Russia 1917: Countdown to Revolution Page #3

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'There he was, helps Lenin shave off

his very distinctive little goatee.

'They give him a dreadful wig

and a worker's cap,'

and smuggle him out

across into Finland.

With Lenin gone

and Trotsky arrested,

Stalin finds himself

the unlikely leader

of the shattered Bolshevik Party.

'Lenin trusted Stalin.'

He carried secret messages,

he set up by the machinery

whereby Lenin could communicate

from a barn out in Finland

with the Bolshevik machine

inside Petrograd.

All of these things, Stalin managed.

And it was now that Stalin

became the key person

behind Lenin in the revolution.

The interesting thing about Stalin,

he played this incredibly subtle

waiting game.

He was very much there

in the shadows,

watching, waiting, learning.

While the Bolsheviks rot in jail,

flee or go underground,

things are looking up

for Alexander Kerensky.

He is now Prime Minister.

After the aborted

Bolshevik uprising,

he appoints Siberian General

Lavr Kornilov

to restore order in Petrograd.

'Kornilov could see that the

Bolsheviks were gearing up

'to try and take over.

'He desperately wanted to round up

the belligerent revolutionaries,

'the Bolsheviks, slam them in jail

'and impose almost a military

government on the city'

because he saw that as the only way

of saving the situation.

'The right-wing, the conservatives,

'are beginning to rally around

Kornilov quite explicitly

'as a figure who can bring order

to Russia.'

Kerensky worries the General

wants to rule Russia

as a military dictator.

'There's no question that Kerensky

was quite paranoid,'

but there's also not much question

that people were out to get him.

Just days after appointing

the General,

Kerensky dismisses him

in a telegram.

But the General's troops

advance on Petrograd.

Ironically, it takes Bolshevik

activists to save the city.

Bolshevik agitators from within

the army, soldiers,

went and spoke to the Kornilov

soldiers and said,

"Do you know why you're being

brought to Petrograd?

"To attack us, to kill

your brothers and sisters.

"Is this what you're coming to do?"

And the descriptions of this event

are that Kornilov's army

melted away

in front of his very eyes.

In an extraordinary reversal

of fortune,

the Bolsheviks are now seen

as the saviours of Petrograd.

MUSIC:

Kerensky's credibility

lies in tatters.

He's reduced to keeping himself

going with cocaine and morphine.

'So, rather than buttress

his power base, in fact,

'the defeat of Kornilov only played

into the hands of the left.'

It's hard for me.

I struggle with the left

and with the right.

The people demand that I lean

on one and then the other.

I want to take a middle road

but nobody will help me.

'How could you roll out democracy

in a country like that?'

So I think it was always inevitable

that this anarchic force

which splintered the country

into revolution

was never going to quickly shuffle

the pieces and put them back

into a neat jigsaw puzzle

which was a proper democracy.

That wasn't going to happen.

The Kornilov coup created

the situation

where you had a government

with no real power.

With power ebbing away.

A leader with no real prestige.

And the opportunity, the vacuum,

into which someone, somewhere,

could seize power.

And that someone, Lenin was

determined, would be the Bolsheviks.

The Bolshevik resurgence begins when

Kerensky releases them from jail.

While locked up, Leon Trotsky has

finally joined Lenin's party.

Crowds flock to hear him speak.

Trotsky was the great celebrity

of the revolution.

He was much more famous than Lenin,

not to speak of Stalin.

'Trotsky was probably the most

brilliant intellectual mind'

produced in tsarist Russia,

including Lenin.

'Lenin knew that Stalin and Trotsky

were his two chief supporters

'in pushing for

the October Revolution,

'so Stalin and Trotsky had actually

had a lot in common politically.'

But it was personally that they

absolutely loathed each other.

Their animosity only grows when

Trotsky replaces Stalin

as interim leader.

Stalin was very valuable

behind the scenes.

He did have a knack of convincing

the average run of leaders,

especially the provincials.

APPLAUSE:

The time for words has passed.

The country stands on the edge

of ruin.

The Army demand peace.

The peasants demand land.

The workers demand work and food.

The coalition government

is against the people.

The government is a tool in the

hands of the enemies of the people.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

The time for words has passed!

Trotsky's individualism and panache

is not always trusted by Lenin.

'Trotsky writes,

"Lenin was worried,'

"suspicious of

my non-Bolshevik past,'

"wondering, have I got

the capacity to do it,

"and I had to constantly reassure

him, do not worry, Comrade Lenin,

"it's going to happen.

We are doing it."

All power to the Soviets!

CHEERING:

Immediate Armistice on all fronts!

Land to the peasants!

CHEERING:

He's sort of arrogant

and that's his Achilles heel

because people don't like arrogance

in the party.

Trotsky felt it should all

be delivered to him

because of that brilliance.

And he would read...

ostentatiously read French novels

during meetings of the politburo,

to show how, erm,

above all this he was.

When Lenin was asked what had kept

he and Trotsky apart for so long,

he answered...

Don't you know?

Ambition.

Ambition.

Ambition.

Now they share an ambition -

real power.

While hiding in Finland, Lenin makes

the biggest decision of his life.

The time is ripe for his revolution.

'By then, everyone was sick

of the war.'

They were sick

of the food shortages.

People were openly saying

on the streets,

"Do you know what,

we don't care who's in power.

"If they like, the Germans

can come and take Petrograd."

From mid-September,

Lenin bombards the Bolsheviks with

letters insisting they seize power.

"The present task must be an armed

uprising in Petrograd and Moscow,

"the seizing of power and the

overthrow of the government."

'Lenin was a complete monomaniac.'

He's like a boiling pot.

All the time, you can hear

the lid rattling.

He gets more and more furious

and the bubbles are bubbling up.

"It would be naive to wait for a

formal majority for Bolsheviks.

"No, revolution ever waits

for that."

He brewed himself up

extraordinarily

and twisted himself up into anger

and his flashes of anger

were terrifying.

"History will not forgive us

if we do not assume power now.

'Lenin is raging

that we are about to lose'

the one-off opportunity to seize

power, to seize Russia.

"To wait would be utter idiocy."

'The Bolshevik leadership

doesn't know what to do with these.

'It thinks that they might be

inflammatory

'and provoke an uprising

prematurely,'

so they go as far as to destroying

these letters if they can.

BLEEP traitors

to the proletarian cause!

'When you read the letters,'

my God, he could swear like

a trooper when he wanted to.

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