Joseph Stalin as witness

The meeting of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party on 10 October 1917 (23 October in the old style) was a historic turning point—it was then that the decision to launch an armed uprising was taken.

Shortly after the decision to stage the uprising, Lenin -now wanted by the Provisional Government- was once again forced into hiding. In these critical days, practical preparations for the revolution were undertaken by the Petrograd Soviet and its military wing, the Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC). Formed on 20 October (Old Style) to prevent the Petrograd garrison from being sent to the front, the MRC became the principal organising force behind the uprising.

At the head of the committee stood Lev Trotsky. With remarkable organisational brilliance, Trotsky oversaw critical processes -from securing the garrison’s allegiance to the Soviet cause to coordinating the logistics of the uprising. He directed Soviet military operations in Petrograd and by early November had brought almost the entire capital under Bolshevik control. On 13 November (Old Style), he repelled Alexander Kerensky’s attempt to retake the city with loyalist forces in the Battle of Pulkovo, thereby consolidating Bolshevik domination over Petrograd.

Trotsky’s organisational genius, his ability to inspire the masses, and his military-political vision were key to the revolution’s victory. His role was so pivotal that, in an assessment written on the first anniversary of the revolution, his contribution to the uprising’s success was expressed in the following terms:

All practical work in connection with the organization of the uprising was done under the immediate direction of Comrade Trotsky, the president of the Petrograd Soviet. It can be stated with certainty that the Party is indebted primarily and principally to Comrade Trotsky for the rapid going over of the garrison to the side of the Soviet and the efficient manner in which the work of the Military-Revolutionary Committee was organized. The principal assistants of Comrade Trotsky were Comrades Antonov and Podvoisky.

— Pravda, 6 October 1918

The author of these lines was none other than Joseph Stalin.

Tariq Ali (author) & Phil Evans (Illustrator), Trotsky for Beginners, Pantheon Books, New York, 1980, p.76 [*]

With Stalin’s rise to power, this highly ‘inconvenient’ piece of testimony was systematically erased from the historical record. Back issues of Pravda were withdrawn from libraries, archives were combed for this purpose, and considerable efforts were made to make the article inaccessible.

The 6 November 1918 issue of Pravda, featuring Stalin’s article

[*] Ali and Evans give the date of Stalin’s article incorrectly; it was in fact published in Pravda on 6 November 1918.