p In his secret hiding place in Razliv, near Sestroretsk, Lenin had thoroughly analysed recent events and was calling on the Party to ready iself for an armed rising. Liaison between Lenin and the Party was maintained by Sverdlov; he considered it his most vital task. We generally had no secrets from each other but this link was so clandestine that I only knew it existed; Sverdlov told me no more.

p Although the counter-revolution had complicated our work, the bourgeoisie was unable to crush the Party or drive it underground. Our leader was still in control of Party affairs through the Central Committee and, only two and a half weeks after the closure of Pravda, 88 the Military Organisation, with the cooperation of the CC, produced a temporary replacement, Rabochy i soldat (The Worker and the Soldier). Three weeks after that, in mid-August, Pravda, our major Party organ, reappeared as Proletary; Sverdlov had done a lot to help bring that about.

p The Sixth Party Congress opened on 26 July. Sverdlov had spoken about it to the Second Petrograd Party Conference early in the month and the Central Committee had formed a special bureau to make preliminary arrangements, a task which the events of July had made considerably more difficult—as the Congress would have to be a partially clandestine operation. But the bureau did all it could to meet the schedule. Sverdlov took on numerous responsibilities, including choosing the meeting hall, preparing the agenda and arranging board and lodging for the delegates.

p Lenin should have been the principal speaker, but, as it was too risky for him to participate personally, the Central Committee instructed Stalin to deliver the CC political report and to speak on the political situation in his stead. Sverdlov gave the CC report on current Party activities. These were the central issues considered at the Congress.

p Though Lenin was absent, every delegate continually sensed his presence; the hall rose, applauding wildly, when the decision to elect him Honorary Chairman was announced. Sverdlov, Olminsky, Lomov, Yurenev and Stalin were unanimously elected to the Presidium.

p This Congress showed the extent to which the Party had taken a militant line, following Lenin’s course towards an armed uprising. It was clear that this was the only way that power could pass to the proletariat and the impoverished peasantry.

p The Congress was well under way when the bourgeois press began to raise an incredible uproar. On 28 July a Provisional Government decree was issued outlawing all congresses and conferences. A raid seemed inevitable.

p Sverdlov suggested that an extraordinary closed session be held to elect a new Central Committee as a matter of urgency. No minutes were taken and the election results were not publicised. Sverdlov noted them down in code and did not announce them until the Central Committee Plenary Session on 4 August.

p If the bourgeoisie had counted on quelling the revolution during the July days’, they had miscalculated badly. Tension was mounting daily, the country was in growing disarray, bread was in short supply, the June offensive had been a terrible fiasco—and all this served to open the eyes of the people, to strengthen the position of the Bolsheviks.

p At the end of August, Kornilov, a general in the tsarist army, attempted a counter-revolutionary coup. Although acting on the instance of Russian and foreign capitalists, he only succeeded in harming the bourgeois cause.

p As his troops advanced on Petrograd they were met by detachments of workers, batallions and regiments of revolutionary soldiers, and groups of sailors. Hundreds of Bolsheviks agitators—workers and soldiers—infiltrated his ranks, showing the counter-revolutionary intrigue in its true colours. The advancing forces faltered, hesitated and halted, and the Bolsheviks gained immensely from Kornilov’s failure.

p On 31 August the Petrograd Soviet adopted the Bolshevik motion ’On Power’. The Soviet’s Presidium, which was predominantly made up of Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, was forced to step down; this ultimately ensured a Bolshevik majority on the Presidium, and they later took over the Soviets in Moscow and elsewhere.

p Not long after this Sverdlov and the other Central Committee members in the Petrograd Soviet transferred to the former Smolny Institute, along with the rest of the Bolshevik faction. Sverdlov began to spend most of his time there, visiting the Secretariat offices more rarely. At that time we on the staff of Priboi were sharing 19 Furshtadtskaya street with the Secretariat, having moved there not long before the Kornilov mutiny.

p Meanwhile the tension continued to mount. Now that the Soviets were in Bolshevik hands, the question of taking power came to the fore. The rising was imminent.

p Lenin left Razliv for Finland at the beginning of August; at the end of the month he moved to Helsingfors and the middle of September found him in Vyborg, coming ever closer to the centre of events.

p In the first half of September some of his letters were delivered to the Central Committee by his sister, Maria. A meeting was held on 15 September to discuss his insistence that we ready ourselves in earnest for the rising.

p Sverdlov had an unshakable belief that the rising would succeed, that Lenin’s arguments were correct beyond question; this belief was founded on his knowledge of the situation, on his close ties with the Party nucleus and with large numbers of workers, on his unlimited faith in the revolutionary zeal and the strength of the Russian proletariat. He had gone out among the Petrograd workers, soldiers and sailors, had attended their meetings and talked to them; he knew their mood. And thanks to his daily contact with Party members from local groups, with representatives of the Bolshevik factions in Soviets throughout the country, with, the ordinary people he knew the mood of the provinces too.

p From the end of September communications between Lenin and Sverdlov became very lively indeed. Hardly a day went by without news from Vyborg—letters, articles for publication, assessments of recent events, something that he had said or done—and I heard it all from Sverdlov.

p And then he came home from Smolny late one evening in early October and announced that Lenin was back in Petrograd. Everything’s all right now,’ he said.

p Lenin was back. He immediately made his presence felt, especially in the Central Committee; Sverdlov saw a great deal of him. On 10 October he participated for the first time in a meeting of the Central Committee that had been elected at the Sixth Congress. Sverdlov opened the session and also chaired it. He gave a short address, outlining the state of affairs on the Roumanian front, in the north, and around Minsk, and emphasised that counter-revolution was gathering force. Lenin then spoke on the current situation—the most vital item on the agenda—and again insisted that a rising was not only essential but inevitable. His arguments were compelling.

p Six days later the Central Committee met again. This was a secret session, at which the strictest possible security was observed, for it also involved representatives of the Petrograd Soviet Executive Commission, the Military Organisation, the Bolshevik faction in the Petrograd Soviet, the trade unions and the factory committees. Sverdlov was Chairman.

p Several of those present had not met Lenin since his return to Petrograd, and many had not expected to see him at this meeting. He began the proceedings with a speech about the CC decision taken on 10 October to organise an armed rising, and hammered home how necessary and inevitable this rising was.

p A disorderly and passionate discussion followed, in which Lenin spoke three times, firmly supported by all the genuine Bolsheviks present. His opponents on the issue of the uprising were routed and the motion was carried by an overwhelming majority.

p The Central Committee at its meeting on 10 October had agreed to lead up to the rising under cover of defending Petrograd against counter-revolutionaries. This made it possible to create a perfectly legal body, subordinate to the Petrograd Soviet, which could use its authority to make above-board military preparations.

p At the end of the session, when all but the Central Committee had left, a Military-Revolutionary Centre, comprising Sverdlov, Stalin, Bubnov, Uritsky and Dzerzhinsky, was elected to lead the rising, and head the Military-Revolutionary Committee.

p I heard about all this from Sverdlov on the same day. As he was 91 talking he pulled some papers from his pocket. 1 can see them now: sheets of squared paper that could have been taken from a school exercise book. They were covered top to bottom in Lenin’s hand. The upper corner of one sheet was torn.

p ’Take these,’ Sverdlov said. ‘They’re Lenin’s letters. Put them somewhere really safe. Not a word to anybody for the time being. They’re vitally important; we must preserve them at all costs.’

p 1 did as I was told and years later, when Sverdlov was no longer with us, they were handed to the Central Committee.

p Preparations for the rising proceeded apace. Smolny seethed with activity, issuing instructions and orders of all kinds, and receiving an endless stream of workers, soldiers and sailors that poured into the wide corridors and spacious rooms of the huge building where young ladies of gentle birth had once studied.

p The Provisional Government was in a fever of preparation too, rallying its forces to strike the first blow, to enfeeble the revolution by destroying its leadership, the Party. Troops were recalled from the front and patrolled the streets in strength.

But the days of the bourgeoisie’s ascendancy were numbered. The working-class districts of Petrograd were bristling with bayonets; every factory had become a revolutionary stronghold. The workers formed into military detachments under Bolshevik supervision; the Petrograd garrison was in the hands of revolutionaries who were under arms; the peerless men of Kronstadt and Helsingfors were ready for action; aboard the battleships of the Baltic fleet the sailors, prompted by the Party, were stoking the engines. Throughout the land the people were rising, steeling themselves for the conflict that would decide all.