November 6-7 – October 24-25, 1917: The
Winter Palace Defended. When Kerensky returns to the Winter Palace from the
Pre-Parliament (the session of November 6 – October 24), he finds Commissar
Stankevich there, back from headquarters at the front. Stankevich was skeptical
about whether an insurrection was actually taking place – too quiet. Kerensky
thought it was; he was waiting on the resolution of the Pre-Parliament before
taking certain steps against it. Stankevich went to Mariinsky Palace to see how
things stood there.
Kerensky did not
like the news Stankevich brought back at about 9:00 p.m. – particularly the resolution
demanding that the Pre-Parliament should run the fight against the insurrection
through its own committee of public safety. Kerensky summoned the
Pre-Parliament’s leaders to a cabinet meeting at the palace, at which he
threatened to resign – again. Avksentiev explained that the resolution was
“purely theoretical” and admitted that maybe the wording wasn‘t apt. The
Menshevik Dan wanted the government to proclaim it had proposed peace
negotiations to the Entente, and publish it on posters throughout the city.
A delegation of
Cossack officers came in next. They believed their three regiments of cavalry
would be willing and able not only to defend the government, but also to
destroy the Bolsheviks. Kerensky seems to have liked this pretty well, but said
he regretted he had not arrested Trotsky before then.
Of course none of
this was based on the realities of the situation. After the meetings broke up
at 2:00 a.m. (November 7 – October 25), Kerensky was left alone with his deputy
Konovalov. General Polkovnikov came in with a plan to capture Smolny, but he
could not specify what forces he intended to use. Maybe the commander in chief
could find them. Only then did Kerensky realize that all Polkovnikov’s reports
on the preparedness and loyalty of the garrison were not just mistaken, but
self-deluded.
Further proof
that the situation was more dangerous than imagined came from a commissar of
the city government: ships of the Baltic Fleet in the Neva, bridges taken,
Bolshevik movements “meeting nowhere the slightest resistance….” Now Kerensky
and his deputy knew they needed troops – lots of them, and fast.
They went to
Polkovnikov’s nearby headquarters and found it stuffed with officers hiding
from troops they could no longer command. Not much help. Kerensky telephoned
his party’s headquarters; maybe the Social Revolutionaries could arm the
membership. Miliukov observes that this was sure to alienate military elements
aligned with the right. But unlike the Bolsheviks, the Social Revolutionaries had
made no effort to arm the party rank and file.
Now it was time
to call in the Cossack regiments. But cavalry cannot operate without support,
the Cossacks said. They must have armored cars, machine guns, and especially
infantry to back them up. Kerensky promised these things, but they were things
he could not deliver. Only squadrons, not regiments, of Cossacks ever came to
the defense of the Winter Palace.
People in
headquarters and at the palace were beginning to sense an oncoming fiasco.
Kerensky summoned
a War Ministry official to headquarters. He was stopped, taken to the barracks
of the Pavlovsky Regiment, then permitted to go on his way. Commissar
Stankevich too was allowed to pass into headquarters during this time (later
going on his mission
to the telephone exchange). That at least was something.
It was 5:00 a.m.
New conversations with the headquarters of the Northern Front brought new promises
and assurances. But troops were not arriving. Kerensky and Konovalov returned
to the palace to rest, only to find the phones had been cut off. And there in
the river, across the courtyard from the palace, revolutionary marines stood
guard on the Dvortsovy bridge.
November 7 – October 25, 1917: Kerensky
Goes for Help. Their rest cut short by disturbing news. Kerensky and
Konovalov return to General Polkovnikov’s headquarters. Maybe the phones were
working there….
But the situation
was deteriorating. The junkers were nervous: the Bolsheviks had told them to
move off. Armored cars intended for the defense of the Winter Palace seemed to
have gone missing. No news from the front. At any rate the officers ejected
from their regiments had found somewhere else to hide.
Now Kerensky
wanted the cabinet to join him at headquarters. Most of them, for one reason or
another, didn’t have automobiles; only Kishkin and one other minister paid
attendance. Though he didn’t have a quorum of the cabinet, Kerensky did have
one last card to play: he himself would go forth and hasten the echelons
advancing to the rescue of the Provisional Government. They sent for Kerensky’s
touring car.
Then another
automobile arrived, bearing the stars and stripes of the American embassy. In
Kerensky’s version of events, the American and British embassies had heard of
his plan to go to the front, and put the car at his disposal. The American
ambassador’s version is less generous. A Russian officer followed the car to
the embassy and demanded to use it for Kerensky’s trip to the front. That much,
the ambassador said, the embassy might be willing to acquiesce in, but then the
Russian officer left the American flag in place.
Kerensky got into
his own car; the embassy car followed. People seemed to recognize him; Kerensky
says he saluted “a little carelessly and with an easy smile.” The Red Guards
did not know what to make of it as the cars rushed past; at any rate they did
not fire.
In the result,
the Third Bicycle Battalion, expected at the Winter Palace, telegraphed Smolny
instead and were invited to send a delegation there. Kerensky did not find them
and so was unable to change their minds. He did find some troops at the
Gatchina station at about 10:00 a.m., but his harangue was unsuccessful.
Thereafter his movements are lost to history. The next day General Kornilov,
supposedly under guard in Bhykov, also dropped out of sight. Trotsky says
Kerensky must have tipped Kornilov off.
November 7 – October 25, 1917: The Winter
Palace Encircled. The Military Revolutionary Committee launches its plan to
encircle the Winter Palace and trap the ministers of the Provisional Government
inside. Lashevich at Smolny, Podvoisky and Antonov in the front lines, and Chudnowsky,
lately arrived from the front, were in charge. The plan involved joint
operations between naval and ground forces. Moreover, the ground forces
included marines, garrison infantry, and detachments of the Red Guards. So the
field headquarters were in the Peter and Paul, with subordinate commands on the
cruiser Aurora, in the Pavlovsky Regiment, and in the barracks of the marines.
By its very
nature, encirclement is a difficult maneuver, even for competent generals with
experienced staffs – not to mention practiced coordination between the different
branches of the service. Needless to say the politicians on the Military
Committee encountered difficulties and delays.
At first the
committee promised it to take the palace by 10:00 a.m. This would have made the
announcement at that hour true without qualification. As it was, Petrograd
had been taken, but not the Provisional Government – even though the government
was, as the War Ministry wired
the front, “in the capital of a hostile state.”
Trotsky thinks a coup de main would have worked late that
morning or even that afternoon – just rush the main entrance with the troops on
hand. Two considerations, I believe, must have militated against this tactic.
The first was political: the insurrection had been bloodless up until then; an
assault would have drawn blood. This consideration was apparently later
dropped. The second consideration was strategic: the object was to capture the
Provisional Government alive and whole; in the confusion of an assault, some of
them, maybe someone brave or clever enough to continue the resistance, might
have got away. Moreover it would have been a very bad thing for the
insurrection to kill a socialist
minister by mistake.
At any rate, the
Military Committee went ahead with its plan. Different kinds of detachments,
under differing chains of command, had to take their places in the line. Though
this complicated movements still further, the committee assembled the
encirclement out of sight of the palace. Action was planned for 10:00 a.m., but
a naval force of ships and marines from Kronstadt failed to arrive in
time.
The committee
decided to wait on the Kronstadters. It took time: noon passed; 3:00 p.m.
passed. All afternoon, Podvoisky and Antonov were under pressure from Smolny.
The Bolshevik’s political plan called for the liquidation of the Provisional
Government before the Congress of
Soviets was convened. That would clear the way for the Congress to assume the
state power on behalf of the soviets. But the delegates had been summoned for
the 25th (November 7, new style). So Smolny was under pressure too.
After 6:00 p.m., even though the Kronstadters had arrived and were at their
posts, Podvoisky and Antonov stopped making promises about when the palace
would be taken.
November 7 – October 25, 1917: Inside the
Winter Palace. 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.
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.
November 7 – October 25, 1917: The March of
the City Duma. One of the last outbound telephone calls from the Winter
Palace’s regular lines that evening goes to the city duma in their headquarters
on the Nevsky Prospect. It sparked a considerable discussion, not so much about
what to do, but about what unkind fate had in store for the Bolsheviks.
Minister of Supplies Prokopovich, briefly detained by the Bolsheviks that
morning on the way to the cabinet meeting at the Winter Palace, expressed the
desire to join his colleagues in their fate. The duma, dominated by the
bourgeois parties, was sympathetic.
Now gunfire could
be heard from the direction of the palace. Something must be done! In Trotsky’s words, “The duma must march in a body to
the Winter Palace in order to die there, if necessary, with the government.” It
was, at any rate, a plan. But it had to be ratified. More discussion. The
delegates from the Compromiser parties were ready to march; the Cadets would
join them. The advice of the Bolshevik delegates – to stay off the streets and
suggest to the government that they ought, in order to avoid bloodshed, to
surrender – was ignored.
The duma took a
roll-call vote: sixty-two of the delegates were prepared to die “if necessary.”
Then the duma got word that the Executive Committee of the Deputies of the Peasants
Soviets wanted to march with them. Another round of speeches was now required.
The palace
defenders heard of the march: to them “a miracle,” Trotsky suggests. By the
time it passed from mouth to mouth, the rumor sounded like a miracle indeed:
“The people with the clergy at their head,” where “people” again means
“bourgeoisie.”
The streets
around the Nevsky Prospect were dark and pretty quiet when the marchers,
bearing lanterns and umbrellas, got underway. The fourteen Bolshevik delegates
went off to Smolny and the Congress of Soviets, leaving three
Menshevik-Internationalists quite alone in the halls of the duma. The American
journalist Reed saw the minister Prokopovich, the mayor of Petrograd, and
Avksentiev, lately the President of the Pre-Parliament, in the procession, but
no clergy.
No people either, of any social condition. The whole crowd numbered no more than 400
marchers, mainly all politicians. They sang the Marseillaise to keep up their morale. Where the Nevsky Prospect
crosses over the Ekaterininsky Canal, the march encountered an ensign’s guard
of marines. Reed recounts the conversation. The marines did not propose to
allow anyone to interfere with the insurrection’s business at the Winter
Palace. The marchers could see that the marines would halt their march by
force. Prokopovich made a new proposal, “’Let us return to the duma and talk
over methods of saving the country and the revolution.’”
And this proposal
was very sensibly adopted. On the return they did not feel much like singing
the Marseillaise.
Overnight November 7-8 – October 25-26,
1917: Congress of Soviets in Session. The delegates who assemble in Smolny
for the October Congress of Soviets do not resemble those of the June Congress
– neither in party alignment nor, Trotsky says, in appearance. Worn soldiers,
peasants, and workers in worn clothing who represented the Bolshevik soviets in
October replaced the well-turned-out intellectuals who represented the
leadership of the compromisist parties in June. Of the 832 delegates to the
June Congress, some 600 were Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. Of the 650
arriving for the first session of the October Congress, 390 were with the
Bolsheviks, 80 were Mensheviks, and of the 159 Social Revolutionaries,
three-fifths were “left,” that is, were aligned with the Bolsheviks. Other
delegates, to the number of 900, would arrive later.
The delegates
took a straw poll on the preferred shape of the government they expected – most
of them – to form:
·
505 for a government of the soviets
·
86 for a government of the “democracy”
·
55 for a coalition government
·
21 for a coalition government excluding the
Cadets.
Party caucuses
began in the morning. The city was quiet and in the hands of the insurrection;
the Winter Palace was fairly quiet too, but it still held the Provisional
Government. This gave the caucuses plenty to talk about.
The right- and
left-Social Revolutionaries split over the question on taking a page
from the Bolsheviks’ book by withdrawing from the Congress. Sixty on the
right wanted to withdraw; 92 on the left were against it. By evening the two
camps were sitting in separate caucuses.
The Mensheviks
had trouble deciding what their attitude should be. Lots of views were being
aired. They were still being aired at 8:00 p.m., when their caucus requested
that the opening of the Congress be put off.
It was, until
10:40 p.m. The hall filled up to overflowing in clouds of tobacco smoke. The American
journalist Reed squeezed in, but certain people who were important in the June
Congress – Cheidze, Tseretilli, Chernov – were missing. The Menshevik Dan
called the meeting to order on behalf of the Central Executive Committee chosen
by the June Congress. He did not want to make a political speech but he can’t
help referring to the compromisist ministers holed up in the Winter Palace.
Hardly anybody
liked this. The Congress passed to the first order of business: selecting a new
praesidium. A Bolshevik from Moscow moved that representation be proportional
to the party identification of the delegates. The right-Social Revolutionaries
refused their seats; the left-SRs were happy to take them (seven seats). For
the time being the Mensheviks, guided by Martov, stayed in the game (three
seats).
Sverdlov had
drawn up the Bolshevik list of fourteen. He put Kamenev and Zinoviev, who’d
voted in the Bolshevik Central Committee against starting the insurrection, on
it, but modestly left himself off. Naturally Lenin was on the list, but he did
not yet come forward. He was still in disguise – wig, spectacles, and make up –
trying to gauge the mood of the Congress. The Mensheviks Dan and Skobelev saw
him in a passageway and, recognizing him, stared. Lenin did not acknowledge
them.
Kamenev took the
chair. He announced the agenda, but the guns
of the Aurora and the Peter and Paul were making another announcement….
The agenda was to
be:
·
Organization of the new government
·
Peace policy
·
Role of the constituent Assembly
…but it was
derailed by the evident incompletion of the insurrection. The Congress seated
some delegates from the peasants soviets who, as this was officially a congress
of workers and soldiers deputies, had not been invited. Then the Menshevik
Martov spoke. To considerable applause, he moved to halt all military action
and begin negotiations with the government. This promised to split the Congress
before it could get well started. Luncharsky made the reply for the Bolsheviks.
The Bolsheviks have “’absolutely nothing against Martov’s proposal.’” It passed
unanimously.
Delegates from
the soldiers committees – officers – now took the floor one after another,
speaking against the insurrection, the Bolsheviks, and even the Congress
itself. Then a Menshevik actually proposed forming a coalition with the
Provisional Government – just then entering upon its last few minutes of existence.
It was impossible to work with the Bolsheviks, he continued, and moreover the
Congress lacked any lawful authority. The speech – what could be heard of it
over booing and catcalls – was not received sympathetically.
Now a Latvian
rifleman rose to speak. The officers do not represent the troops on the front.
The day of the Compromisers is done. “’The Revolution has had enough gab! We
want action!’” Reed says the audience “knew [his words] for the truth.”
The next speaker,
another right socialist from the Bund, declared the events in Petrograd “’a
misfortune,’” and invited his colleagues to walk out. Seventy of them, about
half, did, leaving the other half wondering whether it was possible to work with the Bolsheviks. Some of them apparently
joined with the left Social Revolutionaries in alignment with the Bolsheviks.
The half that left, some of them, joined the march of the city duma.
Apparently, in
spite of Martov’s motion, the sounds of gunfire can still be heard. Martov rose
to speak again. He demanded adjournment of Congress until the motion had been
acted upon and realized. The Bolsheviks from the city duma turned up right at
this moment and were greeted enthusiastically.
Lenin and Trotsky
were taking a rest in a room nearly bare of furnishings except some cushions
thrown on the floor. Someone called for Trotsky to make a reply to Martov. The
first premise of his argument is – well – uncompromising: “’An insurrection of
the popular masses needs no justification.’” The present insurrection happened
to have been victorious. Ought it to compromise victory? Compromise “’[w]ith
whom? … With that pitiful handful who just walked out?’” The question answered
itself. Trotsky ended by inviting the advocates of compromise “’into the
rubbish-can of history!’”
“’Then we will
go!’” answered Martov. He took the Mensheviks with him out of the Congress. The
vote was fourteen for Martov to withdraw, twelve for Sukhanov to stay on.
Trotsky moved a resolution condemning the Compromisers for their actions from
the June
offensive on down. Another interruption. Then a sailor from the cruiser
Aurora came to assure the Congress that the ship was only throwing blanks.
A speaker for the
left Social Revolutionaries said they could not support Trotsky’s resolution
against their departed colleagues on the right. Lunacharsky, in answer,
softened the Bolshevik tone – a little. Trotsky’s resolution was left on the
table.
It was
approaching 2:00 a.m. October 26. The Congress took a half-hour’s recess….
Overnight November 7-8 – October 25-26,
1917: The Provisional Government Arrested. 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….
Early Morning November 8 – October 26,
1917: Victory for the Congress. During the recess that started at 2:00
a.m., delegates to the Congress of Soviets trade rumors about the fall of the
Winter Palace and the capture of the cabinet of the Provisional Government;
when it reconvenes, Kamenev, to bitter cheers, reads Antonov’s list of arrested
ministers. The name of Foreign Minister Tereshchenko, a better friend to the
capital markets of the Entente than to the soldiers at the front, was received
with pronounced hostility.
A left-Social
Revolutionary spoke up on behalf of the imprisoned socialist ministers. Another
deputy said it would be ironic if the Minister of Agriculture should “’turn up
in the same cell’” he had occupied under the tsar. This cut no ice with
Trotsky, who had already been held in Kresty prison both under the tsar and under
the government of the minister in question. The socialist ministers would
be held under house arrest, Trotsky answered, due to “’considerations of
expediency’” until the revolution’s grip on its new government was secure.
Next a
representative of the Third
Bicycle Battalion appeared before the Congress to announce that his unit,
chosen out of all the troops at the front to ride against the revolution, had
met with the Fifth Bicycle Battalion on the way, and together with them decided
not to do it: “’[W]e will not give the power to a government at the head of
which stand the bourgeoisie and the landlords!’” Trotsky says this speaker was
“greeted with a storm, a whirlwind, a cyclone.” The bicyclist gave evidence
that the front, which might have replaced the deposed Provisional Government as
the greatest of the threats the revolution faced, would not become its enemy.
Then a Menshevik
spoke up. The Congress thought they had left. Now the threat of troops from the
front inspired no doubts or fears. So they left again, seemingly for good.
At 5:17 a.m.
Krylenko came in to read a message received by the Military Revolutionary
Committee: The 12th Army, holding the Northern Front nearest
Petrograd in Estonia, had, with its commanding General Cheremissov, placed
itself at the disposal of the committee. The commissar appointed by the
Provisional Government had resigned. “Pandemonium,” says the American
journalist Reed.
The rivals of the
Bolshevik program having taken themselves out of the picture, Lunacharsky now
came forward to read a proclamation and move that it be adopted and published
by the Congress. By it, the Congress took the power of the state into its own
hands, gave all local power to the soviets, and adopted all the other
essentials of the Bolshevik program. The proclamation anticipated the decrees
on peace and land that would come the next day.
Peasant
delegates, admitted to the Congress but not given votes, now, because it
promised the redistribution of lands, wanted to subscribe to the proclamation.
So they were given votes. The proclamation frightened those few remaining
delegates who thought the Bolsheviks were headed to disaster. A last group of
Mensheviks withdrew – some of them apparently for the third time. Only fourteen
votes out of hundreds were cast against the resolution.
The Congress
adjourned at about 6:00 a.m.
