Ten Days That Shook The World (21 page)
In spite of the revolutionary exaltation of the triumphant crowd, Avilov's cool tolerant reasoning had shaken them. Toward the end, the cries and hisses died away, and when he finished there was even some clapping.
Karelin followed him-also young, fearless, whose sincerity no one doubted-for the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, the party of Maria Spiridonova, the party which almost alone followed the Bolsheviki, and which represented the revolutionary peasants.
"Our party has refused to enter the Council of People's Commissars because we do not wish forever to separate ourselves from the part of the revolutionary army which left the Congress, a separation which would make it impossible for us to serve as intermediaries between the Bolsheviki and the other groups of the democracy.... And that is our principal duty at this moment. We cannot sustain any government except a government of Socialist coalition....
"We protest, moreover, against the tyrannical conduct of the Bolsheviki. Our Commissars have been driven from their posts. Our only organ, Znamia Truda (Banner of Labor), was forbidden to appear yesterday....
"The Central Duma is forming a powerful Committee for Salvation of Country and Revolution, to fight you. Already you are isolated, and your Government is without the support of a single other democratic group....
And now Trotsky stood upon the raised tribune, confident and dominating, with that sarcastic expression about his mouth which was almost a sneer. He spoke, in a ringing voice, and the great crowd rose to him.
"These considerations on the dangers of isolation of our party are not new. On the eve of insurrection our fatal defeat was also predicted. Everybody was against us; only a faction of the Socialist Revolutionaries of the left was with us in the Military Revolutionary Committee. How is it that we were able to overturn the Government almost without bloodshed?.... That fact is the most striking proof that we were not isolated. In reality the Provisional Government was isolated; the democratic parties which march against us were isolated, are isolated, and forever cut off from the proletariat!
"They speak of the necessity for a coalition. There is only one coalition possible-the coalition of the workers, soldiers and poorest peasants; and it is our party's honor to have realised that coalition.... What sort of coalition did Avilov mean? A coalition with those who supported the Government of Treason to the People? Coalition doesn't always add to strength. For example, could we have organized the insurrection with Dan and Avksentiev in our ranks?" Roars of laughter.
"Avksentiev gave little bread. Will a coalition with the oborontsi furnish more? Between the peasants and Avksentiev, who ordered the arrest of the Land Committees, we choose the peasants! Our Revolution will remain the classic revolution of history....
"They accuse us of repelling an agreement with the other democratic parties. But is it we who are to blame? Or must we, as Karelin put it, blame it on a 'misunderstanding'? No, comrades. When a party in full tide of revolution, still wreathed in powder-smoke, comes to say, 'Here is the Power-take it!'-and when those to whom it is offered go over to the enemy, that is not a misunderstanding.... that is a declaration of pitiless war. And it isn't we who have declared war....
"Avilov menaces us with failure of our peace efforts-if we remain 'isolated.' I repeat, I don't see how a coalition with Skobeliev, or even Terestchenko, can help us to get peace! Avilov tries to frighten us by the threat of a peace at our expense. And I answer that in any case, if Europe continues to be ruled by the imperialist bourgeoisie, revolutionary Russia will inevitably be lost....
"There are only two alternatives; either the Russian Revolution will create a revolutionary movement in Europe, or the European powers will destroy the Russian Revolution!"
They greeted him with an immense crusading acclaim, kindling to the daring of it, with the thought of championing mankind. And from that moment there was something conscious and decided about the insurrectionary masses, in all their actions, which never left them.
But on the other side, too, battle was taking form. Kameniev recognized a delegate from the Union of Railway Workers, a hard-faced, stocky man with an attitude of implacable hostility. He threw a bombshell.
"In the name of the strongest organization in Russia I demand the right to speak, and I say to you: the Vikzhelcharges me to make known the decision of the Union concerning the constitution of Power. The Central Committee refuses absolutely to support the Bolsheviki if they persist in isolating themselves from the whole democracy of Russia!" Immense tumult all over the hall.
"In 1905, and in the Kornilov days, the Railway Workers were the best defenders of the Revolution. But you did not invite us to your Congress-" Cries, "It was the old Tsay-ee-kah which did not invite you!" The orator paid no attention. "We do not recognize the legality of this Congress; since the departure of the Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries there is not a legal quorum.... The Union supports the old Tsay-ee-Kah, and declares that the Congress has no right to elect a new Committee....
"The Power should be a Socialist and revolutionary Power, responsible before the authorised organs of the entire revolutionary democracy. Until the constitution of such a power, the Union of Railway Workers, which refuses to transport counter-revolutionary troops to Petrograd, at the same time forbids the execution of any order whatever without the consent of the Vikzhel. The Vikzhel also takes into its hands the entire administration of the railroads of Russia."
At the end he could hardly be heard for the furious storm of abuse which beat upon him. But it was a heavy blow-that could be seen in the concern on the faces of the presidium. Kameniev, however, merely answered that there could be no doubt of the legality of the Congress, as even the quorum established by the old Tsay-ee-Kah was exceeded-in spite of the secession of the Mensheviki and Socialist Revolution arises....
Then came the vote on the Constitution of Power, which carried the Council of People's Commissars into office by an enormous majority....
The election of the new Tsay-ee-kah, the new parliament of the Russian Republic, took barely fifteen minutes. Trotsky announced its composition: 100 members, of which 70 Bolsheviki.... As for the peasants, and the seceding factions, places were to be reserved for them. "We welcome into the Government all parties and groups which will adopt our program," ended Trotsky.
And thereupon the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets was dissolved, so that the members might hurry to their homes in the four corners of Russia and tell of the great happenings....
It was almost seven when we woke the sleeping conductors and motor-men of the street-cars which the Street-Railway Workers' Union always kept waiting at Smolny to take the Soviet delegates to their homes. In the crowded car there was less happy hilarity than the night before, I thought. Many looked anxious; perhaps they were saying to themselves, "Now we are masters, how can we do our will?"
At our apartment-house we were held up in the dark by an armed patrol of citizens and carefully examined. The Duma's proclamation was doing its work....
The landlady heard us come in, and stumbled out in a pink silk wrapper.
The House Committee has again asked that you take your turn on guard-duty with the rest of the men," she said.
"What's the reason for this guard-duty?"
"To protect the house and the women and children."
"Who from?"
"Robbers and murderers."
"But suppose there came a Commissar from the Military Revolutionary Committee to search for arms?"
"Oh, that's what they'll say they are.... And besides, what's the difference?"
I solemnly affirmed that the Consul had forbidden all American citizens to carry arms-especially in the neighborhood of the Russian intelligentsia....
Chapter 6: The Committee for Salvation
FRIDAY, November 9th....
Novotcherkask, November 8th.
In view of the revolt of the Bolsheviki, and their attempt to depose the Provisional Government and to seize the power in Petrograd... the Cossack Government declares that it considers these acts criminal and absolutely inadmissible. In consequence, the Cossacks will lend all their support to the Provisional Government, which is a government of coalition. Because of these circumstances, and until the return of the Provisional Government to power, and the restoration of order in Russia, I take upon myself, beginning November 7th, all the power in that which concerns the region of the Don.
Signed: ATAMAN KALEDIN
President of the Government of the Cossack Troops.
Prikaz of the Minister-President Kerensky, dated at Gatchina:
I, Minister-President of the Provisional Government, and Supreme Commander of all the armed forces of the Russian Republic, declare that I am at the head of regiments from the Front who have remained faithful to the fatherland.
I order all the troops of the Military District of Petrograd, who through mistake or folly have answered the appeal of the traitors to the country and the Revolution, to return to their duty without delay.
This order shall be read in all regiments, battalions and squadrons.
Signed: Minister-President of the Provisional
Government and Supreme Commander
A. F. KERENSKY.
Telegram from Kerensky to the General in Command of the Northern Front:
The town of Gatchina has been taken by the loyal regiments without bloodshed. Detachments of Cronstadt sailors, and of the Semionovsky and Ismailovsky regiments, gave up their arms without resistance and joined the Government troops.
I order all the designated units to advance as quickly as possible. The Military Revolutionary Committee has ordered its troops to retreat....
Gatchina, about thirty kilometers south-west, had fallen during the night. Detachments of the two regiments mentioned-not the sailors-while wandering captainless in the neighborhood, had indeed been surrounded by Cossacks and given up their arms; but it was not true that they had joined the Government troops. At this very moment crowds of them, bewildered and ashamed, were up at Smolny trying to explain. They did not think the Cossacks were so near.... They had tried to argue with the Cossacks....
Apparently the greatest confusion prevailed along the revolutionary front. The garrisons of all the little towns southward had split hopelessly, bitterly into two factions-or three: the high command being on the side of Kerensky, in default of anything stronger, the majority of the rank and file with the Soviets, and the rest unhappily wavering.
Hastily the Military Revolutionary Committee appointed to command the defense of Petrograd an ambitious regular Army Captain, Muraviov, the same Muraviov who had organized the Death Battalions during the summer, and had once been heard to advise the Government that "it was too lenient with the Bolsheviki; they must be wiped out." A man of military mind, who admired power and audacity, perhaps sincerely....
Beside my door when I came down in the morning were posted two new orders of the Military Revolutionary Committee, directing that all shops and stores should open as usual, and that all empty rooms and apartments should be put at the disposal of the Committee....
For thirty-six hours now the Bolsheviki had been cut off from provincial Russia and the outside world. The railway men and telegraphers refused to transmit their dispatches, the postmen would not handle their mail. Only the Government wireless at Tsarskoye Selo launched half-hourly bulletins and manifestoes to the four corners of heaven; the Commissars of Smolny raced the Commissars of the City Duma on speeding trains half across the earth; and two airplanes, laden with propaganda, fled high up toward the Front....
But the eddies of insurrection were spreading through Russia with a swiftness surpassing any human agency. Helsingfors Soviet passed resolutions of support; Kiev Bolsheviki captured the arsenal and the telegraph station, only to be driven out by delegates to the Congress of Cossacks, which happened to be meeting there; in Kazan, a Military Revolutionary Committee arrested the local garrison staff and the Commissar of the Provisional Government; from far Krasnoyarsk, in Siberia, came news that the Soviets were in control of the Municipal institutions; at Moscow, where the situation was aggravated by a great strike of leather-workers on one side, and a threat of general lock-out on the other, the Soviets had voted overwhelmingly to support the action of the Bolsheviki in Petrograd.... Already a Military Revolutionary Committee was functioning.
Everywhere the same thing happened. The common soldiers and the industrial workers supported the Soviets by a vast majority; the officers, yunkers and middle class generally were on the side of the Government-as were the bourgeois Cadets and the "moderate" Socialist parties. In all these towns sprang up Committees for Salvation of Country and Revolution, arming for civil war....
Vast Russia was in a state of solution. As long ago as 1905 the process had begun; the March Revolution had merely hastened it, and giving birth to a sort of forecast of the new order, had ended by merely perpetuating the hollow structure of the old regime. Now, however, the Bolsheviki, in one night, had dissipated it, as one blows away smoke. Old Russia was no more; human society flowed molten in primal heat, and from the tossing sea of flame was emerging the class struggle, stark and pitiless-and the fragile, slowly-cooling crust of new planets....