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This volume is intended to complete the study begun in The Petrograd Workers and the Fall of the Old Regime, taking it from the July Days through the October Revolution to the start of the intense phase of the civil war in the summer of 1918. This is a natural termination: by that time a majority of the workers of 1917, including those who had been the most ardent advocates of soviet power, were no longer in the factories. Many were far from Petrograd in remote corners of the hungry and desolate land. The basic aims and methodology of this volume remain the same. It is an attempt to understand the revolution as viewed from below, from the factory districts of the 'red capital'. It argues that the workers' participation in the revolution can be understood in fundamentally rational terms, that their political behaviour was a response, not to internal drives and unrealistic hopes, but to a real situation, that it involved a reasoned weighing of the consequences of various possible alternative routes of action. It does not ignore the important role of non-rational factors. But it questions the often condescending and impressionistic interpretations of the workers' radicalism as elemental anarchism, chiliasm or simply political immaturity. (In the interval between the completion of this book and its appearance in print, a number of other monographs on related aspects of the social history of the revolution have appeared that also challenge these long-standing views (in particular D. Koenker, The Moscow Workers and the 1917 Revolution and S. Smith, Red Petrograd). This long-overdue turn to the nizy in the West (heralded, in fact, by M. Ferro, La Révolution de 1917 and A. Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks Come to Power, which appeared several years ago) cannot help but greatly deepen our understanding of the revolution and the origins of the Soviet system. Although it is not possible to comment further on these works here, I refer the reader to R. Suny's review article 'Toward a Social History of the October Revolution', American Journal of History, no. 1 (1983) 31-52.) This is not the same as arguing that the workers were 'correct' in the path they chose. The reader will have to judge that. But I do argue that the workers as a group had a realistic grasp of their situation and acted upon it in a largely conscious manner, certainly no less consciously than did the other social classes and strata in Russian society. The previous volume traced the political attitudes and activity of the Petrograd workers during the first four and half months of the revolution, when a majority of workers, reversing their original position, turned against the liberal-moderate socialist coalition government, that represented a political alliance between the propertied classes and the workers and soldiers organised into their soviets. More and more insistently came the demand from the factories, particularly the more skilled metalworking plants, for the transfer of 'all power to the soviets', for a government of 'revolutionary democracy', i.e. for an exclusively workers' and peasants' government (the soldiers being overwhelmingly peasants). Exasperated by what they saw as the growing boldness of the counterrevolution, identified more and more with the propertied classes and aided by the Provisional Government, these workers and a part of the garrison took to the streets in demonstrations aimed at forcing the moderate socialist leaders of the soviets to assume power on their own. Already on 4 July the reaction set in: firing on demonstrators by provocateurs and troops, indiscriminate raids, beatings, arrests and searches in workers' organisations and among the left socialists, newspaper closings, the reintroduction of the death penalty at the front. This lasted with declining intensity for several weeks. Tsereteli, the undisputed leader of the TsIK (Central Executive Committee of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies) and Minister of Interior, assumed personal responsibility for the arrests. Other moderates in the TsIK were less enthusiastic but nevertheless continued to support the government and the idea of a coalition. The July Days presented the workers with a problem they had not had to face before: could they go it alone? This issue is the major theme of this book. It continued to dominate political debate among the workers in one version or another for months after the October Revolution, which had seemed at the time conclusively to have laid it to rest. The reaction following the July Days made it clear to the workers that in a split with the propertied classes they could not count on the support of the moderate socialists and their constituency within revolutionary democracy - most of the left intelligentsia, the urban petty bourgeoisie and at least the wealthier strata of the peasantry. This isolation carried with it the threat of civil war within revolutionary democracy, infinitely more serious than any overt resistance the propertied classes themselves could muster. It also meant that the workers would have to assume the tasks of running the state and organising the economy without the aid of the socialist intelligentsia. This new and much more threatening perspective on the revolution's development that resulted from the July Days left its mark on relations between the worker rank and file and their leadership. In this respect, the period from July to October was very different from the preceding months, when the masses held the initiative, repeatedly outflanking their socialist leaders, Bolsheviks included. This changed abruptly, if not completely, after the July Days. The leadership role of the Bolshevik Party now came to the fore, particularly in the October Revolution. This, however, did not make October any less of a popular revolution. The identification of the workers with soviet power was to prove a major challenge to the moderate socialist opposition, a challenge that, despite the great suffering and disappointments the following months dealt the workers, it was never able to overcome. Nearly all those whose assistance I gratefully acknowledged in the preface to the preceding volume have also aided me in one way or another in the preparation of the present one. I would nevertheless like once again especially to thank Leopold Haimson, my thesis supervisor, whose generous help in more ways than one was crucial to the realisation of this work. We differed more than once on large and small matters. But these were always honest intellectual differences. I am also again indebted to R. W. Davies of the Centre for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Birmingham and editor of this series for his helpful comments on the manuscript as well as the other practical aid he has afforded me. To all these and others who have in some way aided and supported me in the research and writing of this volume I offer my sincere thanks. DAVID MANDEL Montréal.

Democracy --- Philosophy.