"In the elections to the soviets held the next month, the Bolsheviks scored impressive gains, which signaled to Lenin that the time had come for another and decisive blow. The resolution to seize power was taken at a clandestine meeting of the Bolshevik leaders held on the night of October 23–24, 1917. Lenin had to overcome a great deal of reluctance from his lieutenants, who feared a repetition of the July fiasco. The coup took place on November 7 when pro-Bolshevik units took over all the strategic points in the capital without firing a shot. There was some fighting in Moscow, but in the rest of the country the transition proceeded quite smoothly. Lenin later said that taking power in Russia was as easy as “lifting a feather.” The reason was that he had cleverly camouflaged the seizure of power by himself and his party as the transfer of “all power to the soviets,” which slogan promised grassroots democracy rather than dictatorship. Even Lenin’s socialist rivals, who suspected his intentions, were not terribly upset, convinced that a Bolshevik one-party dictatorship could not possibly last and would soon yield to a socialist coalition. They preferred to let him exercise power for a while rather than unleash a civil war that would only benefit the “counterrevolution.” As it turned out, the Bolsheviks would stay in power for seventy-four years. Communism thus did not come to Russia as the result of a popular uprising: it was imposed on her from above by a small minority hiding behind democratic slogans. This salient fact was to determine its course."