isaac-deutscher-the-prophet-armed-trotsky-1879-1921

THE PROPHET ARMED
answer the examiner's questions and gave his reasons in a letter
to the Central Executive of the Soviets. Three days later, on
4 September, he was released on bail.
Straight from the prison he went to the Smolny Institute to
participate in a session of the Committee for Struggle against
Counter-revolution, which had, with Kerensky's blessing, been
formed by the Soviet. This body was to be the prototype of the
Military Revolutionary Committee which led the October
insurrection.
Kornilov was defeated not by force of arms, but by Bolshevik
agitation. His troops deserted him, without firing a shot. From
Kornilov's defeat started a new chain of events leading straight
to the October insurrection. Just as the abortive revolution of
3-4J uly had swung the balance in favour of counter-revolution,
so this abortive counter-revolution had swung it much more
powerfully in the opposite direction. The second coalition
government broke down. The Cadet ministers resigned,
because they did not favour Kerensky's action against Kornilov.
The Socialist ministers withdrew, because they suspected
Kerensky of having previously intrigued with Kornilov against
the Soviet and encouraged his ambitions. For a month Kerensky,
incapable of piecing together the broken fragments of the
coalition, ruled through a so-called Directorate, a small and
quite unrepresentative committee.
In the Soviet Trotsky and Kamenev asked for an investigation
of the events that led to Kornilov's coup and of Kerensky's role
in the preliminaries. With increased insistence they pressed the
moderate Socialists to part company at last with the Cadets,
many of whom had backed Kornilov. After the Kornilov affair
the argument in favourofa purely Socialist government sounded
irrefutable. When the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries
still continued their attempts to revive the coalition, their
followers deserted them en masse. Within a few days the moderate
majority in the Soviet disintegrated. On 9 September Trotsky
made one of his rousing speeches, demanding an unequivocal
rehabilitation of himself and the Bolshevik leaders. He asked
for the government's long-overdue report on the July events,
and he tabled a motion of no confidence in the Menshevik
'Presidium' of the Soviet. To everybody's immense surprise,
the motion was carried. For the first time the Bolsheviks