... working hours. There is, however, an indubitable connection between these demands and the demand for a constitution and if we can get the masses ...
... of thousands, when it will no longer be comical, but menacing. It is related that a certain person driving through the streets of Kharkov during the ...
... Other books that may be interesting to you:Vladimir Ilyich Lenin : A Fly in the OintmentReturning to Russia on April 3, Lenin arrived in Petrograd ...
... introduced to the 20th century the practice of taking an all-embracing ideology and imposing it on an entire society rapidly and mercilessly he created ...
... government of the country. The Bolshevik slogans Down with the ten capitalist ministers! and All... >>read more<