The Provisional
Government – minus Kerensky – is getting nowhere in its efforts to find
reinforcements while the insurrection’s encirclement is still fairly porous. General
Polkovnikov was too discouraged to act. General Alexiev, once commander in
chief under the tsar, came to headquarters as an advisor. He soon realized the
game was up and left.
That morning insurrectionary
troops had not yet encircled the Winter Palace, nor had they occupied the
streets nearby or the square in which it stood. They’d watched Kerensky’s
car drive off and let Stankevich
pass in and out again. Now they were stopping cars and dispossessing the
riders. Somehow they missed the cars of the ministers summoned to the palace
for a cabinet meeting. Only one minister was stopped and arrested, and he was
later released.
The cabinet was
thus able to meet and try what Polkovnikov could not find the energy for. At
about 11:00 a.m., finding no-one else in the cabinet willing, they appointed
Kishkin, a Cadet and a civilian, to coordinate the defense. Trotsky observes
this can hardly have induced troops from the front, who hated the Cadets, to
come to the cabinet’s rescue. Kishkin relieved Polkovnikov and appointed an
equally ineffective replacement.
If he wanted more
defenders, Kishkin would have to find more junkers and persuade the Cossacks to
come in. The defense also needed armored cars, they had six, but five departed
and did not return. Fortunately the palace still had a direct wire to district
military headquarters. There was also a telephone line the insurrection had
overlooked.
At noon the
palace was defended by ensigns from two junker schools and a section of field
artillery from a third, an engineering school. The junkers piled up cordwood in
the courtyard as a barricade for their riflemen.
Difficulties
arose. Passers-by brandished revolvers and disarmed the surprised sentries.
There did not appear to be sufficient rations for the day, much less for a
siege. Agitators so played on their nerves that the junkers demanded a council
of war with the ministers. Konovalov granted it; the whole cabinet was there
with him.
An hour’s meeting
gave reassurance. The chief of the engineering school took command of the whole
junker contingent; his actions made the defense seem more substantial. So did
rifle fire from behind the barricades, meant to clear the square. This gave the
Military Committee pause. Deciding to bring up more reserves, mainly the still-expected
Kronstadters, the committee called off a planned advance.
Now there was
time to bring in more defenders too. Note that the encirclement had to face
both ways: inward to hold the defenders, and outward to prevent reinforcements.
Neither circle was complete. The Cossacks, after much internal debate, resolved
to send in two squadrons of cavalry and some machine gun crews. They arrived
towards evening. Shortly afterwards some forty Cavaliers of St. George,
crippled war veterans, came up, and after them a company of the Women’s
Battalion, widows of men killed in the war. If this was their infantry
support, the Cossacks did not like the looks of it. At no time, Trotsky
estimates, did the garrison defending the palace number more than 2,000.
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