Decrees of the Congress of Soviets

One hundred years ago today, plus two, the October Revolution, assembled as a body in the Congress of Soviets, formed a government and issued decrees on peace and land. Read about it all in the blog by following the links that begin here.

Or read the whole story from the beginning by following this link.

Decrees on Peace and Land

One hundred years ago today, plus one, having taken control of Petrograd, the capital, the Bolsheviks put the questions of peace and the redistribution of land before the Congress of Soviets. The decrees, drafted by Lenin, passed unanimously.  

Find out what the Congress decreed and how they felt about it here.  

Red October

One hundred years ago today, plus one, on the eve of the Congress of Soviets in Petrograd, the Bolsheviks set the insurrection that would come to be known as Red October in motion. It was nearly bloodless, the only casualties coming in the taking of the Winter Palace late that evening.

Read about the October Revolution here. It’s in October because Russia was still on the old style Julian calendar that then ran 13 days behind the new Gregorian calendar.

The Vote for Insurrection

One hundred years ago today, plus one, in Russia (old style date October 10, 1917): In a secret meeting, the Bolshevik Central Committee voted 10 to 2 in favor of insurrection. Follow the link to learn who voted no, and how Lenin, then in hiding, was disguised.

Though a date was not set, the decision set the wheels of the October Revolution in motion.  

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: On the Brink

November 5-6 – October 23-24, 1917: Wheels in Motion. The workers of the Vyborg district, firmly with the Bolsheviks, establish patrols of the Red Guards in the neighborhood and acquire the keys to the drawbridges over the Neva. They were running the district committee of the party, the district soviet for Vyborg, and a unit of the Bolshevik Military Organization from a house on Samsonevsky Prospect. Soon they began requisitioning automobiles and medical supplies.

The British ambassador having expressed alarm about information indicating the imminence of an insurrection, Foreign Minister Tereshchenko replied that “Nothing of the kind” would happen. Kerensky, for his part, believed the reports of General Polkovnikov. This just meant that the tricks he had up his sleeve would prove more provocative than effective.

Orders to the garrison to make patrols were being obeyed – after receiving the sanction of the Military Revolutionary Committee – zealously. It is pretty easy to guess which side the patrols were looking out for and reporting to.

November 6 – October 24, 1917: The Revolution in Readiness. Trotsky describes the military and operational weight of the forces available to the insurrection in some detail. The rank and file of the garrison was firmly on the side of peace, the revolution, and the insurrection – in that order. This meant that, as far as possible, the Bolsheviks would have to rely on armed workers – the Red Guards – to accomplish the insurrection’s immediate objectives. Even if the garrison could be made to fight, for example against counter-revolutionary units sent from the front, they would lack leadership: their officers were aligned with the government, and the politicians on the Military Revolutionary Committee were no substitute. Further, the rank and file were not particularly well trained or organized. The officers, shock troops, and even the junkers were better trained, and they stood with the government. The well-trained Cossacks too were generally, though not all of them, with the government.

On the other hand, with the Garrison Conference’s support, the policy requiring orders to the garrison to be countersigned by the Soviet (via the Military Committee) would be fully operational. Thus, though the garrison would not oppose the insurrection, Trotsky says, “its fighting weight” in support of the insurrection “was not large.” As we’ll see, this judgment did not apply equally to all the units of the garrison.

The Red Guards had kept up their training ever since the July Days, eventually practicing their drills in the public squares and on the boulevards. When the Bolsheviks came into control of the Petrograd Soviet, many of them for the first time came into possession of rifles and other weapons. The Red Guards recruited the young and the old; even workers who had voted for the Mensheviks or Social Revolutionaries were caught up; they practiced their marksmanship in the factories. They were volunteers, but amateurs. Few of them had ever been under fire; neither had their officers.

The relative military value of the garrison and the Red Guards in an insurrection, Trotsky says, can be explained by their reasons for adhering to the revolution. The conscript soldiers of the peasantry wanted peace, and to return home after the revolution to land that would then belong to them. The volunteer workers of the Red Guards wanted social and political change along Marxist-Leninist lines. So the workers would be the operational vanguard of the insurrection, and the garrison would be the “mass of maneuver” against whatever forces to government might happen to bring to bear. The Bolsheviks also knew they could call on the garrisons of what Trotsky calls the “military ring around the capital” as their first reserves, and the staunchly revolutionary troops from Finland and the Baltic Fleet as their second.

More concretely, the Military Revolutionary Committee took steps to put Smolny in better defense. Trotsky says they were almost too late, but on the other hand, why tip off the enemy by acting too soon? At 3:00 a.m. the early morning of November 6 (October 24, old style), all the American journalist Reed saw was a couple of machine guns and “strong patrols of soldiers.” The Military Committee was bringing in a company of infantry from the Litovsky Regiment and a machine gun company. Then cordwood was piled up as a barricade against rifle fire. Provisions and ammunition came in by truck, and cannon were posted in front. Reserves crowded Smolny’s halls. By evening, Sukhanov writes, “the defense of Smolny began to look like something.”

The Peter and Paul fortress, which had come over to the revolution only the day before, was also being put in better defense that day. Detachments of the Machine Gun Regiment were cleaning their 80 guns and placing them where they would command the bridge and quay of the Neva River. Patrols and sentries also increased.

November 6 – October 24, 1917: The Counter-Revolution in Readiness. Trotsky also assesses the forces the government could put into play. The influence of the compromisist parties in the soldiers committees and soviets had collapsed. This left the officers, who had nobody to command, and the junkers, from the military preparatory schools, as the only reliable troops.

But how reliable were they? The officers hated Kerensky, but they hated the Bolsheviks more. Neither had their support made Kornilov’s insurrection a success. The junkers, most of them, hated the Bolsheviks. But some of them were Bolsheviks, so Smolny knew what was going on in the schools. Moreover, most of the schools were in workers’ districts or near barracks of the garrison; they could be kept under surveillance.

The government would have liked to be able to rely on the garrisons surrounding the capital. But in the main they, led by the Kronstadt sailors, were also turning left, and in some cases were solidly Bolshevik.

As for troops from the front, Baron Budburg, a corps commander on the Northern Front, wrote in his diary during this time, “There is not a single unit…which would not be in the control of the Bolsheviks” in the event of an insurrection.

November 6 – October 24, 1917: The Counter-Revolution in Action. The Provisional Government, becoming a little alarmed about the attitude of the Garrison Conference towards the district military headquarters, decides to do something. They would arrest the Military Revolutionary Committee, shut down the Bolshevik presses, and summon troops from nearby garrisons and the front.

The government thought they ought to get the backing of the Pre-Parliament first; nevertheless parts of the program were set in motion. The military schools of the junkers received orders to be ready for action. The cruiser Aurora, anchored in the Neva near the Winter Palace, was told to sail for the Baltic Fleet. Neighboring garrisons got orders to send troops and artillery to the capital. So did the Northern Front. The Minister of Justice revoked bail for people who, like Trotsky, had been released from jail, exposing them to arrest.

More direct steps, with a better chance of success, were also ordered: increasing the guard of the Winter Palace, raising the drawbridges over the Neva, stopping and searching automobile traffic, cutting off Smolny’s telephone lines.

Military headquarters issued orders as well. They wanted the commissars of the Military Revolutionary Committee removed from the units of the garrison, subject to possible court martial. They also asked owners to place their automobiles under protective custody at headquarters.

Meanwhile, at 5:30 a.m., a squad of junkers accompanied a government commissar to the Bolshevik printing plant. They’d come bearing an order from headquarters. The workers were not inclined to obey it, but the junkers broke in anyway, smashed the stereotypes, sealed the building, and went on guard.

November 6 – October 24, 1917: The Revolution in Action. The Pavlovsky Regiment, on patrol near the Winter Palace, is listening with the ears of the revolution to rumors about the preparations of the government. Smolny soon knew what the government had afoot. This time, orders would be meet with orders, actions with actions.

A couple of workers from the Bolshevik presses, for the moment in the hands of junkers, ran to Smolny for help. Trotsky and Podvoisky heard their story and caused orders to be issued. The Litovsky Regiment sent a company to the scene; a detachment of the Sixth Engineers, neighbors of the press plant, joined them. They sent the junkers packing, and within a few hours the paper, of which Stalin was editor, came out. Trotsky observes that these troops were following orders from a Military Revolutionary Committee that was itself subject to arrest: “That was insurrection.”

So was the Military Committee’s order to the cruiser Aurora. When it got the government’s orders to rejoin the fleet, the ship asked the Military Committee what to do about them. The orders were not to be obeyed, said the committee; instead the ship was to remain at its station, protect the garrison with its guns, and protect itself, using smaller vessels, from being boarded.

November 6 – October 24, 1917: Defense of the Congress? The attempts against the printing presses and the fleet are everywhere seen as counter-revolutionary. Moreover, since they were successfully resisted, the government itself was losing what little credibility it had left.

The insurrection put these circumstances to good account. The soldiers at the press plant and the sailors in the Neva River were defending the revolution, said Smolny. Though the phone lines were out, the cruiser Aurora had a powerful radio. It broadcast Smolny’s message: “the counter-revolution [has] taken the offensive.” Trotsky says it’s good for an insurrection to begin on the defensive. The cloak of self-defense is cast over a course of action that is, by its very nature, extra-legal.

So now the Military Revolutionary Committee, when it issued orders to the garrison, could say – and did say – it was acting in defense of the Congress of Soviets, due to convene the next day. Yet in essence its orders came, Trotsky says, with “the voice of a sovereign power.” The Military Committee sounded the same themes when it issued a proclamation and general orders covering the front page of Rabochy i Soldat that day. Reed reproduces the proclamation in Ten Days that Shook the World.

November 6 – October 24, 1917: The Central Committee in Readiness. The Bolshevik Central Committee, seeing the initiative pass to the insurrection, meets in Smolny to gather the threads to the party. Sverdlov was in the chair. Lenin had not made his way from his new hiding place in Vyborg yet. Zinoviev was missing, but Kamemev, who had become active in the operations of the insurrection, was there. (Trotsky doesn’t say why Kamenev, voted off the committee earlier in the week, happened to be participating in the meeting, but he doesn’t say whether Kamenev cast any votes either.) Stalin, at his post in the party’s pressrooms, also missed the meeting.

The agenda was short: how, Trotsky says, to take “full possession of Petrograd in the next twenty-four hours.” The Military Revolutionary Committee and the Bolshevik Military Organization had already set, or were setting, a plan of operations that would place all essential points and functions of the capital under the control of the insurrection during that time. The Central Committee now had to make decisions about leadership roles towards these ends.

Kamenev moved that no member of the Central Committee should be allowed to leave Smolny unless the committee as a whole approved. Trotsky proposed delegating members of the committee as liaisons to or observers of the postal and telegraph workers, the railroad workers, and the Provisional Government. Sverdlov was given responsibility for the government. Another member became responsible for food supplies. Kamenev was to conduct negotiations as necessary with the left Social Revolutionaries.

Trotsky also called for establishing a reserve headquarters in the Peter and Paul fortress. Lashevich was to represent the committee there, joining Corporal Blagonravov, the commissar appointed by the Military Committee. Those two were to maintain contact with Sverdlov in Smolny and provide fortress passes to the committee members.

At the center of all these arrangements was Sverdlov. He kept Smolny and the party in touch with each other, funneled party workers to meet needs of the military organizations, and carried out the most sensitive operations himself, or with the help of the Bolshevik Military Organization. He was also the point of contact for the party’s delegates to the Congress of Soviets, telling them as they arrived what they needed to know and giving them something to do.

November 6 – October 24, 1917: Trotsky Caucuses, etc. By 2:00 p.m., as many as 300 Bolshevik delegates to the Congress of Soviets are at Smolny. They caucused with Trotsky.

How to address the caucus presented some delicate issues. The delegates could not be told too much, lest important information reach enemy ears. Nor could the insurrection be given an offensive character, lest certain elements of the garrison hear of it and be put off. Further, as the conspiratorial nature of the insurrection could not be concealed, it had to be justified in terms of the Marxist theory of state.

So Trotsky cited recent articles by Lenin arguing the objective necessity of conspiracy in this case; he cited the incident at the Bolshevik printing plant and the orders to the Aurora to show the insurrection had started as a defensive maneuver. Smolny too had been placed in a state of defense, but against the threat to arrest the Military Revolutionary Committee.

The caucus wanted to know what would happen if Kerensky refused to submit to the Congress of Soviets. Trotsky replied that that would create “’not a political but a police question.’” Of course this meant that in such a case the insurrection would go over to the offensive, aggressively seizing and exercising the police powers of the state. And Trotsky says, “That was in essence almost exactly what happened.”

A delegation of the city duma interrupted the caucus for a moment. Trotsky says “they wanted to know too much.” He told them only that the Soviet would defend the Congress, that the Military Committee had issued orders to suppress looting, and that if the duma could not support the Congress, a new election would be held. They left, Trotsky says, “dissatisfied.”

Returning to the caucus, Trotsky drew the lesson of the meeting with the duma: the wheel had turned full circle. Weeks before, the Bolsheviks had a majority in the Soviet, but nothing, not even printing presses, to show for it. Now they were the people to see if you wanted to know the fate of the capital.

Next, at about 4:00 p.m., Trotsky was called to the Peter and Paul fortress. A battalion of bicyclists, thought to be loyal to the government, had had been kept out of the meeting the day before by their officers. Relying on the bicyclists to back him, the commandant threatened to arrest the commissar Blagonravov. Blagonravov arrested the commandant instead. Now the bicycle men had to be mollified.

Trotsky won this “supplementary oratorical battle” with the government’s representative. The matter was settled without a fight. Another detachment of bicycle men, assigned to guard the Winter Palace, heard of this result, stood down, and had to be replaced by junkers. The Peter and Paul remained solidly with the insurrection. Trucks and wagons continued to arrive, and to depart loaded with rifles and other weapons for the Red Guards.

November 6 – October 24, 1917: Or Insurrection? Alarmed when he ordered measures early that morning against the possibility of insurrection, Kerensky seems even more alarmed as he addresses the Pre-Parliament that afternoon. He recited what Lenin had been openly saying in the Bolshevik press. But the patience of the government had worn thin with the Bolsheviks and the “rabble” they represent. The last straws were calling out troops of the garrison to recover the Bolshevik printing plant and openly distributing weapons out of the government’s arsenals.

Then Konovalov handed Kerensky the text of the message from the Military Revolutionary Committee calling on the garrison to defend the Congress of Soviets. Kerensky read it to the assembly. So it was insurrection. Miliukov says, “Kerensky pronounced these words in the complacent tone of a lawyer who has at last succeeded on getting evidence against his opponent.” He promised “liquidation” to the insurrection, demanded the support of the Pre-Parliament for the government’s efforts in this endeavor, and left the hall.

Support did not come immediately or by acclamation. The parties caucused first, then debated among themselves. It took four hours, until 6:00 p.m., and still failed of unanimity. The socialists adopted a resolution suggested by the Menshevik Dan, blaming both the government and the Bolsheviks for the crisis. The Cadets and Cossacks, in the minority, promised “unqualified support to the government,” pending, as Trotsky observes, their own counter-revolutionary insurrection. The Pre-Parliament also proposed to entrust the struggle against the insurrection to a committee of public safety they would name. All in all, it was another staggering defeat for the authority of the government.

Meanwhile, in the Petrograd Soviet, Trotsky was doing his best to portray the actions of the Military Revolutionary Committee as defensive. He would say what the committee had done, and why, then ask rhetorically, “Is this insurrection?”

The fact is, it was. Miliukov speculates in his history that the Bolsheviks were planning to wait until the Congress of Soviets opened to take the insurrection on the offensive. But the government had proved so weak, they did so beforehand. Trotsky says, no, it was always intended to present the Congress, so far as possible, with a fait accompli. The Kronstadt sailors would join up with the Vyborg workers and take the capital together, then the Congress would convene.

But the weakness of the government did make a difference in the plans, as the next series of entries will show.

November 6 – October 24, 1917: The Struggle for the Bridges. Kerensky hurries off after his speech at the Pre-Parliament, leaving the delegates to their debates, once again animated, this time seemingly by the message of the Military Revolutionary Committee to the garrison. The government soon ordered detachments of junkers to the railroad stations and principal street crossings. They put the drawbridges over the Neva under guard and raised them. They redoubled efforts to requisition automobiles.

But the bridges were of capital importance to the insurrection: they connected the neighborhoods of the armed workers to the buildings and functions of the government the insurrection wanted to occupy and control. Trotsky says the people took their seizure as the opening blow against the insurrection itself. Red Guards and soldiers from the workers district marched on their own initiative to the river; the drawbridges came down without bloodshed. Some were raised and had to be lowered again before the evening was out.

The Military Revolutionary Committee ordered the cruiser Aurora to occupy the bridge upriver from its anchorage and lower it. Only after the commander was put under arrest (and thus given the plea of compulsion), did he and his officers carry these orders out. The former occupants, junkers, were long gone before the sailors could debark on the quays and take possession.

Now acts of defense and insurrection began to happen, some spontaneously, all over. Government militia seized the evening edition of Rabochy i Soldat and tried to drive off with it. The printers, reinforced by two sailors who happened by, regained the papers and delivered them to Smolny. The Military Committee sent two squads of the Preobrazhentsky Regiment to secure the facility.

An officer and some junkers, thinking they could find Lenin and arrest him in Vyborg, stumbled into a workers’ club by mistake. The workers summoned the Red Guard, who arrested the officer and junkers instead. The Red Guards conducted them to the Peter and Paul.

The commissar of the Keksgolmsky Regiment paid a visit to the telephone exchange. He was able to persuade the workers there to restore phone service to Smolny. Another commissar, freshly appointed to a post at the telegraph station, found soldiers of the Keksgolmsky Regiment already there. The telegraphers, none of whom were Bolsheviks, agreed for the time being to compromise with the insurrection.

Then, at 9:00 p.m., the Military Committee sent another commissar, with an escort of marines, to the government news agency. They were to censor, but not necessarily suppress, the dispatches emanating there.

Now the actions of the Military Committee, particularly with regard to the media of communications, already rapid and effective in the early 20^th century, seemed to have passed over to the offensive. Trotsky nevertheless says that, arguably, oversight of the media was just another instance of the dual power, with the Bolsheviks in the Soviet taking the place of the Compromisers. Yet even if “the umbilical cord of ‘legality’ was not conclusively severed,” it would be soon enough.

November 6-7 – October 24-25, 1917: The Marines Arrive? The two delegates from the Kronstadt Soviet to the Congress of Soviets arrive at Smolny during the afternoon of the 6^th (October24, old style). There they came across Chudnovsky, just returned from the front. The three of them began to argue about whether the time for insurrection was ripe. Chudnovsky was in doubt; he thought the mood at the front was not favorable.

Trotsky came in. He asked Flerovsky, one of the Kronstadt delegates, to return there. “Events are maturing so fast that everyone must be at his post,” Trotsky said. Hearing this, Chudnovsky shed his doubts and threw himself into plans for the operations.

Messages ordering mobilization went out by telephonegram and telegraph. Kronstadt’s forces were to set forth at dawn. Sverdlov wired Smilga in Finland “Send regulations.” This was the code for embarking 1,500 heavily armed marines on ships bound for Petrograd.

The original plan of operations, as we’ve seen, called for the marines to debark and join the Vyborg Red Guards; they would enter the capital together. Now, to take advantage of the initiative the insurrection had gained, the Guards would go in first, with the marines coming in to protect their flank or rear as needed. The new plan started off very well indeed, but the arrival of the marines became problematic, as we’ll see.

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.”

Red October: The Winter Palace

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 25^th (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 12^th 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.