The Correlation of Forces

October 25 – October 12, 1917: Regulations for Insurrection. After Trotsky spins them a little, the regulations drafted by Lazimir and his Military Revolutionary Committee come before the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet for approval. Despite Trotsky’s spin, the Mensheviks clearly perceived how useful the regulations would be to an insurrection. But the powers they gave the Soviet had ample precedent in the powers previously shared with the Provisional Government under the dual power scheme.

Another proposal, for the formation of a Garrison Conference, moved forward at this time. The conference would represent the soldiers of the Petrograd garrison in the way the factory committees represented the workers of the factories. It incidentally also enabled the Bolshevik leadership in the Soviet to better understand the purely military problems facing an insurrection.

Meanwhile, Kerensky sent a long letter to his fellow head of state Lloyd George of Great Britain. He promised that the Provisional Government would continue the war, hoping and begging for the financial credits necessary to do so.

October 25-26 – October 12-13, 1917: Northern Regional Conference Concludes. As the conference closes, the Central Committee advises the delegates to remain in Petrograd and await the Congress of Soviets. A handful returned to the provinces to further preparations for the insurrection.

October 26 – October 13, 1917: The Soldiers Section Approves. Dybenko, “a black-bearded giant” and president of the Central Committee of the Baltic Fleet, addresses the soldiers section of the Petrograd Soviet on the question of the regulations of the Military Revolutionary Committee. He opened by telling the meeting that, when an admiral asked whether they would obey orders in the anticipated action in Moon Sound, the sailors replied that they would, but, “…if we see that the fleet is threatened with destruction, the commanding staff will be the first to hang from the mast head.”

This kind of talk played unexpectedly well in a section of the soviet hitherto dominated by the compromisist parties. Then Dybenko spoke of the transfer of units in the garrison to the front: “We will defend Reval ourselves. Stay here and defend the interests of the revolution.” The Military Committee’s regulations passed with nearly 300 in favor, one against, and a couple dozen abstaining. This consolidated the Committee’s control of the garrison as against headquarters and the government.

Meanwhile, Trotsky’s Executive Committee announced the renewed mobilization of the Red Guard. The special department then created would soon come under the Military Committee, integrating the military preparations of the workers with those of the soldiers.

This brought the problem of arming the workers to the fore. The attempt to disarm the workers after the July Days uncovered some of their weapons, “old rubbish,” Trotsky says, but “the very valuable weapons were carefully concealed.”

But they were not nearly enough. At about this time, some of the workers came to Trotsky asking for rifles. When he told them they party didn’t have control of the arsenals, they told him they’d just been to the factory and the factory would be happy to fill an order from the Soviet. The Soviet placed the order and the workers had 5,000 rifles by the end of the day.

Also on this day, Tseretilli having gone home to Georgia, the Menshevik Dan took it upon himself to ask in the Executive Committee whether the Bolsheviks intended to “come out.” The old Marxist Riazanov replied, inferably, “Yes.”

October 27 – October 14, 1917: Kerensky Takes Alarm. The cabinet of the Provisional Government ratifies headquarters plans and preparations to meet the possibility of insurrection. The district commander for Petrograd, General Polkovnikov, told the press, “In any case we are ready.”

The Central Executive Committee was also taking alarm. The Menshevik Martov warned them on this day, “We cannot expect the Bolsheviks to listen to us.” By “Bolsheviks,” Martov meant the mass following of the party, not the party members themselves.

October 28 – October 15, 1917: Support for the Congress. The Kiev Soviet joins its comrades of the Northern Regional Conference in declaring the coming Congress of Soviets “the sovereign organ of power.” On the following day, a regional conference of soviets in Minsk demanded that the Congress not be postponed. The Urals soviets did the same a few days after that.

On the other hand, Kalinin, though in favor of insurrection, spoke in the Petrograd Soviet as if it could and should be delayed indefinitely. Many party leaders in Moscow and elsewhere shared this attitude. Yet the party rank and file largely remained to the left of these leaders, supporting Lenin’s summons to insurrection.

October 28 – October 15, 1917: Reed’s Interviews at Smolny. The American journalist Reed interviews Kamenev and Volodarsky in the halls of Smolny Institute. They answered questions about the coming Congress of Soviets. Both of them spoke conditionally; neither was sure the Congress would actually take place.

Kamenev said that if it took place, the Congress would certainly represent the will of the masses, and probably have a Bolshevik majority. Of course, this was his preferred path for the transfer of power to the soviets.

Volodarsky said that the Compromisers were trying to see that the Congress did not come off. So the Bolsheviks “’were realists enough not to depend on that!’” But apparently he didn’t say, or Reed didn’t ask, what the Bolsheviks would do in such a case.

October 29 – October 16, 1917: The Garrison and the Executive Committee. Trotsky’s Executive Committee puts approval of the regulations of the Military Revolutionary Committee on the agenda of the Petrograd Soviet. Asked by the Mensheviks whether the Bolsheviks were preparing for a seizure of power, Trotsky said, “We make no secret of that.” The regulations were approved by a large majority. More and more left Social Revolutionaries were coming over to the Bolshevik program.

Yet the majority of the Bolshevik Military Organization was not confident in its operational readiness for insurrection, as Ensign Krylenko reported on this day. Another member of the organization, Lashevich, expressed similar doubts a couple of days later; Podvoisky joined in this opinion. Yet Uritsky, a member of the Central Committee and former Trotskyite, estimated the armed strength of the workers at 40,000 rifles. Lenin soon met with these leaders to stiffen their backs. 

That same day, General Polkovnikov again (and still quite incorrectly) reported that the garrison largely remained loyal to the government….

The Executive Committee also named representatives to the meeting General Cheremissov wanted. When they subsequently arrived at Pskov, they rebuffed the claim of the general and his staff that transfers from the garrison to the front were a strategic necessity. So much for another effort orchestrated by Kerensky to weaken the forces of the insurrection. 

October 29 – October 16, 1917: Why the Delay? Lenin, alarmed at the delay in launching the insurrection and, in isolation, not fully aware of the steps that were being taken, insists on a new meeting of the Bolshevik Central Committee. The meeting, held in a suburb of Petrograd, included leaders of other organizations involved in preparations. Trotsky could not be present, as he was engaged in the business described in the previous entry.

Doubts and hesitation, to Lenin’s dismay, having been expressed, Ensign Krylenko took the lead in explaining the situation. He said, “the water is boiling hard enough,” so hard in fact that in essence the insurrection had already begun; there was no need to set a date for it.

Lenin did not respond. Kamenev claimed, “We have no machine of insurrection.” To this Lenin replied that the political decision had been made; the party must continue to build the operational basis for it. Only then could the people, led by the party, take the reins. Joffe, who sat on the Military Revolutionary Committee, emphasized that, for the last step, political work still remained to be done.

Lenin’s new resolution called for “an all-sided and vigorous preparation of armed insurrection.” It passed 20 to 2, with 3 abstentions and only Kamenev and Zinoviev against. But the real balance of opinion on the committee was revealed by the vote on Zinoviev’s resolution ruling out any action until the Congress of Soviets convened and the committee could meet with the Bolshevik caucus. It failed 15 votes to 6, with 3 abstentions. So even though the committee was moving to the left, Lenin’s line could only command some two-thirds of the votes.

The committee also received a report, on the whole favorable, on the attitude of the garrisons surrounding Petrograd.

Meanwhile, the American journalist Reed heard Foreign Minister Tereshechenko’s speech to the Pre-Parliament in the Mariinsky Palace. Apparently the instructions the Pre-Parliament gave Skobelev for presentation to the allied conference in Paris had caused some embarrassment. Reed says “Nobody was satisfied” with the speech, not even the Cadets.

October 30 – October 17, 1917: Congress Postponed. Today, three days before the Congress of Soviets is to convene, the Central Executive Committee puts it off by five days, until the 25^th (November 7, new style). The compromisist parties stepped up their efforts to recruit and elect delegates to the workers’ and soldiers’ soviets, and prepared to summon a congress of peasants’ soviets as a counterweight. But they were well not positioned to benefit from the delay.

The Bolsheviks instead gained the advantage. For example, the Semenovsky Regiment had the blood of revolutionary workers in 1905 on its hands. It hung back from the rest of the Petrograd garrison when they were declaring for the Bolshevik program. Yet at a regimental meeting during this time, Trotsky was permitted to speak; the representative of the Central Executive Committee, Skobelev, was not. In the result, the regiment joined with the bulk of the garrison in alignment with the Bolsheviks.

A rumor that the Bolsheviks would “come out” that day proved to be untrue. So the rumor was put off for a few days too.

Meanwhile, Kamenev published a letter in Gorky’s paper declaring insurrection “an inadmissible step.” Trotsky characterizes his reasoning as opportunism. The action was also another breach of party discipline by Kamenev. Hearing of this, Lenin composed a lengthy Letter to Comrades, refuting the arguments Kamenev and others were using against insurrection. The letter appeared in Rabochi Put the following day.

October 30 – October 17, 1917: Reed’s Interviews. Three journalists, including the American Reed, interview Kerensky – his last meeting with the press while still head of the Russian state. The man from the Associated Press wanted to know why the Russians had stopped fighting. In a bitter response, Kerensky blamed the tsarists for ruining the army, the British for not sending their fleet to fight the Germans in the Gulf of Riga, and the Allies generally, with whom, in their state of economic prostration, the people are “disillusioned.” The dispatch on this interview, returned by the U.S. State Department, had to be emended – over Kerensky’s objections – by the foreign ministry.

Reed says Kerensky had also “suspended capital punishment in the army” that day. That evening, Reed went to a meeting of the Petrograd Soviet; he records some lively observations of what workers and soldiers had to tell the committee.

On the same day Reed also interviewed Trotsky, if interview it was. After a few questions, Trotsky “talked rapidly for more than an hour.” He spoke of the feebleness of the Provisional Government, that the Compromisers were giving the bourgeoisie cover for what control they did have. To obtain real control the bourgeoisie would have to adopt the Kornilov method. But the army was with the revolution and the soviets.

The soviets would prevail in their fight with the Cadet counter-revolution, Trotsky continued. But he went further than that. He explained Lenin’s vision for world proletarian revolution. When the soviets came to power, they would make peace on the basis of solidarity with proletarians and their organizations in all the belligerent powers. They would create a European republic – a “United States of Europe” – on that basis. So Trotsky chose to express himself to an impressionable, left-leaning American journalist.

October 31 – October 18, 1917: Deadlocks in the Pre-Parliament and in the Baltic. After three days of debate, neither the right-socialist Compomisers nor the bourgeois Cadets can pass a resolution on reforming the army and continuing the war. The votes were symptomatic of general paralysis in the Pre-Parliament on every issue it attempted to address. The American journalist Reed heard the Cadet Miliukov give a speech denouncing Skobelov’s instructions. But this decision had already been taken over Cadet objections.

At about this time, Kerensky renewed his dispute with the Baltic Fleet and the soviets of Finland. The sailors sent a delegation to the Central Executive Committee demanding removal of “a person who is disgracing…the revolution with his shameless political chantage.” By this they meant Kerensky. The Regional Committee of the Finnish Soviets, taking sovereign powers, held up some of the government’s freight. Kerensky’s response, threats of arrest, left the soviets unimpressed.

Trotsky observes that the fleet and Finnish soviets were already in a state of insurrection; they had assumed state functions and administered them independently of the Provisional Government. In another connection Trotsky observes that the Finnish garrison and Baltic Fleet had become a dependable reserve for an insurrection of workers and soldiers in Petrograd.

Meanwhile, the Petrograd Soviet held elections for its delegates to the Congress of Soviets. The Bolshevik slate – Trotsky, Kamenev, Volodarsky, Yurenev, and Lashevich – received well over 400 votes. Just over 200 votes were cast for candidates from the compromisist parties.

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.

November 8 – October 26, 1917: A New Day

The morning papers draw a blank on the events of the previous thirty-six hours. They reported the taking of the Winter Palace and arrest of the ministry, but weren’t sure what that meant or what kind of difference it would make. By orders from Smolny, the streets, tramcars, shops, and restaurants opened and functioned normally. So people went out or went to work and shared the rumors they’d heard or speculations they’d made up. Trotsky says “…the seismograph of the Stock Exchange describes a convulsive curve.” Apparently he means stocks fell – at least they could still make trades.   

The American journalist Reed picked up whatever papers he could find through the course of the day. Reed’s clippings from the compromisist papers predicted the failure of the Bolshevik revolution, denounced the party program – peace, land, and bread – as lies and false promises, and condemned the Congress of Soviets as illegal and without authority. Trotsky says some of the bourgeois and compromisist press were reviving the old slander of the German connection. Reed observes that the few Cadet papers to be found took a “detached, ironical” attitude. A few of the more destructive papers were suppressed.

So not everything was new that day. But the Bolshevik paper, lately published under title of Rabochy Put, now reappeared as Pravda.

Follow this link to the next post, which is out of the regular sequence.

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.

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.

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 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: 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 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.

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.”