The march of the
Putilov workers, their wives and children, begins before midnight.
But by then, after
shouting, pushing and shoving, and struggles over the banners of the soldiers
and workers, gunfire had broken out on Nevsky Prospect. We know the
demonstrators were armed; so were their enemies in that bourgeois neighborhood.
The Grenadier Guards regiment returned a volley when shots were fired at them,
possibly by right-wing Cavaliers of St. George or officers crippled in the war,
possibly by provocateurs. Panic ensued; dead and wounded lay in the street.
Meanwhile the Petrograd
Soviet reconvened in joint session. The Menshevik Dan offered a resolution
inviting anyone who would not be able to support the decision of the committee
to leave the meeting beforehand. It was dropped when the Bolsheviks appeared.
The delegation from the demonstrators demanded to be heard, but was ignored.
Little was accomplished except the airing of accusations. A member of the
Jewish Bund accused the Bolsheviks of conspiracy; Tseretilli accused the
demonstrators of aiding the counter-revolution. The meeting adjourned at 5:00
a.m., needless to say without taking any concrete action on any of the demonstrators’
demands, much less to seize the state power.
The Bolsheviks
and Trotskyites also met late into the night, debating again the question
whether to hold back the demonstration or lead it, and deciding for the latter.
Then Zinoviev was called to the telephone. News from Kronstadt came that the
sailors would march to the aid of the demonstrators that morning. Social
Revolutionaries among the sailors, and even the commissar appointed by the
Provisional Government, had voted to join the march when they’d learned the
Bolsheviks were leading it.
By 3:00 a.m.,
after first encountering obstruction and gunfire, the Putilov workers and family
members, joined on the march by workers of other factories and now some 80,000
strong, reached the Tauride Palace. The Central Executive Committee agreed to receive
their representatives, while the wearied marchers lay on the grounds of the
palace, wondering about the next day, sure only that they would be too tired to
go to work.
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