The ‘July Days’ were a pivotal period in the history of the Russian Revolution. They also nearly led to the destruction of the Bolshevik Party. On the evening of 3 July 1917, soldiers from the First Machine Gun Regiment began demonstrating against the Provisional Government and the possibility that they might be sent off to fight in the disastrous Kerensky Offensive. They were soon joined by other soldiers from Petrograd's revolutionary garrison, by workers from the striking Putilov Works and, the next morning, by 20,000 sailors from the Kronstadt naval base. This growing but leaderless mob posed a problem for the Bolshevik Central Committee as well as for the Provisional Government. The soldiers were reacting to agitation by lower-echelon Bolsheviks in the city's Military Organization; they were shouting Bolshevik slogans about ‘Down with the Provisional Government’ and ‘All Power to the Soviets’; and they were well armed. The party leadership, however, felt that any attempt to seize power in the summer of 1917 was ill advised and premature. Initially, the demonstrators were urged to call off their protests and then, when this appeal was ignored, to make sure their actions were ‘peaceful’ so as not to justify government countermeasures. This hesitant advice also went unheeded by many of the 400,000 demonstrators. One reason that the Central Committee was following rather than leading events in the streets was that its own leader, V. I. Lenin, was not on the scene.