Quick questions on Trotsky and the October Revolution: HSC Modern History Personality

Trotsky was in New York at the outbreak of the February Revolution, editing the Russian socialist paper Novy Mir with Bukharin and Volodarsky. He left New York on 27 March 1917 (New Style) on the SS Kristianiafjord. The British navy interned him at Amherst, Nova Scotia from 3 April to 29 April 1917, on suspicion of being a German agent. After Provisional Government protests he was released and arrived in Petrograd on 4 May 1917 (Old Style 17 May).

Trotsky led the Mezhraiontsy (Inter-District Organisation), a Petrograd Marxist faction of some 4,000 members that stood between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. Through May, June, and July 1917 Trotsky negotiated the fusion of the Mezhraiontsy with the Bolshevik Party. The fusion was completed at the Sixth Party Congress (26 July to 3 August 1917, Old Style), held in semi-clandestine conditions because Lenin was in hiding in Finland.

The July Days (3-7 July 1917) were the unsuccessful Petrograd workers' and sailors' rising. The Provisional Government blamed the Bolsheviks. Lenin fled to Finland. Trotsky was arrested on 23 July 1917 and held in the Kresty Prison.

The Petrograd Soviet gained a Bolshevik majority on 31 August 1917. Trotsky was elected chair of the Petrograd Soviet on 25 September 1917, the position he had occupied for 50 days in 1905. The chairmanship gave him institutional command of the city's workers' and soldiers' deputies and a public platform second only to the Provisional Government's.

The Northern Front commander Lavr Kornilov's defeat had left Petrograd defenceless. The Provisional Government's proposal to move two-thirds of the Petrograd garrison to the front (10 October 1917, Old Style) was the immediate trigger for the seizure of power: the Bolshevik claim was that the soldiers were being moved to disable the Petrograd Soviet.

The seizure of power began on the night of 24 October 1917 (New Style 6-7 November) after the Provisional Government attempted to close two Bolshevik papers and to arrest the MRC leadership. Trotsky directed operations from the Smolny Institute. By the morning of 25 October the MRC controlled the bridges, the telephone exchange, the post office, the railway stations, the State Bank, and the major streets. The Winter Palace fell late in the night of 25-26 October.

The Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets opened at Smolny at 10:40 PM on 25 October 1917. Mensheviks and Right SRs walked out in protest at the armed seizure. Trotsky met the walkout with the famous line, "You are a pitiful handful of bankrupts. Your role is played out.

In the "Letter to the Congress" of December 1922 (commonly called Lenin's Testament), Lenin wrote: "Comrade Trotsky, as his struggle against the Central Committee on the question of the People's Commissariat of Transport has already proved, is distinguished not only by outstanding ability. He is personally perhaps the most capable man in the present Central Committee."

The seizure of power was 25 October Old Style and 7 November New Style.

It was nominally a Petrograd Soviet body, with Left SR membership; this gave the seizure its formal cover.

Trotsky entered the Bolshevik Central Committee at the head of his own faction in July 1917.