Nineteen-Seventeen: The Pressure Cooker

Nineteen-Seventeen: The Pressure Cooker ​

Excerpt from E.E. Schattschneider, “Party Government in Crisis” in American Political Science Review , Vol. 32, No. 1, February 1938.

Predictably, the rise of the Socialist Labor Party as a third force in American party politics created dramatic consequences for party-government in the Congress. The work of previous theorists of the party in government demonstrated the effects of certain facets of the revolution in party politics more than adequately. Notably, the work of Fenwick et al. have theorized the enormous upheavals that the existence of three parties in Congress (particularly the House) have caused in the American constitutional system. Demonstrably, the existence of a sharply defined separation of powers within the government was a system that reflected the strongly non-partisan preferences of Founders such as Washington and Madison, and has adapted poorly to a regime of two powerful political organizations competing for control of the apparatus of government.

…Presidential government, while hindered by the existence of political organizations independent of the formal positions and councils of government, nonetheless could still function even with the consequences of divided party authority and potential divided government. As Representative Clark noted, while the government could still function being pulled in two separate directions, the addition of a third independent force made such functions impossible.

…However, the resulting crisis in party government between 1908 and 1920 could not be explained solely in terms of constitutional factors of separation of powers. As we must understand, in seeming paradox, party government does not just form within the councils and halls of government. The party is larger than its members within the government, and as will be demonstrated with reference to the specific cases of the 1917 New York City Mayoral election, the characteristics of the party and the form its membership takes can have drastic consequences upon the performance of the party in government.

…1917 saw the first eclipse of the Tammany Hall machine in New York politics. As was demonstrated, Socialist Labor’s ties to both organized labor and a large pool of enrolled members of the party eroded traditional dominance of the political machine’s system of organized legal corruption. The Socialists and the unions provided the same services to their members that the machines did; they offered opportunities for gainful employment, helped cover rent shortfalls for party workers, offered legal services to members and medical care to injured workers. But more importantly, the party’s membership rolls enabled it to mobilize its electorate in much the same way as the Tammany Hall machine. However, it did so without resort to the totality of legal corruption of the machine, and the egalitarian drives of its leaders created effective political organizations more of the vein of a fraternal order than of a cloistered, highly stratified secret society. Morris Hillquit’s move into the mayor’s mansion on January 1st, 1918 was the first blow in the final death knell of machine politics in the former United States.
President Thomas R. Marshall’s Cabinet

Vice-President: Charles Evans Hughes (R-NY)
First Secretary: Woodrow Wilson (D-NJ)
Deputy First Secretary: James Mann (R-IL)
Secretary of State: Robert Lansing (D-NY)
Secretary of Treasury: Joseph Fordney (R-MI)
Secretary of War: Leonard Wood (R-MA)
Attorney General: Thomas W. Gregory (D-TX)
Postmaster General: Albert S. Burleson (D-TX)
Secretary of the Navy: Theodore Roosevelt (I-NY)
Secretary of the Interior: Knute Nelson (R-MN)
Secretary of Agriculture: Gilbert N. Haugen (R-IA)
Secretary of Commerce: Joshua W. Alexander (D-MO)
Secretary of Industrial Coordination: William S. Vare (R-PA)
Leader of the House of Representatives: Champ Clark (D-MO)
Senate Majority Leader : Jacob H. Gallagher (R-NH)

The Russian Revolution

The day after Thomas Marshall was inaugurated as President of the United States, workers at the Putilov factory, Petrograd’s largest industrial plant, announced a wildcat strike. While there were limited clashes with Tsarist forces, there were few industries on the opening day. The strikers were fired, some shops closed, and arrests were made at the plant. However, the strike continued to fester.

On 7 March 1917 (22 February in the Julian Calendar), a series of meeting that had originally been held for International Women’s Day quickly evolved into economic and political gatherings. Demonstrations were organized to demand bread, which quickly spread among the factories. The strikes themselves grew, and by 10 March (25 February), virtually every industrial enterprise in Petrograd had been shut down, along with most commercial and service enterprises. The general strike brought together industrial workers, white-collar professionals, students and teachers. The red banners were flying.

Close to two hundred thousand soldiers were mobilized by the Emperor to quell the uprising. However, they were poorly trained, with high numbers of injured and sick within the ranks. At best, some ten thousand could be counted as reliable, but even they were reluctant to put down the riots. By the 11th, they began to mutiny en mass.

With the bulk of the Petrograd garrison mutinying, and the city virtually under the control of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, representing the various worker councils and factory committees set up in the revolt, the beating heart of the Tsarist empire was gone. On 15 March (2 March), Emperor Nikolay II abdicated the throne to his brother, Grand Duke Mikhail Aleksandrovich. The Grand Duke wisely declined the crown.

The following day, there was a spirit of elation all over Petrograd. A provisional government was announced, representing a diverse liberal coalition, and chaired by Prince Georgy Lvov, a liberal aristocrat and member of the Constitutional Democrats (Kadets). However, the Provisional Government would face competition from the Petrograd Soviet, which chiefly involved the industrial workers and the political left.

For now, they cooperated, but the Provisional Government was forced to concede de facto supremacy to the Petrograd Soviet, which held democratic legitimacy, while the Provisional Government was a self-selected committee from the former Duma. For now, the Russian war effort continued mostly unabated against the German Reich ; but it did ease some political issues for the Entente, especially for the American war government. President Marshall quickly recognized the Provisional Government,and welcomed the transition to democracy in the Russian Empire. These events would later be known as the February Revolution in Russia.

The American Expeditionary Forces

The National Army: Overview ​

The US Army would expand from a small colonial occupation force of 140,000 men to a citizen-army of over 6,000,000 men by the end of the Great War. This transformation was accompanied by a permanent change in political/military doctrine.

The United States in 1914 had almost no reservists to speak of. The last mass mobilization had been fifty years prior in the Slavers’ War, and the advance of military technology had left that doctrinal experience obsolete. Nevertheless, certain echoes of the old doctrine continued to affect the modern army. In the Slavers’ War, most of the men mobilized by the Union had been part of the United States Volunteers, either individual or as regiments raised by states for that purpose, and separate from the permanent-professional Regular Army.

This was reflected in the division between the Regular Army of pre-war officers and enlisted, and the National Army composed of men conscripted under the Selective Service Act of 1915. The intent was to demobilise the National Army at the end of hostilities, beating swords into ploughshares in common with the American experience.
Officers would hold separate rank in the National Army from their Regular Army commissions. This created a sort of brevet system that allowed rapid promotion (and demotion), and ensured the mass of OCS trained or battlefield commissioned officers would not dilute the traditional arena of professional privilege in the Regulars.

The Army at Dawn ​

Mobilisation without trained reservists is a time-consuming process. New inductees into the National Army required six months of training to turn into reasonably competent fighting men. Most officers in the National Army had very little experience even in the peacetime command of men. The French and British Armies could provide few officers to assist in training.

Thus, American divisions would not arrive to theatre in significant numbers until late 1916. Meanwhile, American industry tooled up by providing immense amounts of war materiel to the beleaguered Entente.

Thus, from early 1915 to late 1916, the small cadre of the American Expeditionary Force constituted a vanguard of pre-war officers and NCOs, slowly expanded by National Guard soldiers and the first elements of the National Army. Officers and NCOs were rotated in and out of the AEF constantly, returning stateside to train others. This conveyor belt of experience ensured that the initial mass deployments would not be disastrous, but in early actions British and French officers were largely unimpressed with the American military.

Following the disastrous Verdun offensive in fall 1915, American forces in the European Theater were placed under an independent US command. Following the incorporation of US Marine Corps units into this command, on 28 April 1916 it became the American Expeditionary Forces. While on paper General of the Armies John J. Pershing had operational command of all American troops in theater, in practice Pershing would place units under temporary command of British or French allies as needed, particularly Marines serving with the Egyptian Expeditionary Force as part of the Sinai and Palestine Campaign.

American “square divisions”, composed of four infantry regiments organized into two brigades, and a full artillery brigade, had nearly 30,000 men at peak strength, twice the size of its British and French counterparts. These divisions would take a one forward, one back posture on the front line in normal circumstances, placing one brigade to man the front, with the other held in reserve for rest and refitting.

This rotation system would prove vital, given the tenuous morale in the AEF. And as more American divisions arrived, the particularly battered French Army adopted similar systems as Americans took up more of the frontage.

Higher level commands of Corps and Armies were established as the AEF grew throughout 1916. The United States Congress reversed its previous statutes established during the Spanish-American War, allowing these Corps to establish heraldic linkages to the Corps of the Union Army in the Civil War for morale purposes.

African-Americans in the National Army ​

Initially, Congress forbade African-Americans from serving as combat troops, a concession granted to Southern states fearing black fighting men disrupting the Jim Crow order in the South. Blacks would be drafted the same as whites, trained in separate units, and relegated to rear echelon duties.

Following race riots in Richmond, Virginia, started on 24 July 1915 by white draftees on leave after basic training, and successful lobbying by the NAACP to allow black soldiers to prove themselves by fighting for the nation, the Congress allowed the establishment of separate black regiments, to be lead initially by white officers.

But the Army in the continental United States and the Army overseas were functionally separate creatures. The chaos of battle, the needs to integrate replacements into units resting and retraining, and the limits of transport made the segregation policies impossible to maintain. By late 1916, the AEF was integrated at the battalion level, with black companies joining white battalions in many of the frontline divisions. Following the Nivelle Offensive of spring 1917, General Pershing promulgated General Order 127 on 4 July 1917, ordering the inclusion of black replacement and rear echelon soldiers into depleted divisions without regard to segregation.

While hardly uncontroversial, and many malcontents had to be subjected to military discipline to maintain order, the whole most soldiers accepted it with mild enthusiasm. Black soldiers had distinguished themselves in numerous actions, which Pershing utilized in Army propaganda to motivate soldiers, and on the whole black soldiers were more enthusiastic to prove themselves to ensure the advancement of their community. Many white soldiers were welcome to any reinforcement, and the de facto integration addressed white resentment that blacks were not “doing their fair share” by being restricted to rear echelons.

As more divisions were raised among soldiers streaming into France, and old divisions refitted, the military training process served as the most potent weapon against racism, forging soldiers into a cohesive unit.

The Army in France ​

General Pershing treated the expedition to France as a solemn repayment of a sacred debt owed to France for its role in the American War for Independence. But beyond the pageantry of visiting the Marquis de Lafayette’s tomb and making state visits to icons of the French Republic, the US Army would be fundamentally transformed by the four years spent fighting in France.

The French Army was battered but not defeated, and the officers of the American Expeditionary Forces took every opportunity to learn from their French allies and their German adversaries. The war, as then Brigadier General Douglas MacArthur put it, “would be won by the superior exercise of the continental military tradition.”
The AEF began developing its own doctrines for the use of both shock and infiltration after the partial failure of the Nivelle Offensive, still unconvinced about the efficacy of the British “land ships”. Emphasizing speed and surprise, “breaker troops” would cleave into gaps and weak points in the German lines, bypassing first echelon troops to take favorable positions to ambush the counter attack. Attached artillery assets would be support the advance, and work to suppress enemy counterattacks, while heavier batteries would begin prepared fire to rear positions.

Like their counterparts in the German Sturmtruppen, these tactics were a work in progress, and did not instantly yield a return to the manoeuvre war desired by the brass.
Beyond teaching French and German, the Army also began metrification, a process that became permanent in 1917 by Act of Congress. US Army equipment would be notated and produced according to metric standards, and existing equipment would be renamed. For example, the .303 Springfield became the 7.7 mm Springfield. Everything, from the maps the Army used, to the measurement of a soldier’s height and weight, would be in metric, and industry that served the Army’s needs would begin transitioning to metric in fits and starts.

The Army would use a number of licensed built weapons of French design throughout the war, such the venerable Canon de 75, produced as the 75 mm Gun M1897, or the Canon de 155 GPF, produced as the 155 mm Gun M1917. Others, such as the FM Chauchat light machine rifle, served until suitable domestic replacements (in this case, the M1917 Browning Automatic Rifle) became available.

The Army in Italy ​

Just when it seemed that the AEF would reach critical mass in France, disaster would strike in Italy. For the past two years, the Italian Army had struggled in vain to budge the Austro-Hungarians in the Alps. Italian General Luigi Cadorna had made almost a dozen failed offensives in the vicinity of the Soča River, called Isonzo in Italy. In spite of the limited gains, tremendous casualties, and brutal discipline, the Italian Army had hitherto maintained the initiative against the Austro-Hungarians.

But things were shifting behind the scenes, as the German Empire worked diligently to prepare their allies throughout 1917. On 12 October 1917, the Austro-Hungarian Army Group Boroević, supported by the German 14th Army, launched a major offensive near the town of Kobarid, in modern Yugoslavia. Utilizing poison gas, and troops trained in infiltration tactics, the attack overwhelmed the Italian garrisons.

The ensuing rout of the Italian Second Army threatened to knock the country out of the war entirely. By 2 November 1917, nearly 300,000 Italian troops had surrendered, along with huge masses of artillery and munitions.

Pershing was forced to act decisively. Inter-Entente military councils agreed that Italy would have to be kept in the fight at any price. And this would be the US Army’s chance to shine. Six US divisions were rushed to the Italian front; 82nd “All-American”, 84th “Railsplitters”, 91st “Pine Tree”, 93rd “Black Devils”, 101st “Nike” and 109th “Black Cat”. Accompanied by 5 British Divisions, the “Italian Corps” would clash with advancing Austro-Hungarian Troops at the Piave River, sparing the retreating Italian Third Army from a rout.

The front would stabilize by Christmas 1917, as the Italian Army reorganized, and the Americans put down roots. The British and American governments organized additional credit, as well as shipments of strategic materials, chiefly coal and steel, to stabilize the Kingdom of Italy.

The Marines in the Levant ​

The US Marines had fought as a supporting force to the British Egyptian Expeditionary Force through the stubborn battles of 1915 and 1916, fighting to repel Ottoman offensives against the Suez Canal. With the tide of the war shifting, the British chose to go on the offensive, nipping at the heels of the retreating Ottoman forces.
Unfortunately, in the subsequent First Battle of Gaza, this led to overstretched Entente forces attacking into prepared defensive positions on 25 March 1917. In spite of a 2:1 superiority in numbers, the Eastern Force would be savaged by Ottoman counterattacks, and forced to withdraw. In a second attempt on Gaza between 15 and 19 April 1917, the Eastern Force was reinforced by the 1st Marine Division, as well as additional artillery assets and even Mark I tanks. Nevertheless, the reinforced Gaza defenses inflicted awful casualties on the attackers.

While the Arab Revolt continued to brew in the south, a stalemated settled in southern Palestine, with neither the British nor the Ottomans able to take the initiative for almost six months.

The Marines, whose esprit de corps was well respected by friend and foe alike, endured this stalemate stoically. Then Colonel Smedley Butler, commander of the 2nd Marine Brigade, would devote this stalemate to instructing his marines to learn from the Turks and the Arab populations in their empire. By further studying their culture, and its relation to environment and geography, they could more effectively fight them.

Turkish soldiers had proven to be highly disciplined and motivated. Thus, in spite of the major material shortcomings in the logistical backbone of the Ottoman Army, they had proven to be a stubborn foe.

On 10 August 1917, Butler would be promoted to Brigadier General, and assume command of the 1st Marine Division, following Lejeune’s promotion to command of the newly raised X Corps in France. In October, the 1st Marine would join the Beersheba offensive, breaking the stalemate.

Butler himself would remark soberly in a diary entry dated 24 December 1917:

We have taken the ‘Holy City’ of Jerusalem, but I do not feel holy for walking through its streets. [General Edmund] Allenby says I’m becoming a Turk; maybe. Perhaps I do feel a stronger kinship now with the Mehmets fighting desperately to defend their state than I do with the conquerors. There is something shameful in an American, whose forefathers fought to free themselves from the British Empire, fighting to extend the imperial yoke to another people.​

Learning from the Best: The US Navy ​

When the six ships of the US Navy’s Battleship Division 9 joined the British Grand Fleet, their officers and crew found themselves below the exacting standards of the Royal Navy. But as the months wore on, and they drilled to precision, the prospect of facing the enemy fleet seemed to grow more remote. The real action was in the battle against German unrestricted submarine warfare.

On 31 May 1916, though, four of the ships, USS New York, USS Texas , USS Wyoming , and USS Arkansas , would join the Grand Fleet in the pivotal naval engagement of the 20th century off the coast of Denmark Jutland peninsula. The Imperial German Navy sought to entrap a decisive fraction of the Royal Navy and destroy it, breaking the blockade slowly strangling the German war economy. But having grabbed the Lion by his tail, they also got his teeth. The Royal Navy sought to overwhelm the High Seas Fleet and utterly destroy it, and thus deliver a crippling blow to the upstart German Empire.

No plan survives first contact with the enemy. In the initial battlecruiser action, the better protected German battlecruisers inadvertently exploited critical flaws in British gunnery practices, chiefly the nature of British cordite charges and flash protection equipment. Powder bag handling would leave residues, leading from the turret rooms all the way to the powder magazines. Penetration in these spaces would likely be disastrous.

Admiral Beatty’s scouting force would lose four ships, nearly half its number, in the first half hour of action. But these early German victories would be short-lived; later that afternoon Jellicoe’s main force would “cross the t” on Scheer. Three German battleships, the König, Rheinland , and Thüringen would be sunk or scuttled as a result of the action, at the cost of the HMS Colossus.

Battleship Division 9 would see little of the direct action, performing only a handful of salvoes before Scheer ordered an emergency retreat, and Jellicoe chose not to risk torpedoes in pursuit. But the repercussions of the battle would reverberate through the US Navy.

The fear of another Jutland resulted in the transfer of an additional battleship division, with newer oil-fired super dreadnoughts, to Scapa Flow, as well as comprehensive reviews of naval architecture, ammunition handling, and damage control protocols. The new Lexington -class battlecruisers would have their construction halted pending redesigns, trading 35 knot top speed for increased horizontal and vertical armor protection.

In March 1917, in concert with the Royal Navy the US Atlantic Fleet began a more aggressive u-boat hunting campaign. Coupled with scores of new destroyers escorting merchant convoys, the campaign hoped to decisively crush the threat to Transatlantic trade while safeguarding the export of heating oil from the US to the UK.
Coupled with new naval minefields laid in the North Sea and aggressive patrols for surface raiders, the Battle of the Atlantic was swinging strongly in the Entente’s favor. But much of the Navy’s life at Scapa Flow was boredom and drudgery, punctuated by sports exhibitions to raise morale. Ashore, this meant baseball and boxing, and slowly taking up rugby in matches with their British comrades.

Conclusion: A New Tradition ​

1917 would be the formative year for the American military tradition, in profound ways that would outlive the United States itself. As writer Ernest Hemingway would put it, “The Army is Franco-German, the Navy is British, and the Marines are all Turks.”

In this formative year, the war effort would catalyze a number of reactions with far-reaching significance in American society. The Army would mobilize a mass army of citizen-soldiers, cohesive and drilled to murderous efficiency, but the civilian leadership would ultimately fail to justify its war aims to the soldiers it created. Several hundred thousand African-Americans would be trained to fight, and given a taste of formal equality, only to come back home to Jim Crow. Their white comrades would join them in embitterment over this and numerous other offenses.

For an entire generation of American officers, the year’s grimly slow advance would punctuate a general demoralization. In spite of the best efforts of public diplomacy and military censors, news of corruption and brutality on the home front was impossible to completely shut out. Without the fear of complete defeat, it became easier to doubt the justice of a war waged to secure the debts owed to American bankers, to pry open foreign markets to American exports, or to serve as a catspaw to British imperialism.
The seeds planted in 1917 would bear fruit sixteen years later in the Red May Revolution and beyond. Whatever disillusionment the masses of Navy and Army enlisted felt in the war effort, revulsion towards its vanity, or condemnation of the economic racket that war served, the legacy of the Great War also gave them the skills they would use as the revolutionary cadres, and to fight the menace of fascism.

The Nivelle Offensive

In late 1916, French Marshal Joffre was replaced by General Robert Nivelle as Commander-in-Chief of the French Army. Nivelle immediately put forward a bold plan for combined offensive. The British Army, supplemented by American divisions, would begin an attack near Arras in early April as a diversion. Meanwhile, the French Army and the bulk of the American Expeditionary Force would prepare for an attack at Chemin des Dames ridge.

Nivelle’s plan was bold and foolhardy. He expected a breakthrough and encirclement of the German Army within 48 hours, followed by a quick end to the war. For the offensive, the Entente assembled an immense force of nearly one million men, close to 8,000 guns and three-hundred-fifty tanks.

The British offensive at Arras began on April 3rd. The Entente committed four armies to the offensive: the British First, Third and Fifth Armies, and the American Third Army. Since October of the year before, the British Royal Engineers had been working underground, digging tunnels in the chalky soil around Arras. Besides logistical tunnels, to bring troops and ammunition to the front safely and allow the safe evacuation of casualties, the Royal Engineers also dug assault tunnels, stopping a few meters short of the German lines to be blown on Zero-Day. In addition, mines were laid under the front-line, to be blown during the assault.
For the assault itself, a “creeping barrage” was planned, protecting attacking troops with a veil of artillery fire advancing one hundred meters ahead of the advance. Counter-battery fire was planned, and the crews drilled diligently in the weeks prior to make the most of the assault. On Zero-Day, over 80% of German heavy guns in the sector were neutralized.

Z-day proceeded surprisingly well. By chance, the sudden snowstorm of the day came at the assaulting troops’ backs, blinding the German defenders with sleet. Many were caught unaware, captured half-dressed coming out of their dugouts. By the standards of the Western front, the gains of the first two days were nothing short of spectacular. A great deal of ground was gained for relatively few casualties and a number of strategically significant points were captured, notably Vimy Ridge. Additionally, the offensive succeeded in drawing German troops away from the French offensive in the Aisne sector.

The assault at Chemin des Dames, however, proved to be much more difficult. Beginning on April 13th, forty-seven divisions from the French Fifth and Sixth Armies and the American First Army attacked the German line along an 80 km stretch from Soissons to Reims. Following a massive but ineffective artillery barrage, French and American infantry, supported by French Schneider CA1 and American copies of the British Mark IV tank, crossed no-man’s-land to face an average of one machine-gun every ten meters. German troops, safe in the underground quarries of the region, emerged to savage the attackers.

Coupled with an ineffective creeping barrage, and the poor showing of the French CA1 tanks, the first day of the assault bloody. On the first day of battle, the French suffered close to 10,000 casualties and lost over forty tanks. The Americans fared slightly better, suffering six thousand casualties and the loss of twenty tanks to enemy fire.

The British faced their own share of setbacks in the week following the French offensive on the Aisne. German counterattacks wore down the British attackers, and the Franco-American attack only made ground through sheer weight and dogged determination. Thanks to the tankers of the American Tank Corps, and the dogged determination of the French and American infantry, the offensive proceeded.

Finally, on April 19th, the French and American troops achieved a breakthrough at Chemin de Dames. The British army continued to push forward steadily, and in spite of setbacks, the Entente pushed forward to the planned linkup at Hirson, near the Belgian border.

The luck was not to last. The continued artillery bombardments had leveled literally everything above ground on the axis of advance, and transformed the terrain into a cratered moonscape. The logistical problem would prove to be insurmountable. Moving ammunition and food to the front became nearly impossible in the conditions created by trench warfare. Thanks to this, and German tactical poise, the British and French assaults both ground to a halt by the 21st of April.

Men continued to be fed into the meat-grinder, in one last reckless hope of finishing the operation. The German Heer had sensed the tightening snare, hurriedly evacuating troops from the pocket. While the evacuating troops took heavy casualties from Entente artillery, the encirclement only succeeded in pocketing the rearguard of three German divisions. Subsequent German counteroffensives threatened those gains. The front would stabilize on 25 May, giving the Entente a victory, though a Pyrrhic one at that.

Victory would cost the Entente over three hundred thousand casualties, compared to little over three-hundred-fifty thousand casualties for the German Army. In 1915 or 1916, such a victory would have been phenomenal. But Nivelle had oversold his offensive, promising a decisive war-ending victory. The demoralization caused by high casualties and the failed aims would bring the French and American armies to the edge of mutiny.

The October Revolution

The young Russian Republic was in great social, political and economic crisis from the moment of its birth. Disorder in industry and transport continued to increase, and gross industrial production in 1917 had decreased by over forty percent from what it had been in 1916. Faced with a war it could not win, the economy also was on the verge of total collapse, with mass unemployment in the Urals, the Donbas and other industrial regions, massively increased cost of living, and the depression of real wages by almost 50 percent.

In September and October 1917, there were strikes by the Moscow and Petrograd workers, the miners of the Donbas, the metalworkers of the Urals, the oil workers of Baku, the textile workers of the Central Industrial Region, and the railroad workers on 44 different railway lines. In these months alone more than a million workers took part in mass strike action. Workers established control over production and distribution in many factories and plants in a social revolution.

The Provisional Government’s authority continued to erode, especially after the Kornilov Affair. Facing an attempted coup, only the army’s own poor morale, and the belligerence of the forces under the control of the Petrograd Soviet, saved the Provisional Government during the August affair. Bolshevik popularity soared over the affair, and Vladimir Lenin continued to gain influence within the party.

On 5 November (23 October), the Central Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks) voted 10-2 in favor of a resolution saying that “an armed uprising is inevitable, and that the time for it is fully ripe”. It became clear that it would only be a matter of time before the Provisional Government fell, whether to reaction or revolution.

The Bolshevik coup began in the early hours of the morning of 6 November (24 October). Bolshevik operatives quickly took control of all major government offices and centers of power in Petrograd without firing a shot. At 9:45 p.m., Vladimir Lenin launched an assault upon the Winter Palace, guarded only by a few Cossacks, military cadets, and a Women’s Battalion. It was taken at about 2 a.m., bloodlessly, and the tattered remnants of the Provisional Government were soon arrested.

The following day, on the floor of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, the Bolshevik leaders announced a decree transferring all powers to the Congress of Soviets. The resolution was ratified, with a strong majority of around 400 of the Congress’ 670 elected delegates. While the Bolsheviks and the Left faction of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party (a peasant left-wing nationalist party) had supported the overthrow, the Right faction of the SRs and the Mensheviks had opposed it, charging that the Bolsheviks had illegally seized power. They soon walked out, effectively handing power to the Bolsheviks. As they left, Leon Trotsky taunted them “Go out where you belong – into the ash heap of history.”

On 8 November (26 October), the Congress of Soviets elected a Council of People’s Commissars to serve as the basis of Soviet government until a Constituent Assembly could be assembled to ratify a new constitution. The Revolution would be a disaster for the Entente. The new government of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic made its intention to withdraw from the war abundantly clear.