The Winter Palace
is beset inside and out: infiltrators in the halls agitating for the surrender
of the defending garrison, and naval gunfire exploding menacingly but mostly
harmlessly outdoors. Together these tactics minimized casualties while
maximizing the demoralization of the defense.
As the numbers of
infiltrators grew, so did their boldness. Singly and then in groups they called
on the junker sentries to surrender. They dropped a couple of grenades from a
gallery; Kishkin the physician-minister tended to a couple of lightly wounded
junkers. If infiltrators happened to be captured – and some of them just gave
themselves up – they continued to agitate with their captors. After a time,
Trotsky says, nobody knew who were the captives and who were the captors.
Kishkin made one
last phone call on the secret line: the Cadets must arm the party and relieve
the palace at once. But this worked no better with Kishkin’s Cadets late that
night than it had worked with Kerensky’s Social Revolutionaries early that
morning.
Now peremptory
word came from Smolny: have done with the Winter Palace so the Congress of
Soviets can get on with its business. Doubt about the result threatened to
split the Congress and isolate the Bolsheviks. Even Lenin was sending angry
notes. Only the guns of the Aurora could meet the need. The Peter and Paul sent
an order to fire point-blank. On the Aurora, the Bolshevik Fleurovsky had a
hunch; he held fire for a quarter of an hour. It was just as well…
…for at that
moment a great rush of soldiery sweeps past the junker riflemen and through the
main entrance of the palace. The junkers behind their cordwood barricades do
not fire because they think it might be the approach of the miracle march of
the city duma. Then some of them have to surrender; the rest take to their
feet.
The insurrection,
armed to the teeth, confronts the defenders in the stairways and halls: pistols
are not fired; grenades are not thrown. It’s a standoff. The rest of the
encircling force advances, followed closely by Antonov and Chudnovsky. The
commandant, seeing the game is up, offers to surrender the palace and asks
terms for his junkers.
That much Antonov
is willing to grant, but not to the cabinet. He and Chudnovsky are led to the
room where the ministers huddle; the ministers have not ordered their sentries
to resist. And so in this interior room, at 2:10 a.m. October 26, the Military
Revolutionary Committee, in the person of the Bolshevik Antonov, places the
ministers of the Provisional Government under arrest. Kerensky’s deputy
Konovalov signifies that the government, under the threat of force, will
submit.
A hand-picked
guard of twenty-five led the captives into the square. Soldiers in the crowd
called for their heads; some tried to strike them. Trotsky says the Red Guards
told them, “Do not stain the proletarian victory,” and formed a protective ring
around the ministry’s guard. Once an errant shot made everybody flatten. A
minister later gave Antonov much of the credit for getting them through.
The insurrection
took a roll call of the cabinet and put them up in the Peter and Paul for the rest
of the night. The surrendered junkers were paroled, but Trotsky doubts whether
most of them kept their promise never to bear arms against the new socialist government. Back in the palace
the American journalist Reed saw looters at work – until somebody reminded them
that the valuables were now the property of the people. Guards were placed at
the doors to recover and record items found stashed in pockets. Chudnovsky was made
commandant of the Winter Palace.
Reed took quite a
tour of the palace before he and his journalist colleagues were invited to
leave. They even got into the Malachite Room. There Reed found ministerial
drafts of proclamations and plans, drifting off into anxious doodles. He
pocketed one that appeared to be in Konovalov’s handwriting.
Word went out,
first about the capture of the palace and then about the arrest of the
government, to the Aurora and to Smolny….
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