December 1917

British Major-General Alfred W. F. Knox gives his explanation of Bolshevik success in 1917

Dzerzhinsky
"Iron Felix" Dzerzhinsky, Cheka head (Wikipedia Commons).

"Creation of Secret Police: The Cheka"
"The Bolshevik coup d'etat in Petrograd was the work of a handful of fanatics. It succeeded partly because these fanatics, being men of action, had seduced by money, wine and promises the armed workmen, the sailors, and a small part of the garrision, but chiefly because Kerenski, in his desire to please moderate socialists, who were only talkers, had failed entirely to govern, and had so alienated the only men of action who might have defended him, the officers and the Cossacks" (723).
Click here for lecture Soviet theory versus Soviet practice.
Click here to read "Using Russia as a Club: Teutons Hope to Force the Entente to Enter Negotiations" from The New York Times on December 28, 1917
 

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