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 25th (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.”
