The attempts
against the printing presses and the fleet are everywhere seen as counter-revolutionary.
Moreover, since they were successfully resisted, the government itself was
losing what little credibility it had left.
The insurrection
put these circumstances to good account. The soldiers at the press plant and
the sailors in the Neva River were defending the revolution, said Smolny. Though
the phone lines were out, the cruiser Aurora had a powerful radio. It broadcast
Smolny’s message: “the counter-revolution [has] taken the offensive.” Trotsky
says it’s good for an insurrection to begin on the defensive. The cloak of
self-defense is cast over a course of action that is, by its very nature,
extra-legal.
So now the
Military Revolutionary Committee, when it issued orders to the garrison, could
say – and did say – it was acting in defense of the Congress of Soviets, due to
convene the next day. Yet in essence its orders came, Trotsky says, with “the
voice of a sovereign power.” The Military Committee sounded the same themes
when it issued a proclamation and general orders covering the front page of Rabochy i Soldat that day. Reed
reproduces the proclamation in Ten Days
that Shook the World.
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