"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”
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| The Smolny Building |
“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
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| Smolny Institute in 2012 |
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.
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| Peter and Paul Fortress from the Winter Palace 2012 |
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).
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