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 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 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 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 5-6 – 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 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.