Overnight November 6-7 – October 24-25, 1917: Petrograd Occupied

When the American journalist Reed leaves Smolny at about 4:00 a.m. on the morning of the 25^th (November 7, new style), somebody tells him the insurrection is already under way and going well. Reed says, “Behind us great Smolny, bright with lights, hummed like a gigantic hive….”

Operations had begun at about 2:00 a.m.; now they were offensive in nature and would be carried through to the end. Trotsky says that, though it’s possible to know what was done, it’s generally not possible to tell who did any given action or when the action got done. The records of the operations are scant.

The Bolshevik Military Organization grouped the workers and soldiers into divisions and set objectives for each division. Everything went according to plan. The first objectives were railroad stations, the electrical power plant, stores of munitions and food, the waterworks. The one bridge remaining to the junkers was seized. So were the centers of communication: the telephone exchange, telegraph exchange, post office, and printing plants were occupied and guarded in strength. So was the State Bank.

Trotsky gives a few specifics.

It fell to the engineer battalion, thoroughly Bolshevik, to take the Nikolaevsky railroad station. This they did without incident or bloodshed. They hardly knew what to do next. They stopped cars and people and checked their papers. At 6:00 a.m. they arrested two truckloads of junkers and sent them to Smolny. Detachments of engineers also guarded stores of food and the power plant.

Commissar Uralov got instructions to gather troops from the Semenov Guards Regiment and occupy a plant wanted for printing a special edition – bigger sheets and a larger circulation – of the Bolshevik paper. When Uralov roused them, the soldiers shouted “Hurrah!” So did the printers when Uralov told them why he and the soldiers had come.

Now the scales were falling from General Polkovnikov’s eyes. There were no demonstrations, just workers and soldiers systematically occupying every strategic point and function. The junkers were useless to resist them. “We have no guarantee there will not be an attempt to seize the Provisional Government,” he insightfully wired Cheremissov at the Northern Front.

Now too the Military Revolutionary Committee became bolder: it issued orders to arrest any officers who would not place themselves under the authority of the committee. Some of those who wouldn’t went into hiding instead. We’ll discover one of their hiding places later.

Trotsky also gives an example of the initiative displayed by the insurrectionary units. A chemical weapons battalion had junker military schools for neighbors. Their patrols kept the junkers in line by disarming them whenever they found them. The Pavlovsky Regiment was also patrolling in the neighborhood, so the staff of the chemical battalion saw to it they the soldiers had the keys to the battalion’s weapons.

Trotsky estimates no more than 10,000 men were required for occupation of the capital, nearly complete by morning. The bulk of the garrison had stayed in their barracks, on the ready.