The Bolsheviks played an important role during the Kornilov revolt. The non-Bolshevik socialists rallied to the support of the Provisional Government, while the Bolsheviks used the crisis to extract their arrested leaders (after the ”July Days”) and they obtained the approval by the Soviet’s Committee Against Counter-revolution to put up an armed worker’s militia to defend the revolution. In this way the already existing armed Bolshevik supporters - the ”Red Guard” who helped to defend Petrograd against Kornilov, received the Soviet’s recognition. About this time (August 1917) the Red Guards contained about 10,000 troops.

The Bolsheviks popularity was already increasing before the ”July Days”. This incident brought them into temporary disrepute, but it didn’t effect the general trend of increasing popularity. Their ideas were expressed by one of the editors of ”Pravda” - Molotov (Skryabin). He advocated resistance to the Provisional Government, termination of the war and immediate distribution of the landowners estates to the peasants! The Bolsheviks were the only party with this program and the workers and soldiers were getting tired of the war…

The Bolsheviks won a majority in the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets. The Bolsheviks could now act in the name of the Soviet (to top it all - Trotsky was elected chairman of the Petrograd Soviet in early October). The early Bolshevik slogan ”All power to the Soviets” was paying off.

The Bolsheviks were very successful in their propaganda against the Provisional Government. Pravda - the official paper of the Bolsheviks (+ several other propaganda papers - Morris writes that the party produced 41 different newspapers in August 1917) made this possible because of a ”steady flow of funds through various channels and under different labels” from Germany (Zeman, Z.A.B. ”Germany and the Revolution in Russia 1915-1918”, London 1958; pp. 94-5). In the Bolshevik papers Lenin openly accused Kerensky for planning to surrender Petrograd to the advancing Germans.

In order to protect the revolution the Petrograd Soviet (Trotsky and the Bolsheviks) had organized forces under a ”Military Revolutionary Committee”. These forces were used during the coup. Since they were officially under the control of the Petrograd Soviet it was hard to accuse the Bolsheviks of seizing power…

The Bolsheviks promoted and supported regional nationalism in the local Soviets and the army, especially in the Ukraine.

The Bolsheviks showed a compromising attitude towards other parties and if necessary they were willing to adopt elements of their program.

The Bolsheviks became very skilled at applying the right degree of force at the right time…

To the Bolshevik ”strategy” should be added the ”war situation”, the shortage of fuel and food, the unemployment etc.… which all led to the Bolshevik take-over (the October Revolution)