Status Updates From History of the Russian Revo...

“During the first two months, when the power belonged formally to the government of Guchkov and Miliukov, it was as a fact wholly in the hands of the Soviet. During the following two months the Soviet grew weaker.” (Cont…)

“A prototype of the July Days is to be found in all the old revolutions — with various, but generally speaking unfavorable, and frequently catastrophic, results. This stage is involved in the inner mechanics of a bourgeois revolution, inasmuch as that class which sacrifices most for the success of the revolution and hopes the most from it, receives the least of all.” (Cont…)

“During the month of June those people had well convinced themselves of the strong influence of the Bolsheviks on the masses, and they now simply refused to believe that a movement of workers and soldiers could have surged up over the heads of the Bolsheviks.” (Cont…)

“The throng of workers, hungry and dead-tired, scattered about on the street and in the garden, a majority immediately stretching themselves out, thinking to wait there for an answer.” (1/3)

Finished the appendices, as well as the introduction to volumes 1 and 2, which consists primarily of Trotsky responding to criticism of the first volume from a M.N. Pokrovsky, who Trotsky repeatedly clowns on, but then includes the footnote: “I did not realize he had died while I was working on this criticism. He was brilliant and I’ve heard lovely things” (paraphrase).

Appendix 1 is a pretty good essay on Russia’s unique development in its own right.

“The Bolsheviks went after the provincials. Does this look like a gang of conspirators? The delegates agreed that it did not. "In Petrograd you are the power," they conceded […], "but not in the provinces, not at the front. Petrograd cannot go against the whole country." That's all right, answered the Bolsheviks, your turn will soon come the same slogans will be raised.”

Finished vol. 1. Onto the appendices.