Red October Approaches

 

One hundred years ago this week, plus three, the pace of events leading up to the October Revolution picked up, so much so that I will post weekly instead of day-by-day during this time.

October 25 – October 12, 1917: Regulations for Insurrection. Draft regulations from the newly formed Military Revolutionary Committee, useful for an insurrection but with ample precedents since the February Revolution, were approved by the Petrograd Soviet. Read  about it here.

October 28 – October 15, 1917: Reed’s Interviews at Smolny. The American journalist John Reed, author of Ten Days That Shook the World, interviewed Kamenev and Volodarsky, members of the Bolshevik Central Committee, among other things about the coming Congress of Soviets. They did discuss the transfer of state power to the soviets, but not, of course, the manner in which it actually was to come about. Read about it here.

October 29 – October 16, 1917: Why the Delay? Lenin, in exile and therefore not fully informed about the state of things in the capital, called a meeting of the Bolshevik Central Committee and ventured into the suburbs of Petrograd to attend it. Having received assurances that things were moving with such speed and force that the insurrection could hardly be stopped, he moved a resolution of “vigorous preparations.” It prevailed, again, with only Kamenev and Zinoviev dissenting. Read about it here.

October 30 – October 17, 1917: Congress Postponed. Right-socialists on the Central Executive Committee of the soviets put off the planned national Congress of Soviets by five days, hoping to increase their share of the vote during the interim. The tactic backfired: the Bolsheviks were the gainers by it. Read about it here.

October 31 – October 18, 1917: The Garrison Conference. In a development that would prove to be decisive, the units of the Petrograd garrison nearly unanimously adopted the policy that orders not countersigned by the Petrograd Soviet would not be obeyed. This of course left the right-socialists of the Central Executive Committee of the soviets out of the loop. For the Petrograd Soviet was dominated by the Bolsheviks. Read about it here.

You can read the whole chapter on the Correlation of Forces here, and the chapter on the Day of the Petrograd Soviet here. Or read the whole story from the beginning by following this link.

Zinoviev and Kamenev Dissent

 

One hundred years ago today, plus three, Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, the two members who opposed the Bolshevik Central Committee vote for insurrection, published a pamphlet stating their views of the matter – though of course remaining silent on the actual  Bolshevik vote. Lenin called them “deserters,” but they recovered his good graces and were made members of the Politburo after the revolution.

 

Read about it here. Or read the whole chapter on Lenin’s Insurrection here. Or read the whole story from the beginning by following this link. 

  

Vote for Insurrection

 

One hundred years ago today, plus three, and a day after the Petrograd Soviet had proposed to create a Military Revolutionary Committee for the defense of the capital and thus of the revolution itself, the Bolshevik Central Committee met in a suburban apartment. Lenin, who attended in disguise, moved a vote for armed insurrection, which prevailed 10 votes to 2.

We’ll see about the dissenting votes in another post. Meanwhile, read about the Military Revolutionary Committee here, and the vote for insurrection here. Or read the whole chapter on Lenin’s Insurrection here. Or read the whole story from the beginning by following this link.

Council of the Republic

 

One hundred years ago today, plus three, Prime Minister Kerensky addressed the Council of the Republic, or Pre-Parliament, projected some two weeks before by the Democratic Conference of the soviets. Kerensky made it clear that the Pre-Parliament would have no authority of any kind, elective, legislative, or executive, over the Coalition Government he had in the meanwhile assembled.

On the same day, Lenin published “The Crisis Is Ripe” in Rabochy Put, making some of the same arguments for insurrection he would soon be making to the Bolshevik Central Committee.

Read about the Pre-Parliament here, and Lenin’s article here. Or read the whole chapter on Lenin’s Insurrection here. Or read the whole story from the beginning by following this link.

 

Red October

One hundred years ago today, plus two, Red October began. Lots of people know about the “Hunt for” Red October, fewer know Red October for what it really means, though many claim to know the event it refers to, only by another name. Fewer still, perhaps, know why it is “October” rather than November, even though it was 102 years ago today. 

The physical events leading up to the result began the day before with a struggle for the bridges over the River Neva in Petrograd. Read about it here.

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

The Bolsheviks Vote for Insurrection

One hundred years ago today, plus two, a quorum of the Bolshevik Central Committee met and took a vote for armed insurrection. Find out who voted for, and who against, and what disguise Lenin wore in order to attend here.

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

Kornilov’s Insurrection

One hundred years ago today, plus two, Kerensky’s choice for overall command in the war against Germany and her allies, General Kornilov, turned his forces instead in the direction of Petrograd. His manifesto, also issued that day, made it sound as if, not the Bolsheviks, but the Provisional Government itself was the target of the move.

Of course, Kerensky, head of that government, did not think particularly well of Kornilov’s plans. Read about it here.

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

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.

Kornilov’s Insurrection

August 30 – August 17, 1917: Kornilov’s Demands. Prime Minister Kerensky orders Commissar Savinkov to draft a law for putting General Kornilov’s demands into effect. The demands were already on the record of the State Conference in Moscow:

·         Militarizing the railroads and factories

·         Permitting the death penalty in the rear

·         Putting the Petrograd garrison under Kornilov’s command

·         Abolishing the soldiers’ committees

August 31 – August 18, 1917: Against the Death Penalty. The Petrograd Soviet demands abolition of the death penalty by a vote of 900 to 4. The four voting against the resolution were among the right-socialists most closely tied to the Compromisers and the Provisional Government: Tseretilli, Cheidze, Dan, and Lieber.

September 1 – August 19, 1917: Breach in the Front. The Germans take the offensive, breaching the Russian lines of the Northern Front at Ikskul. (This must have been on the road to Riga, the capital of Latvia, but it appears the place no longer exists.)

Kornilov took this occasion to again demand personal control of the Petrograd garrison.

September 2 – August 20, 1917: Kornilov Orders Movements. A corps of cavalry Kornilov had positioned on the railroad net south of Petrograd before the State Conference edges nearer the capital. A formation of mountaineers from the Caucasus, called the Savage Division because, it was said, they didn’t care whom they killed, had joined them.

Another cavalry division, of Cossacks, was in place north of Petrograd, near the Finnish frontier.

An election to the city Duma of Petrograd took place on this day. The Social Revolutionaries polled 200,000 votes, some 375,000 fewer than in the previous election. The Cadets won 50,000 votes and the Mensheviks 23,000. In a sign of increasing strength, the Bolsheviks matched the 200,000 vote total of the Social Revolutionaries.

Meanwhile Zinoviev wrote in Pravda against insurrection, citing the example of the Paris Commune of 1871. Stalin, editor of Pravda, printed the article without comment or emendation. Lenin responded two weeks later, explaining the mistakes of the Commune and what the Russian Revolution would have to do differently.

September 3 – August 21, 1917: Riga Falls. German troops march into Riga, having pushed aside the mostly unprepared 12^th Army. The army’s commander defended the performance of his troops, saying the “most thoroughly propagandized” formations fought the hardest. These included a brigade of Latvian sharpshooters who counterattacked under red banners, and the marines of the Baltic Fleet. Bolshevik influence predominated in these formations; moreover, they were fighting to defend their national capital and home port.

But if the 12^th Army was as a whole unprepared, this suited General Kornilov’s plans perfectly well. Trotsky observes that the generals of the Northern Front in Latvia were in on Kornilov’s plot, but didn’t have to do anything affirmative, like ordering withdrawals or conspiring with the Germans, to ensure that Riga would fall. They could just await the expected result.

Nevertheless the bourgeois papers blamed the peasant infantry.

Meanwhile Kornilov assembled the high command at headquarters in Moghiliev and let some of them in on his plot. Among other measures then taken, the cavalry were given grenades, thought to be an effective weapon against urban crowds and buildings.

On the same day, the Provisional Government placed two Romanov grand dukes under house arrest. They needn’t have bothered, Trotsky says, as the counter-revolution had no interest in restoring the monarchy, and the Bolsheviks were not fooled by the gesture.

September 4 – August 22, 1917: Kerensky’s Plotter. Prime Minister Kerensky sends the adventurer Savinkov to General Kornilov’s headquarters at Moghiliev to demand that cavalry be placed at the government’s disposal. Of course a corps was already stationed on the railroad net south of Petrograd.

But there was now a quid pro quo for the demand: the proposed law acceding to Kornilov’s political demands for the conduct of the war. (Savinkov had been tasked with drafting it.) This in turn was part of the rationale for the request for troops: the law was among a number of provocations the plotters thought would bring the Bolsheviks into the streets. Then the cavalry would come in, impose martial law, and, for good measure, do away with the soviets.

Trotsky marshals the evidence against Kerensky (including minutes of the headquarters meetings with Savinkov kept by the general staff), and chronicles Kerensky’s actions as the insurrection approached. In fact, Kerensky expected that he, not Kornilov, would be made dictator when the insurrection had finished off the soviets, and Kerensky’s own Provisional Government along with them.

Meanwhile Kornilov took action to discredit the soldiery, issuing orders to shoot “deserters” and requiring commanders to submit lists of Bolshevik officers in their commands.

The soldiers and the officers of the Rumanian Front and Black Sea Fleet protested these kinds of imputations. Izvestia defended the soldiers, and editorialized about the counter-revolutionary clique in the army. A Menshevik conference, without debate, called for abolition of the death penalty. Even Tseretilli felt compelled to hold his silence.

September 5 – August 23, 1917: Kerensky Chimes In. Kerensky offers his contribution to the controversy over the fall of Riga, saying the soldiers were “concealing their cowardice under idealistic slogans.” It might have seemed odd for Kerensky to so harshly criticize troops that might have to defend his government against an insurrection by counter-revolutionary elements in the army, but then again, he was already part of Kornilov’s plot.

The Russian ambassador telegraphed that French President Poincare and his Foreign Minister had many questions about Kornilov at a recent Paris reception. So word of the plot was apparently getting out.

September 6 – August 24, 1917: Demand for Democracy. Central Executive Committee of the Soviets calls for an end to “counter-revolutionary methods” and a transition to democracy. Though details on both steps seem to have been lacking, Trotsky observes, “This was a new language.” It put pressure on Kerensky from the left.

September 7 – August 25, 1917: The Plot is Hatched. Commissar Savinkov returns to Petrograd with news of his success. The agreed plan was to publish the law as Kornilov demanded, await the immediately expected Bolshevik demonstration, and then send in the cavalry to put down the demonstrators and establish martial law. Under martial law, of course, anything could happen, including an emergency dictatorship under (one of) the plotters.

Of course, the Social Revolutionary resolution calling for headquarters to expel members of the League of Officers was ignored. The League was part of the plot; on the appointed day, they were to raise an armed fifth column in the streets of Petrograd.

The date was set for August 27 (September 9, new style), the six-month anniversary of the February Revolution.

In another provocation, the Bolshevik paper Proletarian was suppressed.

Sometime between September 7-8 – August 25-26, 1917: Double-Crossings. Commissar Savinkov returns to headquarters to clear up a few details. General Kornilov listened, and maybe he seemed to agree, but in the end he did as he wished. Against Kerensky’s orders, he put General Krymov in command of the advance on Petrograd and the Savage Division in the vanguard.

Kerensky had also ordered an adjustment to Kornilov’s demand for military control of Petrograd. Kornilov could have command of the military district in which Petrograd was located, but the government would retain control of the garrison in the city itself. Since he figured the balance of forces would still be in his favor when his cavalry got there, this did not bother Kornilov much.

Meanwhile Lvov, a church official (not the former Prime Minister), had also been shuttling between Kornilov’s headquarters and those of Kerensky at the Winter Palace. Lvov began to realize that two plots, not just one, had been hatched. Kerensky’s did not match up with Kornilov’s, particularly on the very important point of who the dictator would be. So Kerensky sent Lvov back to Moghiliev with the proposal that the two camps would together work out a “transformation” of the government. He arrived there after Savinkov had already left the second time.

Kornilov’s camp took the message Lvov delivered as a sign of weakness. Kornilov told Lvov that once the (expected) Bolshevik insurrection had been suppressed, the plotters should seek “the immediate transfer of power by the Provisional Government into the hands of the supreme commander-in-chief,” adding “whoever he may be.” Then he politely suggested that Kerensky and Savinkov seek refuge with him at Moghiliev, to be safe from the Bolsheviks.

When Lvov delivered this proposal, Kerensky immediately telegraphed Kornilov, asking him to confirm it. Then Kerensky replied as though he would be arriving at headquarters the following day. But of course he didn’t. Another Kornilov proposal, that Kerensky become Minister of Justice in a cabinet headed by…someone else, made Kerensky so angry be put the messenger, Lvov, under arrest at the Winter Palace. Trotsky says Lvov spent the evening listening to Kerensky sing opera in the next room.

Back at headquarters, on the same evening (August 26^th, September 8, new style), Kornilov’s camp thought the success of their plot was at hand.

September 8 – August 26, 1917: The Price of Grain. The Provisional Government doubles the price of grain. This served the bourgeois landowners better than it served the workers. The Petrograd Soviet protested, but the provocation did not, as the plotters of the insurrection must have hoped, bring the Bolshevik masses into the streets. Instead the Central Committee warned against “provocational agitation,” and the Bolsheviks, with their allies in the labor unions and factory committees, all announced that they were not calling for a demonstration.

The Cadet ministers took this opportunity to resign the Provisional Government, as Miliukov says, “without prejudicing…their future participation.” Knowing what was afoot, they preferred to await events. Not knowing, but very suspicious, the Compromiser ministers also sat on the sidelines for the day. The government thus effectively ceased to exist, leaving Kerensky with whatever powers it formerly possessed.

Kerensky later told the story that Savinkov came to him on the night of the 26^th (September 8, new style) and offered to submit himself to arrest for his role in the Kornilov conspiracy. Whether that part of the story is true or not, Kerensky did make him governor-general of Petersburg instead. Thus, Trotsky observes, Kerensky and Savinkov were jointly responsible both for carrying out and for preventing the conspiracy.

Kerensky did not promulgate the decree acceding to Kornilov’s demands, neither on this day, as originally planned, nor afterwards.

September 9 – August 27, 1917: Kornilov’s Insurrection. On the day set for the movement on Petrograd to begin, Prime Minister Kerensky telegraphs General Kornilov, ordering him to present himself at the capital. Instead Kornilov issued a manifesto declaring that “the Provisional Government, under pressure from the Bolshevik majority in the Soviets, is acting in full accord with the plans of the German general staff,” which, he added, included an advance up the coastline from Riga. So he, Kornilov, was going to do something to save the Provisional Government from itself. At least he was acting consistently with the plans of the conspiracy – though of course the “Bolshevik majority” did not exist and though, even on the six-month anniversary of the February Revolution, the streets of Petrograd were quiet.

Next Kerensky ordered Kornilov to hold up the movements by rail of the Savage Division and cavalry corps towards Petrograd, but Kornilov refused. Kerensky removed him from command. This likewise had no effect on the tendency of events. Next Kerensky issued an order to the Petrograd garrison, saying Kornilov had treacherously removed troops from the front and sent them against the capital. Kornilov answered by saying the traitors were already there, in Petrograd.

There had been nothing about Kornilov’s movements in the morning papers, but word of his manifesto and break with Kerensky spread through the capital. By evening, the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets had formed its Committee of Struggle Against the Counter-Revolution. The committee drew its membership from all three socialist parties including the Bolsheviks, from trade unions, and from the Petrograd soviets generally.

The Mensheviks now began to advocate a program considerably to the left of where they stood before: for declaring a republic, for dissolving the State Duma, and for agrarian reform. The Committee also agreed the cabinet of the Provisional Government should continue, with socialists replacing the resigned Cadets.

The Bolsheviks declared themselves and the Red Guards ready to resist Kornilov’s attempt. Through their Military Organization, they had already issued instructions for the revolutionary troops of the garrison to remain at arms, but not to demonstrate.

On the other side, only the command of the Southwestern Front supported Kornilov. Accordingly, they smashed the printing presses of organizations thought to be loyal to the government.

Overnight, September 9-10 – August 27-28, 1917: A Proposal from the Soviet. The joint Central Executive Committee of the Soviets debates its response to the situation created by General Kornilov’s insurrection well into the morning hours. After midnight, the Soviet got word that Kerensky would not agree to democratic reforms. He insisted on the notion of a directory, that is, a reconcentration of power in a smaller cabinet with himself at the head.

Tseretilli nevertheless went from the Smolny Institute to the Winter Palace to submit the Soviet’s proposal. When Kerensky refused it, he returned to Smolny, arriving at about 7:30 a.m. on the 28^th (September 10, new style). Wearied, the Soviet was ready to concede Kerensky’s plan for a directory.

Kornilov’s Defeat

September 10 – August 28, 1917: Kornilov Advances. Petrograd receives news about the movement in its direction of General Kornilov’s forces. Reportedly: at 12:30 p.m., General Krymov reached Luga, 87 miles from the capital; at 2:30 p.m., trains loaded with Kornilov’s troops were passing through Oredezh station; at 3:00 p.m., Luga’s garrison surrendered; at 6:00 p.m., troops were advancing past Narva and approaching Gatchina, 28 miles from the capital.

The stock markets actually went up!

Little did the bourgeoisie know, this is what was really happening: Railroad workers were tearing up the tracks on the insurrection’s line of march. They isolated Moghiliev, Kornilov’s headquarters, from the rest of the railroad net. They put the railroad bridges under guard. Rail dispatchers and engineers were sending parts of Kornilov’s units one way, other parts another way, so that troops got separated from commanders and staff, from their own weapons and supplies, and from each other. Telegraph operators were not only holding up messages, but retransmitting them to the Committee of Defense. Other workers dug trenches – in hours instead of days.

And in Petrograd itself, workers eager to join the Red Guard were arming themselves with 40,000 stand of rifles. The workers of the Putilov factory turned out 100 cannon for defense of the city. The chauffeurs union provided transportation and delivered messages for the Soviet’s Committee of Defense. Clerks of the metal workers union prepared and distributed the necessary paperwork. The printers union decided, favorably to the interests of the Soviet, what would go into print. Counter-revolutionary elements were put under arrest.

Governor-general Savinkov had little or nothing to do with the organization of the defense.

Significantly, the Menshevik Dan, on behalf of the Petrograd Soviet, decreed that units of the Petrograd garrison should not carry out any movements unless orders were countersigned by the Committee of Defense. This was the same tactic the Soviet had employed during the April Days. It effectively deprived Kerensky of command over the city’s troops. Not only did he not control resistance to Kornilov on behalf of the Provisional Government, he did not have forces to support his own ambitions as against both Kornilov and the Provisional Government.

I might observe, without revealing too much too soon, that this was all good practice for the October Revolution.

September 10 – August 28, 1917: Kerensky Negotiates. Kerensky summons Commissar Savinkov to the Winter Palace. When he arrived at about 4:00 a.m., General Alexiev and Foreign Minister Tereshchenko were already there. They began talking as if there had been some kind of misunderstanding between Kerensky and Kornilov, thinking to deceive the public with this explanation. Kerensky asked the press not to print anything about his rift with Kornilov, but it was already too late.

The cruiser Aurora sailed to the Winter Palace from Kronstadt that day at about noon. The revolutionary sailors were thus on guard, whether over or for Kerensky was still to be determined.

Towards evening, Miliukov arrived at the palace and offered to mediate between Kerensky and Kornilov. Kerensky seems to have welcomed this, accepting Miliukov’s argument that the balance of power then lay with Kornilov. Miliukov did not disclose that he and his friends on the bourgeois right had Alexiev in mind to succeed Kerensky.

Later still, word came to the palace that Russia’s allies in the Entente were willing, “in the interests of humanity,” to bridge the difficulties between Kornilov and Kerensky. British Ambassador Buchanan had given Foreign Minister Tereshchenko a note to this effect.

Kerensky called the “retired” Cadet ministers to the palace. But before they could reach any decisions, alarming (but false) news that the enemy was nearing the capital was received. So they began to talk again about forming a directory with Alexiev in it. Miliukov’s plan was about to bear fruit.

Then there came a knock at the door. It was Tseretilli, returned from the Soviet to announce its demands. There would be no negotiations with Kornilov; instead the Committee of Defense would continue the struggle. 

Kerensky and his cohorts had no answer for this, no means of compelling the Soviet to abandon its decision. The meeting broke up, the Cadet ministers having resigned the cabinet for good this time. After everyone took his leave, Kerensky spent the night in nearly “complete solitude,” no longer, presumably, singing opera.

Meanwhile Krymov was actually withdrawing from Luga on the evening of the 28^th (September 10, new style). The Committee of Defense took control of the Southwestern Front through the soldiers committees. The Rumanian, Western, and Caucasian Fronts telegraphed the Winter Palace in support of the revolution and against Kornilov. The Northern Front, which Kornilov had suborned, got a new commander who later volunteered for the Red Army.

Kaledin, the Cossack general and political leader, was in the Don steppes, riding around the countryside and testing the mood of the people. Effectively neutral, he was emphatically not forming another front against the Provisional Government. Likewise, the fifth column in Petrograd promised by the League of Officers never showed itself. The provocateurs who were supposed to have drawn the Bolsheviks into the streets left for Finland, taking their allotment of money – what they hadn’t already spent on parties – with them.

Overnight, September 10-11 – August 28-29, 1917: The Savage Division Stalls. The Savage Division enters the battle unprepared. Some of its arms were still well down the railroad line, supposedly expected at Pskov. Overnight, the division came to a halt.

Two days later, the tracks leading to Pskov had been cut. In the result, the division never engaged troops supporting the Provisional Government at all.

September 11 – August, 29, 1917: Kornilov’s Insurrection Stalls. From headquarters in Moghiliev, General Kornilov orders General Krymov, in command of the advance on Petrograd, to concentrate his troops. But this was impossible; Krymov didn’t know where his troops were. The railroad workers had sent them hither and yon on eight different rail lines. Meanwhile, Kerensky telegraphed Krymov telling him Petrograd was quiet, his troops were not needed.

The capital received reports of a battle at Antropshio Station. Maybe this was in fact a reconnaissance in force that Krymov had actually ordered; it retired without engaging revolutionary troops.

The revolutionary Kronstadt sailors docked at Petrograd that morning, adding their numbers to those of the garrison and the armed workers. The sailors had replaced Kornilovist officers with men of their own choosing. Their representatives visited Trotsky in prison, but did not free him. Even though Kerensky had been refusing continuous requests of the Central Executive Committee to free the political prisoners taken after the July Days, Trotsky advised the sailors not to arrest the members of the Provisional Government – yet.

In Vyborg (the city near the Finnish frontier, not the workers’ district near Petrograd), the commanding officer had withheld news of the insurrection from his troops. When they found out, they shot him. Bolshevik-leaning units from the Vyborg garrison were also on the march to Petrograd. In the Baltic Fleet, they shot a number of officers who refused to take oaths of allegiance to the revolution. At Helsinki, the Soviet and fleet brought over the Cossacks of the garrison to the defense of the revolution.

When the railroad workers refused to move the trains at Luga, the garrison there, loyal to the revolution (and not having surrendered, as reported in Petrograd the day before), began to fraternize with Kornilov’s troops stranded there. Here too, even the Cossacks came under the influence of the Bolshevik agitators among the revolutionary soldiery.

Neither was the Savage Division immune. Their officers wanted to arrest the delegation of Moslems the Bolsheviks sent to negotiate, but the soldiers refused this order as lacking hospitality to their co-religionists. In the result, the soldiers set up a red banner bearing the words “Land and Freedom” over a staff car.

Kornilov’s troop concentration near Pskov had also evaporated.

September 12 – August 30, 1917: The Insurrection Collapses. The Central Executive Committee of the Soviets announces the “complete demoralization” of the forces in Kornilov’s insurrection. General Krymov presented himself to Kerensky at the Winter Palace and was treated to a theatrical speech. He shot himself dead on the way back to the War Ministery.

General Krasnov, the commander of Kornilov’s cavalry advance, saw the same thing other Kornilovist officers had been seeing: animated agitators among his troops. These particular troops began to arrest their officers and put themselves under soldiers committees they themselves had elected. Going further, they formed a soviet and sent a delegation to the Provisional Government.

The Kronstadt sailors were also making their views felt. They sent a delegation to the Central Executive demanding representation there, but had to be satisfied with four non-voting seats.

The Bolsheviks in Finland went even further, assuming governmental functions that, Trotsky says, anticipated the October Revolution itself.

Meanwhile Kerensky dismissed Governor-general Savinkov and replaced him with another individual, who himself was dismissed three days later.

September 13 – August 31, 1917: Change in Command, etc. Prime Minister Kerensky appoints himself commander-in-chief in preference to General Kornilov. General Alexiev was made chief of staff. Kornilov asked for terms; meanwhile, said Kerensky, his orders as against the Germans should be obeyed.

Alexiev was sent to headquarters at Moghiliev. The Compromisers in the Soviet wanted Kornilov’s head; the Moscow Church Council was against it as not Christian. Kerensky placed Kornilov and a few other headquarters conspirators under house arrest instead.

Meanwhile Alexiev was trying to persuade the big bourgeoisie to supply stipends for the conspirators, under the explicit threat that Kornilov was in a position to reveal their conspiratorial roles. For essentially the same reason, Miliukov dropped out of sight; his party, the Cadets, officially explained that he had “gone to the Crimea for a rest.”

On the same day, Kerensky assembled the Directory he had been planning. He kept Tereshchenko as Foreign Minister, and added a general (who had to be promoted from colonel), an admiral, and a Menshevik.

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.