31) The Soviet Congress

The Congress begins

Throughout the 25th, caucuses of the various party factions awaiting the start of the Congress of Soviets had gathered in Smolny. The Bolshevik delegation was by far the largest, although many of its members were engaged in fighting duties during the day. Recognising that they were in a minority and unsure what to do, the opposing factions had been in no hurry to begin. Their requests for a delay in opening the Congress suited the Bolsheviks perfectly as they were still awaiting the fall of the Winter Palace.

By ten o’clock it wasn't possible to delay any longer. The delegates crammed in to the hall, crowding close, tobacco smoke filling the air. The neatly dressed officers and intellectuals that had been so evident at the June Congress were hardly to be seen. Instead, “a grey colour prevailed uninterruptedly, in costumes and in faces.  Many of the city workers had provided themselves with soldiers’ coats. The trench delegates were by no means a pretty picture: long unshaven, in old torn trench-coats, with heavy [fur-hats]  on their dishevelled hair … belts hanging loose, and long unoiled boots wrinkled and rusty. The plebeian nation had for the first time sent up an honest representation made in its own image and not retouched” (157).

The political make-up of the Congress had also decisively changed since June when the Compromisers had won 600 votes out of the 832 delegates. Now Trotsky estimates, although the registration statistics were never fully compiled, around 390 of the 650 voting delegates present at the opening of the Congress were Bolsheviks, either as members or sympathisers. Later on the total size of the Congress, including non-voting delegates, reached 900. But, whatever the precise figures, the Bolshevik majority was in no doubt.

Few of the delegates were well-known figures, most simply workers and soldiers who had proved themselves in action and won the confidence of their local soviet. The front’s delegates were almost entirely rank-and-file soldiers whose political lives had only begun over the last few months of revolution. Their rapid maturing carried on even as they waited in the cauldron of Petrograd for the Congress to start.

The Mensheviks, of various hues, had only around 80 delegates. The SRs had between 159 and 190 delegates, a majority already being Left SRs. The Compromisers’ main figures like Tseretelli, Cheidze and Chernov had already opted not to be present at their political funeral.

“A straw-vote taken among the delegates revealed that 505 soviets stood for the transfer of all power to the soviets; 86 for a government of the ‘democracy’; 55 for a coalition; 21 for a coalition, but without the Kadets.  Even … these figures give an exaggerated idea of the remains of the Compromisers’ influence. Those for democracy and coalition were soviets from the more backward districts and least important points” (158).

At 10.40 pm, Dan opened the Congress in the name of the Executive Committee. At the Bolsheviks’ suggestion, a praesidium for the Congress was appointed on a proportional basis –  14 Bolsheviks, 7 SRs, 3 Mensheviks and 1 for the ‘United Internationalists’ of the ex-Bolshevik Avilov. The right-wingers immediately declined to participate but seven Left SRs took up their places alongside the Bolsheviks.

The Bolshevik candidates were Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev; Rykov and Nogin from the Moscow Soviet; Lunacharsky and Kollontai as popular speakers; Riazanov from the trade unions; Muranov, an old worker-Bolshevik; Stuchka, head of the Lettish Bolsheviks; Krylenko and Skliansky from the army; and Antonov from the MRC. Sverdlov, who certainly merited a place, drew up the list but hadn’t added his own name and nobody remembered to amend it. The list included the main opponents of the insurrection, showing how the Party nevertheless sought to include all its leading figures.

For the first session, Lenin stayed in the background, preferring to listen and discuss behind the scenes. Kamenev took the president’s chair, his opening remarks accompanied by the distant rumble of the artillery firing from the fortress. The sound of cannon-fire continued as a background to the ensuing discussions with the immediacy of the insurrection also apparent in the hall as hands were raised for votes between bayonets.

The first session’s debates

Martov, the left-Menshevik who had stepped forward when the revolution was in retreat in July, now stepped back as the revolution was leaping forward. He addressed the Congress demanding that fighting ceased and negotiations started to create a government representing the ‘whole democracy’.

Martov’s proposal was agreed by the Left SRs and the Internationalists. But, to the Right’s surprise, the Bolsheviks sent Lunacharsky up to the podium to announce their support as well. Knowing they were in charge of events, they could afford to be seen to compromise, all the better to expose the Right.

And, indeed, the speakers of the Right Mensheviks and SRs now refused to back down, arguing against the insurrection, even questioning the very authority of the assembled Congress.  They were working on the assumption that the Bolsheviks would soon be overthrown and were making haste to separate themselves from the Congress as soon as possible.

These speeches irritated, rather than persuaded, delegates who had already had their fill of these bragging leaders over the previous months. A Lettish soldier, Peterson, stepped forward to denounce the Menshevik officers who had been claiming to speak in the name of the army. “The revolution has had enough gab! We want action! The power should be in our hands. Let the impostors leave the congress – the army is through with them!” (159). Other soldiers spoke up to support him.

Just over half of the right-wing faction decided to walk out. But this only came to about 70 delegates – not enough to be noticeable in the body of the hall. Meanwhile some of the previously uncommitted delegates were moving to the left, filling out the ranks of the Left SRs to perhaps 180 over the session.

Nevertheless, Martov’s condemnation of the Bolsheviks’ action had to be answered. Trotsky took the floor to explain: “What has taken place … is an insurrection, not a conspiracy. An insurrection of the popular masses needs no justification.  Our insurrection has conquered, and now you propose to us: Renounce your victory: make a compromise. With whom?  I ask: With whom ought we to make a compromise? With that pitiful handful who just went out?” (160).

Trotsky proposed a resolution which indicted the Compromisers for their failures, their deception of the peasants over land, their continuation of the war, the economic ruin, and now their abandonment of the soviets.

The Left SRs sent up a speaker to announce, helpfully, that unlike the right-wing, they had not walked out. However, they made clear that Trotsky’s resolution was too sharp for them to support. Again, happy to give ground in the Congress knowing that they had real control outside it, the Bolsheviks agreed not to insist on a vote on the resolution.

The Left SRs, feeling the pressure from the villages, stayed in the Congress. However, Martov’s small group of left Mensheviks now also took their leave.

Their final exit only took place after a brief recess in the early morning. The Congress had reconvened to hear the news that most delegates had been eagerly awaiting – the capture of the Winter Palace. Although word had already spread, Kamenev’s statement was met by delegates with shouts and applause as their tension was released.

A further ovation then greeted the announcement from the representative of the 3rd Bicycle Battalion that they were on the side of the revolution. This was a unit that had marched from the front to defend the government. However, by the time it reached the capital, it was supporting insurrection!

Soon after 5 am, a dog-tired Krylenko then came to give greetings from the 12th Army and to announce that government attempts to bring forces from the Northern front had been broken and that their commander-in-chief, General Cheremissov, had submitted to their military revolutionary committee. John Reed reported that pandemonium broke out with men weeping and embracing each other. The nagging doubts - that perhaps the army was against the revolution – were evaporating.

Lunacharsky then at last had the opportunity to proclaim that: “ ‘The authority of the compromisist Central Executive Committee is at an end. The Provisional Government is deposed. The Congress assumes the power ...’ The Soviet Government proposes immediate peace. It will transfer the land to the peasant, democratise the army, establish control over production, promptly summon the Constituent Assembly, guarantee the right of the nations of Russia to self-determination. ‘The Congress resolves: That all power in the localities goes over to the soviets.’ Every phrase as it is read turns into a salvo of applause” (161).

The representatives attending from individual peasant soviets pricked up their ears at the talk of land and asked that they were now also made official delegates alongside the workers and soldiers so that they could support the proclamation. It was adopted almost unanimously, with just two votes against and twelve abstentions – mainly the tiny forces of the United Jewish Workers party and the United Internationalists.

With hardly strength left to applaud, the delegates finished the session at around 6 am and left to a grey cold dawn, but into a city that was now under a new power.

October 26th

The intellectuals and citizens who had not participated in the previous day’s events rushed to get their morning papers to try and find out the news.

The Kadets’ and Compromisers’ press was still claiming that the Bolsheviks were isolated and would soon be overthrown. But the Bolsheviks hurried to spread the news of the victory to the rest of the country and to urge other soviets to follow Petrograd’s lead.

Smolny became the focal point for all communications. Confiscated cars clogged the surrounding streets, bonfires burned at its gates where armed sentries inspected the passes of the people who came and went conducting the business of revolution.

“The MRC never stopped working for an instant. It received delegates, sent commissars to all corners of the town, set innumerable seals upon orders and commands and credentials.   People utterly exhausted of their force, long without sleep or eating, unshaven, in dirty linen, with inflamed eyes, would shout in hoarse voices, gesticulate fantastically, and if they did not fall half dead on the floor, it seemed only thanks to the surrounding chaos which whirled them about and carried them away again.  Never since the creation of the world have so many orders been issued.  But … in this crazy whirlpool … the most important and necessary things got done. Replacing the old web of administration, the first threads of the new were strung. The revolution grew in strength”  (162).

The Bolshevik C.C. met to prepare for that evening’s session of the Congress. It was due to elect a cabinet of ministers for the new government but the title of ‘minister’ sounded too much like the politicians of the old regime. Instead, the fresher sounding title for the new government of the ‘Soviet of People’s Commissars’ was agreed. Negotiations with the Left SRs brought little progress so the C.C. adopted Lenin’s motion to form a government solely of Bolsheviks.

Congress reconvened at 9 pm with an agenda to decide on three questions – peace, land and government. The meeting had a similar appearance to the first session, if slightly less crowded and with fewer weapons on show. But the mood of the delegates was different. The tiredness and hidden doubts of the first session had been replaced by the confidence of knowing that the insurrection had conquered and that now they were about to vote on actions that would really change their lives.

The Congress first ratified measures already taken by the praesidium, including the removal of all the Provisional Government’s commissars from office, the abolition of the death penalty at the front, plus orders to free political prisoners and to arrest Kerensky and Kornilov, who had been allowed to escape from his supposed imprisonment by the old regime.

Peace

To tumultuous applause, Lenin then made his first appearance at Congress to report on the question of peace. He stood gripping the reading-stand for several minutes as the ovation rolled around the hall. Then he began his speech, as Reed reports with a simple statement: ‘We shall now proceed to construct the socialist order’.

“But for this it was first of all necessary to end the war. From his exile in Switzerland Lenin had thrown out the slogan: Convert the imperialist war into a civil war. Now it was time to convert the victorious civil war into peace. The speaker began immediately by reading the draft of a declaration to be published by the government still to be elected. The text had not been distributed, technical equipment being still very weak. The congress drank in every word of the document as pronounced” (163).

Lenin declared:“ ‘The workers’ and peasants’ government created by the revolution of October 24-25, and resting upon the soviets of workers’, soldiers’ and peasants’ deputies, proposes to all the warring peoples and their governments to open immediate negotiations for a just, democratic peace’ . The soviet government abolishes secret diplomacy and under-takes to publish the secret treaties. Everything in those treaties directed toward the accruing of profit and privilege to the Russian landlords and capitalists, and the oppression of other peoples by the Great Russians, ‘the government declares unconditionally and immediately annulled’. In order to enter upon negotiations, it is proposed to conclude an immediate armistice, for not less than 3 months at least” (164).

Lenin explained that the conditions could not be presented as an ultimatum to their adversaries. It had to be absolutely clear that the Bolsheviks were genuinely wishing to negotiate an end to the war. But, at the same time as appealing to governments, the revolution also had to appeal to the workers of Europe to intervene themselves in ending the war - by also taking the revolutionary road to peace and socialism.

The proclamation was agreed unanimously. The assembly looked around at itself proudly. “Pride surges up of its own accord. Eyes shine. All are on their feet. No one is smoking now. It seems as though no one breathes. The præsidium, the delegates, the guests, the sentries, join in a hymn of insurrection and brotherhood. ‘Suddenly, by common impulse’, – the story will soon be told by John Reed, observer and participant, chronicler and poet of the insurrection – ‘we found ourselves on our feet, mumbling together into the smooth lifting unison of the “Internationale”. A grizzled old soldier was sobbing like a child. Alexandra Kollontai rapidly winked the tears back. The immense sound rolled through the hall, burst windows and doors and soared into the quiet sky’ ” (165).

When the singing stopped, someone shouted out Lenin’s name from the back of the hall. “The hall seemed only to have awaited the signal. Long live Lenin! The anxieties endured, the doubts overcome, pride of initiative, triumph of victory, gigantic hopes – all poured out together in one volcanic eruption of gratitude and rapture” (166).

News of the immediate armistice soon travelled around the country, evoking similar scenes of jubilation wherever it was heard.

Land

Lenin then came to the tribune to speak on the land question. Once again, he had the only rough draft of the decree in his hand, so badly written in the rush of events that Lenin had to stop to regain his place.

“The essence of the decree is contained in two lines of the first point: ‘The landlord’s property in the land is annulled immediately and without any indemnity whatever. The landlord … monastery and church estates with all their goods and chattels are given in charge of the town land committees and county soviets of peasant deputies until the Constituent Assembly. The confiscated property is placed as a national possession under the protection of the local soviets. The land of the rank-and-file peasants and rank-and-file Cossacks is protected against confiscation’ ” (167).

Lenin then read out ‘for guidance’ the instructions compiled by the Social Revolutionaries and agreed at the First Congress of Peasant Deputies: “The right to private property in the land is annulled for ever.  The use of the land must be equalised – that is, the land to be divided among the toilers according to local conditions …” (168).

Lenin understood that this equal distribution of land, rather than its nationalisation, was far from being a socialist policy. However, the Bolsheviks had to keep step with the changing outlook of the peasantry. Only by maintaining its confidence, and waiting for its illusions to fade, could the socialist government carry through the agrarian revolution successfully. This decree would be a weapon to spread the revolution throughout the country.

The Social Revolutionaries greeted Lenin’s resolution as support for their own policy. “With one vote opposed and eight abstaining, the congress adopts with a new burst of enthusiasm the decree putting an end to serfdom, the very foundation stone of the old Russian culture. Henceforth the agrarian revolution is legalised, and therewith the revolution of the proletariat acquires a mighty basis” (169).

Government

The Congress now came to the last issue – the creation of a government. Kamenev read out the Bolsheviks’ proposal that commissions should be set up to manage each sector of state life and carry out Soviet policy. Each commission was to have a commissar as president who would together form the government as the Soviet of People’s Commissars. It would be accountable to the Congress of Soviets and its Central Executive Committee.

“Seven members of the C.C. of the Bolshevik Party were nominated to the first Council of People’s Commissars: Lenin as head of the government, without portfolio; Rykov as People’s Commissar of the Interior; Miliutin as head of the Department of Agriculture; Nogin as chief of Commerce and Industry; Trotsky as head of the Department of Foreign Affairs; Lomov of Justice; Stalin, president of a Commission on the Affairs of the Nationalities; Military and naval affairs were allotted to a committee consisting of Antonov-Ovseënko, Krylenko and Dybenko; the head of the Commissariat of Labour is to be Shliapnikov; the chief of the Department of Education, Lunacharsky; the heavy and ungrateful task of Minister of Provisions is laid upon Theodorovich; the Posts and Telegraph upon the worker, Glebov; the position of People’s Commissar of Communications is ... left open here for an agreement with the organisations of the railroad workers” (170).

As Kamenev read out the list of names each was applauded, particularly Lenin and Trotsky’s, according to John Reed. Remaining outside the Council, Kamenev was instead selected as president of the new Central E.C. and Zinoviev as editor of the official soviet paper.

Avilov from the United Internationalists came up to speak against the proposal and to argue for a coalition government that would not be so ‘isolated’. A speaker from the Left SRs followed in similar vein, saying, contradictorily, that they would support the work of the new government but could not enter it. This way they hoped to keep their hands free to negotiate with the parties that had abandoned the Congress.

Trotsky rose to reply. “They have tried to frighten us more than once with a possible isolation of the Left Wing.  Some days back when the question of insurrection was first openly raised,  they told us that we were headed for destruction.  Against us stood not only the counter-revolutionary bands, but also the defensists of all varieties. The Left Social Revolutionaries, only one wing of them courageously worked with us in the Military Revolutionary Committee. The rest occupied a position of watchful neutrality. And nevertheless even with these unfavourable circumstances and when it seemed that we were abandoned by all, the insurrection triumphed.  If the real forces were actually against us, how could it happen that we won the victory almost without bloodshed. No, it is not we who are isolated, but the government and the so-called democrats.  Our great superiority as a party lies in the fact that we have formed a coalition with the class forces, creating a union of the workers, soldiers and poorest peasants” (171).

“Avilov says to us: There is little bread, we must have a coalition.  The problem of bread is the problem of a programme of action. The struggle with economic collapse demands a definite system from below, and not political groupings on top.  Avilov speaks of a union with the peasantry: But again of what peasantry is he talking? … A coalition with the kulak elements of the peasantry we firmly reject in the name of a coalition of the working class and the poorer peasant” (172).

“Openly and before the face of the whole people we raised the banner of insurrection. The political formula of this insurrection was: All power to the soviets – through the Congress of Soviets. They tell us: You did not await the Congress with your uprising. We thought of waiting, but Kerensky would not wait. The counter-revolutionists were not dreaming. We as a party considered this our task: to make it genuinely possible for the Congress of Soviets to seize the power. If the Congress had been surrounded with junkers, how could it have seized the power? In order to achieve this task, a party was needed which would wrench the power from the hands of the counter-revolution and say to you:  ‘Here is the power and you’ve got to take it!’ (Stormy and prolonged applause.)”  (173).

“For the struggle for peace, says Avilov, we must have a coalition with the Compromisers. At the same time he acknowledges that the Allies do not want to make peace.  There are two roads in the struggle for peace. One road is to oppose to the Allied and enemy governments the moral and material force of revolution. The other is a … complete subjection to Allied imperialism. We rest all our hope on the possibility that our revolution will unleash the European revolution.  Either the Russian revolution will raise the whirlwind of struggle in the west, or the capitalists of all countries will crush our revolution…”  ‘There is a third road’, says a voice from the benches. “The third road,” answers Trotsky, “is the road of the Central Executive Committee – on the one hand sending delegates to the west European workers, and on the other forming a union with the Kishkins and Konovalovs. That is a road of lies and hypocrisy which we will never enter.  A union of the oppressed here and everywhere – that is our road” (174).

“The delegates of the Congress, says John Reed, ‘greeted him with an immense crusading acclaim, kindling to the daring of it, with the thought of championing mankind’ ” (175).

One last attack on the revolution was then made by the hostile representative from the Vikzhel, the leadership of the railworkers’ union. He sought to threaten the Bolsheviks that they would use their control of the railways to oppose the new government unless it includes the ‘entire democracy’. It was not an entirely empty threat as Vikzhel still had a basis of support amongst the upper layers of clerks. However, the soviets, too, had a strong and growing influence over the railworkers. Kamenev brusquely dismissed his attack on the democratic decisions of the Congress.

The Council of People’s Commissars was ratified by an overwhelming majority with only a hundred or so Left SRs voting for Avilov’s alternative proposal.

The membership of the new Central Executive Committee was then agreed unanimously. It was to have 101 members, including 62 Bolsheviks and 29 Left SRs plus others to be later added from the peasant soviets and army committees. The Compromise factions that had walked out of  Congress were given the right to also send delegates on the basis of proportional representation.

The work could now begin

“The agenda of the Congress was completed! The Soviet government was created. It had its programme. The work could begin. And there was no lack of it. At 5.15 in the morning Kamenev closed the Constituent Congress of the Soviet régime. To the stations! Home! To the front! To the factories and barracks!    To the mines and the far-off villages!   In the decrees of the Soviet, the delegates will carry the leaven of the proletarian revolution to all corners of the country” (176).

Trotsky concludes by asking: “The chief task of a political régime, according to an English aphorism, is to put the right people in the right positions. How does the experiment of 1917 look from this point of view? During the first two months Russia was ruled, through right of monarchic succession, by a man … who believed in saints’ mummies and submitted to Rasputin. During the next eight months the liberals and democrats attempted from their governmental high places to prove to the people that the revolution had been accomplished in order that all should remain as before.  From the 25th of October the man at the head of Russia was Lenin, the greatest figure in Russian political history. He was surrounded by a staff of assistants who, as their most spiteful enemies acknowledge, knew what they wanted and how to fight for their aims. Which of these three systems, in the given concrete conditions, proved capable of putting the right people in the right positions?” (177).

“The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, may be summarised as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces – in nature, in society, in man himself. Critical and creative thought can boast of its greatest victories up to now in the … sciences. But social relations are still forming in the manner of the coral islands.  In comparison with monarchy and other heirlooms … democracy is of course a great conquest, but it leaves the blind play of forces in the social relations of men untouched. It was against this deeper-sphere of the unconscious that the October revolution was the first to raise its hand. The Soviet system wishes to bring aim and plan into the very basis of society, where up to now only accumulated consequences have reigned” (178).

“That aristocratic culture overthrown by the October revolution was in the last analysis only a superficial imitation of higher western models. Remaining inaccessible to the Russian people, it added nothing essential to the treasure-store of humanity, The October revolution laid the foundation of a new culture taking everybody into consideration, and for that very reason immediately acquiring international significance. Even supposing for a moment that owing to unfavourable circumstances and hostile blows the Soviet régime should be temporarily overthrown, the inexpugnable impress of the October revolution would nevertheless remain upon the whole future development of mankind” (179).

Trotsky completes his work with this final paragraph: “The language of the civilised nations has clearly marked off two epochs in the development of Russia. Where the aristocratic culture introduced into world parlance such barbarisms as czar, pogrom … October has internationalised such words as  Bolshevik, soviet … This alone justifies the proletarian revolution, if you imagine that it needs justification”   (180).

** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **

30) The Capture of the Winter Palace

Junkers guarding the Winter Palace

The plan comes unstuck

The original plan for the insurrection had foreseen the Winter Palace being seized on the morning of the 25^th of October, at the same time as the other main strategic objectives were secured. However, while the rest of the city had fallen under the control of the MRC more easily than expected, late into the evening of the 25th, the Winter Palace remained untouched.

Part of the problem lay with the three principal leaders that had been left in charge of the assault, Podvoisky, Antonov and Chudnovsky. All three were devoted and selfless revolutionaries, and probably as able military leaders as any that the MRC could have appointed. However, they simply did not possess the skills necessary to compile and execute a suitable plan of action.

Podvoisky, who had been too impetuous in July, had now grown cautious and sought to drag in as many forces as possible to complete a job that could have been completed far more simply. Antonov’s strength was improvisation rather than careful calculation, and the impulsive Chudnovsky, who had arrived with Trotsky from Canada, was an excellent agitator but had no real military training.

Fearing their own strategic limitations might endanger the action, the three had concluded on a plan that involved throwing such a superiority of forces at the palace that nothing could go wrong – or so they thought. The whole area around the palace was to be encircled by revolutionary forces – or, to be more precise, surrounded by an oval with its longest axis along the embankment of the Neva. On the other side of the river, the encirclement would be completed by the Peter and Paul fortress, the Aurora, and other ships summoned from the Baltic fleet and Kronstadt. Behind this ring, to counter any attack from the rear, further armed detachments would be positioned.

“The plan as a whole was too heavy and complicated for the problem it aimed to solve. The time allotted for preparation proved inadequate. Small incoordin-ations and omissions came to light at every step, as might be expected.  To call out the military units, unite them with the Red Guards, occupy the fighting positions, make sure of communications among them all and with headquarters – all this demanded a good many hours more than had been imagined” (143).

As everything else had been going so smoothly, the MRC had not at first really taken on board the extent of the problem. However, at midday, by when Podvoisky had first promised the operation would be completed, it was clear that the forces were still not in place and that the soldiers and sailors from Kronstadt were still to arrive. Five thousand were now on their way aboard navy ships but they had been sent their summons too late to maintain the plan.

Under pressure from the MRC, a new deadline for seizure was set for 3 pm, which Trotsky took as a sufficient guarantee to make his announcement to the Soviet that afternoon. But this deadline, and then another set for 6 pm, came and went without the action being started. By now Podvoisky and Antonov were too flustered to agree to any kind of timescale – things were clearly not going to plan.

“That caused serious anxiety. Politically it was considered necessary that at the moment of the opening of the Congress the whole capital should be in the hands of the MRC: That was to simplify the task of dealing with the opposition at the Congress, placing them before an accomplished fact. Meanwhile the hour appointed for opening the Congress had arrived, had been postponed, and arrived again, and the Winter Palace was still holding out. Thus the siege of the palace, thanks to its delay, became for no less than twelve hours the central problem of the insurrection” (144).

Inside the Winter Palace

While the attackers had the forces but lacked the military know-how to marshal them swiftly, the defenders of the palace had experienced commanders but next to no forces to deploy.

Earlier that morning, the district commander Polkovnikov had already more or less given up his post as a last course. He had been replaced by General Bagratuni who, alongside General Alexeiev at headquarters, had attempted to gather up what forces they could - largely composed of junkers.

Meanwhile, most of the Ministers had now successfully managed to assemble at the Winter Palace where they chose one of their own, the hated Kadet Kishkin, to lead its defence. Although its phones had been cut, the Winter Palace still had a direct wire – via the War Ministry – to headquarters. They in turn found enough ‘phone links in operation to attempt to call up reinforcements.

As one of the SR leaders who assisted with these efforts later recalled: “You would learn … of the readiness of this or that regiment to come to the defence of the government, but as soon as you called the barracks directly on the telephone, one unit after another would flatly refuse” (145). As Trotsky points out: “The fact of the matter is that no lightning-like changes in the garrison took place, but the remaining illusions of the governmental parties did crumble to the ground with lightning speed” (146).

Each side sought the help of armoured cars, but across the city they were by now either ‘Bolshevik’ or ‘neutral’, simply withdrawing from the battle. Of the six armoured cars in the Winter Palace, only one remained, and that to guard property, rather than the government.

By midday, the defenders found the vast square in front of the palace still empty. “The government has nobody to fill it with.The troops of the Committee do not occupy it, because they are absorbed in carrying out their too complicated plan. Military units, workers’ detachments, armoured cars, are still assembling for this wide encirclement” (147).

But this prolonged preparation, instead of mounting a bold attack, had allowed the government to strengthen its meagre defences. Junkers from various schools now took up position in the palace courtyard, where logs had been set in defensive piles, as at Smolny. Others took up firing positions on the first floor, clearing Palace Square with their gunfire. These signs of potentially strong defence had persuaded Antonov and Podvoisky to postpone their attack until the Kronstadters arrived.

In the afternoon, two squadrons and a machine-gun crew from the Cossack Uralsky regiment had arrived at the Palace, along with forty war-wounded ‘Knights of St. George’ and a shock company of the Women’s Battalion. The defenders now numbered perhaps two thousand at most, not a great force by any means, but one that was now going to be far more difficult for the attackers to remove.

The sailors arrive

Later in the afternoon, the ships from Kronstadt finally arrived on the Neva and the sailors quickly disembarked. Spirits were further raised when five ships from the Baltic fleet arrived soon after. They steamed up and down, patrolling the river. Now finally, shortly after six, the Winter Palace was solidly surrounded by the forces of the MRC. There was no more chance of further troops coming to the government’s aid.

Armoured cars began to make forays into Palace Square further raising the confidence of the attackers. Now secure from any sorties by junkers from the palace, a detachment of Red Guards, sailors and soldiers occupied military headquarters, situated nearby, again encountering no resistance.

Inside the palace, the ministers now felt even more isolated. They had received an ultimatum signed by Antonov threatening that the guns of the Peter and Paul fortress and the warships would open fire unless the defenders surrendered the palace forthwith. General Bagratuni chose this moment to resign his post and, having been asked by Kishkin to leave the palace, was promptly arrested by the Baltic sailors.

However, neither the guns of the fortress, nor the Aurora, opened fire. The attackers still hoped the siege could be ended without a battle. But, as junkers and attackers began to exchange sporadic machine-gun and rifle fire, the first few individual casualties occurred.

In the palace dining-room, undermining what patriotic sense of duty still stirred within the defending troops, their officers were sinking bottle after bottle of the palace’s fine wines. Their drunken antics may have been the last straw for some of the junkers from the artillery school who now abandoned the palace, taking four of their six guns with them.

Meanwhile, despite General Alexeiev’s attempts to get further Cossacks to reinforce the palace, the Uralsky regiment instead decided to send a delegation to call its two squadrons back to barracks. Their younger members had never been that keen on going to the government’s aid, the reactionary elders had also now had enough of defending the palace alongside women and Jewish junkers. At nine o’clock the besiegers allowed the Uralsky to withdraw through a side exit which, until then, had been unknown to the defending troops.

Bolshevik agitators had already been using this entrance to infiltrate the palace. They sought to demoralise the junkers while promising them free passage out of the palace if they chose to abandon their posts. Chudnovsky himself managed to get inside and returned with a handful of surrendering junkers and Knights of St. George.

The Women’s Battalion then announced their intention to make a sortie of their own to take on the besiegers. But, as they went out, the electric lights on the gate suddenly lit up their position. Sailors had occupied the electricity station and were controlling the light. Most of the women soon surrendered. After this failure, a lull descended on the palace between ten and eleven o’clock.

Seizing the palace at last

This lull was also down to the fact that the attackers were having difficulty carrying out their threat to fire their artillery at the palace. The first hiccough had come over the failure to find a red lantern to hang on the flagpole of the Peter and Paul fortress! This had been the signal arranged between Antonov and Blagonravov for the Aurora to start firing – with blanks at first and then, if required, live shells. Then it transpired that the unreliable artillery campaign within the fortress was dragging its feet, claiming its guns were rusty and lacking oil. Finally, Lashevich managed to send two sailor gunners to the fortress, inexperienced but Bolshevik. They fired a signal shot and the Aurora opened up with a loud and bright blank shell.

After yet another delay to see if the palace would surrender, further shots were fired – thirty-five or so over the next two hours or so. But all bar two of them fell wide of the mark. Perhaps Lashevich’s men were also deliberately aiming high to avoid destruction in the hope that a peaceful outcome could still be secured.

But the next explosions that were heard came from inside the palace. Sailors had managed to get into the palace and had let off two hand-grenades before being arrested. They are not alone: “Uninvited guests now begin to appear no longer one by one, but in groups. The palace is getting more and more like a sieve. The number of captives grows. New groups break in. It is no longer quite clear who is surrendering to whom, who is disarming whom. The artillery continues to boom” (148).

Smolny was getting impatient. The delay was putting at risk the whole plan to have a clear victory to put before the Congress of Soviets. Podvoisky reported that plenty of men were willing to mount a direct assault but how many casualties might that lead to? It was decided to order the Aurora to open fire. But, before it was carried out, news came that the palace had already been taken!

In the end, the palace did not surrender, it was taken by storm by workers, sailors and soldiers themselves. Hundreds first broke through the main door – rather than the secret entrance. They had been mistaken for a deputation that the besieged had been told was on its way from the reactionary city duma. This band of a few hundred deputies and Compromisist leaders had indeed set out along the Nevsky before being turned back by a patrol of armed sailors.

With the junkers’ defence weakened, waves of revolutionary forces had poured through the square into the courtyard, and from there into the palace, pushing the remaining junkers back. The attackers flooded through the stairways and corridors, reaching the last guarded door behind which the ministers awaited their fate.

At 2.10 am, Antonov led a crowd into the room and announced the arrest of the members of the Provisional Government in the name of the MRC, with the joy of victory gleaming in his eyes. The eighteen arrested ministers were led away into the square and on to the Peter and Paul fortress. The angry crowd outside, where deaths and injuries had been suffered, yelled abuse at the prisoners. Red Guards surrounded them for their own protection as they made their way over Troitsky Bridge.

The junkers and officers that had been defending the palace were released on the condition that they gave assurances not to organise action against soviet rule. This again proved to be wishful thinking on behalf of the new power.

Attempts at looting had been made, as John Reed’s account of the revolution explains. However, as this invaluable eye-witness also describes, this was quickly stopped by the Red Guards:

“Everyone going out was searched, and every object stolen was taken back and listed. In this way they recovered little statues, bottles of ink, daggers, cakes of soap, ostrich feathers. The junkers were also subjected to a careful search, and their pockets turned out to be full of stolen bric-a-brac. The junkers were abused and threatened by the soldiers, but that was as far as it went” (149).

So now, in the early hours of October 26th (actually November 8^th in the international calendar) the MRC was finally in full possession of the capital.

“The military authorities of the governmental camp in Petrograd gave a very flattering judgement of the military leadership of the revolution. ‘The insurrectionaries are preserving  order and discipline.  There have been no cases at all of destruction or pogroms. On the contrary, patrols of insurrectionists have detained strolling soldiers.  The plan of the insurrection was undoubtedly worked out in advance and carried through inflexibly and harmoniously’ ” (150). They certainly had a thorough plan, even if not carried out quite as smoothly as the enemy imagined. But, as Trotsky concludes: “Even in the court of the most austere critic success is the best praise” (151).

The role of the insurrection

“The October revolution was a struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie for power, but the outcome of the struggle was decided in the last analysis by the muzhik.  The party led the uprising; the principal motive force was the proletariat; the armed detachments of workers were the first of the insurrection; but the heavy-weight peasant garrison decided the outcome of the struggle” (152).

The Red Guards had been able to swiftly occupy the government institutions because they were confident that the garrison would not stand in their way. Unlike February, when it had taken the fraternisation of workers and soldiers during the general strike and street encounters over several days to test out the mood of the troops, in October no general strike was required – the Bolsheviks already knew that they were masters of the garrison. The insurrection completed the final task of using these forces to remove the state apparatus from the government.

“The government of Kerensky, having irrevocably lost the soul of the soldier, still clung to the commanding summits. In its hands the headquarters, the banks, the telephone, were only the façade of power. When they should come into the hands of the soviets,  they would guarantee the conquest of complete power” (153).

These final operations only required limited forces – Trotsky estimates twenty-five to thirty thousand at most – and even then the military bases and state institutions fell with hardly any resistance. “To be sure, the thing was not after all settled without fighting. The Winter Palace had to be taken by storm. But the very fact that the resistance of the government came down to a defence of the Winter Palace, clearly defines the place occupied by October 25th in the whole course of the struggle. The Winter Palace was the last redoubt of a régime politically shattered during its eight months’ existence, and conclusively disarmed during the preceding two weeks” (154).

“The tranquillity of the October streets, the absence of crowds and battles, gave the enemy a pretext to talk of the conspiracy of an insignificant minority, of the adventure of a handful of Bolsheviks. But in reality the Bolsheviks could reduce the struggle for power at the last moment to a ‘conspiracy’, not because they were a small minority, but for the opposite reason – because they had behind them in the workers’ districts and the barracks an overwhelming majority, consolidated, organised, disciplined” (155).

Trotsky adds that in Moscow too, the balance of forces was decisively in favour of the revolution, so much so that Lenin had suggested starting the insurrection there. Rather than a conflict over the garrison as in Petrograd, the preceding weeks in Moscow had been dominated by a wave of strikes. On October 23rd the city soviet declared that only the shop committees could decide on ‘hiring-and-firing’, not the employers or government – meaning the soviet was effectively starting to act as the state power.

However, if a decisive leadership had sometimes been lacking in Petrograd, things were far worse in Moscow: “It was in Moscow that the insurrection took the form of extended battles lasting with intervals for eight days. ‘In this hot work’, writes Muralov, one of the chief leaders of the Moscow Insurrection,   ‘we were not always and in everything firm and determined. Having an overwhelming numerical advantage, ten to one, we dragged the fight out for a whole week …’ ” (156).

The weaknesses were again partly in military technique, but largely political. The Bolshevik leaders in Moscow had stayed too close to the Compromisers. But this was a reflection of the lack of experience of struggle among Moscow’s working-class. They had not taken part in the February overthrow and the city had remained peaceful enough in July. Moscow’s previous calm now contributed to a more protracted battle in October.

29) The Conquest of the Capital



The Smolny Building

The plan of action

“All is changed and yet all remains as before. The revolution has shaken the country … but not yet wiped out a thing or replaced it.  Great red streamers are hanging down the fronts of the government buildings. But the palaces, the ministries, the headquarters, seem to be living a life entirely apart from those red banners.  All the old Russia is lurking, its jaws set in rage.  The czarist generals remain generals … the landlords are still landlords, no end of the war is in sight …” (129).

The ruling circles still preferred to pretend that they had no particular reason to worry. Some wealthy families had already fled the city, alarmed by the warnings in their bourgeois papers, the shortage of food, the new-found absence of humility from their servants. Others remained, consoling themselves in wild parties and in the gambling-clubs. The Compromisist politicians and state bureaucrats deceived themselves with comforting reports, trying to create an illusion of security.

However, the moment when the old order would be overthrown was now close at hand. In the MRC, in the factories, barracks and district committees, the last preparations were being made.

The preliminary military plan was to commence the insurrection late on the night of October 24th, starting with the occupation of the Winter Palace where the government had taken refuge. Baltic sailors were to arrive at the Finland station in the Vyborg district, join up with the Red Guard, and then spread the insurrection district by district. However, it turned out that the lack of any enemy resistance meant that the insurrection was able to commence from a far wider geographical base.

“The strategic plan underwent changes in the matter of dates also, and that in two directions: the insurrection began earlier and ended later than had been indicated” (130).

The first actions on the 24th

The MRC was prompted to commence action earlier than planned on the 24th  in response to the government’s own attacks on the Bolsheviks.

The government had belatedly decided that things were perhaps more serious than they had supposed once Smolny had formally announced its break with military headquarters on the 23rd.

Early on the 24th, orders were issued to call in reliable forces from the front and nearby garrisons, to increase the guard on the Winter Palace, to raise the bridges over the Neva river, and to cut off Smolny from the telephone system.

A call for Trotsky’s arrest, prosecution of the MRC and the removal of all soviet commissars was also issued – although it was far from clear which forces would be able to carry them out!

The cruiser Aurora, moored in the Neva with a crew sympathetic to the Bolsheviks, was also ordered to move out to join the rest of the fleet. The sailors asked the MRC for guidance and were promptly told to ignore the government orders and to protect the ship against any possible attack.

At five-thirty in the morning, a government commissar and a detachment of junkers turned up at  the Bolshevik printing-plant situated in the Vyborg district. The plates were smashed and the building sealed.  A worker and a working-girl from the factory ran to Smolny to ask the MRC  for armed defence so that they could continue printing. Trotsky’s response was to call out a company of the Litovsky regiment, and some sappers from the dependable 6th battalion, with orders to guarantee the publication of the party and soviet newspapers.

“The seals were torn from the building, the moulds again poured … with a few hours’ delay the newspaper suppressed by the government came out. That was insurrection. That is how it developed.  These two acts of resistance, suggested by workers and sailors, and carried out, thanks to the sympathy of the garrison, with complete impunity, became political events of capital importance. The last remnants of the fetishism of authority crumbled to dust” (131).

These hostile, if relatively minor, incidents – and the impotence of the government forces that they had exposed – provided a perfect opportunity for the Military Revolutionary Committee to signal that the battle had commenced, while still using the banner of ‘self-defence’.

“Telephonograms to all districts and units of the garrison announced the event: ‘The enemy of the people took the offensive during the night. The Military Revolutionary Committee is leading the resistance to the assault of the conspirators.  Make the regiment ready for battle and await further orders’. That was the voice of a sovereign power” (132). What’s more, the news could also be broadcast to the garrisons surrounding the city from the Aurora’s  radio-station.

Smolny organises

Rather belatedly perhaps, the MRC now ordered a proper fortification of the Smolny building. Red Guards and soldiers, machine-guns and artillery were put in position and wood piled up in the courtyard to provide cover against rifle-fire.

Inside, eleven members of the Bolshevik C.C. met to take final decisions. Zinoviev and Stalin did not appear, although Kamenev took an active part in preparations. Lenin was still in hiding, now in the Vyborg district.

At Trotsky’s suggestion, Sverdlov was given the role of keeping in constant touch with a reserve headquarters to be established in the Peter and Paul fortress. He was also appointed to keep an eye on the Provisional Government. In retrospect, Sverdlov probably had too many responsibilities allocated to him. The failure to reconnoitre the forces defending the Government in the Winter Palace contributed to the mistaken exaggeration of their strength.

Dzerzhinsky was delegated to liaise with the postal and telegraph workers, Bubnov the railworkers. Miliutin was put in charge of food supplies, Kamenev entrusted with negotiations with the Left SRs. Otherwise, the plans worked out, or being worked out, by the MRC       and the Military Organisation of the Bolsheviks to take full control of Petrograd over the next twenty-four hours were confirmed. This would ensure that the Congress of Soviets would meet with the power already      in its hands.

At 2 pm on the 24th, a caucus of the two or three hundred Bolshevik delegates that had already arrived from the provinces for the Soviet Congress convened in Smolny to hear a report from the C.C. Without openly revealing the details of the insurrection, which would inevitably have leaked out of such a large gathering, Trotsky made clear to the meeting that a decisive struggle had already begun.

In the Peter and Paul fortress, still only a day after its soldiers had declared their allegiance to the MRC, machine-guns were being cleaned and set upon the walls overlooking the Troitsky bridge.

Yet, it became apparent that there was still one possible point of weakness within the fortress – the bicycle battalion who had not attended the soldiers’ meeting on the 23rd. This conservative battalion had been recruited from more middle-class layers of the cities and installed in the fortress as one of the government’s most reliable detachments after it had zealously helped storm the Palace of Kshesinskaia at the end of the July Days.

Blagonravov decided to convene a special meeting for the bicycle-men and to invite the influential Trotsky to speak. At its conclusion: “By all voices except thirty the battalion supported the resolution of Trotsky. One more of the potential bloody conflicts was settled before the fighting and without bloodshed. That was the October insurrection. Such was its style” (133).

What’s more, the bicycle-men who were guarding the Winter Palace announced that they were no longer prepared to protect the government. That left only the junkers left to defend it. Smolny should probably have taken the advice of some of the Putilov workers to disarm these remaining defenders immediately. This would have prevented the later losses suffered at the Palace. However, and without Lenin’s careful counsel at hand, the MRC over-confidently ignored the danger.

Secure in its support at the Peter and Paul fortress, the MRC could now distribute weapons from its arsenal without difficulty. Trucks from the city districts drove up to its gates to collect arms, factory delegates stood in line at Smolny to receive orders of rifles.

Meanwhile, in the Mariinsky Palace, the Pre-Parliament gathered to hear Kerensky deliver his swansong. He called on the assembly to support his Government in defending the state against the ‘rabble’.

But, losing his last vestiges of authority, Kerensky couldn’t even win unqualified support within the Pre-Parliament. The Compromisers could no longer risk associating themselves with this government. The Left SR faction now even announced to that afternoon’s meeting of the Soviet in Smolny that they were ready to officially enrol as a party in the staff of the MRC.

After Kerensky’s speech, the authorities had sought to widen their offensive, sending detachments of junkers to occupy the railway stations and to stop and requisition private cars at key road-junctions. They also sent forces to raise the bridges over the rivers, a long-held tactic of the army command, fearful of allowing the masses access to the city-centre from the workers’ districts.

“By three o’clock in the afternoon the bridges were raised, except for [one].  The raising of the bridges was received by the population as an official announcement of the beginning of the insurrection. The headquarters of the districts concerned immediately answered this military act of the government in their own way by sending armed detachments to the bridges. This struggle for the bridges assumed the character of a test for both sides. Parties of armed workers and soldiers brought pressure to bear on the junkers and Cossacks, now persuading and now threatening. The guard finally yielded without hazarding a straight-out fight. Some of the bridges were raised and lowered several times” (134).

The Aurora received an order from the MRC to move sailors to the Nikolaevsky Bridge and lower it. The commander initially refused, but after a symbolic ‘arrest’, brought the ship up to the bridge. By the time the sailors had landed, the junkers had fled.

That evening, one further failed attempt was made by the government militia to suppress the Soviet’s newspapers. They seized copies of the Petrograd Soviet’s ‘Worker and Soldier’ paper, which had just been printed on a privately-owned press, and loaded them into a car. But, this time, assistance from Smolny wasn’t even needed – the printers, together with some passing sailors, simply captured the car themselves. The paper was successfully distributed, the printing-plant handed over to soviet administration and thereafter guarded by soldiers sent by the MRC.

Lenin arrives at Smolny

One colonel, supported by a dozen junkers, even made an attempt to seek out and arrest Lenin who was known to be hiding somewhere in the Vyborg district. They were swiftly arrested themselves by Red Guards, then imprisoned in the Peter and Paul fortress.

Lenin, secure from the colonel’s hopeless mission, was, however, still unaware of that morning’s decision by the C.C. to commence the insurrection. Perhaps unnerved by picking up some of the deliberate misinformation being put out by Smolny, saying that no decisive steps were to be taken before the Congress of Soviets, Lenin grew anxious that the Bolsheviks were wavering at the critical moment. On the evening of the 24th, he again wrote to the leaders of the party district committees urging them to move that night to arrest the government.

It was only when Lenin arrived at Smolny soon after to hear from Trotsky about the day’s events and the actions of the Litovsky regiment to secure the party press that Lenin’s fears were banished. Trotsky recalls the moment:

“Lenin … expressed his feeling in exclamations, laughter, and rubbing of his hands. Afterward he became more silent, reflected a moment and said: ‘Well, well – it can be done that way too. Just take the power.’  I understood that only at that moment had he finally become reconciled to the fact that we had refused to seize the power by way of a conspirative plot. Up to the last hour he was fearing that the enemy would cut off our road and catch us unaware. Only now ... did he feel at rest and finally sanction the course which events were taking” (135).

Trotsky adds that Lenin immediately took his place at the head of all aspects of the Party’s work. For example, he played a guiding role in the defensive work of the MRC in the days soon after the overthrow. This was when an attempted insurrection by junkers took place in Petrograd and Kerensky was also attempting to move Cossack forces against the revolutionary capital.

Lenin appeared briefly in public, for the first time since July, at an emergency session of the Petrograd Soviet held on the afternoon of October 25th.“ Lenin … outlined the programme of the revolution: To break up the old governmental apparatus; to create a new system of administration through the soviets; to take measures for the immediate cessation of war, relying upon revolutionary movements in other countries; to abolish the landlords’ property rights and thus win the confidence of the peasants; to establish workers’ control over production. ‘The third Russian revolution’, he said, ‘must in the end lead to the victory of socialism’ ” (136).

By then, much of the MRC’s plan had been successfully put into operation – but not all.

The plans are put into action

On the evening of October 24th, the MRC sanctioned three further actions to strengthen their control of the city before the final offensive.

A visit to the telephone exchange from the commissar of the nearby Keksgolmsky regiment proved to be enough of a threat to firstly get Smolny reconnected to the telephone system. This helped ensure that the MRC could send out speedy and accurate communications. Sending armed sentries from the same regiment to the telegraph agency also proved sufficient to gain control there too. Finally, a small detachment of sailors also took over the government news agency.

It was now time to put the tactical plan for the conquest of the capital into operation. Orders were sent to Kronstadt for its forces to be ready to come out in support of the insurrection on the following morning. As arranged with Smilga, a telegram was sent to Helsingfors summoning 1,500 sailors to arrive in Petrograd the next day as well. But the main operation was not to wait for the Baltic sailors; the city’s own forces were adequate. The sailors would, however, be well-placed if the government did succeed in bringing up reinforcements from the front.

The city had been divided into military divisions manned by Red Guards, co-ordinated with units of the garrison, each given their own goals and all filled with confidence that the operation could succeed without incurring casualties. Things were still, understandably, tense as they waited for the hour to arrive.

Trotsky summarises the action: “The main operation began at two o’clock in the morning. Small military parties, usually with a nucleus of armed workers or sailors under the leadership of commissars, occupied simultaneously, or in regular order, the railroad stations, the lighting plant, the munition and food stores, the waterworks, Dvortsovy Bridge, the Telephone Exchange, the State Bank, the big printing-plants. The Telegraph Station and the Post Office were completely taken over. Reliable guards were placed everywhere” (137).

Detailed accounts of the night’s events are hard to find. Few reports were written at the time. Many of the leaders of the few thousand workers, sailors and soldiers who took part in the operations went on to lead the first detachments of the Red Army, losing their lives in the subsequent civil war before any memoirs could be written. Nevertheless, Trotsky attempts to describe the main events.

The sappers of the Sixth Engineer battalion were sent to seize the Nikolaevsky railway station, gaining control without opposition in a matter of minutes. The junkers guarding it simply evaporated – although two truckloads of them were later disarmed in the vicinity.

Across the city, troops precisely carried out Smolny’s orders, remembering once again their army discipline. An order went out to arrest any officers not recognising the authority of the MRC. Many commanders fled, other officers were arrested. Soldiers of the Semenov regiment occupied one of the right-wing paper’s printing-plants, making sure the Bolsheviks could get out their paper in large format and with a greater print-run. Again, there was no resistance.

Certain units also displayed considerable initiative of their own such as the chemical reserve battalion who disarmed junkers in the officers’ schools close by to them, and made sure that soldiers were in control of the keys to the junkers’ weapon stores.

In the early hours of the 25th, a special meeting of the Executive Committee convened in

Smolny with the delegates to the Congress of Soviets also in attendance, providing a hostile audience for the E.C. leaders. Cheidze and Tseretelli had already abandoned Petrograd for Georgia. Gotz remained as President while it fell to Dan to try in vain to frighten the Bolsheviks with predictions of defeat. His speech was greeted with stony silence at first but ended being drowned in angry uproar. In reply, Trotsky finally removed any last defensive disguise and called on the workers and soldiers to complete the insurrection.

The Bolshevik speakers returned to the MRC where reassuring reports were poring in from across the city. At seven in the morning the Telephone Exchange was taken without a fight, and the lines to military headquarters and the Winter Palace promptly cut. There was a later attempt by junkers to retake the Exchange but this eventually ended in failure after a tense stand-off. Also that morning, a detachment of sailors seized the State Bank and a commissar delivered to Kresty Prison a list of prisoners to be released, including some of the Kronstadt leaders from July.

Smolny was a hive of activity with the MRC’s offices on the third floor constantly receiving reports and turning them into orders. Organisers would report in to check on duties and then return to their areas. Exhausted revolutionaries stretched out in the assembly hall, catching up on lost sleep. A similar picture was reproduced in the district committees with continuous meetings keeping up the flow of information and reinforcing confidence.

As Trotsky himself records, after the long story of the eventful development of the revolution, the details of the final act seem too matter-of-fact, almost disappointing. “Where is the insurrection?   A series of small operations, calculated and prepared in advance.  A unity of thought and aim unites them, but they do not fuse in the struggle itself. There is no action of great masses. There are no dramatic encounters with the troops.  The workers had no need to come out into the public square in order to fuse together: they were already politically and morally one single whole without that. The soldiers were even forbidden to leave their barracks without permission.  But those invisible masses were marching more than ever before in step with the events.  Only with heavy reserves behind them could revolutionary detachments go about their work with such confidence.  The bourgeois classes had expected barricades, flaming conflagrations, looting, rivers of blood. In reality a silence reigned more terrible than all the thunders of the world. The social ground shifted noiselessly like a revolving stage, bringing forward the popular masses, carrying away to limbo the rulers of yesterday” (138).

Kerensky flees the capital

A message sent from the War Ministry accurately summed up the situation: “The general impression is that the Provisional Government finds itself in the capital of a hostile state” (139).

The ministers themselves had been summoned by Kerensky to military headquarters although most could find no cars to take them there. Kerensky had spent the night frantically trying to find a way out of his predicament, with the realisation dawning on him that Polkovnikov’s assurances of military superiority were completely empty.

The building was full of officers but not to organise a fightback, simply to find a place of safety. Some even threatened to arrest Kerensky as the mood of hopelessness spread through both headquarters and the Winter Palace. Most officers began to creep away to save themselves. Though the Bolsheviks were unaware of it, the approaches to both buildings were left at this stage unguarded.

Kerensky had demanded from army headquarters in Moghiliev, and the commanders of the Northern front in Pskov, that loyal regiments were to be dispatched forthwith, but none were to be seen. The Cossack regiments promised by their officers had also failed to arrive. Even the one bicycle battalion that was definitely on its way from the front had not turned up. Unfortunately for Kerensky, they had telegraphed the Petrograd Soviet for advice and their representatives had then reported to Smolny instead!

Kerensky saw no option but to turn to his Allied friends to come to his rescue. A car from the American embassy, offering some diplomatic protection from the Red Guards, came to escort Kerensky’s car out of the city.

“As early as ten o’clock on the morning of the 25th, Smolny considered it possible to broadcast … a triumphant announcement: ‘The Provisional Government is overthrown. The state power has passed into the hands of the Military Revolutionary Committee’. In a certain sense this declaration was very premature. The government still existed, at least within the territory of the Winter Palace. Headquarters existed; the provinces had not expressed themselves; the Congress of Soviets had not yet opened. But … in order to get complete possession of the power it was necessary to act as a power” (140).

At midday, the members of the Pre-Parliament assembled in the Mariinsky Palace with the surrounding streets already occupied by revolutionary troops. They found out that their telephone lines had been cut and that Kerensky had escaped to the front.  Then an armoured car drew up at the entrance and soldiers and sailors entered the building, ordering the deputies to leave. Unfortunately, the inexperience of the revolutionary leaders meant that the troops were not ordered to arrest them. Some soon became organisers of the civil war.

“This parliamentary hybrid, which ended its existence twelve hours in advance of the Provisional Government, had lived in the world for eighteen days. That was the interval between the withdrawal of the Bolsheviks from the Mariinsky Palace to the streets and the entry of the armed street forces into the Mariinsky Palace” (141).

At 2.35 in the afternoon, Trotsky opened an emergency session of the Petrograd Soviet to announce to the delegates – and to the foreign press – that the Provisional Government no longer existed.

As remarked, Lenin also made his first public appearance. Trotsky – prematurely as it turned out – predicted the imminent seizure of the Winter Palace and called for the news to be taken out to the front and to the whole country that the revolution had taken place.

“Voices [came] from the small right sector: ‘You are anticipating the will of the Congress of Soviets’. The speaker answered: ‘The will of the Congress has been anticipated by the colossal fact of an insurrection of the Petrograd workers and soldiers. It now remains only to develop our victory’ ” (142).