1898 map of Petrograd, the Russian capital, Kronstadt Bay, and the Russian naval base of Kronstadt, from a German atlas. Petersburg, or Petrograd, is on Kronstadt Bay, an extension of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. Kronstadt was an important naval base. North and east of central Petrograd was the Vyborg district, site of many factories and housing for workers.
"On the morning of the fifth [July] I met Lenin. The offensive by the masses had been beaten off. 'Now they will shoot us down, one by one,' said Lenin. 'This is the right time for them.' But he overestimated the opponent—not his venom, but his courage and ability to act. They did not shoot us down one by one, although they were not far from it. Bolsheviks were being beaten down in the streets and killed. Military students sacked the Kseshinskaya palace and the printing-works of the Pravda. The whole street in front of the works was littered with manuscripts, and among those destroyed was my pamphlet 'To the Slanderers.'"
Leon Trotsky writing of some of the events of July 18, 1917 (July 5 Old Style) and the next days following the July 16 anti-war and anti-government demonstrations in which government ministers were threatened and over 100 were killed. Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolsheviks, did not think the time was ripe for seizing power. Other Bolsheviks, as well as workers and soldiers, clearly did.
My Life: an Attempt at an Autobiography by Leon Trotsky, page 313, publisher: Dover Publications, Inc., publication date: 2007
1917-07-18,
