Legend has invested the events of October with heroic stature. They are presented as an epic frieze across which move figures possessing dimensions greater than life. Above them towers the commanding presence of Lenin, the leader, the master strategist, all wise, armed with the guiding truth of Marx, organizing and directing the strategy and tactics of the supreme revolution. . . . The picture has been painted many times and not only by eulogists of the Lenin cult. The Bolshevik Revolution, as many insist on calling it, proved to be a watershed in contemporary history. It profoundly changed the lives of the Russian people and the politics of the world and it is natural to expect so germinal an event to be presented on an Olympian stage. Natural--but in the case of Russia's October, totally mistaken.

The October events are encumbered by trivia, petty rivalry, miscalculation, hesitation, ineptitude, posturing, and mistakes. Almost nothing was planned and what did happen was often accidental. The Bolsheviks did not seize power in one body clandestine move. The blundered into power, divided, fighting against each other, and until the final moments Lenin had an occasional role in what happened. Kerensky and his Government were not crushed by the steel power of valiant revolutionaries. He and his supporters skedaddled off the political stage, protesting that they were not really leaving, merely regrouping strength for the climactic battle--a battle which was never fought.

Few of the participants understood what they were doing; fewer witnesses comprehended the significance of what they were seeing.

But if error and confusion was the rule of the day, the actual record is worth the closest study—not as an exercise in revolutionary tactics but as an illumination of the banality which so often lies at the heart of great moments in history.