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….

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.

October 4 – September 21, 1917: At the Winter Palace

Despite what the Democratic Conference could try to do or say it would do, matters concerning the make-up of the new government are being discussed and settled at the Winter Palace. Kerensky had offered ministries to two Cadets: the industrialist Konovalov was to be Vice President and Minister of Trade and Industry, and Kishkin was to be Minister of Public Welfare. The Cadet central committee thought they should accept, because, they said, the proposal had originated with the British ambassador, Buchanan. A coalition acceptable to the Entente was very important to the big bourgeoisie who did business with them.