November 7 – October 25, 1917: The Winter Palace Bombarded

At about 4:00 p.m., ships from Kronstadt join the cruiser Aurora. They came much later than planned, but of course the officers did not share the feelings of the sailors towards the revolution.

One of the ships, another cruiser, took a position menacing the Baltic railroad, in case the government should send reinforcements in that way. The others, two destroyers and two gunboats, sailed up the Neva River. They still had to debark their marines, and then the marines had to take their place in the encirclement. From the Winter Palace, says Trotsky, the reinforcement must have looked to the Minister of the Marine, Admiral Verderevsky, formidable.

By 5:00 p.m., the Keksgolmsky Regiment had occupied the War Ministry. By 6:00 p.m., the palace was at last surrounded. Armored cars took up positions at the entrances to the Palace Square; one of them ran up and disarmed the junkers at the main gate.

But the next step in the Military Committee’s plan, an increasingly menacing series of bombardments, was also complicated – perhaps a bit more than necessary. We’ll return to this part of the story in a moment.

Meanwhile, inside the palace, if they couldn’t get anything else, the cabinet was at least trying to get news. At 4:00 p.m., Kerensky’s deputy Konovalov called a meeting with party leaders to see what they could do. Only one attended, expressed “sympathy,” as Trotsky says, and hastily left. A secret telephone line was still working, but no good news could be had from the front. Officers without commands drifted into the palace; they made the staff prepare dinner and serve it with wine.

The junkers demanded and received a new conference with the cabinet. But the news the cabinet could share would at this point could hardly have given satisfaction. While this was going on, Kishkin came in with an ultimatum from Antonov. The encirclement was complete, naval guns were trained on the palace; the cabinet should surrender and the garrison should give up its arms. The ministers of war and marine advised their civilian colleges to give in. This the latter would not do; they made no answer and appealed to the city duma instead. The duma was, after all, the only legitimate authority in the city…!

Now the cabinet heard from the district military headquarters: the commanding general there offered to resign. Half an hour later a detachment of soldiers, marines, and Red Guards advanced on headquarters, met no resistance, and arrested the general instead. Then the general who had replaced Polkovnikov stood down. Demoted and ordered to leave by Kishkin, he fell into the hands of some marines. But Podvoisky took custody before he could come to any harm. It was about 5:00 p.m.

The junker riflemen crouched behind the cordwood barriers in front of the palace could see that the siege was tightening. They began to fire more rapidly, with rifles and machine guns; the besiegers did the same; casualties, the first of the whole day anywhere in the city, were suffered.

The cabinet grew apprehensive about the view from the room where they were meeting, called the Malachite Room. If they could see the ships in the river, the ships could fire at them – directly. So they moved to an interior room and papered over the windows overlooking the courtyard. Then the lights went off: the insurrection was in control of the electricity. The cabinet had to content themselves with a lamp.

The palace staff found this a good moment to absent themselves. The displaced officers ordered those who remained to bring more wine. Word of the debauch reached the defenders; it had a demoralizing effect. The junker artillerymen announced they had received orders to return to their school. At least they left a couple of their guns behind. The Pavlovsky Regiment captured and disarmed them on their way out, taking two of their guns and turning them around to bear on the Winter Palace.

At last the Cossack regiments, despairing of infantry support, resolved to withdraw their squadrons. Their machine gunners too, though the guns were left behind. The besiegers let the Cossacks out through a passage the defenders did not know about. This was at about 9:00 p.m.

Infiltration tactics began to have an effect that evening. Troops armed with words entered the palace through the passage the Cossacks used to leave. They did not find it difficult to demoralize the junker guards and patrols in the halls; they advised that anybody who wanted to leave could do so freely.

The plan for bombarding the palace was at last coming together. Like the plan of encirclement, it took longer to hatch than hoped. Corporal Blagonravov got some field guns up onto the parapets of the Peter and Paul by noon, but the insurrection had not found any gunners. There was a company of gunners in the garrison, but they were not revolutionists. Reluctant to fire on the government, they made difficulties about the guns: they were rusty, the compressors needed oil.

Antonov, waiting for the agreed signal from the fortress, grew cross at the delay. He went to see Blagonravov; they lost the way; Antonov suspected treachery for a moment. When they finally found the guns, Antonov dismissed the artillerists and sent for men from the Aurora. Then a messenger hurried up: the palace has surrendered…! But it was only headquarters, taken by the insurrection at about 5:00 p.m.

Blagonravov also had to explain that the agreed signal for beginning the bombardment, a red lantern hoisted above the rampants of the Peter and Paul, could not be given. A red lantern was nowhere to be had. Never mind. Lashevich sends over gunners from the Aurora; they began anew to prepare the guns.

Meanwhile Chudnovsky also found his way into the palace and persuaded some junkers to give up. Then Chudnovsky was arrested and the junkers had to persuade the commandant to let him go. A few junkers went with him and some of the Cavaliers of St. George too; their exit created confusion in the courtyard, where the junker riflemen still kept up their fire.

The lights went back on, making a good target of the junkers. Somebody switched them off, then they went back on again. The junkers fired at the light; an officer threatened the palace electrician. But the marines had taken control of the current.

Then the soldiers of the Women’s Battalion, thinking that the tsarist General Alexiev was held captive and, moreover, that his life must in the interest of the Russian land and people be preserved, sortied to his rescue. Their advance broke up under fire and the greater part of them surrendered. This was at about 10:00 p.m.

Then a lull, for about an hour. Trotsky says, “The besiegers are busied with the preparation of artillery fire.” The surrounded government, under the impression that the besiegers were weak and that their assault had failed, was sending defiant messages: “’Let the army and the people answer!’”

At length the guns and cannon were ready. The plan of bombardment called for a series of escalations: first blanks, then light caliber guns, then the six-inch guns of the Aurora would open up. The blanks made a huge sound and flash. Maybe this would change the defenders’ minds. Antonov again proposed that the defenders give up. Some of them do, including junkers and the rest of the Women’s Battalion, leaving their weapons on the sidewalk.

The bombardment was renewed – somewhat. The rate of fire was not all the Aurora was capable of: thirty-some shots over the course of nearly two hours. Only two hits. Trotsky wonders, “Is lack of skill the real cause?”

Perhaps the commander of the Red Army in the Russian Civil War has overlooked some things about naval gunfire. During World War II, a cruiser with six-inch guns could open fire on an enemy ship at nearly 10,000 yards. A broadside every minute would not be considered a very rapid rate of fire. Not all the shells could be counted on to hit; the target, say another cruiser, would have been about 600 feet long and 55 or more feet abeam. It was also moving. Nevertheless it was possible for one cruiser to hit and, after repeated hits, sink another.

The Winter Palace was not moving. It was, say, a block or more long. The range for Aurora’s six-inch guns was point blank. On Wikipedia, it looks as if she could bring a broadside of eight guns to bear. So consider the story Trotsky relates of the Minister of Marine, Admiral Verderevsky, in light of these facts. The commandant brought the admiral a shard of metal from somewhere on the palace grounds. The admiral inspected it and said, yes, the shard came from a shell fired by the Aurora. Now the government knew that its own navy was willing to fire at it.

Trotsky finds reason to doubt the story about the shard. But it is true that a shell can be fitted with a fuse, and the fuse can ignite the explosive in the shell at any desired range. It seems to me this shard must have come from a shell that exploded over the palace, not in it.

That is, the gunners were not shooting at the palace at all. Neither did the sailors want to cause any more casualties than absolutely necessary, nor the officers to deface a monument of tsarist Russia. On this account, the two “hits” Trotsky mentions were actually misses.

As little effect as the barrage had on the Winter Palace, it caused plenty of consternation and anxiety in other parts of the city, as the next entries show.