As the banners of
the marchers in Nevsky Prospect approach the Tauride Palace, meetings of the
two sections of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets are already in session.
The committee had
had news of the Machine Gun regiment’s plans earlier in the day. Kamenev and
the other Bolsheviks present offered to go to the regiment and ask for
restraint. But the Central Executive preferred to issue a proclamation declaring
demonstrations to be treachery to the revolution. Meanwhile Tseretilli gave the
joint session his ideas for addressing the cabinet crisis brought on by the
resignation of the Cadet ministers the day before.
Realizing a
proclamation might not be enough to stop the what they were calling the
“insurrection,” the Compromisers (i.e., Trotsky’s name for those in the Soviet
who sought accommodation with the Provisional Government and by extension the
bourgeoisie) cast about for the armed protection of troops. Not finding any of
the garrison who were then willing to take their side, they sent to the Fifth
Army, nearest Petrograd at the front. By evening, scarcely a hundred had been
found by the Menshevik assigned this task. Trotsky remarks more than once on
the irony of this effort: The Soviet answering the demonstrators’ demand that
it seize the power, by recruiting troops to suppress the demonstrators rather
than the Provisional Government.
The workers’ and
soldiers’ section of the Central Executive had gone back into session. Recent
elections had given the Bolsheviks a majority in that section, or so the
right-socialists feared. Zinoviev was giving a speech against the Compromisers
when the marchers reached the palace. In response, Kamenev proposed selecting a
commission of 25 members to lead the demonstration; Trotsky seconded. Seeing
the tendency of the debate that followed, the Mensheviks and Social
Revolutionaries walked out of the meeting. The Bolsheviks and Trotskyites who
remained passed a resolution calling on the Central Executive to take power,
and named fifteen members to the leadership committee, leaving ten places open
in case the right-socialists should have second thoughts.
Meanwhile,
Cheidze, Menshevik president of the Soviet, confronted the crowd outside the
palace. When he faltered, Voitinsky took his place, but was also met with
silence. Trotsky fared better when his turn came, but he stopped short of
advocating insurrection (as his enemies were later to claim).
Events did not stop
unfolding at midnight.
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