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As he sped across Germany, Lenin telegraphed orders to his lieutenants. In Stockholm, there was a hasty meeting with Red agents, and time to buy an overcoat and a pair of shoes. Next evening, at twilight, the train pulled into St. Petersburg's dingy Finland Station, and Lenin stepped to the platform, unsure whether he was to be welcomed or arrested.
Several of his followers had reached Petersburg before him. They got together a large crowd of soldiers, sailors and workers, whose fluttering red banners were lit up by searchlights. To full-throated cheers Lenin delivered a speech at the station, another in the street outside, a third from the balcony of Ksheshinskaya Palace, former home of the Czar's mistress and now Bolshevik headquarters.
His speeches gave Maxim Gorky the impression of the "cold glitter of steel shavings," from which arose "with amazing simplicity the perfectly fashioned figure of truth." Even when they knew that he was lying, many men implicitly believed Lenin. He stunned his followers when he denounced the Kerensky government as the bourgeois enemy and vowed to bring it down. Then Lenin proceeded to demonstrate "the fine art of insurrection."
Resigned Ministers. When his first coup against the Kerensky government failed, Lenin told Trotsky: "Now they will shoot us. This is the best time for it." But the government dithered, and by the time it issued an order for his arrest he was hiding in a haystack. Three months later, a second coup succeeded when the Bolsheviks stormed the Czar's Winter Palace, then the seat of the provisional government, and forced Kerensky's ministers to resign at gunpoint.
Meanwhile elections had been held for the Constituent Assembly—the only democratic vote in Russian history—which clearly rejected the Bolsheviks in favor of the liberals. Lenin simply sent troops to disperse the assembly. Thereafter the "Little Robespierre," as Trotsky called him, launched his own Terror. The Czar and his family were executed, and Lenin systematically began the liquidation of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. Comrade Zinoviev cried triumphantly: "The capitalists killed separate individuals. But we kill whole classes." The Cheka (secret police) was organized. Sometimes, mistakes were made, but from Lenin's point of view they were just as good as deliberate acts. At one party meeting, Lenin passed a note to his Cheka chief, Felix Dzerzhinsky, asking how many reactionaries were held in Moscow's jails. Dzerzhinsky scribbled the number 1,500, and Lenin marked the note with a cross. At once Dzerzhinsky left the hall and had the 1,500 shot dead. He learned only later that Lenin marked communications with a cross merely to indicate he had understood them. Later Lenin said: "We are all Chekists."