Ten Days That Shook The World (28 page)

"But Lenin won't get Germany to make peace!" cried one.

A violent young soldier replied. "And whose fault is it? Your damn Kerensky, dirty bourgeois! To hell with Kerensky! We don't want him! We want Lenin...."

Outside the Duma an officer with a white arm-band was tearing down posters from the wall, swearing loudly. One read:

To the Population of Petrograd!

At this dangerous hour, when the Municipal Duma ought to use every means to calm the population, to assure it bread and other necessities, the Right Socialist Revolutionaries and the Cadets, forgetting their duty, have turned the Duma into a counter-revolutionary meeting, trying to raise part of the population against the rest, so as to facilitate the victory of Kornilov-Kerensky. Instead of doing their duty, the Right Socialist Revolutionaries and the Cadets have transformed the Duma into an arena of political attack upon the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies, against the revolutionary Government of peace, bread and liberty.

Citizens of Petrograd, we, the Bolshevik Municipal Councillors elected by you-we want you to know that the Right Socialist Revolutionaries and the Cadets are engaged in counter-revolutionary action, have forgotten their duty, and are leading the population to famine, to civil war. We, elected by 183,000 votes, consider it our duty to bring to the attention of our constituents what is going on in the Duma, and declare that we disclaim all responsibility for the terrible but inevitable consequences....

Far away still sounded occasional shots, but the city lay quiet, cold, as if exhausted by the violent spasms which had torn it.

In the Nicolai Hall the Duma session was coming to an end. Even the truculent Duma seemed a little stunned. One after another the Commissars reported-capture of the Telephone Exchange, street-fighting, the taking of the Vladimir school.... "The Duma," said Trupp, "is on the side of the democracy in its struggle against arbitrary violence; but in any case, whichever side wins, the Duma will always be against lynchings and torture...."

Konovski, Cadet, a tall old man with a cruel face: "When the troops of the legal Government arrive in Petrograd, they will shoot down these insurgents, and that will not be lynching!" Protests all over the hall, even from his own party.

Here there was doubt and depression. The counter-revolution was being put down. The Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionary party had voted lack of confidence in its officers; the left wing was in control; Avksentiev had resigned. signed. A courier reported that the Committee of Welcome sent to meet Kerensky at the railway station had been arrested. In the streets could be heard the dull rumble of distant cannonading, south and southwest. Still Kerensky did not come...

Only three newspapers were out-Pravda, Dielo Naroda and Novaya Zhizn. All of them devoted much space to the new "coalition" Government. The Socialist Revolutionary paper demanded a Cabinet without either Cadets or Bolsheviki. Gorky was hopeful; Smolny had made concessions. A purely Socialist Government was taking shape-all elements except the bourgeoisie. As for Pravda, it sneered:

We ridicule these coalitions with political parties whose most prominent members are petty journalists of doubtful reputation; our "coalition" is that of the proletariat and the revolutionary Army with the poor peasants...

On the walls a vainglorious announcement of the Vikzhel, threatening to strike if both sides did not compromise:

The conquerors of these riots, the saviors of the wreck of our country, these will be neither the Bolsheviki, nor the Committee for Salvation, nor the troops of Kerensky-but we, the Union of Railwaymen...

Red Guards are incapable of handling a complicated business like the railways; as for the Provisional Government, it has shown itself incapable of holding the power...

We refuse to lend our services to any party which does not act by authority of ... a Government based on the confidence of all the democracy....

Smolny thrilled with the boundless vitality of inexhaustible humanity in action.

In Trade Union headquarters Lozovsky introduced me to a delegate of the Railway Workers of the Nicolai line, who said that the men were holding huge mass-meetings, condemning the action of their leaders.

"All power to the Soviets!" he cried, pounding on the table. "Theoborontsi in the Central Committee are playing Kornilov’s game. They tried to send a mission to the Stavka, but we arrested them at Minsk.... Our branch has demanded an All-Russian Convention, and they refuse to call it...."

The same situation as in the Soviets, the Army Committees. One after another the various democratic organizations, all over Russia, were cracking and changing. The Cooperatives were torn by internal struggles; the meetings of the Peasants' Executive broke up in stormy wrangling; even among the Cossacks there was trouble....

On the top floor the Military Revolutionary Committee was in full blast, striking and slacking not. Men went in, fresh and vigorous; night and day and night and day they threw themselves into the terrible machine; and came out limp, blind with fatigue, hoarse and filthy, to fall on the floor and sleep.... The Committee for Salvation had been outlawed. Great piles of new proclamations (See App. VIII, Sect. 2) littered the floor:

... The conspirators, who have no support among the garrison or the working-class, above all counted on the suddenness of their attack. Their plan was discovered in time by Sub-Lieutenant Blagonravov, thanks to the revolutionary vigilance of a soldier of the Red Guard, whose name shall be made public. At the center of the plot was the Committee for Salvation. Colonel Polkovnikov was in command of their forces, and the orders were signed by Gotz, former member of the Provisional Government, allowed at liberty on his word of honor....

Bringing these facts to the attention of the Petrograd population, the Military Revolutionary Committee orders the arrest of all concerned in the conspiracy, who shall be tried before the Revolutionary Tribunal....

From Moscow, word that the yunkers and Cossacks had surrounded the Kremlin and ordered the Soviet troops to lay down their arms. The Soviet forces complied, and as they were leaving the Kremlin, were set upon and shot down. Small forces of Bolsheviki had been driven from the Telephone and Telegraph offices; the yunkers now held the center of the city. ... But all around them the Soviet troops were mustering. Street-fighting was slowly gathering way; all attempts at compromise had failed.... On the side of the Soviet, ten thousand garrison soldiers and a few Red Guards; on the side of the Government, six thousand yunkers, twenty-five hundred Cossacks and two thousand White Guards.

The Petrograd Soviet was meeting, and next door the new Tsay-ee-kah, acting on the decrees and orders (See App. VIII, Sect. 3) which came down in a steady stream from the Council of People's Commissars in session upstairs; on the Order in Which Laws Are to be Ratified and Published, Establishing an Eight hour Days for Workers, and Lunatcharsky's "Basis for a System of Popular Education." Only a few hundred people were present at the two meetings, most of them armed. Smolny was almost deserted, except for the guards, who were busy at the hall windows, setting up machine-guns to command the flanks of the building.

In the Tsay-ee-kah a delegate of the Vikzhel was speaking: "We refuse to transport the troops of either party.... We have sent a committee to Kerensky to say that if he continues to march on Petrograd we will break his lines of communication...."

He made the usual plea for a conference of all the Socialist parties to form a new Government....

Kameniev answered discreetly. The Bolsheviki would be very glad to attend the conference. The center of gravity, however, lay not in composition of such a Government, but in its acceptance of the program of the Congress of Soviets.

... The Tsay-ee-kah had deliberated on the declaration made by the Left Socialist Revolutionaries and the Social Democrats Internationalists, and had accepted the proposition of proportional representation at the conference, even including delegates from the Army Committees and the Peasants' Soviets....

In the great hall, Trotsky recounted the events of the day.

"We offered the Vladimir yunkers a chance to surrender," he said. "We wanted to settle matters without bloodshed. But now that blood has been spilled there is only one way-pitiless struggle. It would be childish to think we can win by any other means.... The moment is decisive. Everybody must cooperate with the Military Revolutionary Committee, report where there are stores of barbed wire, benzine, guns.

... We've won the power; now we must keep it!"

The Menshevik Yoffe tried to read his party's declaration, but Trotsky refused to allow "a debate about principle."

"Our debates are now in the streets," he cried. "The decisive step has been taken. We all, and I in particular, take the responsibility for what is happening...."

Soldiers from the front, from Gatchina, told their stories. One from the Death Battalion, Four Hundred Eighty-first Artillery: "When the trenches hear of this, they will cry, 'This is our Government!'" A yunker from Peterhof said that he and two others had refused to march against the Soviets; and when his comrades had returned from the defense of the Winter Palace they appointed him their Commissar, to go to Smolny and offer their services to the real Revolution....

Then Trotsky again, fiery, indefatigable, giving orders, answering questions.

"The petty bourgeoisie, in order to defeat the workers, soldiers and peasants, would combine with the devil himself!" he said once. Many cases of drunkenness had been remarked the last two days. "No drinking, comrades! No one must be on the streets after eight in the evening, except the regular guards. All places suspected of having stores of liquor should be searched, and the liquor destroyed. (See App. VIII, Sect. 4) No mercy to the sellers of liquor...."

The Military Revolutionary Committee sent for the delegation from the Viborg section; then for the members from Putilov. They clumped out hurriedly.

"For each revolutionist killed," said Trotsky, "we shall kill five counter-revolutionists!"

Down-town again. The Duma brilliantly illuminated and great crowds pouring in. In the lower hall wailing and cries of grief; the throng surged back and forth before the bulletin board, where was posted a list of yunkers killed in the day's fighting-or supposed to be killed, for most of the dead afterward turned up safe and sound.... Up in the Alexander Hall the Committee for Salvation held forth. The gold and red epaulettes of officers were conspicuous, the familiar faces of the Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary intellectuals, the hard eyes and bulky magnificence of bankers and diplomats, officials of the old régime, and well-dressed women....

The telephone girls were testifying. Girl after girl came to the tribune-over-dressed, fashion-aping little girls, with pinched faces and leaky shoes. Girl after girl, flushing with pleasure at the applause of the "nice" people of Petrograd, of the officers, the rich, the great names of politics-girl after girl, to narrate her sufferings at the hands of the proletariat, and proclaim her loyalty to all that was old, established and powerful....

The Duma was again in session in the Nicolai Hall. The Mayor said hopefully that the Petrograd regiments were ashamed of their actions; propaganda was making headway.

[Graphic page-205 Proclamation for "wine pogroms" ]

Revolutionary law and order. A proclamation of the Finland Regiment, in December, 1917, announcing desperate remedies for "wine pogroms." For translation see Appendix 5.

... Emissaries came and went, reporting horrible deeds by the Bolsheviki, interceding to save the yunkers, busily investigating....

"The Bolsheviki," said Trupp, "will be conquered by moral force, and not by bayonets....."

Meanwhile all was not well on the revolutionary front. The enemy had brought up armoured trains, mounted with cannon. The Soviet forces, mostly raw Red Guards, were without officers and without a definite plan. Only five thousand regular soldiers had joined them; the rest of the garrison was either busy suppressing the yunker revolt, guarding the city, or undecided what to do. At ten in the evening Lenin addressed a meeting of delegates from the city regiments, who voted overwhelmingly to fight. A Committee of five soldiers was elected to serve as General Staff, and in the small hours of the morning the regiments left their barracks in full battle array.... Going home I saw them pass, swinging along with the regular tread of veterans, bayonets in perfect alignment, through the deserted streets of the conquered city....

At the same time, in the headquarters of the Vikzhel down on the Sadovaya, the conference of all the Socialist parties to form a new Government was under way. Abramovitch, for the center Mensheviki, said that there should be neither conquerors nor conquered-that bygones should be bygones. ...In this were agreed all the left wing parties. Dan, speaking in the name of the right Mensheviki, proposed to the Bolsheviki the following conditions for a truce: The Red Guard to be disarmed, and the Petrograd garrison to be placed at the orders of the Duma; the troops of Kerensky not to fire a single shot or arrest a single man; a Ministry of all the Socialist parties except the Bolsheviki. For Smolny Riazanov and Kameniev declared that a coalition ministry of all parties was acceptable, but protested at Dan's proposals. The Socialist Revolutionaries were divided; but the Executive Committee of the Peasants's Soviets and the Populist Socialists flatly refused to admit the Bolsheviki.... After bitter quarreling a commission was elected to draw up a workable plan....