By 7:00 p.m., the
main street on the Vyborg side of the river was packed with demonstrators. The
Machine Gun regiment took the lead, followed by the workers, with the Moscow
regiment bringing up the rear. As these marchers were the militants, not the
mere sympathizers, Trotsky says, they did not reach the numbers of the June
Demonstration. But as many as 500,000 workers and soldiers may have participated,
including all or part of seven other regiments of the garrison.
The Bolshevik
headquarters was the first stop. There Nevsky and others again urged the
soldiers and Red Guards to go home, again without success. Seeing the policy of
restraint had been a failure, party leaders on the scene, including members of
the Central Committee, decided instead to, Trotsky says, “guide the developing
movement” along peaceful and politically advantageous lines.
Hearing the
decision, the marchers sang the Marseillaise. The party prepared a list of
demands for submission to the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets at the Tauride Palace, next and
final stop on the march. Some of the machine gunners crossed the canal to the
Peter and Paul fortress, in the river opposite Bolshevik headquarters,
intending to bring the garrison and its artillery over to the side of the
demonstrators.
The principal
demand adopted by the marchers and now articulated by the Bolsheviks was for
the Central Executive to end the dual government by taking power into its own
hands: All Power to the Soviets! The sequel proved ironic.
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