> I'm still wondering how the Bolsheviks could
> have been suckered into supporting Kerensky.
> Big mistake, dude.
Right. Interesting analogy. Talking about the anniversary of the October revolution.
The Bolsheviks supported Kerensky until they didn't. They set out to overthrow Kerensky in the fall, when he refused to go after Kornilov, who was openly plotting against the revolution (the February revolution, that is).
The immediate reason why the Bolsheviks overthrew Kerensky was not because he was in the way of peace, bread, and land for Russia, the immediate demands of the Bolshevik, which put them at odds with Kerensy after February. No, it wasn't because Kerensky betrayed the hopes he had raised with regards to ending the war and re-distributing the land of the tsar and his aristocrats. (Nothing to do with socialism.)
If peace, bread, and land (demands with tremendous popular appeal in Russia after February, especially in the climate of revolutionary enthusiasm that followed the dethroning of the tsar and the extension of a bloody war) had been the exclusive grounds to stage the Bolshevik insurrection, the insurrection would have had a much harder time. Perhaps it would have failed.
Those issues the Bolsheviks were entirely willing to settle through the mechanisms of soviet democracy. Lenin's slogan to deal with Kerensky after it became clear that he was not stopping the war and the time before Kornilov's plotting became too overt to ignore wasn't "To hell with the February revolution" but "Explain patiently." Even after Kornilov's threat went beyond mere threats and death squad selective repression began, the Bolsheviks weren't ready. At some point, Lenin had to shave his goatee and escape to Finland to avoid being killed.
No, the immediate reason or, rather, the political and *ethical* justification brandished by the Bolshevisk to overthrow Kerensky's government was that, in the face of an imminent coup by the restorationists, overthrowing it was necessary to abort a coup by Kornilov and thus to preserve the *democratic* conquests of the February revolution.
Am I right? Chris, Charles, or other Russian revolution history junkies?