The Day of the Petrograd Soviet

October 31 – October 18, 1917: The Garrison Conference. In a decisive development, the Garrison Conference renews the policy of the Soviet from the April Days: orders that have not been countersigned by a representative of the soldiers section of the Soviet are not to be obeyed. The Central Executive Committee tried to suppress the announcement of the meeting for this purpose, but it was successfully sent to all the units of the city garrison via a technology called a “telephonogram.” Apparently the device made a phonographic recording of the message, which could then be sent over the telephone as often as necessary.

The Conference consisted not of Bolshevik politicians, but of representatives from the units of the garrison itself. It took a muster-roll of these units on the question of coming out in case of an insurrection. Only one cavalry regiment and a military school were against it. A few other smaller units declared neutrality or obedience to the Central Executive Committee. The rest, including all the infantry regiments, would come out, as Trotsky says, “at a word from the Petrograd Soviet.”

The Central Executive, denied the opportunity to speak, walked out in frustration. The garrison had formerly been a source of strength for them. Now the president put the main question on the table: by adopting the countersign policy, the garrison placed itself effectively under the Petrograd Soviet’s control.

October 31 – October 18, 1917: Kamenev’s Trick. The Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet is again in session; with rumors flying about insurrection, the Bolsheviks have to give some sort of account of themselves. Trotsky spoke, admitting in the first place that he had signed an order for rifles that went to the Red Guard.

In the second place, he forged a link between the removal of the Petrograd garrison and the convocation of the Congress of Soviets. The Petrograd Soviet, he argued, would ask the Congress to seize the power; in the meantime, the Soviet would resist attempts, originating with the bourgeoisie, to break up the garrison – or for that matter the Congress. With the Garrison Conference and its countersign policy in place, the Soviet’s resistance had teeth.

Someone asked whether the Soviet had set a date for the insurrection. Trotsky replied that it had not, but that “if it became necessary to set one, the workers and soldiers would come out as one man.” Kamenev, sitting next to Trotsky, rose to make a comment that he “wanted to sign his name to Trotsky’s every word.” Of course this meant that he, Kamenev, did not think an insurrection would become necessary any time soon. But it was wrong to implicate Trotsky, and by extension the Bolshevik party, in that opinion. This episode was to have consequences.

Sukhanov’s motion to commemorate Gorky’s 50^th anniversary failed.

Trotsky relates an anecdote of Sukhanov’s observations after this session of the Executive Committee. First, Sukhanov says in his history, he saw Trotsky leave the meeting and approach the run-down, crowded automobiles the Central Executive Committee had made available to the Bolsheviks. After a moment, Trotsky “chuckled and…disappeared into the darkness” on foot. Then, boarding a passenger car, a smallish man with a goatee consoled Sukhanov on the discomforts of travel by rail. Sukhanov learned that the man’s name was Sverdlov, and that he was a “old party worker.” But he did not then know that Sverdlov and a quorum of the Bolshevik Central Committee had met in his apartments eight days before, nor could he know that in two weeks, Sverdlov would be President of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets of All Russia.

Trotsky was apparently due at the All Russian Conference of Factory and Shop Committees that evening. There he spoke against “vacillation and wavering,” and everybody knew he was talking about Kamenev and Zinoviev. The conference also raised an issue that was being raised in Moscow factories and in the artillery factories. A resolution declaring worker control of production “in the interest of the whole country” passed with only five dissenting votes. Thus workers representing every Russian industry endorsed not just the theoretical validity of worker control but also their ability to manage the factories successfully, as in some cases they were already doing.

Beginning of November – End of October, 1917: Bolshevik Agitation. With the decision of the Central Committee in favor of insurrection, but awaiting a favorable opportunity, the Bolsheviks redouble their agitation in the capital. Trotsky lists some of the principal speakers:

·         Sverdlov

·         Volodarsky

·         Lashevich

·         Kollontai

·         Chudnovsky

·         Lunacharsky

·         “scores of agitators of lesser caliber”

Lenin was regrettably missing from the list, still waiting in Finland. Zinoviev and Kamenev were missing too – but they had voted against the insurrection in the Central Committee, and worked against it since then. Neither does Trotsky find any evidence Stalin ever spoke at mass meetings during this time.

Of course Trotsky himself was the leading figure. Somewhat modestly referring to himself as “president of the Petrograd Soviet” instead of by name, Trotsky somewhat immodestly reproduces a passage from Sukhanov’s history saying that his influence “was overwhelming,” and that “every [Petrograd] worker and soldier knew him and heard him personally.” Returning to modesty, Trotsky points out that the person-to-person “molecular agitation” of the workers and soldiers was “incomparably more effective.”

November 1 – October 19, 1917: “Lawful” Garrison Conference. Dismayed by the decision of the Garrison Conference the day before, the Central Executive Committee assembles its own meeting of the representatives of the Petrograd garrison. Several units not represented at the previous meeting sent delegates to this one. Two of them, the garrison of the Peter and Paul fortress and an armored car division, declared allegiance to the Central Executive.

The military importance of this development lay in the position of the Peter and Paul on an island in the Neva River. Though of course it could not maneuver, the fortress not only dominated a number of bridges in the middle of the city, but it also blocked the direct route to the Winter Palace, seat of the Provisional Government. There was also a substantial arsenal, coveted by the Red Guards, on the island.

Then the Central Executive asked the assembly to pass a cautiously worded resolution. The soldiers refused both the resolution and the notion that an assembly called by the Central Executive rather than the Petrograd Soviet would have authority to take any such decision. After this failure, the Central Executive, with the cooperation of headquarters, tried to appoint a commissar over the Petrograd military district. This the Petrograd Soviet in turn rejected. General Polkovnikov, in his turn, issued general orders for the suppression of demonstrations. Reed reproduces them in his book; Polkovnikov’s lack of urgency is remarkable.

Meanwhile, hearing of agitation for the convocation of a constituent assembly in and for the Ukraine, Kerensky summons its General Secretary to Petrograd for an explanation. This did not create much of a ripple in the Ukraine. The American journalist Reed says Kerensky also told the Pre-Parliament that the government would be able to handle any Bolshevik insurrection, even though he himself was “a doomed man.”

November 2 – October 20, 1917: Military Revolutionary Committee at Work. The Military Revolutionary Committee, with Trotsky presiding, begins preparations for defending the Congress of Soviets. Delegates aligned with the Compromisers boycotted the meeting, leaving the Bolsheviks, with their new left Social Revolutionary allies, completely in control. The Social Revolutionary Lazimir continued in charge of operations; Sverdlov assumed a role corresponding to that of chief of the general staff.

The committee assigned commissars to all the units of the garrison. Among their responsibilities was taking control of stores of arms; distributions of weapons were to take place only by consent of the commissars. In this way, the commissar for Peter and Paul fortress prevented a shipment of 10,000 rifles to the Cossacks of the Don, as well as distributions to junkers and other counter-revolutionary organizations in the capital.

The typographical workers came forward to report an increase of Black Hundreds propaganda to the committee. Such reports gave the committee an opportunity to control counter-revolutionary agitation.

The rumors about a Bolshevik insurrection that day proved again to be untrue. Nevertheless the government continued its own preparations, which it still considered adequate. The Petrograd Soviet, in a preparation of its own, announced that on Sunday the 22^nd (November 4, new style), it would conduct a review of its forces. The counter-revolution responded by promising a religious procession on that day.

Also on this day, Kerensky’s Minister of War, Verkhovsky, made the mistake of advocating a separate peace to a committee of the Pre-Parliament. Even people who might have agreed in private that this was advisable attacked him publicly, coupling his policy to that of Trotsky. The minister had to take an enforced vacation.

Finally, as the nationalities question in Russia extended to the Cossacks, on this day they declared the unity of their armies with the Caucasian mountaineers and the people of the steppes. This proved to be the foundation for the Cossack state formed to oppose the Bolshevik government the following spring.

November 2 – October 20, 1917: Kamenev’s Resignation, etc. The Bolshevik Central Committee meets in the absence of both Lenin and Kamenev. After his “trick” (Lenin’s word) at the Petrograd Soviet, Kamenev offered his resignation from the Central Committee, making himself freer to oppose its decisions. Trotsky obliged him by putting the item on the agenda.

Trotsky moved the resignation be accepted. Sverdlov read a letter from Lenin criticizing Kamenev and Zinoviev as “strikebreakers,” and characterizing the way Kamenev had twisted Trotsky’s words as “plain petty cheating.” Stalin spoke against acceptance, but the motion passed five votes to three, with Stalin among those against. The committee also forbade Kamenev’s and Zinoviev’s agitation against the party’s policies, again over Stalin’s dissent.

This was but one of a number of signs of fissures in the party as the pressure of the coming insurrection mounted. On the day of the committee meeting, the party paper printed a letter from Zinoviev saying that he had moved closer to Lenin’s views and accepted what Trotsky said in the Soviet. The editor, Stalin, printed it over comments that this was also the meaning of Kamenev’s “declaration” in the Petrograd Soviet (though no-one believed this but Stalin) and that the “sharpness of tone” of Lenin’s article obscured the agreement of the party “in fundamentals” (though, as Trotsky says, the fundamental question at that time was the imminence of the insurrection, over which Kamenev, at any rate, was still fighting).

Stalin offered to resign from the editorial board, but the offer was not accepted.

The American journalist Reed got the story on the insurrection from Volodarsky the next day. But because Volodarsky was not on the Central Committee, and might not have been at the meeting, the version Reed reports has a touch of the fabulous. Lenin, Volodarsky said, ruled out the 6^th, because the insurrection needed an all-Russian basis, and the Congress of Soviets would not yet have assembled. Lenin ruled out the 8^th, because though the Congress would already be in session, it would be unable to reach a sudden decision democratically. This left the 7^th (October 25, old style).

But of course Lenin was not even there….

November 3 – October 21, 1917: Resolution of the Garrison Conference. With representatives of two of the three Cossack regiments in the garrison present, the Garrison Conference accepted three proposals made by Trotsky: that the garrison would support the Military Revolutionary Committee, that the garrison would take part in the review of forces planned for the following day, and that the Congress of Soviets should “take the power in its hands.” Trotsky also welcomed the Cossacks to the conference.

The committee named three commissars, including Lazimir, to the district military headquarters of General Polkovnikov. They informed the general about the Garrison Conference’s decision requiring military orders to be countersigned by the Soviet. The car the staff had sent to bring the commissars to the meeting was withdrawn when they left.

In a special session at 11:00 a.m., the conference decided to make an accomplished fact official. They summoned Trotsky and Sverdlov, and told them of their plan to break from headquarters entirely and in the open. The resolution then adopted gave the reason: “[H]eadquarters is a direct instrument of the counter-revolutionary forces.” The decision was communicated to the district soviets and soldiers committees; steps were taken to prevent surprise action by the enemy.

The decision of the Garrison Conference forestalled the plans Polkovnikov and the Central Executive Committee wanted to implement at a meeting set for 1:00 p.m. By then the Garrison Conference had already taken, Trotsky says, “a decisive step on the road to insurrection.”

Another Smolny delegation went to headquarters with word of the conference resolution. Staff somewhat wishfully thought it might be just another instance of the dual government, or that the Central Executive Committee could fix things.

It got more difficult to get into Smolny that day; passes were changed every few hours. The American journalist Reed tells how he saw Trotsky run afoul of this when he had lost his pass and neither the guard nor the commander of the guard recognized him. Trotsky and his wife were eventually admitted.

Meanwhile Miliukov’s Cadet paper asserted that if the Bolsheviks were to come out, they would be suppressed “immediately and without difficulty.”

November 4 – October 22, 1917: The Day of the Petrograd Soviet. The Bolshevik press sums up the declarations of revolutionary organizations throughout the country: 56 such organizations are demanding the transfer of power to the soviets.

Meanwhile, the Menshevik Dan reported on behalf of the Central Executive Committee that only 50 out of over 900 soviets had thus far made the decision to send delegates to the Congress of Soviets. Trotsky speculates that this number indicated low morale in the compromisist parties rather than lack of interest across the country as a whole. Those soviets that were attending for the most part did not bother to tell the Central Executive.

This was the day for the review of the revolutionary forces of the Petrograd Soviet. It did not take the form of mass demonstration in the streets. Instead there were meetings in the public halls and squares. One audience would assemble, listen to the speeches, then depart. Then another audience would file in.

All the speakers were Bolsheviks, bolstered by the left Social Revolutionaries who were now joining them. Trotsky addressed the crowd at the House of the People. He read out the resolution and called for their assent. Sukhanov wrote, “Thousands and thousands raised their hands as one man.” They held them up, eyes burning, as Trotsky made the resolution an oath. “They took the oath”: Loyalty to the Soviet, immediate answer to its summons.

Trotsky says, “Each side was satisfied with the other. The leaders were convinced: We can postpone no longer! The masses said to themselves: This time the thing will be done!”

On the request of General Polkovnikov, the “religious” procession of counter-revolutionists did not come off. But the bourgeois press, like the boy who cried wolf, again predicted a bloody demonstration. Miliukov writes in his history that “the frightened population” stayed home. By “population” he meant the bourgeoisie.

As for the refusal of the Garrison Conference to accept orders, Kerensky reportedly said, “I think we can easily handle this.” Later he was asking whether the government ought to arrest the Military Revolutionary Committee. Not necessary, General Polkovnikov thought, given the forces he had in hand. The Compromisers on the Central Executive thought they could deal with the committee’s commissars.

Meanwhile, the American journalist Reed was keeping count of arrivals to the Congress of Soviets:

·         November 2, 15 delegates

·         November 3, 100

·         November 4, 175, “of whom one hundred and three were Bolsheviki!”

November 5 – October 23, 1917: The Peter and Paul Comes Over. General Polkovnikov and his staff try to open a negotiation with the Garrison Conference. They offered to accept the conditions the conference had declared, that is, the policy that orders from headquarters would not be considered valid unless countersigned by the Soviet. But the conference would have to withdraw the order categorically breaking from the headquarters chain of command. Headquarters signed and delivered an agreement to that effect, but the conference never troubled to answer.

It was busy with other things. The Soviet assigned commissars with plenary powers to each military unit and to strategic points in the city. It applied the tactic of “crowding out” government functions and replacing their people with agents of the Soviet at every opportunity.

But the commandant at the Peter and Paul fortress in the Neva River threatened to arrest the commissar, Corporal Blagonravov, who arrived there. Hearing of this at Smolny, the Bolsheviks wondered what to do. Trotsky, thinking the troops themselves must be sound, offered to negotiate. When he and his delegation got there at about 2:00 p.m., a meeting was in progress. The right-wing orators spoke cautiously; the soldiers listened to Trotsky’s delegation instead.

Thus this strategic point and its garrison came over to the Soviet. Blagonravov set up his office and his communications with Smolny. The arsenal and its 100,000 rifles became available to the Military Committee and the Red Guard.

The Preobrazhentsky Regiment of the garrison came over too, protesting rumors (based on their credulity during the July slanders about Lenin and German money) that they were still with the government. As for government troops from the front, cavalry was being held up on the railways at Pskov; the 17^th Infantry Division simply refused orders to march on Petrograd. Delegates from the front itself appeared at the Petrograd Soviet demanding peace. The soldiers of the Fifth Army replaced the Compromisers on their committee with Bolsheviks.

The Red Guards also made their presence felt. A conference of 100 delegates representing 20,000 armed workers from all over the city, convened the previous day, now adopted a resolution for organizing and deploying their forces. Riflemen were organized into squads, companies, battalions, and divisions, and supported by engineers, bicyclists, telegraphers, machine gunners, and artillerists. Women established hospitals and first aid stations. Patrols and guards protected the factories and strategic points.

On Nevsky Prospect, the American journalist Reed bought a copy of Lenin’s pamphlet, “Will the Bolsheviks Be Able to Hold the State Power?” Then he went to Smolny, where Lazimir, head of the Military Revolutionary Committee, told him the Peter and Paul had come over. And that a regiment the government had sent to the capital stopped at the Gatchina Station, passed a resolution in favor of power to the soviets, and sent a delegation to Lazimir’s committee. The committee returned a message welcoming them as comrades and telling them to remain where they were until further instructions from the committee.

Reed saw the organizers of the insurrection at work: Podvoisky, Antonov, Krylenko, Dybenko….

Meanwhile, Kerensky’s Provisional Government issued a decree proclaiming “in principle” the independence of Finland. Both the bourgeoisie and the proletarians of Finland wanted this – though for different reasons. The grant of independence did not extend to military matters and foreign policy. It did not create much of a ripple in Finland.

Red October: The Insurrection

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.

Overnight November 6-7 – October 24-25, 1917: Politics of Insurrection. Meanwhile, sometime after midnight, the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets opens a joint session of the workers and soldiers sections. Tseretilli was absent, Cheidze with him, both back home in Georgia. This left the Menshevik Dan to speak for the compromisist faction.

Dan, of course quite ignorant of how things were going and would go, gave arguments like those Kamenev and Zinoviev had given: the insurrection would ruin the revolution, the counter-revolution was too strong. So the Central Executive would not permit it: “Only over its dead body will the hostile camps cross their bayonets.” The left benches mocked, “Yes, it’s been dead a long time.” Truth, it seems, stood with the benches.

Trotsky pointed out that it was over-late for the Mensheviks to adopt the Bolshevik lines on peace and land, just as it had been over-late for Kerensky to suspend the death penalty. Anyhow, it was too late to forbid insurrection. Trotsky now openly declared that the insurrection had taken the offensive. He says, “The astounded members of the Central Executive Committee found no strength even to protest.”

Reed says the Menshevik Lieber nevertheless rose to speak, arguing that the proletariat was not ready to take power. Bolsheviks would speak, then leave the hall to consult with the Military Revolutionary Committee. Another Bolshevik would leave the committee and deliver a speech.

A length a compromisist offered a resolution empowering the Central Executive to formulate and issue decrees on peace and land. Volodarsky answered, no, that is for the Congress of Soviets to do, and the Bolsheviks left the hall. What was left of the Central Executive passed the resolution; the session broke up at about 4:00 a.m. Maybe they were surprised to see how peaceful the streets of an insurrection could look as they made their ways home.

By 3:20 a.m., the War Ministry was wiring the Caucasus: ovation for Trotsky, his claim of bloodless victory, bridges and rail stations in the hands of the Bolsheviks. “[T]he government will be unable to resist with the forces at hand.”

November 7 – October 25, 1917: Petrograd Taken. As morning draws on, the insurrection tightens its grip on the capital. At 7:00 a.m., a company of the Kekgolmsky Regiment took possession of the telephone exchange their commissar had visited the evening before. Marines occupied the State Bank at about the same time. A sentry was posted at each phone as a precaution. This action warmed the hearts of informed Bolsheviks throughout the city, for they knew about the 1871 insurrection of the Paris Commune. The Commune had hesitated to seize the state bank, and their hesitation in that matter was one of a number of reasons later given for the insurrection’s failure.

The last bridge remaining to the junkers was taken at about this time: the Dvortsovy bridge, under the eyes of Kerensky in the Winter Palace. But the insurrection was somewhat careless about the junkers themselves. A truckload of them, out seeking provisions, were taken prisoner and brought to Smolny. Trotsky gave them their freedom in exchange for their parole, that is, a promise not to bear arms against the Soviet. They were surprised and relieved at this. It’s not clear whether these individuals kept their promise, but the junkers from the city’s military schools continued to be the core of the government’s resistance, and specifically, as we’ll see, of the defense of the Winter Palace.

The insurrection also took the printing plant serving the Stock Exchange, and freed political prisoners from the Kresty prison.

The War Ministry took a moment to wire headquarters at the front. They could see that the garrison was with the Soviet. And that the patrols of the insurrection were everywhere. But if “there [had] been no coming out,” that is, armed confrontation and gunfire, this was the natural corollary of their first proposition about the garrison. So in conclusion, “the Provisional Government finds itself in the capital of a hostile state….[italics mine]” An unconscious epitome of the October Revolution!

Trotsky offers a metaphor for how it came about: A mountain climber, thinking another effort lies ahead, reaches and looks up and discovers he is already at the peak. It’s anticlimactic. Instead of a mighty convulsion, hundreds or thousands of small, isolated actions bring it about. Not just those of the Military Revolutionary committee and the party leadership, but also those of the districts and localities acting individually yet at the same time, Trotsky says, as “one single whole.” This whole proved greater than the sum of its parts.

At 10:00 a.m., the Petrograd Soviet made an announcement: “The Provisional Government is overthrown. The state power has passed into the hands of the Military Revolutionary Committee.” Overthrown the Provisional Government was, but the members of the cabinet were still in the Winter Palace, free in their own private persons. In the meantime the committee renewed orders to arrest hostile officers of the garrison and resist government troops trying to advance on the capital, by force if necessary.

A little later, the Provisional Government, in the person of Commissar Stankevich, managed to attempt a blow. Phone service to the Winter Palace had been cut. The commissar, arrived the night before from headquarters at the front, gathered a platoon of junker engineering students and led them to the telephone exchange. The marines on guard there could have repelled them with rifle fire from the windows, but didn’t fire at all. Neither did Stankevich permit his charges to fire; he did not want the blood of the people on their hands.

The officer in charge of the junker platoon did not feel that way; he sent for hand grenades and guncotton. Meanwhile a junker lieutenant and marine ensign, Trotsky says, “exchanged mighty epithets.” This was enough for the women working at the switchboards; they fled the scene. The junkers blocked the entrances with trucks. The insurrection sent in armored cars from all directions. Stankevich thought better of it and negotiated for withdrawal. At least the junkers were able to keep their arms.

That was all the government would or could do – until the time came to defend the Winter Palace.

November 7 – October 25, 1917: The Pre-Parliament Meets the Insurrection. Among the streets the troops of the insurrection occupy that morning are those around the Mariinsky Palace, seat of the Council of the Russian Republic or “Pre-Parliament.” The deputies, assembling at around noon-time, needed some reassurance. They were disappointed to learn that the phone lines to the Winter Palace were cut. The president Avksentiev offered what little he could: Kerensky had gone to the front that morning; he’d be back with troops.

Presently troops did arrive. The Military Revolutionary Committee sent in detachments of the Marine Guards and the Litovsky and Keksgolmsky Regiments. Once they’d formed up on the staircase and in the hall, their commander invited the deputies to leave. They managed to agree, not without dissent from the right, that this was the thing to do.

After passing down the stair case through the cordon of insurrectionary troops, the deputies had to present their papers before they could leave. The Military Committee wanted to arrest any officials of the Provisional Government found in attendance. None were found, but among those let through, to Trotsky’s regret, were “some who soon became organizers of the civil war.”

Thus the Council of the Russian Republic. The Bolsheviks had walked out on the day it first assembled. Now, eighteen days later, they walked back in, at the head of the insurrection, and made an end of it.

Some of the deputies, walking along the Nevsky Prospect, noticed that the bourgeoisie were laughing and joking. They did not expect the Bolsheviks to last three days. I guess it proves on the one hand that the Red Guards had not roughed them up too badly. On the other, it shows that the lack of realism certainly didn’t stop at the doors of the Provisional Government.

Meanwhile Trotsky convened a special session of the Petrograd Soviet. It was 2:35 p.m., according to the journalists who reported what he said. Trotsky announced the extinction of the Provisional Government; “We do not know of a single casualty,” he added. He predicted the Winter Palace would be taken in minutes; it took a bit longer than that, as we’ll see. Accused from the right of “anticipating the will of the Congress of Soviets,” Trotsky answered that the insurrection was a “colossal fact,” but that it remained (for the Congress, he seems to have meant) “to develop our victory.”

Then Lenin, for the first time since July, appeared and spoke. He had not tried to take the reins from the hands of the Military Committee and the leadership on the scene. Instead his eyes were fixed straight forward. He reviewed the points in the Bolshevik program – the soviets, the war, the land, the means of production – and concluded by saying, “The third Russian revolution must in the end lead to the victory of socialism.”

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: 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 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.

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.

November 3 – October 21, 1917: Resolution of the Garrison Conference

With representatives of two of the three Cossack regiments in the garrison present, the Garrison Conference accepted three proposals made by Trotsky: that the garrison would support the Military Revolutionary Committee, that the garrison would take part in the review of forces planned for the following day, and that the Congress of Soviets should “take the power in its hands.” Trotsky also welcomed the Cossacks to the conference.

The committee named three commissars, including Lazimir, to the district military headquarters of General Polkovnikov. They informed the general about the Garrison Conference’s decision requiring military orders to be countersigned by the Soviet. The car the staff had sent to bring the commissars to the meeting was withdrawn when they left.

In a special session at 11:00 a.m., the conference decided to make an accomplished fact official. They summoned Trotsky and Sverdlov, and told them of their plan to break from headquarters entirely and in the open. The resolution then adopted gave the reason: “[H]eadquarters is a direct instrument of the counter-revolutionary forces.” The decision was communicated to the district soviets and soldiers committees; steps were taken to prevent surprise action by the enemy.

The decision of the Garrison Conference forestalled the plans Polkovnikov and the Central Executive Committee wanted to implement at a meeting set for 1:00 p.m. By then the Garrison Conference had already taken, Trotsky says, “a decisive step on the road to insurrection.”

Another Smolny delegation went to headquarters with word of the conference resolution. Staff somewhat wishfully thought it might be just another instance of the dual government, or that the Central Executive Committee could fix things.

It got more difficult to get into Smolny that day; passes were changed every few hours. The American journalist Reed tells how he saw Trotsky run afoul of this when he had lost his pass and neither the guard nor the commander of the guard recognized him. Trotsky and his wife were eventually admitted.

Meanwhile Miliukov’s Cadet paper asserted that if the Bolsheviks were to come out, they would be suppressed “immediately and without difficulty.”

October 29 – October 16, 1917: The Garrison and the Executive Committee

Trotsky’s Executive Committee puts approval of the regulations of the Military Revolutionary Committee on the agenda of the Petrograd Soviet. Asked by the Mensheviks whether the Bolsheviks were preparing for a seizure of power, Trotsky said, “We make no secret of that.” The regulations were approved by a large majority. More and more left Social Revolutionaries were coming over to the Bolshevik program.

Yet the majority of the Bolshevik Military Organization was not confident in its operational readiness for insurrection, as Ensign Krylenko reported on this day. Another member of the organization, Lashevich, expressed similar doubts a couple of days later; Podvoisky joined in this opinion. Yet Uritsky, a member of the Central Committee and former Trotskyite, estimated the armed strength of the workers at 40,000 rifles. Lenin soon met with these leaders to stiffen their backs. 

That same day, General Polkovnikov again (and still quite incorrectly) reported that the garrison largely remained loyal to the government….

The Executive Committee also named representatives to the meeting General Cheremissov wanted. When they subsequently arrived at Pskov, they rebuffed the claim of the general and his staff that transfers from the garrison to the front were a strategic necessity. So much for another effort orchestrated by Kerensky to weaken the forces of the insurrection.