26) A Test of Strength

"The masses saw themselves and their leaders; the leaders saw and listened to the masses. Each side was satisfied with the other. The leaders were convinced: We can postpone no longer! The masses said to themselves: This time the thing will be done!"

Troops supporting the Bolsheviks march towards Smolny

The noose tightens

The Soviet declared that Sunday October 22nd would be a ‘Soviet Day’ in order to peacefully review its strength of support at mass meetings in the barracks and factories. In response, and clearly to provoke disturbances, an announcement was made calling a ‘church procession,’ to ask for divine support to ‘protect the nation’, on the same day.

The Bolsheviks knew that the counter-revolution and the clergy would only be able to muster a tiny handful, largely from the remnants of the Black Hundred reactionaries. But the experienced hands of the Intelligence Service and Cossack Officers could still easily use the event to incite armed clashes. As a precaution, security was tightened at the Smolny building that housed the Soviet.

A meeting of the Garrison Conference was held on the 21st to discuss how best to prevent clashes, including through strengthening its influence over the Cossack regiments. Welcome news came when the delegates from the most leftward unit of the Cossacks announced that it would not take part in the procession. Only the most backward regiment – the Uralsky brought to Petrograd to try to crush the Bolsheviks in July – were absent from the Conference.

“Upon the proposal of Trotsky, the Conference adopted three short resolutions: (1) ‘The garrison of Petrograd and its environs promises the Military Revolutionary Committee full support in all its steps…’; (2) October 22nd is to be a day devoted to a peaceful review of forces.. The garrison appeals to the Cossacks: ‘We invite you to our meeting tomorrow. You are welcome, brother Cossacks!’; (3) ‘The All-Russian Congress of Soviets must take the power in its hands and guarantee to the people peace, land and bread.’ Hundreds of hands were raised for this resolution which sealed the programme of the insurrection. Fifty-seven men abstained. These were the “neutrals” – that is, the wavering enemy. Not one hand was raised against the resolution. The noose around the neck of the February régime was being drawn in a reliable knot” (98).

News then came confirming that the reactionary ‘procession’ had been called off. This was an important moral victory, one that showed what a useful weapon the Garrison Conference was proving to be for combating the dwindling forces of reaction in the barracks.

Breaking with headquarters

The MRC had appointed three commissars – Sadovsky, Mekhonoshin and Lazimir – to Petrograd’s military headquarters. Any orders from its commander, Polkovnikov, were to be followed only when countersigned by one of the three commissars. However, when a delegation from Smolny went to inform Polkovnikov of the arrangements, he would have none of it, believing the troops would still obey his orders without Soviet authority.

A special session of the Garrison Conference responded to this snub by agreeing to formally break with the authority of headquarters. An appeal announced to all districts that only orders countersigned by the commissars were to be obeyed, explaining that: “ ‘Having broken with the organised garrison of the capital, headquarters is a direct instrument of the counter-revolutionary forces.’ The Military Revolutionary Committee standing at the head of the garrison takes upon itself ‘the defence of revolutionary order against counter-revolutionary attempts.’ ” (99).

This breach was another important step towards insurrection. But headquarters chose to console themselves with the idea that this was nothing more than just another quarrel between the Petrograd Soviet and the Central Executive Committee. But the MRC nevertheless alerted barracks close to Smolny to be ready to come to their aid, just in case the Government decided to try some desperate attack.

October 22nd - ‘Soviet Day’

The bourgeois press had already ‘cried wolf’ about impending uprisings on the 17th and the 20th. Now they decided that the Bolsheviks’ show of strength on the 22nd would become the foretold scene of bloodshed. But the Bolshevik press made very clear that it was to be a peaceful assessment of the strength of revolutionary forces.

“This fully answered the plan of the Military Revolutionary Committee: to carry out a gigantic review without clashes, without employing weapons, even without showing them. They wanted to show the masses their own numbers, their strength, their resolution. They wanted to erase from the consciousness of the workers and soldiers the last hindering recollections of the July Days – to bring it about that having seen themselves the masses should say: Nothing and nobody can any longer oppose us” (100).

When Sunday arrived, only the bourgeoisie remained at home, scared by their own press. “All the rest of the population thronged out to meetings from early morning to night – young and old, men and women, boys and girls, mothers with children in their arms. No meetings like this had been seen before throughout the revolution. All Petrograd, with the exception of its upper strata, was one solid meeting” (101).

“In those auditoriums, continually packed to the doors, the audiences would be entirely renewed in the course of a few hours. Fresh and ever fresh waves of workers, soldiers and sailors would roll up to the buildings and flood them full. The petty bourgeoisie of the town bestirred themselves, too, aroused by these waves and by those warnings which were supposed to frighten them. Down with Kerensky! Down with the war! Power to the Soviets! None of the Compromisers any longer dared appear before these red hot crowds. The Bolsheviks had the floor. All the oratorical forces of the party, including delegates to the Congress who were beginning to arrive from the provinces, were brought into action. Occasionally Left Social Revolutionaries spoke – in some places anarchists – but they both tried as little as possible to distinguish themselves from Bolsheviks” (102).

“The people of the slums, of the attics and basements, stood still by the hour in threadbare coat or grey uniform, with caps or heavy shawls still on their heads, the mud of the streets soaked through their shoes, an autumn cough catching at their throats. They stood there packed shoulder to shoulder, listening tirelessly, hungrily. The experience of the revolution, the war, the heavy struggle of a whole bitter lifetime, rose from the deeps of memory in each of those poverty-driven men and women, expressing itself in simple and imperious thoughts: This way we can go no farther, we must break a road into the future” (103).

The events of that day left a lasting impression on everyone who took part in them. In meetings both large and small throughout the city and its suburbs, hundreds of thousands raised their hands in a vote of support for Soviet rule. Similar votes had been taken before in separate meetings “but that day … welded in one gigantic cauldron … the authentic popular masses. The masses saw themselves and their leaders; the leaders saw and listened to the masses. Each side was satisfied with the other. The leaders were convinced: We can postpone no longer! The masses said to themselves: This time the thing will be done!” (104).

Securing the garrison

The success of the 22nd shattered Polkovnikov’s short-lived confidence. With the agreement of the government and the Central E.C., headquarters attempted to reopen negotiations with Smolny over the commissars. However, their attempts were now too little, too late. The MRC proclaimed to the city that the decisions of its commissars, acting as representatives of the Soviet were sacrosanct and further, that citizens should report any disturbances to the nearest commissar to call out armed forces.

With effective control of the garrison, the MRC was now acting like a sovereign power, but still did not give the signal for insurrection. “The Committee is crowding out the government with the pressure of the masses, with the weight of the garrison. It is taking all that it can without a battle. The Military Revolutionary Committee was tying up the arms and legs of the enemy régime before striking him on the head. It was possible to apply this tactic of ‘peaceful penetration’ … only because of the indubitable superiority of forces on the side of the Committee and because they were increasing hour by hour” (105).

However, the Bolsheviks still had to urgently resolve an issue that had been brought to their attention back on the 19th. When the Central E.C. had then convened their own garrison meeting, they had only been able to win minority support. However, the Bolsheviks noted that the Compromisers had been given the backing of most of the committees representing the troops in the Peter and Paul fortress, together with those of the armoured car division.

These were dangerous points of weakness that had to be addressed. The fortress stood opposite the Winter Palace and next door to the well-stocked Kronverksky arsenal. Armoured cars could also be of great significance in any street battle. The Bolsheviks had been left to consider how they could win over these last pockets of opposition.

As feared, the commandant of the Peter and Paul fortress had refused to recognise the authority of Corporal Blagonravov, the commissar appointed by the MRC. Antonov proposed a military operation to take control of the fortress, but this could have provoked bloody clashes which might have broken the hard-won unity of the garrison.

Antonov himself recalls in his memoirs: “ ‘Trotsky was called in to consider this question. [He] was then playing the decisive rôle. The advice he gave us was a product of his revolutionary intuition: that we capture the fortress from within. “It cannot be that the troops there are not sympathetic”, he said. And he was right’ ” (106).

When Trotsky and Lashevich spoke to the soldiers in the fortress on the afternoon of Monday 23rd, they won them over. To relief at Smolny, the garrison of the fortress agreed to take orders only from the MRC.

“That change in the mood of the fortress troops was not of course the result of one or two speeches. It had been well prepared in the past. The soldiers turned out to be far to the left of their committees. It was only the cracked shell of the old discipline that held out a little longer behind the fortress walls than in the city barracks. One tap was enough to shatter it” (107).

Blagonravov was now able to establish his headquarters within the fortress and set up communications with nearby barracks and the district soviet. Delegations from factories and other military units also came to procure weapons from Kronverksky’s arsenal of 100,000 rifles. Meanwhile, military headquarters found their requests for supplies being ignored. Other more backward units, like the Preobrazhentsi, first to fall for the slander about ‘German gold’ back in July, also now declared their support for the MRC.

The balance of forces was now so favourable that Monday evening’s session of the Soviet was able to discuss with remarkable frankness their plans – if still couched in terms of ‘defence’ of the coming Congress of Soviets – rather than ‘insurrection’. Reports were given of troops sent from the front against Petrograd being successfully persuaded to turn back.

Kerensky still tried to light-mindedly reassure his Ministers that everything was under control. Kadet papers also declared that any ‘coming-out’ would be quickly put down, leaving the Bolsheviks broken before elections to the Constituent Assembly. However, this time, the Compromisers and the Central Executive Committee were unable to come to the rescue of the bourgeoisie.