Russia 1917: Countdown to Revolution Page #5

---

arrest and possibly being shot,

and he knew he had to escape

somewhere.

He felt all chance had gone.

With the Bolsheviks in ruins,

Lenin goes into hiding.

There is a 200,000 rouble bounty

on his head.

He must now rely on his Lieutenant,

Joseph Stalin,

to mastermind his escape.

'Now they were going underground

again.

'Stalin, the master of the black

arts, was essential to Lenin.'

'Stalin was the boy in the back room

who watched what was happening'

and made himself useful as

and when the moment came.

'There he was, helps Lenin shave off

his very distinctive little goatee.

'They give him a dreadful wig

and a worker's cap,'

and smuggle him out

across into Finland.

With Lenin gone

and Trotsky arrested,

Stalin finds himself

the unlikely leader

of the shattered Bolshevik Party.

'Lenin trusted Stalin.'

He carried secret messages,

he set up by the machinery

whereby Lenin could communicate

from a barn out in Finland

with the Bolshevik machine

inside Petrograd.

All of these things, Stalin managed.

And it was now that Stalin

became the key person

behind Lenin in the revolution.

The interesting thing about Stalin,

he played this incredibly subtle

waiting game.

He was very much there

in the shadows,

watching, waiting, learning.

While the Bolsheviks rot in jail,

flee or go underground,

things are looking up

for Alexander Kerensky.

He is now Prime Minister.

After the aborted

Bolshevik uprising,

he appoints Siberian General

Lavr Kornilov

to restore order in Petrograd.

'Kornilov could see that the

Bolsheviks were gearing up

'to try and take over.

'He desperately wanted to round up

the belligerent revolutionaries,

'the Bolsheviks, slam them in jail

'and impose almost a military

government on the city'

because he saw that as the only way

of saving the situation.

'The right-wing, the conservatives,

'are beginning to rally around

Kornilov quite explicitly

'as a figure who can bring order

to Russia.'

Kerensky worries the General

wants to rule Russia

as a military dictator.

'There's no question that Kerensky

was quite paranoid,'

but there's also not much question

that people were out to get him.

Just days after appointing

the General,

Kerensky dismisses him

in a telegram.

But the General's troops

advance on Petrograd.

Ironically, it takes Bolshevik

activists to save the city.

Bolshevik agitators from within

the army, soldiers,

went and spoke to the Kornilov

soldiers and said,

"Do you know why you're being

brought to Petrograd?

"To attack us, to kill

your brothers and sisters.

"Is this what you're coming to do?"

And the descriptions of this event

are that Kornilov's army

melted away

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes