At the end of May the Czechoslovaks occupied Chelyabinsk, Petropavlovsk, Taiga railway station, and Tomsk, and at the beginning of June—Omsk and Samara. At the end of May a White Guard plot sponsored by the League was discovered in Moscow; a revolt had been engineered in the Crimea, and the stage was set for a mutiny in the Baltic Fleet. On June 4 a bourgeois-nationalist government was formed in the Crimea. On June 19 there was a counter-revolutionary revolt in Irkutsk, on June 20—in Kozlov and Ekaterinburg, on June 29 a monarchist plot was discovered in Kostroma, and on June 30 a bourgeois government was proclaimed by the Siberian Regional Duma. The Socialist-Revolutionarirs worked hand in hand with the bourgeoisie. On June 8, after the capture of Sarnara by the Czechoslovak Corps, a Constituent Assembly Committee was set up there. On June 19 the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries raised a revolt in Tambov, and the next day assassinated Volodarsky in Petrograd.
The Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, too, took to the ways of counter-revolution.
On June 24 they decided to assassinate the German Ambassador Mirbach and engineer an armed revolt against the Soviet power. On June 27 the British landed in Murmansk. On July 1 White Guard troop-trains formed under the direction of the French Mission were arrested in Moscow. On July 4 the All-Russian Congress of Soviets was opened, and on July 6 Mirbach was assassinated, and a revolt organized in Moscow and Yaroslavl.
Speaking at the Fifth Congress of Soviets on July 5, Ilyich had taken the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries to task for their woolliness, their panic mongering and failure to grasp the situation, but he had not thought them capable of falling so low as counter-revolution.
On July 6 Left S.-R.'s Blyumkin and Andreyev presented themselves at the house of the German Embassy in Moscow and asked for a private audience with Count Mirbach. After throwing a bomb at him and killing him, they escaped to the Cheka detachment under the command of Left S.-R. Popov, which was located in Trekhsvyatiteisky Street. Simultaneously the whole Central Committee of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party moved over there. Head of the Cheka Dzerzhinsky, who went there to arrest the murderers, was himself arrested. Popov's detachment sent patrols out into the nearby streets, who arrested the Chairman of the Moscow Soviet Smidovich, People's Commissar of Post and Telegraph Podbelskv, one of the heads of the Cheka Lacis and others, and seized the General Post Office. The Left S.-R. Central Committee promulgated through- out Russia and the Czechoslovak front a report announcing the revolt in Moscow, and calling for war against Germany. In face of the hostilities started by the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries the Council of People's Commissars took military action against Popov's detachment which numbered about two thousand infantrymen with eight guns and an armoured car. On July 8 Trekhsvyatitelsky Street was sealed off and shelled. The Socialist-Revolutionaries attempted to retaliate by opening fire on the Kremlin. Several shells landed in the courtyard. After a brief resistance Popov's detachment withdrew and escaped by way of the Vladimir Road, where they shortly afterwards dispersed. About three hundred prisoners were taken.
After the suppression of the Socialist-Revolutionaries in Trekhsvyatitelsky Street, Ilyich wanted to have a look at the house in which the rebels had set up their temporary headquarters. We drove down there together in an open car. As we were passing the Oktyabrsky Station, we heard a shout of "Stop!" from round a corner. Not seeing who it was shouting, our chauffeur Gil drove on without stopping, but Ilyich told him to pull up. Meanwhile, somebody had started shooting a revolver from around the corner, and a group of armed men came running up. They were our own people. "What's the idea, comrades, shooting from round the corner when you don't see whom you're shooting at!" Ilyich rebuked them. They were greatly put out. Ilyich asked the way to Trekhsvyatitelsky Street. We were allowed into the house without delay and conducted through the rooms. Ilyich had been curious as to why the Socialist-Revolutionaries had chosen that particular house for their headquarters and how they had organized its defence, but he soon lost interest in that question: the house's location and interior arrangements were not of the slightest interest from that point of view. What struck us there were the floors, which were thickly strewn with scraps of torn paper. Apparently, during the fight, the Socialist-Revolutionaries had torn up all their documents.
Although it was late in the afternoon, Ilyich wanted to go for a ride in Sokolniki Park. At a level crossing we ran into a Komsomol patrol. "Stop!" We stopped. "Documents!" Ilyich showed his document reading "V. Ulyanov, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars." "Tell us another one!" the young men sneered. They arrested Ilyich and took him down to the nearest militia station. There he was immediately recognized, and the men in charge laughed heartily. Ilyich came back, and we drove on. We turned into Sokolniki Park, and as we were driving down one of the roads, we heard shooting again. It appeared that we had been passing a munition store. Our papers were examined and we were allowed to pass with a grumbled remark about our riding about God knows where at unearthly hours. Biding back we had to pass the same youth patrol post, but when the lads caught sight of our car from afar they instantly disappeared.
On July 8 the Fifth Congress of Soviets resolved to expel from the Soviets the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, who had supported the revolt of July 6-7. On July 10 the congress adopted the Soviet Constitution and wound up its proceedings.
The situation was extremely difficult throughout July.
The commander of the troops fighting the Czechoslovaks was the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Muravyov. He had sided with the Soviet power after October, had fought the troops of Kerensky and Krasnov, who had been advancing on Petrograd, had fought against the Central Rada, and on the Rumanian front. But when the S.-R. revolt started on July 6-7, Muravyov went over to their side and wanted to turn his troops against Moscow. The units upon which he had been relying, however, refused to follow his lead; he had counted on the backing of the Simbirsk Soviet, but the Soviet withdrew its support; his arrest was ordered, but he put up a resistance and was killed. Simbirsk was shortly afterwards taken by the Czechoslovaks. The latter were advancing on Ekaterinburg, where Nicholas II was kept prisoner. On July 16 we had him and his family shot. The Czechoslovaks came too late to save him—they took Ekaterinburg ion July 23.
In the north the British and French troops seized part of the Murmansk railway.
The Mensheviks of Baku called in British troops.
The White Volunteer Army took Tikhoretskaya, then Armavir.
The Germans demanded that a battalion of their troops should be allowed into Moscow to guard the Embassy.
Desperate though the situation was, Ilyich never lost heart. His mood is best revealed in his letter to Clara Zetkin, dated July 26.
"My dear Comrade Zetkin," he wrote. "Thank you heartily for your letter of June 27 which Comrade Gerta Gordon brought me. I will do everything I can to help Comrade Gordon.
"We are all delighted that you, Comrade Mehring and other 'Spartacist comrades' in Germany are 'with us heart and soul.' This makes us confident that the best elements of the West-European working-class, despite all difficulties, will come to our aid.
"We here are now experiencing what are perhaps the most difficult weeks of the whole revolution. The class struggle and the civil war have penetrated into the depths of the population: everywhere in the countryside there is a cleavage—-the poor are for us, the kulaks are furiously against us. The Entente has bought the Czechoslovaks, the counter revolutionary revolt is raging, and the whole bourgeoisie is making every effort to overthrow us. Nevertheless, we firmly believe that we shall avoid this 'customary' (as in 1794 and 1849) outcome of the revolution and defeat the bourgeoisie.
"My sincerest greetings, gratefully yours
Lenin" (Works, Vol. 35, p. 282).
To this was added a postscript:
"The new state seal has just been brought to me. Here is an impress. It reads: Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. Workers of all countries, unite!"
The counter-revolutionary revolt continued to rage unabated. The Czechoslovaks captured Kazan, the Anglo-French troops took Arkhangelsk, where a Socialist-Revolutionary Supreme Government of the Northern Region was formed. In Izhevsk the S.-R's launched a revolt; the Izhevsk Right S.-R. troops occupied Sarapul; the Soviet troops abandoned Chita; the Volunteer Army took Ekaterinodar, but the failure of the Moscow and Yaroslavl uprisings caused some vacillation in the ranks of the Socialist-Revolutionaries. The fighting between the Germans and the Allies, which started with renewed force, diverted their attention from Russia. On August 16 the Czechoslovaks were defeated on the River Belaya. The consolidation of all our armed forces began to take shape; a number of important organizational measures was taken, and decrees were issued enlisting the workers' organizations to the business of grain purveyance and providing for the organization of harvesting and stop-the-way detachments—the grain situation had somewhat improved and the closing down of the bourgeois newspapers had put a stop to public excitation. Agitation against intervention was increased among the foreign workers. On August 9 the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs made an offer of peace with the Allied powers to the Government of the United States.
Feeling that the ground was being cut away from under their feet, the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries decided to assassinate a number of Bolshevik leaders, Lenin among them.
On August 30 Petrograd reported to Ilyich that Uritsky, the head of the Petrograd Cheka, had been assassinated at 10 a.m.
That evening Ilyich, at the request of the Moscow Committee, was to address meetings in the Basmanny and Zamoskvoretsky districts.
Bukharin had been dining with us that day, and during the meal he had kept urging Ilyich not to go. Ilyich had dismissed his fears with a laugh, and, then, in order to have done with the subject, he said that he probably would not go. Maria Ilyinichna had been feeling unwell that day and kept indoors. Ilyich came in to see her dressed for going out, and she started asking him to take her with him. "On no account. You stay at home," he said, and went off to the meeting without taking any guard with him.
