p Though three months had passed since the overthrow of the autocracy, nothing had changed: the factories still belonged to the capitalists and the land to the landlords; the devastating war continued and escalated. The conviction that the Provisional Government was a bourgeois, counter-revolutionary body grew among the people, primarily among the workers and soldiers of Petrograd. They were seized by a rebellious mood and on 18 June they took to the street. Over 500, 000 marched in that demonstration, carrying banners bearing the Bolshevik slogans ’Down with the Minister-Capitalists’ and ’All Power to the Soviets’. A few groups of intelligentsia, pathetic in a massive jostling flood of demonstrators who were fired by one desire and one emotion, tried in vain to raise their Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik placards.

p On that same day an all-out offensive against the German forces had been ordered by the Provisional Government  [85•1 . The motivation was clear: if the move succeeded, which no one thought it would, this would strengthen the Government’s position; if it failed, the Bolsheviks could be blamed. In either case the Bolshevik cause would suffer.

p The offensive was a terrible failure, costing tens of thousands of lives and infuriating the workers. The atmosphere in Petrograd grew more strained by the minute.

p The CC and the Petrograd Committee did their best to hold back the soldiers and workers for they knew that the vast bulk of the people did not have the political maturity to undertake any decisive action or even to support a Petrograd rising, while the growing counterrevolutionary forces were looking for an excuse to fall on the 86 revolutionary proletariat. Such was the situation as Sverdlov described it to me when I arrived in Petrograd in early July. At that time he was living in a flat recently vacated by an engineer whom he had known in the Urals.

p Then serious disturbances began on the Vyborg side. The 1st Machine-Gun Regiment had decided to move and sent representatives to the neighbouring factories and military units, asking for support. They could be out on the streets in no time. The Petrograd Party Conference cut short its debates and the delegates went out among the people.

p The Central Committee, the Petrograd Committee and the Military Organisation did everything within their power to prevent the rising; Sverdlov, Podvoisky, Nevsky and Slutsky made dozens of speeches in those few hours, trying to restore calm and restraint, but to no avail. The wall was breached and the insurgent forces were as ungovernable as the elements themselves, so, during the night of 3 July, the CC, the Petrograd Committee, the Conference delegates and the Military Organisation leadership decided to direct the rising. Since it could not be averted, they wanted to ensure that it was peaceful and organised.

p Meanwhile the Cossack regiments, artillery batteries and armoured divisions that had been withdrawn from the front were on their way back to Petrograd and by 4 July the cadets  [86•1  and the dregs of the officer corps were up on the roofs, firing on unarmed demonstrators. In the main streets dozens fell victim to their treachery.

p But the Kronstadt sailors and the soldiers and workers of Petrograd held back in the face of this provocation, defending themselves staunchly but refusing to attack and leaving government buildings and officials unscathed. By a tremendous effort the Bolsheviks managed to keep the people from doing anything that would lead to their own and the Party’s downfall. Late in the evening of the same day the Central Committee decided to put an end to the demonstration, feeling that it had expressed the people’s revolutionary will clearly enough.

p Sverdlov did not come home at all on 4 July; I opened the door on hearing the agreed signal very early the next morning. He had hardly got inside before he was telling me that there had been a cadet attack on the Pravda office. They had narrowly missed capturing Lenin, who had left only a short time before. ’We can’t put anything past those scum now. They could be here before we know it,’ Sverdlov said, looking meaningfully towards the other side of the street. ’I have to warn 87 Lenin right now, get him away from here and then think what to do. I’ve just come to get my waterproof. He’ll need it.’

p He ran off, carrying the coat, to Lenin’s flat across the street. His haste proved to be well-timed.

p He took Lenin to a comrade’s flat in the Petrograd district until a more permanent refuge could be found, as he told me when he dropped in for a moment that evening to return the coat.

p Very shortly afterwards a lorry roared into the street, stopped near Lenin’s house and peppered the pavement with soldiers and cadets. Ignoring all the assurances that Lenin was not there, they searched the cupboards, beds, baskets, trunks... The counter-revolutionary forces were beside themselves with rage: on 7 July the Provisional Government issued a warrant for Lenin’s arrest but, no matter how hard they tried to find him and settle accounts, they were powerless against the Party’s determination to keep its leader safe.

p I hardly ever saw Sverdlov now; he was at home for only an hour or two at a time—obviously, to stay in a flat which was registered in his name would be inviting arrest. One day at dawn he took a few of his things and left, not even waking the children to say goodbye. At the end of July I and the children moved to furnished rooms on Vassilyevsky Island.

Sverdlov visited us on occasions, always briefly and unexpectedly. He moved in more or less permanently at the end of August, when the ardour of the government security services had abated a little, and even then we almost never saw each other at home. In the middle of July the Central Committee had put me in charge of their publishing house Priboi (The Surf), evidently believing that I had learnt something from my years in book shops and depositories. This work brought me into close contact with the Central Committee Secretariat and from August we shared the same premises.