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Title: Ten Days That Shook the World Author: John Reed

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Ten Days That Shook the World by John Reed

Table of Contents Preface.

Notes and Explanations.

Chapter 1. Background.

Chapter 2. The Coming Storm.

Chapter 3. On the Eve.

Chapter 4. The Fall of the Provisional Government.

Chapter 5. Plunging Ahead.

Chapter 6. The Committee for Salvation.

Chapter 7. The Revolutionary Front.

Chapter 8. Counter-Revolution.

Chapter 9. Victory.

Chapter 10. Moscow.

Chapter 11. The Conquest of Power.

Chapter 12. The Peasants’ Congress.

Appendices I - XII
Preface

This book is a slice of intensified history— history as I saw it. It does not pretend to be
anything but a detailed account of the November Revolution, when the Bolsheviki, at the
head of the workers and soldiers, seized the state power of Russia and placed it in the
hands of the Soviets.

Naturally most of it deals with “Red Petrograd,” the capital and heart of the insurrection.
But the reader must realize that what took place in Petrograd was almost exactly
duplicated, with greater or lesser intensity, at different intervals of time, all over Russia.

EeIn this book, the first of several which I am writing, I must confine myself to a
chronicle of those events which I myself observed and experienced, and those
supported by reliable evidence; preceded by two chapters briefly outlining the
background and causes of the November Revolution. I am aware that these two
chapters make difficult reading, but they are essential to an understanding of what
follows.

Many questions will suggest themselves to the mind of the reader. What is Bolshevism?
What kind of a governmental structure did the Bolsheviki set up? If the Bolsheviki
championed the Constituent Assembly before the November Revolution, why did they
disperse it by force of arms afterward? And if the bourgeoisie opposed the Constituent
Assembly until the danger of Bolshevism became apparent, why did they champion it
afterward?

These and many other questions cannot be answered here. In another volume,
“Kornilov to Brest-Litovsk,” I trace the course of the Revolution up to and including the
German peace. There I explain the origin and functions of the Revolutionary
organisations, the evolution of popular sentiment, the dissolution of the Constituent
Assembly, the structure of the Soviet state, and the course and outcome of the Brest-
Litovsk negotiations....

In considering the rise of the Bolsheviki it is necessary to understand that Russian

economic life and the Russian army were not disorganised on November 7th, 1917, but
many months before, as the logical result of a process which began as far back as
1915. The corrupt reactionaries in control of the Tsar’s Court deliberately undertook to
wreck Russia in order to make a separate peace with Germany. The lack of arms on the
front, which had caused the great retreat of the summer of 1915, the lack of food in the
army and in the great cities, the break-down of manufactures and transportation in 1916
— all these we know now were part of a gigantic campaign of sabotage. This was
halted just in time by the March Revolution.

For the first few months of the new regime, in spite of the confusion incident upon a
great Revolution, when one hundred and sixty millions of the world’s most oppressed
peoples suddenly achieved liberty, both the internal situation and the combative power
of the army actually improved.

But the “honeymoon” was short. The propertied classes wanted merely a political
revolution, which would take the power from the Tsar and give it to

them. They wanted Russia to be a constitutional Republic, like France or the United
States; or a constitutional Monarchy, like England. On the other hand, the masses of the
people wanted real industrial and agrarian democracy.

William English Walling, in his book, “Russia’s Message,” an account of the Revolution
of 1905, describes very well the state of mind of the Russian workers, who were later to
support Bolshevism almost unanimously:

They (the working people) saw it was possible that even under a free Government, if it
fell into the hands of other social classes, they might still continue to starve....

The Russian workman is revolutionary, but he is neither violent, dogmatic, nor

unintelligent. He is ready for barricades, but he has studied them, and alone of the
workers of the world he has learned about them from actual experience. He is ready
and willing to fight his oppressor, the capitalist class, to a finish. But he does not ignore
the existence of other classes. He merely asks that the other classes take one side or
the other in the bitter conflict that draws near....

They (the workers) were all agreed that our (American) political institutions were
preferable to their own, but they were not very anxious to exchange one despot for
another (i.e., the capitalist class)....

The workingmen of Russia did not have themselves shot down, executed by hundreds
in Moscow, Riga and Odessa, imprisoned by thousands in every Russian jail, and exiled
to the deserts and the arctic regions, in exchange for the doubtful privileges of the
workingmen of Goldfields and Cripple Creek....

And so developed in Russia, in the midst of a foreign war, the Social Revolution on top
of the Political Revolution, culminating in the triumph of Bolshevism.
Mr. A. J. Sack, director in this country of the Russian Information Bureau, which
opposes the Soviet Government, has this to say in his book, “The Birth of the Russian
Democracy”: The Bolsheviks organised their own cabinet, with Nicholas Lenine as
Premier and Leon Trotsky— Minister of Foreign Affairs. The inevitability of their coming
into power became evident almost immediately after the March Revolution. The history
of the Bolsheviki, after the Revolution, is a history of their steady growth....

Foreigners, and Americans especially, frequently emphasise the “ignorance” of the

Russian workers. It is true they lacked the political experience of the peoples of the
West, but they were very well trained in voluntary organisation. In 1917 there were more
than twelve million members of the Russian consumers’ Cooperative societies; and the
Soviets themselves are a wonderful demonstration of their organising genius. Moreover,
there is probably not a people in the world so well educated in Socialist theory and its
practical application.

William English Walling thus characterises them:

The Russian working people are for the most part able to read and write. For many
years the country has been in such a disturbed condition that they have had the
advantage of leadership not only of intelligent individuals in their midst, but of a large
part of the equally revolutionary educated class, who have turned to the working people
with their ideas for the political and social regeneration of Russia....

Many writers explain their hostility to the Soviet Government by arguing that the last
phase of the Russian Revolution was simply a struggle of the “respectable” elements
against the brutal attacks of Bolshevism. However, it was the propertied classes, who,
when they realised the growth in power of the popular revolutionary organisations,
undertook to destroy them and to halt the Revolution. To this end the propertied classes
finally resorted to desperate measures. In order to wreck the Kerensky Ministry and the
Soviets, transportation was disorganised and internal troubles provoked; to crush the
Factory-Shop Committees, plants were shut down, and fuel and raw materials diverted;
to break the Army Committees at the front, capital punishment was restored and military
defeat connived at.

This was all excellent fuel for the Bolshevik fire. The Bolsheviki retorted by preaching
the class war, and by asserting the supremacy of the Soviets.

Between these two extremes, with the other factions which whole-heartedly or half-
heartedly supported them, were the so-called “moderate” Socialists, the Mensheviki and
Socialist Revolutionaries, and several smaller parties. These groups were also attacked
by the propertied classes, but their power of resistance was crippled by their theories.
Roughly, the Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries believed that Russia was not
economically ripe for a social revolution— that only a political revolution was possible.
According to their interpretation, the Russian masses were not educated enough to take
over the power; any attempt to do so would inevitably bring on a reaction, by means of
which some ruthless opportunist might restore the old regime. And so it followed that
when the “moderate” Socialists were forced to assume the power, they were afraid to
use it.

They believed that Russia must pass through the stages of political and economic
development known to Western Europe, and emerge at last, with the rest of the world,
into full-fledged Socialism. Naturally, therefore, they agreed with the propertied classes
that Russia must first be a parliamentary state— though with some improvements on
the Western democracies. As a consequence, they insisted upon the collaboration of
the propertied classes in the Government.

From this it was an easy step to supporting them. The “moderate” Socialists needed the
bourgeoisie. But the bourgeoisie did not need the “moderate” Socialists. So it resulted in
the Socialist Ministers being obliged to give way, little by little, on their entire program,
while the propertied classes grew more and more insistent.

And at the end, when the Bolsheviki upset the whole hollow compromise, the
Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries found themselves fighting on the side of the
propertied classes.... In almost every country in the world to-day the same phenomenon
is visible.

Instead of being a destructive force, it seems to me that the Bolsheviki were the only
party in Russia with a constructive program and the power to impose it on the country. If
they had not succeeded to the Government when they did, there is little doubt in my
mind that the armies of Imperial Germany would have been in Petrograd and Moscow in
December, and Russia would again be ridden by a Tsar....

It is still fashionable, after a whole year of the Soviet Government, to speak of the
Bolshevik insurrection as an “adventure.” Adventure it was, and one of the most
marvellous mankind ever embarked upon, sweeping into history at the head of the
toiling masses, and staking everything on their vast and simple desires. Already the
machinery had been set up by which the land of the great estates could be distributed
among the peasants. The Factory-Shop Committees and the Trade Unions were there
to put into operation workers’ control of industry. In every village, town, city, district and
province there were Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, prepared to
assume the task of local administration.
No matter what one thinks of Bolshevism, it is undeniable that the Russian Revolution is
one of the great events of human history, and the rise of the Bolsheviki a phenomenon
of world-wide importance. Just as historians search the records for the minutest details
of the story of the Paris Commune, so they will want to know what happened in
Petrograd in November, 1917, the spirit which animated the people, and how the
leaders looked, talked and acted. It is with this in view that I have written this book.

In the struggle my sympathies were not neutral. But in telling the story of those great
days I have tried to see events with the eye of a conscientious reporter, interested in
setting down the truth.

J.R.

New York, January 1st 1919. Notes and Explanations

To the average reader the multiplicity of Russian organisations— political groups,

Committees and Central Committees, Soviets, Dumas and Unions— will prove
extremely confusing. For this reason I am giving here a few brief definitions and
explanations.

Political Parties

In the elections to the Constituent Assembly, there were seventeen tickets in Petrograd,
and in some of the provincial towns as many as forty; but the following summary of the
aims and composition of political parties is limited to the groups and factions mentioned
in this book. Only the essence of their programmes and the general character of their
constituencies can be noticed....

 1.- Monarchists, of various shades, Octobrists, etc. These once-powerful factions

no longer existed openly; they either worked underground, or their members
joined the Cadets, as the Cadets came by degrees to stand for their political
programme. Representatives in this book, Rodzianko, Shulgin.

 2.-Cadets. So-called from the initials of its name, Constitutional Democrats. Its
official name is “Party of the People’s Freedom.” Under the Tsar composed of
Liberals from the propertied classes, the Cadets were the great party of political
reform, roughly corresponding to the Progressive Party in America. When the
Revolution broke out in March, 1917, the Cadets formed the first Provisional
Government. The Cadet Ministry was overthrown in April because it declared
itself in favour of Allied imperialistic aims, including the imperialistic aims of the
Tsar’s Government. As the Revolution became more and more a social economic
 Revolution, the Cadets grew more and more conservative. Its representatives in
this book are: Miliukov, Vinaver, Shatsky.

 2a. Group of Public Men. After the Cadets had become unpopular through their
relations with the Kornilov counter-revolution, the Group of Public Men was
formed in Moscow. Delegates from the Group of Public Men were given portfolios
in the last Kerensky Cabinet. The Group declared itself non-partisan, although its
intellectual leaders were men like Rodzianko and Shulgin. It was composed of
the more “modern” bankers, merchants and manufacturers, who were intelligent
enough to realise that the Soviets must be fought by their own weapon—
economic organisation. Typical of the Group: Lianozov, Konovalov.

 3. Populist Socialists, or Trudoviki (Labour Group). Numerically a small party,

composed of cautious intellectuals, the leaders of the Cooperative societies, and
conservative peasants. Professing to be Socialists, the Populists really supported
the interests of the petty bourgeoisie— clerks, shopkeepers, etc. By direct
descent, inheritors of the compromising tradition of the Labour Group in the
Fourth Imperial Duma, which was composed largely of peasant representatives.
Kerensky was the leader of the Trudoviki in the Imperial Duma when the
Revolution of March, 1917, broke out. The Populist Socialists are a nationalistic
party. Their representatives in this book are: Peshekhanov, Tchaikovsky.

 4. Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Originally Marxian Socialists. At a

party congress held in 1903, the party split, on the question of tactics, into two
factions— the Majority (Bolshinstvo), and the Minority (Menshinstvo). From this
sprang the names “Bolsheviki” and “Mensheviki”— “members of the majority” and
“members of the minority.” These two wings became two separate parties, both
calling themselves “Russian Social Democratic Labour Party,” and both
professing to be Marxians. Since the Revolution of 1905 the Bolsheviki were
really the minority, becoming again the majority in September, 1917.

a. Mensheviki. This party includes all shades of Socialists who believe that
society must progress by natural evolution toward Socialism, and that the
working-class must conquer political power first. Also a nationalistic party. This
was the party of the Socialist intellectuals, which means: all the means of
education having been in the hands of the propertied classes, the intellectuals
instinctively reacted to their training, and took the side of the propertied classes.
Among their representatives in this book are: Dan, Lieber, Tseretelli.

b. Mensheviki Internationalists. The radical wing of the Mensheviki,

internationalists and opposed to all coalition with the propertied classes; yet
unwilling to break loose from the conservative Mensheviki, and opposed to the
dictatorship of the working-class advocated by the Bolsheviki. Trotzky was long a
member of this group. Among their leaders: Martov, Martinov.

c. Bolsheviki. Now call themselves the Communist Party, in order to emphasise

their complete separation from the tradition of “moderate” or “parliamentary”
Socialism, which dominates the Mensheviki and the so-called Majority Socialists
in all countries. The Bolsheviki proposed immediate proletarian insurrection, and
seizure of the reins of Government, in order to hasten the coming of Socialism by
forcibly taking over industry, land, natural resources and financial institutions.
This party expresses the desires chiefly of the factory workers, but also of a large
section of the poor peasants. The name “Bolshevik” can not be translated by
“Maximalist.” The Maximalists are a separate group. (See paragraph 5b). Among
the leaders: Lenin, Trotzky, Lunatcharsky.

d. United Social Democrats Internationalists. Also called the Novaya Zhizn (New
Life) group, from the name of the very influential newspaper which was its organ.
A little group of intellectuals with a very small following among the working-class,
except the personal following of Maxim Gorky, its leader. Intellectuals, with
almost the same programme as the Mensheviki Internationalists, except that the
Novaya Zhizn group refused to be tied to either of the two great factions.
Opposed the Bolshevik tactics, but remained in the Soviet Government. Other
representatives in this book: Avilov, Kramarov.

e. Yedinstvo. Avery small and dwindling group, composed almost entirely of the
personal following of Plekhanov, one of the pioneers of the Russian Social
Democratic movement in the 80’s, and its greatest theoretician. Now an old man,
Plekhanov was extremely patriotic, too conservative even for the Mensheviki.
After the Bolshevik coup d’etat, Yedinstvo disappeared.

5. Socialist Revolutionary party. Called Essaires from the initials of their name.
Originally the revolutionary party of the peasants, the party of the Fighting
Organisations— the Terrorists. After the March Revolution, it was joined by many
who had never been Socialists. At that time it stood for the abolition of private
property in land only, the owners to be compensated in some fashion. Finally the
increasing revolutionary feeling of peasants forced the Essaires to abandon the
“compensation” clause, and led to the younger and more fiery intellectuals
breaking off from the main party in the fall of 1917 and forming a new party, the
Left Socialist Revolutionary party. The Essaires, who were afterward always
called by the radical groups “Right Socialist Revolutionaries,” adopted the
political attitude of the Mensheviki, and worked together with them. They finally
came to represent the wealthier peasants, the intellectuals, and the politically
uneducated populations of remote rural districts. Among them there was,
 however, a wider difference of shades of political and economic opinion than
among the Mensheviki. Among their leaders mentioned in these pages:
Avksentiev, Gotz, Kerensky, Tchernov, “Babuschka” Breshkovskaya.

a. Left Socialist Revolutionaries. Although theoretically sharing the Bolshevik

programme of dictatorship of the working-class, at first were reluctant to follow
the ruthless Bolshevik tactics. However, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries
remained in the Soviet Government, sharing the Cabinet portfolios, especially
that of Agriculture. They withdrew from the Government several times, but always
returned. As the peasants left the ranks of the Essaires in increasing numbers,
they joined the Left Socialist Revolutionary party, which became the great
peasant party supporting the Soviet Government, standing for confiscation
without compensation of the great landed estates, and their disposition by the
peasants themselves. Among the leaders: Spiridonova, Karelin, Kamkov,
Kalagayev.

b. Maximalists. An off-shoot of the Socialist Revolutionary party in the Revolution

of 1905, when it was a powerful peasant movement, demanding the immediate
application of the maximum Socialist programme. Now an insignificant group of
peasant anarchists.

Parliamentary Procedure

Russian meetings and conventions are organised after the continental model rather
than our own. The first action is usually the election of officers and the presidium.

The presidium is a presiding committee, composed of representatives of the groups and

political factions represented in the assembly, in proportion to their numbers. The
presidium arranges the Order of Business, and its members can be called upon by the
President to take the chair pro tern.

Each question (vopros) is stated in a general way and then debated, and at the close of
the debate resolutions are submitted by the different factions, and each one voted on
separately. The Order of Business can be, and usually is, smashed to pieces in the first
half hour. On the plea of “emergency,” which the crowd almost always grants, anybody
from the floor can get up and say anything on any subject. The crowd controls the
meeting, practically the only functions of the speaker being to keep order by ringing a
little bell, and to recognise speakers. Almost all the real work of the session is done in
caucuses of the different groups and political factions, which almost always cast their
votes in a body and are represented by floor-leaders. The result is, however, that at
every important new point, or vote, the session takes a recess to enable the different
groups and political factions to hold a caucus.
The crowd is extremely noisy, cheering or heckling speakers, over-riding the plans of
the presidium. Among the customary cries are: “Prosim! Please! Go on!” “Pravilno!” or
“Eto vierno! That’s true! Right!” “Do volno! Enough!” “Doloi! Down with him!” “Posor!
Shame!” and “Teesche! Silence! Not so noisy!”

Popular Organisations

1. Soviet. The word soviet means “council.” Under the Tsar the Imperial Council of State
was called Gosudarstvermyi Soviet. Since the Revolution, however, the term Soviet has
come to be associated with a certain type of parliament elected by members of working-
class economic organisations— the Soviet of Workers’, of Soldiers’, or of Peasants’
Deputies. I have therefore limited the word to these bodies, and wherever else it occurs
I have translated it “Council.”

Besides the local Soviets, elected in every city, town and village of Russia— and in
large cities, also Ward (Raionny) Soviets—there are also the oblastne or gubiernsky
(district or provincial) Soviets, and the Central Executive Committee of the All-Russian
Soviets in the capital, called from its initials Tsay-ee-kah. (See below, “Central
Committees”).

Almost everywhere the Soviets of Workers’ and of Soldiers’ Deputies combined very
soon after the March Revolution. In special matters concerning their peculiar interests,
however, the Workers’ and the Soldiers’ Sections continued to meet separately. The
Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies did not join the other two until after the Bolshevik coup
d’etat. They, too, were organised like the workers and soldiers, with an Executive
Committee of the All-Russian Peasants’ Soviets in the capital.

2. Trade Unions. Although mostly industrial in form, the Russian labour unions were still
called Trade Unions, and at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution had from three to four
million members. These Unions were also organised in an All- Russian body, a sort of
Russian Federation of Labour, which had its Central Executive Committee in the capital.

3. Factory-Shop Committees. These were spontaneous organisations created in the

factories by the workers in their attempt to control industry, taking advantage of the
administrative break-down incident upon the Revolution. Their function was by
revolutionary action to take over and run the factories. The Factory-Shop Committees
also had their All-Russian organisation, with a Central Committee at Petrograd, which
co-operated with the Trade Unions.

4. Dumas. The word duma means roughly “deliberative body.” The old Imperial Duma,
which persisted six months after the Revolution, in a democratised form, died a natural
death in September, 1917. The City Duma referred to in this book was the reorganised
Municipal Council, often called “Municipal Self- Government.” It was elected by direct
and secret ballot, and its only reason for failure to hold the masses during the Bolshevik
Revolution was the general decline in influence of all purely political representation in
the fact of the growing power of organisations based on economic groups.

5. Zemstvos. May be roughly translated “county councils.” Under the Tsar semi political,
semi-social bodies with very little administrative power, developed and controlled largely
by intellectual Liberals among the land-owning classes. Their most important function
was education and social service among the peasants. During the war the Zemstvos
gradually took over the entire feeding and clothing of the Russian Army, as well as the
buying from foreign countries, and work among the soldiers generally corresponding to
the work of the American Y. M. C. A. at the Front. After the March Revolution the
Zemstvos were democratized, with a view to making them the organs of local
government in the rural districts. But like the City Dumas, they could not compete with
the Soviets.

6. Cooperatives. These were the workers’ and peasants’ Consumers’ Cooperative

societies, which had several million members all over Russia before the Revolution.
Founded by Liberals and “moderate” Socialists, the Cooperative movement was not
supported by the revolutionary Socialist groups, because it was a substitute for the
complete transference of means of production and distribution into the hands of the
workers. After the March Revolution the Cooperatives spread rapidly, and were
dominated by Populist Socialists, Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries, and acted
as a conservative political force until the Bolshevik Revolution. However, it was the
Cooperatives which fed Russia when the old structure of commerce and transportation
collapsed.

7. Army Committees. The Army Committees were formed by the soldiers at the front to
combat the reactionary influence of the old regime officers. Every company, regiment,
brigade, division and corps had its committee, over all of which was elected the Army
Committee. The Central Army Committee cooperated with the General Staff. The
administrative break-down in the army incident upon the Revolution threw upon the
shoulders of the Army Committees most of the work of the Quartermaster’s Department,
and in some cases, even the command of troops.

8. Fleet Committees. The corresponding organisations in the Navy.

Central Committees

In the spring and summer of 1917, All-Russian conventions of every sort of organisation
were held at Petrograd. There were national congresses of Workers’, Soldiers’ and
Peasants’ Soviets, Trade Unions, Factory-Shop Committees, Army and Fleet
Committees— besides every branch of the military and naval service, Cooperatives,
Nationalities, etc. Each of these conventions elected a Central Committee, or a Central
Executive Committee, to guard its particular interests at the seat of Government. As the
Provisional Government grew weaker, these Central Committees were forced to
assume more and more administrative powers.

The most important Central Committees mentioned in this book are:

Union of Unions. During the Revolution of 1905, Professor Miliukov and other Liberals
established unions of professional men— doctors, lawyers, physicians, etc. These were
united under one central organisation, the Union of Unions. In 1905 the Union of Unions
acted with the revolutionary democracy; in 1917, however, the Union of Unions opposed
the Bolshevik uprising, and united the Government employees who went on strike
against the authority of the Soviets.

Tsay-ee-kah. All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviets of Workers’ and

Soldiers’ Deputies. So called from the initials of its name.

Tsentroflot. “Centre-Fleet”— the Central Fleet Committee.

Vikzhel. All-Russian Central Committee of the Railway Workers’ Union. So called from
the initials of its name.

Other Organisations

Red Guards. The armed factory workers of Russia. The Red Guards were first formed
during the Revolution of 1905, and sprang into existence again in the days of March,
1917, when a force was needed to keep order in the city. At that time they were armed,
and all efforts of the Provisional Government to disarm them were more or less
unsuccessful. At every great crisis in the Revolution the Red Guards appeared on the
streets, untrained and undisciplined, but full of Revolutionary zeal.

White Guards. Bourgeois volunteers, who emerged in the last stages of the Revolution,
to defend private property from the Bolshevik attempt to abolish it. A great many of them
were University students.

Tekhintsi. The so-called “Savage Division” in the army, made up of Mohametan

tribesmen from Central Asia, and personally devoted to General Kornilov. The Tekhintsi
were noted for their blind obedience and their savage cruelty in warfare.
Death Battalions. Or Shock Battalions. The Women’s Battalion is known to the world as
the Death Battalion, but there were many Death Battalions composed of men. These
were formed in the summer of 1917 by Kerensky, for the purpose of strengthening the
discipline and combative fire of the army by heroic example. The Death Battalions were
composed mostly of intense young patriots.

These came for the most part from among the sons of the propertied classes. Union of
Officers. An organisation formed among the reactionary officers in the

army to combat politically the growing power of the Army Committees. Knights of St.
George. The Cross of St. George was awarded for distinguished action in battle. Its
holder automatically became a “Knight of St. George. ” The predominant influence in the
organisation was that of the supporters of the military idea.

Peasants’ Union. In 1905, the Peasants’ Union was a revolutionary peasants’

organisation. In 1917, however, it had become the political expression of the more
prosperous peasants, to fight the growing power and revolutionary aims of the Soviets
of Peasants’ Deputies.

Chronology and Spelling

I have adopted in this book our Calendar throughout, instead of the former Russian
Calendar, which was thirteen days earlier.

In the spelling of Russian names and words, I have made no attempt to follow any
scientific rules for transliteration, but have tried to give the spelling which would lead the
English-speaking reader to the simplest approximation of their pronunciation.

Sources

Much of the material in this book is from my own notes. I have also relied, however,
upon a heterogeneous file of several hundred assorted Russian newspapers, covering
almost every day of the time described, of files of the English paper, the Russian Daily
News, and of the two French papers, Journal de Russie and Entente. But far more
valuable than these is the Bulletin de la Presse issued daily by the French Information
Bureau in Petrograd, which reports all important happenings, speeches and the
comment of the Russian press. Of this I have an almost complete file from the spring of
1917 to the end of January, 1918.

Besides the foregoing, I have in my possession almost every proclamation,

decree and announcement posted on the walls of Petrograd from the middle of
September, 1917, to the end of January, 1918. Also the official publication of all
Government decrees and orders, and the official Government publication of the secret
treaties and other documents discovered in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs when the
Bolsheviki took it over.

Ten Days That Shook The World Chapter I

Background

Toward the end of September, 1917, an alien Professor of Sociology visiting Russia
came to see me in Petrograd. He had been informed by business men and intellectuals
that the Revolution was slowing down. The Professor wrote an article about it, and then
travelled around the country, visiting factory towns and peasant communities— where,
to his astonishment, the Revolution seemed to be speeding up. Among the wage-
earners and the land-working people it was common to hear talk of “all land to the
peasants, all factories to the workers.” If the Professor had visited the front, he would
have heard the whole Army talking Peace....

The Professor was puzzled, but he need not have been; both observations were
correct. The property-owning classes were becoming more conservative, the masses of
the people more radical.

There was a feeling among business men and the intelligentzia generally that the
Revolution had gone quite far enough, and lasted too long; that things should settle
down. This sentiment was shared by the dominant “moderate” Socialist groups, the
oborontsi (See App. I, Sect. 1) Mensheviki and Socialist

Revolutionaries, who supported the Provisional Government of Kerensky. On October

14th the official organ of the “moderate” Socialists said:

The drama of Revolution has two acts; the destruction of the old regime and the
creation of the new one. The first act has lasted long enough. Now it is time to go on to
the second, and to play it as rapidly as possible. As a great revolutionist put it, “Let us
hasten, friends, to terminate the Revolution. He who makes it last too long will not
gather the fruits....”

Among the worker, soldier and peasant masses, however, there was a stubborn feeling
that the “first act” was not yet played out. On the front the Army Committees were
always running foul of officers who could not get used to treating their men like human
beings; in the rear the Land Committees elected by the peasants were being jailed for
trying to carry out Government regulations concerning the land; and the workmen (See
App. I, Sect. 2) in the factories were fighting black-lists and lockouts. Nay, furthermore,
returning political exiles were being excluded from the country as “undesirable” citizens;
and in some cases, men who returned from abroad to their villages were prosecuted
and imprisoned for revolutionary acts committed in 1905.

To the multiform discontent of the people the “moderate” Socialists had one answer:
Wait for the Constituent Assembly, which is to meet in December. But the masses were
not satisfied with that. The Constituent Assembly was all well and good; but there were
certain definite things for which the Russian Revolution had been made, and for which
the revolutionary martyrs rotted in their stark Brotherhood Grave on Mars Field, that
must be achieved Constituent Assembly or no Constituent Assembly: Peace, Land, and
Workers’ Control of Industry. The Constituent Assembly had been postponed and
postponed— would probably be postponed again, until the people were calm enough—
perhaps to modify their demands! At any rate, here were eight months of the Revolution
gone, and little enough to show for it....

Meanwhile the soldiers began to solve the peace question by simply deserting, the
peasants burned manor-houses and took over the great estates, the workers sabotaged
and struck.... Of course, as was natural, the manufacturers, land owners and army
officers exerted all their influence against any democratic compromise....

The policy of the Provisional Government alternated between ineffective reforms and
stern repressive measures. An edict from the Socialist Minister of Labour ordered all the
Workers’ Committees henceforth to meet only after working hours. Among the troops at
the front, “agitators” of opposition political parties were arrested, radical newspapers
closed down, and capital punishment applied— to revolutionary propagandists.
Attempts were made to disarm the Red Guard. Cossacks were sent to keep order in the
provinces....

These measures were supported by the “moderate” Socialists and their leaders in the
Ministry, who considered it necessary to cooperate with the propertied classes. The
people rapidly deserted them, and went over to the Bolsheviki, who stood for Peace,
Land, and Workers’ Control of Industry, and a Government of the working-class. In
September, 1917, matters reached a crisis. Against the overwhelming sentiment of the
country, Kerensky and the “moderate” Socialists succeeded in establishing a
Government of Coalition with the propertied classes; and as a result, the Mensheviki
and Socialist Revolutionaries lost the confidence of the people forever.

An article in Rabotchi Put (Workers’ Way) about the middle of October, entitled “The
Socialist Ministers,” expressed the feeling of the masses of the people against the
“moderate” Socialists:
Here is a list of their services.(See App. I, Sect. 3)

Tseretelli: disarmed the workmen with the assistance of General Polovtsev, checkmated
the revolutionary soldiers, and approved of capital punishment in the army.

Skobeliev: commenced by trying to tax the capitalists 100% of their profits, and finished
— and finished by an attempt to dissolve the Workers’ Committees in the shops and
factories.

Avksentiev: put several hundred peasants in prison, members of the Land Committees,
and suppressed dozens of workers’ and soldiers’ newspapers.

Tchernov: signed the “Imperial” manifest, ordering the dissolution of the Finnish Diet.

Savinkov: concluded an open alliance with General Kornilov. If this saviour of the
country was not able to betray Petrograd, it was due to reasons over which he had no
control.

Zarudny: with the sanction of Alexinsky and Kerensky, put some of the best workers of
the Revolution, soldiers and sailors, in prison.

Nikitin: acted as a vulgar policeman against the Railway Workers.

Kerensky: it is better not to say anything about him. The list of his services is too long....

A Congress of delegates of the Baltic Fleet, at Helsingfors, passed a resolution which

began as follows:

We demand the immediate removal from the ranks of the Provisional Government of the
“Socialist,” the political adventurer— Kerensky, as one who is scandalising and ruining
the great Revolution, and with it the revolutionary masses, by his shameless political
blackmail on behalf of the bourgeoisie....

The direct result of all this was the rise of the Bolsheviki....

Since March, 1917, when the roaring torrents of workmen and soldiers beating upon the
Tauride Palace compelled the reluctant Imperial Duma to assume the supreme power in
Russia, it was the masses of the people, workers, soldiers and peasants, which forced
every change in the course of the Revolution. They hurled the Miliukov Ministry down; it
was their Soviet which proclaimed to the world the Russian peace terms— “No
annexations, no indemnities, and the right of self-determination of peoples”; and again,
in July, it was the spontaneous rising of the unorganised proletariat which once more
stormed the Tauride Palace, to demand that the Soviets take over the Government of
Russia.

The Bolsheviki, then a small political sect, put themselves at the head of the movement.
As a result of the disastrous failure of the rising, public opinion turned against them, and
their leaderless hordes slunk back into the Viborg Quarter, which is Petrograd’s St.
Antoine. Then followed a savage hunt of the Bolsheviki; hundreds were imprisoned,
among them Trotzky, Madame Kollontai and Kameniev; Lenin and Zinoviev went into
hiding, fugitives from justice; the Bolshevik papers were suppressed. Provocators and
reactionaries raised the cry that the Bolsheviki were German agents, until people all
over the world believed it.

But the Provisional Government found itself unable to substantiate its accusations; the
documents proving pro-German conspiracy were discovered to be forgeries;[l] and one
by one the Bolsheviki were released from prison without trial, on nominal or no bail-until
only six remained. The impotence and indecision of the ever-changing Provisional
Government was an argument nobody could refute. The Bolsheviki raised again the
slogan so dear to the masses, “All Power to the Soviets!”— and they were not merely
self-seeking, for at that time the majority of the Soviets was “moderate” Socialist, their
bitter enemy.

[1] Part of the famous “Sisson Documents”.

But more potent still, they took the crude, simple desires of the workers, soldiers and
peasants, and from them built their immediate programme. And so, while the oborontsi
Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries involved themselves in compromise with the
bourgeoisie, the Bolsheviki rapidly captured the Russian masses. In July they were
hunted and despised; by September the metropolitan workmen, the sailors of the Baltic
Fleet, and the soldiers, had been won almost entirely to their cause. The September
municipal elections in the large cities (See App. I, Sect. 4) were significant; only 18 per
cent of the returns were Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary, against more than 70
per cent in June....

There remains a phenomenon which puzzled foreign observers: the fact that the Central
Executive Committees of the Soviets, the Central Army and Fleet Committees,[2] and
the Central Committees of some of the Unions— notably, the Post and Telegraph
Workers and the Railway Workers— opposed the Bolsheviki with the utmost violence.
These Central Committees had all been elected in the middle of the summer, or even
before, when the Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries had an enormous following;
and they delayed or prevented any new elections. Thus, according to the constitution of
the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, the All-Russian Congress should have
been called in September; but the Tsay-ee-kah[2] would not call the meeting, on the
ground that the Constituent Assembly was only two months away, at which time, they
hinted, the Soviets would abdicate. Meanwhile, one by one, the Bolsheviki were winning
in the local Soviets all over the country, in the Union branches and the ranks of the
soldiers and sailors. The Peasants’ Soviets remained still conservative, because in the
sluggish rural districts political consciousness developed slowly, and the Socialist
Revolutionary party had been for a generation the party which had agitated among the
peasants.... But even among the peasants a revolutionary wing was forming. It showed
itself clearly in October, when the left wing of the Socialist Revolutionaries split off, and
formed a new political faction, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries.

[2] See Notes and Explanations.

masses, “All Power to the Soviets!”— and they were not merely self-seeking, for at that
time the majority of the Soviets was “moderate” Socialist, their bitter enemy.

[1] Part of the famous “Sisson Documents”.

But more potent still, they took the crude, simple desires of the workers, soldiers and
peasants, and from them built their immediate programme. And so, while the oborontsi
Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries involved themselves in compromise with the
bourgeoisie, the Bolsheviki rapidly captured the Russian masses. In July they were
hunted and despised; by September the metropolitan workmen, the sailors of the Baltic
Fleet, and the soldiers, had been won almost entirely to their cause. The September
municipal elections in the large cities (See App. I, Sect. 4) were significant; only 18 per
cent of the returns were Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary, against more than 70
per cent in June....

There remains a phenomenon which puzzled foreign observers: the fact that the Central
Executive Committees of the Soviets, the Central Army and Fleet Committees,[2] and
the Central Committees of some of the Unions— notably, the Post and Telegraph
Workers and the Railway Workers— opposed the Bolsheviki with the utmost violence.
These Central Committees had all been elected in the middle of the summer, or even
before, when the Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries had an enormous following;
and they delayed or prevented any new elections. Thus, according to the constitution of
the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, the All-Russian Congress should have
been called in September; but the Tsay-ee-kah[2] would not call the meeting, on the
ground that the Constituent Assembly was only two months away, at which time, they
hinted, the Soviets would abdicate. Meanwhile, one by one, the Bolsheviki were winning
in the local Soviets all over the country, in the Union branches and the ranks of the
soldiers and sailors. The Peasants’ Soviets remained still conservative, because in the
sluggish rural districts political consciousness developed slowly, and the Socialist
Revolutionary party had been for a generation the party which had agitated among the
peasants.... But even among the peasants a revolutionary wing was forming. It showed
itself clearly in October, when the left wing of the Socialist Revolutionaries split off, and
formed a new political faction, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries.

[2] See Notes and Explanations.

At the same time there were signs everywhere that the forces of reaction were gaining
confidence.(See App. I, Sect. 5) At the Troitsky Farce theatre in Petrograd, for example,
a burlesque called Sins of the Tsar was interrupted by a group of Monarchists, who
threatened to lynch the actors for “insulting the Emperor.” Certain newspapers began to
sigh for a “Russian Napoleon.” It was the usual thing among bourgeois intelligentzia to
refer to the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies (Rabotchikh Deputatov) as Sabatchikh
Deputatov— Dogs’ Deputies.

On October 15th I had a conversation with a great Russian capitalist, Stepan

Georgevitch Lianozov, known as the “Russian Rockefeller”— a Cadet by political faith.

“Revolution,” he said, “is a sickness. Sooner or later the foreign powers must intervene
here— as one would intervene to cure a sick child, and teach it how to walk. Of course it
would be more or less improper, but the nations must realise the danger of Bolshevism
in their own countries— such contagious ideas as p‘roletarian dictatorship,’ and ‘world
social revolution’... There is a chance that this intervention may not be necessary.
Transportation is demoralised, the factories are closing down, and the Germans are
advancing. Starvation and defeat may bring the Russian people to their senses....”

Mr. Lianozov was emphatic in his opinion that whatever happened, it would be
impossible for merchants and manufacturers to permit the existence of the workers’
Shop Committees, or to allow the workers any share in the management of industry.

“As for the Bolsheviki, they will be done away with by one of two methods. The
Government can evacuate Petrograd, then a state of siege declared, and the military
commander of the district can deal with these gentlemen without legal formalities.... Or
if, for example, the Constituent Assembly manifests any Utopian tendencies, it can be
dispersed by force of arms.... ”

Winter was coming on— the terrible Russian winter. I heard business men speak of it
so: “Winter was always Russia’s best friend. Perhaps now it will rid us of Revolution.”
On the freezing front miserable armies continued to starve and die, without enthusiasm.
The railways were breaking down, food lessening, factories closing. The desperate
masses cried out that the bourgeoisie was sabotaging the life of the people, causing
defeat on the Front. Riga had been surrendered just after General Kornilov said publicly,
“Must we pay with Riga the price of bringing the country to a sense of its duty?”[3]

[3] See “Kornilov to Brest-Litovsk” by John Reed. Boni and Liveright N.Y., 1919.

To Americans it is incredible that the class war should develop to such a pitch. But I
have personally met officers on the Northern Front who frankly preferred military
disaster to cooperation with the Soldiers’ Committees. The secretary of the Petrograd
branch of the Cadet party told me that the break-down of the country’s economic life
was part of a campaign to discredit the Revolution. An Allied diplomat, whose name I
promised not to mention, confirmed this from his

own knowledge. I know of certain coal-mines near Kharkov which were fired and
flooded by their owners, of textile factories at Moscow whose engineers put the
machinery out of order when they left, of railroad officials caught by the workers in the
act of crippling locomotives....

A large section of the propertied classes preferred the Germans to the Revolution —
even to the Provisional Government— and didn’t hesitate to say so. In the Russian
household where I lived, the subject of conversation at the dinner table was almost
invariably the coming of the Germans, bringing “law and order.”... One evening I spent
at the house of a Moscow merchant; during tea we asked the eleven people at the table
whether they preferred “Wilhelm or the Bolsheviki.” The vote was ten to one for
Wilhelm...

The speculators took advantage of the universal disorganisation to pile up fortunes, and
to spend them in fantastic revelry or the corruption of Government officials. Foodstuffs
and fuel were hoarded, or secretly sent out of the country to Sweden. In the first four
months of the Revolution, for example, the reserve food-supplies were almost openly
looted from the great Municipal warehouses of Petrograd, until the two-years’ provision
of grain had fallen to less than enough to feed the city for one month.... According to the
official report of the last Minister of Supplies in the Provisional Government, coffee was
bought wholesale in Vladivostok for two rubles a pound, and the consumer in Petrograd

paid thirteen. In all the stores of the large cities were tons of food and clothing; but only
the rich could buy them.

In a provincial town I knew a merchant family turned speculator— maradior (bandit,

ghoul) the Russians call it. The three sons had bribed their way out of military service.
One gambled in foodstuffs. Another sold illegal gold from the Lena mines to mysterious
parties in Finland. The third owned a controlling interest in a chocolate factory, which
supplied the local Cooperative societies— on condition that the Cooperatives furnished
him everything he needed. And so, while the masses of the people got a quarter pound
of black bread on their bread cards, he had an abundance of white bread, sugar, tea,
candy, cake and butter.... Yet when the soldiers at the front could no longer fight from
cold, hunger and exhaustion, how indignantly did this family scream “Cowards!”— how

“ashamed” they were “to be Russians”... When finally the Bolsheviki found and
requisitioned vast hoarded stores of provisions, what “Robbers” they were.

Beneath all this external rottenness moved the old-time Dark Forces, unchanged since
the fall of Nicholas the Second, secret still and very active. The agents of the notorious
Okhrana still functioned, for and against the Tsar, for and against Kerensky— whoever
would pay.... In the darkness, underground organisations of all sorts, such as the Black
Hundreds, were busy attempting to restore reaction in some form or other.

In this atmosphere of corruption, of monstrous half-truths, one clear note sounded day
after day, the deepening chorus of the Bolsheviki, “All Power to the Soviets! All power to
the direct representatives of millions on millions of common workers, soldiers, peasants.
Land, bread, an end to the senseless war, an end to secret diplomacy, speculation,
treachery.... The Revolution is in danger, and with it the cause of the people all over the
world!”

The struggle between the proletariat and the middle class, between the Soviets and the
Government, which had begun in the first March days, was about to culminate. Having
at one bound leaped from the Middle Ages into the twentieth century, Russia showed
the startled world two systems of Revolution— the political and the social— in mortal
combat.

What a revelation of the vitality of the Russian Revolution, after all these months of
starvation and disillusionment! The bourgeoisie should have better known its Russia.
Not for a long time in Russia will the “sickness” of Revolution have run its course....

Looking back, Russia before the November insurrection seems of another age, almost
incredibly conservative. So quickly did we adapt ourselves to the newer, swifter life; just
as Russian politics swung bodily to the Left— until the Cadets were outlawed as
“enemies of the people,” Kerensky became a “counter revolutionist,” the “middle”
Socialist leaders, Tseretelli, Dan, Lieber, Gotz and Avksentiev, were too reactionary for
their following, and men like Victor Tchernov, and even Maxim Gorky, belonged to the
Right Wing....

About the middle of December, 1917, a group of Socialist Revolutionary leaders paid a
private visit to Sir George Buchanan, the British Ambassador, and implored him not to
mention the fact that they had been there, because they were “considered too far
Right.”

“And to think,” said Sir George. “One year ago my Government instructed me not to
receive Miliukov, because he was so dangerously Left!”

September and October are the worst months of the Russian year— especially the
Petrograd year. Under dull grey skies, in the shortening days, the rain fell drenching,
incessant. The mud underfoot was deep, slippery and clinging, tracked everywhere by
heavy boots, and worse than usual because of the complete break-down of the
Municipal administration. Bitter damp winds rushed in from the Gulf of Finland, and the
chill fog rolled through the streets. At night, for motives of economy as well as fear of
Zeppelins, the street-lights were few and far between; in private dwellings and
apartment-houses the electricity was turned on from six o’clock until midnight, with
candles forty cents apiece and little kerosene to be had. It was dark from three in the
afternoon to ten in the morning. Robberies and housebreakings increased. In apartment
houses the men took turns at all-night guard duty, armed with loaded rifles. This was
under the Provisional Government.

Week by week food became scarcer. The daily allowance of bread fell from a pound and
a half to a pound, then three quarters, half, and a quarter-pound. Toward the end there
was a week without any bread at all. Sugar one was entitled to at the rate of two pounds
a month— if one could get it at all, which was seldom. A bar of chocolate or a pound of
tasteless candy cost anywhere from seven to ten rubles— at least a dollar. There was
milk for about half the babies in the city; most hotels and private houses never saw it for
months. In the fruit season apples and pears sold for a little less than a ruble apiece on
the street-corner....

For milk and bread and sugar and tobacco one had to stand in queue long hours in the
chill rain. Coming home from an all-night meeting I have seen the kvost (tail) beginning
to form before dawn, mostly women, some with babies in their arms.... Carlyle, in his
French Revolution, has described the French people as distinguished above all others
by their faculty of standing in queue. Russia had accustomed herself to the practice,
begun in the reign of Nicholas the Blessed as long ago as 1915, and from then
continued intermittently until the summer of 1917, when it settled down as the regular
order of things. Think of the poorly- clad people standing on the iron-white streets of
Petrograd whole days in the Russian winter! I have listened in the bread-lines, hearing
the bitter, acrid note of discontent which from time to time burst up through the
miraculous goodnature of the Russian crowd....

Of course all the theatres were going every night, including Sundays. Karsavina
appeared in a new Ballet at the Marinsky, all dance-loving Russia coming to see her.
Shaliapin was singing. At the Alexandrinsky they were reviving Meyerhold’s production
of Tolstoy’s “Death of Ivan the Terrible”; and at that performance I remember noticing a
student of the Imperial School of Pages, in his dress uniform, who stood up correctly
between the acts and faced the empty Imperial box, with its eagles all erased.... The
Krivoye Zerkalo staged a sumptuous version of Schnitzler’s “Reigen.”

Although the Hermitage and other picture galleries had been evacuated to Moscow,
there were weekly exhibitions of paintings. Hordes of the female intelligentzia went to
hear lectures on Art, Literature and the Easy Philosophies. It was a particularly active
season for Theosophists. And the Salvation Army, admitted to Russia for the first time in
history, plastered the walls with announcements of gospel meetings, which amused and
astounded Russian audiences....

As in all such times, the petty conventional life of the city went on, ignoring the
Revolution as much as possible. The poets made verses— but not about the
Revolution. The realistic painters painted scenes from mediaeval Russian history —
anything but the Revolution. Young ladies from the provinces came up to the capital to
learn French and cultivate their voices, and the gay young beautiful officers wore their
gold-trimmed crimson bashliki and their elaborate Caucasian swords around the hotel
lobbies. The ladies of the minor bureaucratic set took tea with each other in the
afternoon, carrying each her little gold or silver or jewelled sugar-box, and half a loaf of
bread in her muff, and wished that the Tsar were back, or that the Germans would
come, or anything that would solve the servant problem.... The daughter of a friend of
mine came home one afternoon in hysterics because the woman street-car conductor
had called her “Comrade!”

All around them great Russia was in travail, bearing a new world. The servants one
used to treat like animals and pay next to nothing, were getting independent. A pair of
shoes cost more than a hundred rubles, and as wages averaged about thirty-five rubles
a month the servants refused to stand in queue and wear out their shoes. But more than
that. In the new Russia every man and woman could vote; there were working-class
newspapers, saying new and startling things; there were the Soviets; and there were
the Unions. The izvoshtchiki (cab-drivers) had a Union; they were also represented in
the Petrograd Soviet. The waiters and hotel servants were organised, and refused tips.
On the walls of restaurants they put up signs which read, “No tips taken here— ” or,
“Just because a man has to make his living waiting on table is no reason to insult him
by offering him a tip!” At the Front the soldiers fought out their fight with the officers, and
learned self-

government through their committees. In the factories those unique Russian

organisations, the Factory-Shop Committees,[4] gained experience and strength and a
realisation of their historical mission by combat with the old order. All Russia was
learning to read, and reading—politics, economics, history— because the people
wanted to know.... In every city, in most towns, along the Front, each political faction
had its newspaper— sometimes several. Hundreds of thousands of pamphlets were
distributed by thousands of organisations, and poured into the armies, the villages, the
factories, the streets. The thirst for education, so long thwarted, burst with the
Revolution into a frenzy of expression. From Smolny Institute alone, the first six months,
went out every day tons, car-loads, train loads of literature, saturating the land. Russia
absorbed reading matter like hot sand drinks water, insatiable. And it was not fables,
falsified history, diluted religion, and the cheap fiction that corrupts— but social and
economic theories, philosophy, the works of Tolstoy, Gogol, and Gorky....

[4] See Notes and Explanations.

Then the Talk, beside which Carlyle’s “flood of French speech” was a mere trickle.
Lectures, debates, speeches— in theatres, circuses, school-houses, clubs, Soviet
meeting-rooms, Union headquarters, barracks.... Meetings in the trenches at the Front,
in village squares, factories.... What a marvellous sight to see Putilovsky Zavod (the
Putilov factory) pour out its forty thousand to listen to Social Democrats, Socialist
Revolutionaries, Anarchists, anybody, whatever they had to say, as long as they would
talk! For months in Petrograd, and all over Russia, every street-corner was a public
tribune. In railway trains, street-cars, always the spurting up of impromptu debate,
everywhere....

And the All-Russian Conferences and Congresses, drawing together the men of two
continents— conventions of Soviets, of Cooperatives, Zemstvos,[5] nationalities,
priests, peasants, political parties; the Democratic Conference, the Moscow
Conference, the Council of the Russian Republic. There were always three or four
conventions going on in Petrograd. At every meeting, attempts to limit the time of
speakers voted down, and every man free to express the thought that was in him....

[5] See Notes and Explanations.

We came down to the front of the Twelfth Army, back of Riga, where gaunt and bootless
men sickened in the mud of desperate trenches; and when they saw us they started up,
with their pinched faces and the flesh showing blue through their torn clothing,
demanding eagerly, “Did you bring anything to read?”

What though the outward and visible signs of change were many, what though the
statue of Catharine the Great before the Alexandrinsky Theatre bore a little red flag in its
hand, and others— somewhat faded— floated from all public buildings; and the Imperial
monograms and eagles were either torn down or covered up; and in place of the fierce
gorodovoye (city police) a mild-mannered and unarmed citizen militia patrolled the
streets— still, there were many quaint anachronisms.

For example, Peter the Great’s _Tabel o Rangov— _Table of Ranks— which he rivetted
upon Russia with an iron hand, still held sway. Almost everybody from the school-boy
up wore his prescribed uniform, with the insignia of the Emperor on button and
shoulder-strap. Along about five o’clock in the afternoon the streets were full of subdued
old gentlemen in uniform, with portfolios, going home from work in the huge, barrack-
like Ministries or Government institutions, calculating perhaps how great a mortality
among their superiors would advance them to the coveted tchin (rank) of Collegiate
Assessor, or Privy Councillor, with the prospect of retirement on a comfortable pension,
and possibly the Cross of St. Anne....

There is the story of Senator Sokolov, who in full tide of Revolution came to a meeting
of the Senate one day in civilian clothes, and was not admitted because he did not wear
the prescribed livery of the Tsar’s service!

It was against this background of a whole nation in ferment and disintegration that the
pageant of the Rising of the Russian Masses unrolled....
Chapter II

The Coming Storm

In September General Kornilov marched on Petrograd to make himself military dictator

of Russia. Behind him was suddenly revealed the mailed fist of the bourgeoisie, boldly
attempting to crush the Revolution. Some of the Socialist Ministers were implicated;
even Kerensky was under suspicion. (See App. II, Sect. 1) Savinkov, summoned to
explain to the Central Committee of his party, the Socialist Revolutionaries, refused and
was expelled. Kornilov was arrested by the Soldiers’ Committees. Generals were
dismissed, Ministers suspended from their functions, and the Cabinet fell.

Kerensky tried to form a new Government, including the Cadets, party of the
bourgeoisie. His party, the Socialist Revolutionaries, ordered him to exclude the Cadets.
Kerensky declined to obey, and threatened to resign from the Cabinet if the Socialists
insisted. However, popular feeling ran so high that for the moment he did not dare
oppose it, and a temporary Directorate of Five of the old Ministers, with Kerensky at the
head, assumed the power until the question should be settled.

The Kornilov affair drew together all the Socialist groups— “moderates” as well as
revolutionists— in a passionate impulse of self-defence. There must be no more
Kornilovs. A new Government must be created, responsible to the elements supporting
the Revolution. So the Tsay-ee-kah invited the popular organisations to send delegates
to a Democratic Conference, which should meet at Petrograd in September.

In the Tsay-ee-kah three factions immediately appeared. The Bolsheviki demanded that
the All-Russian Congress of Soviets be summoned, and that they take over the power.
The “centre” Socialist Revolutionaries, led by Tchernov, joined with the Left Socialist
Revolutionaries, led by Kamkov and Spiridonova, the Mensheviki Internationalists under
Martov, and the “centre” Mensheviki,[6] represented by Bogdanov and Skobeliev, in
demanding a purely Socialist Government. Tseretelli, Dan and Lieber, at the head of the
right wing Mensheviki, and the right Socialist Revolutionaries under Avksentiev and
Gotz, insisted that the propertied classes must be represented in the new Government.

[6] See Notes and Explanations.

Almost immediately the Bolsheviki won a majority in the Petrograd Soviet, and the
Soviets of Moscow, Kiev, Odessa and other cities followed suit.

Alarmed, the Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries in control of the Tsay-ee- kah
decided that after all they feared the danger of Kornilov less than the danger of Lenin.
They revised the plan of representation in the Democratic Conference, (See App. II,
Sect. 2) admitting more delegates from the Cooperative Societies and other
conservative bodies. Even this packed assembly at first voted for a Coalition
Government without the Cadets. Only Kerensky’s open threat of resignation, and the
alarming cries of the “moderate” Socialists that “the Republic is in danger” persuaded
the Conference, by a small majority, to declare in favour of the principle of coalition with
the bourgeoisie, and to sanction the establishment of a sort of consultative Parliament,
without any legislative power, called the Provisional Council of the Russian Republic. In
the new Ministry the propertied classes practically controlled, and in the Council of the
Russian Republic they occupied a disproportionate number of seats.

The fact is that the Tsay-ee-kah no longer represented the rank and file of the Soviets,
and had illegally refused to call another All-Russian Congress of Soviets, due in
September. It had no intention of calling this Congress or of allowing it to be called. Its
official organ, Izviestia (News), began to hint that the function of the Soviets was nearly
at an end, (See App. II, Sect. 3) and that they might soon be dissolved... At this time,
too, the new Government announced as part of its policy the liquidation of “irresponsible
organisations”— i.e. the Soviets.

The Bolsheviki responded by summoning the All-Russian Soviets to meet at Petrograd

on November 2, and take over the Government of Russia. At the same time they
withdrew from the Council of the Russian Republic, stating that they would not
participate in a
“Government of Treason to the People.” (See App. II, Sect. 4)

The withdrawal of the Bolsheviki, however, did not bring tranquillity to the ill- fated
Council. The propertied classes, now in a position of power, became arrogant. The
Cadets declared that the Government had no legal right to declare Russia a republic.
They demanded stern measures in the Army and Navy to destroy the Soldiers’ and
Sailors’ Committees, and denounced the Soviets. On the other side of the chamber the
Mensheviki Internationalists and the Left Socialist Revolutionaries advocated immediate
peace, land to the peasants, and workers’ control of industry— practically the Bolshevik
programme.

I heard Martov’s speech in answer to the Cadets. Stooped over the desk of the tribune
like the mortally sick man he was, and speaking in a voice so hoarse it could hardly be
heard, he shook his finger toward the right benches:

“You call us defeatists; but the real defeatists are those who wait for a more propitious
moment to conclude peace, insist upon postponing peace until later, until nothing is left
of the Russian army, until Russia becomes the subject of bargaining between the
different imperialist groups.... You are trying to impose upon the Russian people a policy
dictated by the interests of the bourgeoisie. The question of peace should be raised
without delay.... You will see then that not in vain has been the work of those whom you
call German agents, of those Zimmerwaldists[7] who in all the lands have prepared the
awakening of the conscience of the democratic masses....”

[7] Members of the revoloutionary internationalist wing of the Socialists of Europe, so-
called because of their participation in the International Conference held at Zimmerwald,
Switzerland, in 1915.

Between these two groups the Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries wavered,
irresistibly forced to the left by the pressure of the rising dissatisfaction of the masses.
Deep hostility divided the chamber into irreconcilable groups.

This was the situation when the long-awaited announcement of the Allied Conference in
Paris brought up the burning question of foreign policy....

Theoretically all Socialist parties in Russia were in favour of the earliest possible peace
on democratic terms. As long ago as May, 1917, the Petrograd Soviet, then under
control of the Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries, had proclaimed the famous
Russian peace-conditions. They had demanded that the Allies hold a conference to
discuss war-aims. This conference had been promised for August; then postponed until
September; then until October; and now it was fixed for November 10th.
The Provisional Government suggested two representatives— General Alexeyev,
reactionary military man, and Terestchenko, Minister of Foreign Affairs. The Soviets
chose Skobeliev to speak for them and drew up a manifesto, the famous nakaz—(See
App. II, Sect. 5) instructions. The Provisional Government objected to Skobeliev and his
nakaz; the Allied ambassadors protested and finally Bonar Law in the British House of
Commons, in answer to a question, responded coldly, “As far as I know the Paris
Conference will not discuss the aims of the war at all, but only the methods of
conducting it....”

At this the conservative Russian press was jubilant, and the Bolsheviki cried, “See
where the compromising tactics of the Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries have
led them!”

Along a thousand miles of front the millions of men in Russia’s armies stirred like the
sea rising, pouring into the capital their hundreds upon hundreds of delegations, crying
“Peace! Peace!”

I went across the river to the Cirque Moderne, to one of the great popular meetings
which occurred all over the city, more numerous night after night. The bare, gloomy
amphitheatre, lit by five tiny lights hanging from a thin wire, was packed from the ring up
the steep sweep of grimy benches to the very roof— soldiers, sailors, workmen, women,
all listening as if their lives depended upon it. A soldier was speaking— from the Five
Hundred and Forty-eight Division, wherever and whatever that was:

“Comrades,” he cried, and there was real anguish in his drawn face and despairing
gestures. “The people at the top are always calling upon us to sacrifice more, sacrifice
more, while those who have everything are left unmolested.

“We are at war with Germany. Would we invite German generals to serve on our Staff?
Well we’re at war with the capitalists too, and yet we invite them into our Government....

“The soldier says, ‘Show me what I am fighting for. Is it Constantinople, or is it free

Russia? Is it the democracy, or is it the capitalist plunderers? If you can prove to me that
I am defending the Revolution then I’ll go out and fight without capital punishment to
force me.’

“When the land belongs to the peasants, and the factories to the workers, and the
power to the Soviets, then we’ll know we have something to fight for, and we’ll fight for
it!”
In the barracks, the factories, on the street-corners, end less soldier speakers, all
clamouring for an end to the war, declaring that if the Government did not make an
energetic effort to get peace, the army would leave the trenches and go home.

The spokesman for the Eighth Army:

“We are weak, we have only a few men left in each company. They must give us food
and boots and reinforcements, or soon there will be left only empty trenches. Peace or
supplies... either let the Government end the war or support the Army....”

For the Forty-sixth Siberian Artillery:

“The officers will not work with our Committees, they betray us to the enemy, they apply
the death penalty to our agitators; and the counter-revolutionary Government supports
them. We thought that the Revolution would bring peace. But now the Government
forbids us even to talk of such things, and at the same time doesn’t give us enough food
to live on, or enough ammunition to fight with....”

From Europe came rumours of peace at the expense of Russia. (See App. II, Sect. 6)...

News of the treatment of Russian troops in France added to the discontent. The First
Brigade had tried to replace its officers with Soldiers’ Committees, like their comrades
at home, and had refused an order to go to Salonika, demanding to be sent to Russia.
They had been surrounded and starved, and then fired on by artillery, and many killed.
(See App. II, Sect. 7)...

On October 29th I went to the white-marble and crimson hall of the Marinsky palace,
where the Council of the Republic sat, to hear Terestchenko’s declaration of the
Government’s foreign policy, awaited with such terrible anxiety by all the peace-thirsty
and exhausted land.

A tall, impeccably-dressed young man with a smooth face and high cheek-bones,
suavely reading his careful, non-committal speech. (See App. II, Sect. 8) Nothing....
Only the same platitudes about crushing German militarism with the help of the Allies—
about the “state interests” of Russia, about the

“embarrassment” caused by Skobeliev’s nakaz. He ended with the key-note: “Russia is

a great power. Russia will remain a great power, whatever happens.

We must all defend her, we must show that we are defenders of a great ideal, and
children of a great power.”
Nobody was satisfied. The reactionaries wanted a “strong” imperialist policy; the
democratic parties wanted an assurance that the Government would press for peace....
I reproduce an editorial in Rabotchi i Soldat (Worker and Soldier), organ of the
Bolshevik Petrograd Soviet:

THE GOVERNMENT’S ANSW ER TO THE TRENCHES

The most taciturn of our Ministers, Mr. Terestchenko, has actually told the trenches the
following:

1. We are closely united with our Allies. (Not with the peoples, but with the
Governments.)

2. There is no use for the democracy to discuss the possibility or impossibility of a

winter campaign. That will be decided by the Governments of our Allies.

3. The 1st of July offensive was beneficial and a very happy affair. (He did not mention
the consequences.)

4. It is not true that our Allies do not care about us. The Minister has in his possession
very important declarations. (Declarations? What about deeds? What about the
behaviour of the British fleet? (See App. II, Sect. 9) The parleying of the British king with
exiled counter-revolutionary General Gurko? The Minister did not mention all this.)

5. The nakaz to Skobeliev is bad; the Allies don’t like it and the Russian diplomats don’t
like it. In the Allied Conference we must all ‘speak one language.’

And is that all? That is all. What is the way out? The solution is, faith in the Allies and in
Terestchenko. When will peace come? When the Allies permit. That is how the
Government replied to the trenches about peace!

Now in the background of Russian politics began to form the vague outlines of a sinister
power— the Cossacks. Novaya Zhizn (New Life), Gorky’s paper, called attention to their
activities:

At the beginning of the Revolution the Cossacks refused to shoot down the people.
When Kornilov marched on Petrograd they refused to follow him. From passive loyalty
to the Revolution the Cossacks have passed to an active political offensive (against it).
From the back-ground of the Revolution they have suddenly advanced to the front of the
stage....
Kaledin, ataman of the Don Cossacks, had been dismissed by the Provisional
Government for his complicity in the Kornilov affair. He flatly refused to resign, and
surrounded by three immense Cossack armies lay at Novotcherkask, plotting and
menacing. So great was his power that the Government was forced to ignore his
insubordination. More than that, it was compelled formally to recognise the Council of
the Union of Cossack Armies, and to declare illegal the newly- formed Cossack Section
of the Soviets....

In the first part of October a Cossack delegation called upon Kerensky, arrogantly
insisting that the charges against Kaledin be dropped, and reproaching the Minister-
President for yielding to the Soviets. Kerensky agreed to let Kaledin alone, and then is
reported to have said, “In the eyes of the Soviet leaders I am a despot and a tyrant.... As
for the Provisional Government, not only does it not depend upon the Soviets, but it
considers it regrettable that they exist at all.”

At the same time another Cossack mission called upon the British ambassador, treating
with him boldly as representatives of “the free Cossack people.”

In the Don something very like a Cossack Republic had been established. The Kuban
declared itself an independent Cossack State. The Soviets of Rostov-on- Don and
Yekaterinburg were dispersed by armed Cossacks, and the headquarters of the Coal
Miners’ Union at Kharkov raided. In all its manifestations the Cossack movement was
anti-Socialist and militaristic. Its leaders were nobles and great land-owners, like
Kaledin, Kornilov, Generals Dutov, Karaulov and Bardizhe, and it was backed by the
powerful merchants and bankers of Moscow....

Old Russia was rapidly breaking up. In Ukraine, in Finland, Poland, White Russia, the
nationalist movements gathered strength and became bolder. The local Governments,
controlled by the propertied classes, claimed autonomy, refusing to obey orders from
Petrograd. At Helsingfors the Finnish Senate declined to loan money to the Provisional
Government, declared Finland autonomous, and demanded the withdrawal of Russian
troops. The bourgeois Rada at Kiev extended the boundaries of Ukraine until they
included all the richest agricultural lands of South Russia, as far east as the Urals, and
began the formation of a national army. Premier Vinnitchenko hinted at a separate
peace with Germany— and the Provisional Government was helpless. Siberia, the
Caucasus, demanded separate Constituent Assemblies. And in all these countries there
was the beginning of a bitter struggle between the authorities and the local Soviets of
Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies....

Conditions were daily more chaotic. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers were deserting
the front and beginning to move in vast, aimless tides over the face of the land. The
peasants of Tambov and Tver Governments, tired of waiting for the land, exasperated
by the repressive measures of the Government, were burning manor-houses and
massacring land-owners. Immense strikes and lock-outs convulsed Moscow, Odessa
and the coal-mines of the Don. Transportation was paralysed; the army was starving
and in the big cities there was no bread.

The Government, torn between the democratic and reactionary factions, could do
nothing: when forced to act it always supported the interests of the propertied classes.
Cossacks were sent to restore order among the peasants, to break the strikes. In
Tashkent, Government authorities suppressed the Soviet. In Petrograd the Economic
Council, established to rebuild the shattered economic life of the country, came to a
deadlock between the opposing forces of capital and labour, and was dissolved by
Kerensky. The old regime military men, backed by Cadets, demanded that harsh
measures be adopted to restore discipline in the Army and the Navy. In vain Admiral
Verderevsky, the venerable Minister of Marine, and General Verkhovsky, Minister of
War, insisted that only a new, voluntary, democratic discipline, based on cooperation
with the soldiers’ and sailors’ Committees, could save the army and navy. Their
recommendations were ignored.

The reactionaries seemed determined to provoke popular anger. The trial of Kornilov
was coming on. More and more openly the bourgeois press defended him, speaking of
him as “the great Russian patriot.” Burtzev’s paper, Obshtchee Dielo (Common Cause),
called for a dictatorship of Kornilov, Kaledin and Kerensky!

I had a talk with Burtzev one day in the press gallery of the Council of the Republic. A
small, stooped figure with a wrinkled face, eyes near-sighted behind thick glasses,
untidy hair and beard streaked with grey.

“Mark my words, young man! What Russia needs is a Strong Man. We should get our
minds off the Revolution now and concentrate on the Germans. Bunglers, bunglers, to
defeat Kornilov; and back of the bunglers are the German agents. Kornilov should have
won....”

On the extreme right the organs of the scarcely-veiled Monarchists, Purishkevitch’s

Narodny Tribun (People’s Tribune), Novaya Rus (New Russia), and Zhivoye Slovo
(Living Word), openly advocated the extermination of the revolutionary democracy....

On the 23rd of October occurred the naval battle with a German squadron in the Gulf of
Riga. On the pretext that Petrograd was in danger, the Provisional Government drew up
plans for evacuating the capital. First the great munitions works were to go, distributed
widely throughout Russia; and then the Government itself was to move to Moscow.
Instantly the Bolsheviki began to cry out that the Government was abandoning the Red
Capital in order to weaken the Revolution. Riga had been sold to the Germans; now
Petrograd was being betrayed!

The bourgeois press was joyful. “At Moscow,” said the Cadet paper Ryetch (Speech),
“the Government can pursue its work in a tranquil atmosphere, without being interfered
with by anarchists.” Rodzianko, leader of the right wing of the Cadet party, declared in
Utro Rossii (The Morning of Russia) that the taking of Petrograd by the Germans would
be a blessing, because it would destroy the Soviets and get rid of the revolutionary
Baltic Fleet:

Petrograd is in danger (he wrote). I say to myself, “Let God take care of Petrograd.”
They fear that if Petrograd is lost the central revolutionary organisations will be
destroyed. To that I answer that I rejoice if all these organisations are destroyed; for
they will bring nothing but disaster upon Russia....

With the taking of Petrograd the Baltic Fleet will also be destroyed.... But there will be
nothing to regret; most of the battleships are completely demoralised.... In the face of a
storm of popular disapproval the plan of evacuation was

repudiated.

Meanwhile the Congress of Soviets loomed over Russia like a thunder-cloud, shot
through with lightnings. It was opposed, not only by the Government but by all the
“moderate” Socialists. The Central Army and Fleet Committees, the Central Committees
of some of the Trade Unions, the Peasants’ Soviets, but most of all the Tsay-ee-kah
itself, spared no pains to prevent the meeting. Izviestia and Golos Soldata (Voice of the
Soldier), newspapers founded by the Petrograd Soviet but now in the hands of the Tsay-
ee-kah, fiercely assailed it, as did the entire artillery of the Socialist Revolutionary party
press, Dielo Naroda (People’s Cause) and Volia Naroda (People’s Will).

Delegates were sent through the country, messages flashed by wire to committees in
charge of local Soviets, to Army Committees, instructing them to halt or delay elections
to the Congress. Solemn public resolutions against the Congress, declarations that the
democracy was opposed to the meeting so near the date of the Constituent Assembly,
representatives from the Front, from the Union of Zemstvos, the Peasants’ Union,
Union of Cossack Armies, Union of Officers, Knights of St. George, Death Battalions,[8]
protesting.... The Council of the Russian Republic was one chorus of disapproval. The
entire machinery set up by the Russian Revolution of March functioned to block the
Congress of Soviets....

[8] See Notes and Explanations.

On the other hand was the shapeless will of the proletariat— the workmen, common
soldiers and poor peasants. Many local Soviets were already Bolshevik; then there were
the organisations of the industrial workers, the Fabritchno- Zavodskiye Comitieti—
Factory-Shop Committees; and the insurgent Army and Fleet organisations. In some
places the people, prevented from electing their regular Soviet delegates, held rump
meetings and chose one of their number to go to Petrograd. In others they smashed the
old obstructionist committees and formed new ones. A ground-swell of revolt heaved
and cracked the crust which had been slowly hardening on the surface of revolutionary
fires dormant all those months. Only an spontaneous mass-movement could bring
about the All- Russian Congress of Soviets....

Day after day the Bolshevik orators toured the barracks and factories, violently
denouncing “this Government of civil war.” One Sunday we went, on a top- heavy steam
tram that lumbered through oceans of mud, between stark factories and immense
churches, to Obukhovsky Zavod, a Government munitions-plant out on the
Schlusselburg Prospekt.

The meeting took place between the gaunt brick walls of a huge unfinished building, ten
thousand black-clothed men and women packed around a scaffolding draped in red,
people heaped on piles of lumber and bricks, perched high upon shadowy girders,
intent and thunder-voiced. Through the dull, heavy sky now and again burst the sun,
flooding reddish light through the skeleton windows upon the mass of simple faces
upturned to us.

Lunatcharsky, a slight, student-like figure with the sensitive face of an artist, was telling
why the power must be taken by the Soviets. Nothing else could guarantee the
Revolution against its enemies, who were deliberately ruining the country, ruining the
army, creating opportunities for a new Konilov.

A soldier from the Rumanian front, thin, tragical and fierce, cried, “Comrades! We are
starving at the front, we are stiff with cold. We are dying for no reason. I ask the
American comrades to carry word to America, that the Russians will never give up their
Revolution until they die. We will hold the fort with all our strength until the peo

ples of the world rise and help us! Tell the American workers to rise and fight for the
Social Revolution!”

Then came Petrovsky, slight, slow-voiced, implacable: “Now is the time for deeds, not
words. The economic situation is bad, but we must get used to it. They are trying to
starve us and freeze us. They are trying to provoke us. But let them know that they can
go too far— that if they dare to lay their hands upon the organisations of the proletariat
we will sweep them away like scum from the face of the earth!”
The Bolshevik press suddenly expanded. Besides the two party papers, Rabotchi Put
and Soldat (Soldier), there appeared a new paper for the peasants, Derevenskaya
Byednota (Village Poorest), poured out in a daily half-million edition; and on October
17th, Rabotchi i Soldat. Its leading article summed up the Bolshevik point of view:

The fourth year’s campaign will mean the annihilation of the army and the country....
There is danger for the safety of Petrograd.... Counter-revolutionists rejoice in the
people’s misfortunes.... The peasants brought to desperation come out in open
rebellion; the landlords and Government authorities massacre them with punitive
expeditions; factories and mines are closing down, workmen are threatened with
starvation.... The bourgeoisie and its Generals want to restore a blind discipline in the
army.... Supported by the bourgeoisie, the Kornilovtsi are openly getting ready to break
up the meeting of the Constituent Assembly....

The Kerensky Government is against the people. He will destroy the country.... This
paper stands for the people and by the people— the poor classes, workers, soldiers and
peasants. The people can only be saved by the completion of the Revolution... and for
this purpose the full power must be in the hands of the Soviets....

This paper advocates the following: All power to the Soviets— both in the capital and in
the provinces.

Immediate truce on all fronts. An honest peace between peoples. Landlord estates—
without compensation— to the peasants. Workers’ control over industrial production.

A faithfully and honestly elected Constituent Assembly.

It is interesting to reproduce here a passage from that same paper— the organ of those
Bolsheviki so well known to the world as German agents:

The German kaiser, covered with the blood of millions of dead people, wants to push his
army against Petrograd. Let us call to the German workmen, soldiers and peasants,
who want peace not less than we do, to... stand up against this damned war!

This can be done only by a revolutionary Government, which would speak really for the
workmen, soldiers and peasants of Russia, and would appeal over the heads of the
diplomats directly to the German troops, fill the German trenches with proclamations in
the German language.... Our airmen would spread these proclamations all over
Germany....
In the Council of the Republic the gulf between the two sides of the chamber deepened
day by day.

“The propertied classes,” cried Karelin, for the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, “want to
exploit the revolutionary machine of the State to bind Russia to the war-chariot of the
Allies! The

revolutionary parties are absolutely against this policy....”

Old Nicholas Tchaikovsky, representing the Populist Socialists, spoke against giving the
land to the peasants, and took the side of the Cadets: “We must have immediately
strong discipline in the army.... Since the beginning of the war I have not ceased to
insist that it is a crime to undertake social and economic reforms in war-time. We are
committing that crime, and yet I am not the enemy of these reforms, because I am a
Socialist.”

Cries from the Left, “We don’t believe you!” Mighty applause from the Right....
Adzhemov, for the Cadets, declared that there was no necessity to tell the army

what it was fighting for, since every soldier ought to realise that the first task was to
drive the enemy from Russian territory.

Kerensky himself came twice, to plead passionately for national unity, once bursting into
tears at the end. The assembly heard him coldly, interrupting with ironical remarks.

Smolny Institute, headquarters of the Tsay-ee-kah and of the Petrograd Soviet, lay miles
out on the edge of the city, beside the wide Neva. I went there on a street-car, moving
snail-like with a groaning noise through the cobbled, muddy streets, and jammed with
people. At the end of the line rose the graceful smoke blue cupolas of Smolny Convent
outlined in dull gold, beautiful; and beside it the great barracks like faqade of Smolny
Institute, two hundred yards long and three lofty stories high, the Imperial arms carved
hugely in stone still insolent over the entrance....

Under the old regime a famous convent-school for the daughters of the Russian nobility,
patronised by the Tsarina herself, the Institute had been taken over by the revolutionary
organisations of workers and soldiers. Within were more than a hundred huge rooms,
white and bare, on their doors enamelled plaques still informing the passerby that within
was “Ladies’ Class-room Number 4” or

“Teachers’ Bureau”; but over these hung crudely-lettered signs, evidence of the vitality
of the new order: “Central Committee of the Petrograd Soviet” and “Tsay-ee-kah” and
“Bureau of Foreign Affairs”; “Union of Socialist Soldiers,” “Central Committee of the All-
Russian Trade Unions,” “Factory-Shop Committees,” “Central Army Committee”; and
the central offices and caucus rooms of the political parties....

The long, vaulted corridors, lit by rare electric lights, were thronged with hurrying shapes
of soldiers and workmen, some bent under the weight of huge bundles of newspapers,
proclamations, printed propaganda of all sorts. The sound of their heavy boots made a
deep and incessant thunder on the wooden floor.... Signs were posted up everywhere:
“Comrades! For the sake of your health, preserve cleanliness!” Long tables stood at the
head of the stairs on every floor, and on the landings, heaped with pamphlets and the
literature of the different political parties, for sale....

The spacious, low-ceilinged refectory downstairs was still a dining-room. For two rubles
I bought a ticket entitling me to dinner, and stood in line with a thousand others, waiting
to get to the long serving-tables, where twenty men and women were ladling from
immense cauldrons cabbage soup, hunks of meat and piles of kasha, slabs of black
bread. Five kopeks paid for tea in a tin cup. From a basket one grabbed a greasy
wooden spoon.... The benches along the wooden tables were packed with hungry
proletarians, wolfing their food, plotting, shouting rough jokes across the room....

[Graphic, page 33: text of placard in russian, translation follows]

COMRADES FOR THE SAKE OF YOUR HEALTH, PRESERVE CLEANLINESS.

Upstairs was another eating-place, reserved for the Tsay-ee-kah— though every one
went there. Here could be had bread thickly buttered and endless glasses of

tea....

In the south wing on the second floor was the great hall of meetings, the former ball-
room of the Institute. A lofty white room lighted by glazed-white chandeliers holding
hundreds of ornate electric bulbs, and divided by two rows of massive columns; at one
end a dais, flanked with two tall many-branched light standards, and a gold frame
behind, from which the Imperial portrait had been cut. Here on festal occasions had
been banked brilliant military and ecclesiastical uniforms, a setting for Grand
Duchesses....

Just across the hall outside was the office of the Credentials Committee for the
Congress of Soviets. I stood there watching the new delegates come in— burly,
bearded soldiers, workmen in black blouses, a few long-haired peasants. The girl in
charge— a member of Plekhanov’s Yedinstvo[9] group— smiled contemptuously.
“These are very different people from the delegates to the first Siezd (Congress),” she
remarked. “See how rough and ignorant they look! The Dark People....” It was true; the
depths of Russia had been stirred, and it was the bottom which came uppermost now.
The Credentials Committee, appointed by the old Tsay-ee-kah, was challenging
delegate after delegate, on the ground that they had been illegally elected. Karakhan,
member of the Bolshevik Central Committee, simply grinned. “Never mind,” he said,
“When the time comes we’ll see that you get your seats....”

[9] See Notes and Explanations. Rabotchi i Soldat said:

The attention of delegates to the new All-Russian Congress is called to attempts of

certain members of the Organising Committee to break up the Congress, by asserting
that it will not take place, and that delegates had better leave

Petrograd.... Pay no attention to these lies.... Great days are coming....

It was evident that a quorum would not come together by November 2, so the opening
of the Congress was postponed to the 7th. But the whole country was now aroused; and
the Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries, realising that they were defeated,
suddenly changed their tactics and began to wire frantically to their provincial
organisations to elect as many “moderate” Socialist delegates as possible. At the same
time the Executive Committee of the Peasants’ Soviets issued an emergency call for a
Peasants’ Congress, to meet December 13th and offset whatever action the workers
and soldiers might take...

What would the Bolsheviki do? Rumours ran through the city that there would be an
armed “demonstration,” a vystuplennie—“coming out” of the workers and soldiers. The
bourgeois and reactionary press prophesied insurrection, and urged the Government to
arrest the Petrograd Soviet, or at least to prevent the meeting of the Congress. Such
sheets as Novaya Rus advocated a general Bolshevik massacre.

Gorky’s paper, Novaya Zhizn, agreed with the Bolsheviki that the reactionaries were
attempting to destroy the Revolution, and that if necessary they must be resisted by
force of arms; but all the parties of the revolutionary democracy must present a united
front.

As long as the democracy has not organised its principal forces, so long as the
resistance to its influence is still strong, there is no advantage in passing to the attack.
But if the hostile elements appeal to force, then the revolutionary democracy should
enter the battle to seize the power, and it will be sustained by the most profound strata
of the people....
Gorky pointed out that both reactionary and Government newspapers were inciting the
Bolsheviki to violence. An insurrection, however, would prepare the way for a new
Kornilov. He urged the Bolsheviki to deny the rumours. Potressov, in the Menshevik
Dien (Day), published a sensational story, accompanied by a map, which professed to
reveal the secret Bolshevik plan of campaign.

As if by magic, the walls were covered with warnings, (See App. II, Sect. 10)
proclamations, appeals, from the Central Committees of the “moderate” and
conservative factions and the Tsay-ee-kah, denouncing any “demonstrations,” imploring
the workers and soldiers not to listen to agitators. For instance, this from the Military
Section of the Socialist Revolutionary party:

Again rumours are spreading around the town of an intended vystuplennie. What is the
source of these rumours? What organisation authorises these agitators who preach
insurrection? The Bolsheviki, to a question addressed to them in the Tsay- ee-kah,
denied that they have anything to do with it.... But these rumours themselves carry with
them a great danger. It may easily happen that, not taking into consideration the state of
mind of the majority of the workers, soldiers and peasants, individual hot-heads will call
out part of the workers and soldiers on the streets, inciting them to an uprising.... In this
fearful time through which revolutionary Russia is passing, any insurrection can easily
turn into civil war, and there can result from it the destruction of all organisations of the
proletariat, built up with so much labour.... The counter-revolutionary plotters are
planning to take advantage of this insurrection to destroy the Revolution, open the front
to Wilhelm, and wreck the Constituent Assembly.... Stick stubbornly to your posts! Do
not come out!

On October 28th, in the corridors of Smolny, I spoke with Kameniev, a little man with a
reddish pointed beard and Gallic gestures. He was not at all sure that enough delegates
would come. “If there is a Congress,” he said, “it will represent the overwhelming
sentiment of the people. If the majority is Bolshevik, as I think it will be, we shall demand
that the power be given to the Soviets, and the Provisional Government must resign....”

Volodarsky, a tall, pale youth with glasses and a bad complexion, was more definite.
“The ‘Lieber-Dans’ and the other compromisers are sabotaging the Congress. If they
succeed in preventing its meeting,— well, then we are realists enough not to depend on
that!”

Under date of October 29th I find entered in my notebook the following items culled from
the newspapers of the day:

Moghilev (General Staff Headquarters). Concentration here of loyal

Guard Regiments, the Savage Division, Cossacks and Death Battalions.

The yunkers of the Officers’ Schools of Pavlovsk, Tsarskoye Selo and Peterhof ordered
by the Government to be ready to come to Petrograd. Oranienbaum yunkers arrive in
the city.

Part of the Armoured Car Division of the Petrograd garrism stationed in the W inter
Palace.

Upon orders signed by Trotzky, several thousand rifles delivered by the Government
Arms Factory at Sestroretzk to delegates of the Petrograd workmen.

At a meeting of the City Militia of the Lower Liteiny Quarter, a resolution demanding that
all power be given to the Soviets.

This is just a sample of the confused events of those feverish days, when everybody
knew that something was going to happen, but nobody knew just what.

At a meeting of the Petrograd Soviet in Smolny, the night of October 30th, Trotzky
branded the assertions of the bourgeois press that the Soviet contemplated armed
insurention as “an attempt of the reactionaries to discredit and wreck the Congress of
Soviets.... The Petrograd Soviet,” he declared, “had not ordered any uystuplennie. If it is
necessary we shall do so, and we will be supported by the Petrogruad garrison.... They
(the Government) are preparing a counter-revolution; and we shall answer with an
offensive which will be merciless and decisive.”

It is true that the Petrograd Soviet had not ordered a demonstration, but the Central
Committee of the Bolshevik party was considering the question of insurrection. All night
long the 23d they met. There were present all the party intellectuals, the leaders— and
delegates of the Petrograd workers and garrison. Alone of the intellectuals Lenin and
Trotzky stood for insurrection. Even the military men opposed it. A vote was taken.
Insurrection was defeated!

Then arose a rough workman, his face convulsed with rage. “I speak for the Petrograd
proletariat,” he said, harshly. “We are in favour of insurrection. Have it your own way, but
I tell you now that if you allow the Soviets to be destroyed, we’re through with you!”
Some soldiers joined him.... And after that they voted again— insurrection won....

However, the right wing of the Bolsheviki, led by Riazanov, Kameniev and Zinoviev,
continued to campaign against an armed rising. On the morning of October 31st
appeared in Rabotchi Put the first instalment of Lenin’s “Letter to the Comrades,” (See
App. II, Sect. 11) one of the most audacious pieces of political propaganda the world
has ever seen. In it Lenin seriously presented the arguments in favour of insurrection,
taking as text the objections of Kameniev and Riazonov.

“Either we must abandon our slogan, ‘All Power to the Soviets,”’ he wrote, “or else we
must make an insurrection. There is no middle course....”

That same afternoon Paul Miliukov, leader of the Cadets, made a brilliant, bitter speech
(See App. II, Sect. 12) in the Council of the Republic, branding the Skobeliev nakaz as
pro-German, declaring that the “revolutionary democracy” was destroying Russia,
sneering at Terestchenko, and openly declaring that he preferred German diplomacy to
Russian.... The Left benches were one roaring tumult all through....

On its part the Government could not ignore the significance of the success of the
Bolshevik propaganda. On the 29th joint commission of the Government and the
Council of the Republic hastily drew up two laws, one for giving the land temporarily to
the peasants, and the other for pushing an energetic foreign policy of peace. The next
day Kerensky suspended capital punishment in the army. That same afternoon was
opened with great ceremony the first session of the new “Commission for Strengthening
the Republican Regime and Fighting Against Anarchy and Counter-Revolution”— of
which history shows not the slightest further trace.... The following morning with two
other correspondents I interviewed Kerensky (See App. II, Sect. 13)— the last time he
received journalists.

“The Russian people,” he said, bitterly, “are suffering from economic fatigue— and from
disillusionment with the Allies! The world thinks that the Russian Revolution is at an end.
Do not be mistaken. The Russian Revolution is just beginning....” Words more
prophetic, perhaps, than he knew.

Stormy was the all-night meeting of the Petrograd Soviet the 30th of October, at which I
was present. The “moderate” Socialist intellectuals, officers, members of Army
Committees, the Tsay-ee-kah, were there in force. Against them rose up workmen,
peasants and common soldiers, passionate and simple.

A peasant told of the disorders in Tver, which he said were caused by the arrest of the
Land Committees. “This Kerensky is nothing but a shield to the pomieshtchiki
(landowners),” he cried. “They know that at the Constituent Assembly we will take the
land anyway, so they are trying to destroy the Constituent Assembly!”

A machinist from the Putilov works described how the superintendents were closing
down the departments one by one on the pretext that there was no fuel or raw
materials. The Factory-Shop Committee, he declared, had discovered huge hidden
supplies.

“It is a provocatzia, ” said he. “They want to starve us— or drive us to violence!” Among
the soldiers one began, “Comrades! I bring you greetings from the place

where men are digging their graves and call them trenches!”

Then arose a tall, gaunt young soldier, with flashing eyes, met with a roar of welcome. It
was Tchudnovsky, reported killed in the July fighting, and now risen from the dead.

“The soldier masses no longer trust their officers. Even the Army Committees, who
refused to call a meeting of our Soviet, betrayed us.... The masses of the soldiers want
the Constituent Assembly to be held exactly when it was called for, and those who dare
to postpone it will be cursed— and not only platonic curses either, for the Army has
guns too..

He told of the electoral campaign for the Constituent now raging in the Fifth Army. “The
officers, and especially the Mensheviki and the Socialist Revolutionaries, are trying
deliberately to cripple the Bolsheviki. Our papers are not allowed to circulate in the
trenches. Our speakers are arrested— ”

“Why don’t you speak about the lack of bread?” shouted another soldier.

“Man shall not live by bread alone,” answered Tchudnovsky, sternly.... Followed him an
officer, delegate from the Vitebsk Soviet, a Menshevik

oboronetz. “It isn’t the question of who has the power. The trouble is not with the
Government, but with the war.... and the war must be won before any change— ” At
this, hoots and ironical cheers. “These Bolshevik agitators are demagogues!” The hall
rocked with laughter. “Let us for a moment forget the class struggle— ” But he got no
farther. A voice yelled, “Don’t you wish we would!”

Petrograd presented a curious spectacle in those days. In the factories the committee-
rooms were filled with stacks of rifles, couriers came and went, the Red Guard[10]
drilled.... In all the barracks meetings every night, and all day long interminable hot
arguments. On the streets the crowds thickened toward gloomy evening, pouring in
slow voluble tides up and down the Nevsky, fighting for the newspapers.... Hold-ups
increased to such an extent that it was dangerous to walk down side streets.... On the
Sadovaya one afternoon I saw a crowd of several hundred people beat and trample to
death a soldier caught stealing.... Mysterious individuals circulated around the shivering
women who waited in queue long cold hours for bread and milk, whispering that the
Jews had cornered the food supply— and that while the people starved, the Soviet
members lived luxuriously....

[10] See Notes and Explanations.

At Smolny there were strict guards at the door and the outer gates, demanding
everybody’s pass. The committee-rooms buzzed and hummed all day and all night,
hundreds of soldiers and workmen slept on the floor, wherever they could find room.
Upstairs in the great hall a thousand people crowded to the uproarious sessions of the
Petrograd Soviet....

Gambling clubs functioned hectically from dusk to dawn, with champagne flowing and
stakes of twenty thousand rubles. In the centre of the city at night prostitutes in jewels
and expensive furs walked up and down, crowded the cafes....

Monarchist plots, German spies, smugglers hatching schemes....

And in the rain, the bitter chill, the great throbbing city under grey skies rushing faster
and faster toward— what?

Chapter III

On the Eve

In the relations of a weak Government and a rebellious people there comes a time when
every act of the authorities exasperates the masses, and every refusal to act excites
their contempt....
The proposal to abandon Petrograd raised a hurricane; Kerensky’s public denial that the
Government had any such intention was met with hoots of derision.

Pinned to the wall by the pressure of the Revolution (cried Rabotchi Put), the
Government of “provisional” bourgeois tries to get free by giving out lying assurances
that it never thought of fleeing from Petrograd, and that it didn’t wish to surrender the
capital....

In Kharkov thirty thousand coal miners organised, adopting the preamble of the I. W. W.
constitution: “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.”
Dispersed by Cossacks, some were locked out by the mine-owners, and the rest
declared a general strike. Minister of Commerce and Industry Konovalov appointed his
assistant, Orlov, with plenary powers, to settle the trouble. Orlov was hated by the
miners. But the Tsay-ee-kah not only supported his appointment, but refused to demand
that the Cossacks be recalled from the Don Basin....

This was followed by the dispersal of the Soviet at Kaluga. The Bolsheviki, having
secured a majority in the Soviet, set free some political prisoners. With the sanction of
the Government Commissar the Municipal Duma called in troops from Minsk, and
bombarded the Soviet headquarters with artillery. The Bolsheviki yielded, but as they left
the building Cossacks attacked them, crying, “This is what we’ll do to all the other
Bolshevik Soviets, including those of Moscow and Petrograd!” This incident sent a wave
of panic rage throughout Russia....

In Petrograd was ending a regional Congress of Soviets of the North, presided over by
the Bolshevik Krylenko. By an immense majority it resolved that all power should be
assumed by the All-Russian Congress; and concluded by greeting the Bolsheviki in
prison, bidding them rejoice, for the hour of their liberation was at hand. At the same
time the first All-Russian Conference of Factory-Shop Committees (See App. Ill, Sect. 1)
declared emphatically for the Soviets, and continued significantly,

After liberating themselves politically from Tsardom, the working-class wants to see the
democratic regime triumphant in the sphere of its productive activity. This is best
expressed by Workers’ Control over industrial production, which naturally arose in the
atmosphere of economic decomposition created by the criminal policy of the dominating
classes....

The Union of Railwaymen was demanding the resignation of Liverovsky, Minister of

Ways and Communications....
In the name of the Tsay-ee-kah, Skobeliev insisted that the nakaz be presented at the
Allied Conference, and formally protested against the sending of Terestchenko to Paris.
Terestchenko offered to resign....

General Verkhovsky, unable to accomplish his reorganisation of the army, only came to
Cabinet meetings at long intervals....

On November 3d Burtzev’s Obshtchee Dielo came out with great headlines: Citizens!
Save the fatherland!

I have just learned that yesterday, at a meeting of the Commission for National Defence,
Minister of War General Verkhovsky, one of the principal persons responsible for the fall
of Kornilov, proposed to sign a separate peace, independently of the Allies.

That is treason to Russia!

Terestchenko declared that the Provisional Government had not even examined
Verkhovsky’s proposition.

“You might think,” said Terestchenko, “that we were in a madhouse!” The members of
the Commission were astounded at the General’s words. General Alexeyev wept.

No! It is not madness! It is worse. It is direct treason to Russia!

Kerensky, Terestchenko and Nekrassov must immediately answer us concerning the

words of Verkhovsky.

Citizens, arise! Russia is being sold! Save her!

What Verkhovsky really said was that the Allies must be pressed to offer peace,
because the Russian army could fight no longer....

Both in Russia and abroad the sensation was tremendous. Verkhovsky was given
“indefinite leave of absence for ill-health,” and left the Government. Obshtchee Dielo
was suppressed....

Sunday, November 4th, was designated as the Day of the Petrograd Soviet, with
immense meetings planned all over the city, ostensibly to raise money for the
organisation and the press; really, to make a demonstration of strength. Suddenly it was
announced that on the same day the Cossacks would hold a Krestny Khod —
Procession of the Cross— in honour of the Ikon of 1612, through whose miraculous
intervention Napoleon had been driven from Moscow. The atmosphere was electric; a
spark might kindle civil war. The Petrograd Soviet issued a manifesto, headed “Brothers
— Cossacks!”

You, Cossacks, are being incited against us, workers and soldiers. This plan of Cain is
being put into operation by our common enemies, the oppressors, the privileged classes
— generals, bankers, landlords, former officials, former servants of the Tsar.... We are
hated by all grafters, rich men, princes, nobles, generals, including your Cossack
generals. They are ready at any moment to destroy the Petrograd Soviet and crush the
Revolution....

On the 4th of November somebody is organising a Cossack religious procession. It is a

question of the free consciousness of every individual whether he will or will not take
part in this procession. We do not interfere in this matter, nor do we obstruct anybody....
However, we warn you, Cossacks! Look out and see to it that under the pretext of a
Krestni Khod, your Kaledins do not instigate you against workmen, against soldiers....

The procession was hastily called off....

In the barracks and the working-class quarters of the town the Bolsheviki were
preaching, “All Power to the Soviets!” and agents of the Dark Forces were urging the
people to rise and slaughter the Jews, shop-keepers, Socialist leaders....

On one side the Monarchist press, inciting to bloody repression— on the other Lenin’s
great voice roaring, “Insurrection!.... We cannot wait any longer!”

Even the bourgeois press was uneasy. (See App. Ill, Sect. 2) Birjevya Viedomosti
(Exchange Gazette) called the Bolshevik propaganda an attack on “the most
elementary principles of society— personal security and the respect for private
property.”

[Graphic, page 46: Appeal of the Petrograd Soviet]

Appeal of the Petrograd Soviet to the Cosacks to call off their Krestny Khod— the
religious procession planned for November 4th (our calendar). “Brothers— Cossacks!” it
begins. “The Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies addresses you.”

But it was the “moderate” Socialist journals which were the most hostile. (See App. Ill,
Sect. 3) “The Bolsheviki are the most dangerous enemies of the Revolution,” declared
Dielo Naroda. Said the Menshevik Dien, “The Government ought to defend itself and
defend us.” Plekhanov’s paper, Yedinstvo (Unity) (See App. Ill, Sect. 4), called the
attention of the Government to the fact that the Petrograd workers were being armed,
and demanded stern measures against the Bolsheviki.

Daily the Government seemed to become more helpless. Even the Municipal
administration broke down. The columns of the morning papers were filled with
accounts of the most audacious robberies and murders, and the criminals were
unmolested.

On the other hand armed workers patrolled the streets at night, doing battle with
marauders and requisitioning arms wherever they found them.

On the first of November Colonel Polkovnikov, Military Commander of Petrograd, issued

a proclamation:

Despite the difficult days through which the country is passing, irresponsible appeals to
armed demonstrations and massacres are still being spread around Petrograd, and
from day to day robbery and disorder increase.

This state of things is disorganising the life of the citizens, and hinders the systematic
work of the Government and the Municipal Institutions.

In full consciousness of my responsibility and my duty before my country, I command:

1. Every military unit, in accordance with special instructions and within the territory of
its garrison, to afford every assistance to the Municipality, to the Commissars, and to the
militia, in the guarding of Government institutions.

2. The organisation of patrols, in co-operation with the District Commander and the
representatives of the city militia, and the taking of measures for the arrest of criminals
and deserters.

3. The arrest of all persons entering barracks and inciting to armed demonstrations and
massacres, and their delivery to the headquarters of the Second Commander of the city.

4. To suppress any armed demonstration or riot at its start, with all armed forces at
hand.

5. To afford assistance to the Commissars in preventing unwarranted searches in

houses and unwarranted arrests.
6. To report immediately all that happens in the district under charge to the Staff of the
Petrograd Military District.

I call upon all Army Committees and organisations to afford their help to the
commanders in fulfilment of the duties with which they are charged.

In the Council of the Republic Kerensky declared that the Government was fully aware
of the Bolshevik preparations, and had sufficient force to cope with any demonstration.
(See App. Ill, Sect. 5) He accused Novaya Rus and Robotchi Put of both doing the
same kind of subversive work. “But owing to the absolute freedom of the press,” he
added, “the Government is not in a position to combat printed lies.fll]....” Declaring that
these were two aspects of the same propaganda, which had for its object the counter-
revolution, so ardently desired by the Dark Forces, he went on:

“I am a doomed man, it doesn’t matter what happens to me, and I have the audacity to
say that the other enigmatic part is that of the unbelievable provocation created in the
city by the Bolsheviki!”

[11] This was not quite candid. The Provisional Government had suppressed Bolshevik
papers before, in July, and was planning to do so again.

On November 2d only fifteen delegates to the Congress of Soviets had arrived. Next
day there were a hundred, and the morning after that a hundred and seventy-five, of
whom one hundred and three were Bolsheviki.... Four hundred constituted a quorum,
and the Congress was only three days off....

I spent a great deal of time at Smolny. It was no longer easy to get in. Double rows of
sentries guarded the outer gates, and once inside the front door there was a long line of
people waiting to be let in, four at a time, to be questioned as to their identity and their
business. Passes were given out, and the pass system was changed every few hours;
for spies continually sneaked through....

[Graphic, page 49: Russian Pass to Reed, translation follows]

Pass to Smolny Institute, issued by the Military Revolutionary

Committee, giving me the right of entry at any time. (Translation)

Military Revolutionary Committee

attached to the
Petrograd Soviet of W. & S. D. Commandant’s office

16th November, 1917

No. 955.

Smolny Institute

PASS

Is given by the present to John Reed, correspondent of the American Socialist press,
until December 1, the right of free entry into Smolny Institute. Commandant Adjutant

One day as I came up to the outer gate I saw Trotzky and his wife just ahead of

me. They were halted by a soldier. Trotzky searched through his pockets, but could find
no pass.

“Never mind,” he said finally. “You know me. My name is Trotzky.” “You haven’t got a
pass,” answered the soldier stubbornly.

“You cannot go in. Names don’t mean anything to me.” “But I am the president of the
Petrograd Soviet.”

“Well,” replied the soldier, “if you’re as important a fellow as that you must at least have
one little paper.”

Trotzky was very patient. “Let me see the Commandant,” he said. The soldier hesitated,
grumbling something about not wanting to disturb the Commandant for every devil that
came along. He beckoned finally to the soldier in command of the guard. Trotzky
explained matters to him. “My name is Trotzky,” he repeated.

“Trotzky?” The other soldier scratched his head. “I’ve heard the name somewhere,” he
said at length. “I guess it’s all right. You can go on in, comrade....”

In the corridor I met Karakhan, member of the Bolshevik Central

Committee, who explained to me what the new Government would be like. “A loose
organisation, sensitive to the popular will as expressed through the
Soviets, allowing local forces full play. At present the Provisional Government obstructs
the action of the local democratic will, just as the Tsar’s Government

did. The initiative of the new society shall come from below.... The form of the
Government will be modelled on the Constitution of the Russian Social Democratic
Labour Party. The new Tsay-ee-kah, responsible to frequent meetings of the All-Russian
Congress of Soviets, will be the parliament; the various Ministries will be headed by
collegia—committees— instead of by Ministers, and will be directly responsible to the
Soviets....”

On October 30th, by appointment, I went up to a small, bare room in the attic of Smolny,
to talk with Trotzky. In the middle of the room he sat on a rough chair at a bare table.
Few questions from me were necessary; he talked rapidly and steadily, for more than an
hour. The substance of his talk, in his own words, I give here:

“The Provisional Government is absolutely powerless. The bourgeoisie is in control, but

this control is masked by a fictitious coalition with the oborontsi parties. Now, during the
Revolution, one sees revolts of peasants who are tired of waiting for their promised
land; and all over the country, in all the toiling classes, the same disgust is evident. This
domination by the bourgeoisie is only possible by means of civil war. The Kornilov
method is the only way by which the bourgeoisie can control. But it is force which the
bourgeoisie lacks.... The Army is with us. The conciliators and pacifists, Socialist
Revolutionaries and Mensheviki, have lost all authority— because the struggle between
the peasants and the landlords, between the workers and the employers, between the
soldiers and the officers, has become more bitter, more irreconcilable than ever. Only by
the concerted action of the popular mass, only by the victory of proletarian dictatorship,
can the Revolution be achieved and the people saved....

“The Soviets are the most perfect representatives of the people— perfect in their
revolutionary experience, in their ideas and objects. Based directly upon the army in the
trenches, the workers in the factories, and the peasants in the fields, they are the
backbone of the Revolution.

“There has been an attempt to create a power without the Soviets— and only
powerlessness has been created. Counter-revolutionary schemes of all sorts are now
being hatched in the corridors of the Council of the Russian Republic. The Cadet party
represents the counter-revolution militant. On the other side, the Soviets represent the
cause of the people. Between the two camps there are no groups of serious
importance.... It is the lutte finale. The bourgeois counter revolution organises all its
forces and waits for the moment to attack us. Our answer will be decisive. We will
complete the work scarcely begun in March, and advanced during the Kornilov affair....”
He went on to speak of the new Government’s foreign policy:

“Our first act will be to call for an immediate armistice on all fronts, and a conference of
peoples to discuss democratic peace terms. The quantity of democracy we get in the
peace settlement depends on the quantity of revolutionary response there is in Europe.
If we create here a Government of the Soviets, that will be a powerful factor for
immediate peace in Europe; for this Government will address itself directly and
immediately to all peoples, over the heads of their Governments, proposing an
armistice. At the moment of the conclusion of peace the pressure of the Russian
Revolution will be in the direction of ‘no annexations, no indemnities, the right of self-
determination of peoples,’ and a Federated Republic of Europe....

“At the end of this war I see Europe recreated, not by the diplomats, but by the
proletariat. The Federated Republic of Europe— the United States of Europe— that is
what must be. National autonomy no longer suffices. Economic evolution demands the
abolition of national frontiers. If Europe is to remain split into national groups, then
Imperialism will recommence its work. Only a Federated Republic of Europe can give
peace to the world.” He smiled— that fine, faintly ironical smile of his. “But without the
action of the European masses, these ends cannot be realised— now....”

Now while everybody was waiting for the Bolsheviki to appear suddenly on the streets
one morning and begin to shoot down people with white collars on, the real insurrection
took its way quite naturally and openly.

The Provisional Government planned to send the Petrograd garrison to the front. The
Petrograd garrison numbered about sixty thousand men, who had taken a

prominent part in the Revolution. It was they who had turned the tide in the great days
of March, created the Soviets of Soldiers’ Deputies, and hurled back Kornilov from the
gates of Petrograd.

Now a large part of them were Bolsheviki. When the Provisional Government talked of
evacuating the city, it was the Petrograd garrison which answered, “If you are not
capable of defending the capital, conclude peace; if you cannot conclude peace, go
away and make room for a People’s Government which can do both....”

It was evident that any attempt at insurrection depended upon the attitude of the
Petrograd garrison. The Government’s plan was to replace the garrison regiments with
“dependable” troops— Cossacks, Death Battalions. The Army Committees, the
“moderate” Socialists and the Tsay-ee-kah supported the Government. A wide-spread
agitation was carried on at the Front and in Petrograd, emphasizing the fact that for
eight months the Petrograd garrison had been leading an easy life in the barracks of the
capital, while their exhausted comrades in the trenches starved and died.

Naturally there was some truth in the accusation that the garrison regiments were
reluctant to exchange their comparative comfort for the hardships of a winter campaign.
But there were other reasons why they refused to go. The Petrograd Soviet feared the
Government’s intentions, and from the Front came hundreds of delegates, chosen by
the common soldiers, crying, “It is true we need reinforcements, but more important, we
must know that Petrograd and the Revolution are well-guarded.... Do you hold the rear,
comrades, and we will hold the front!”

On October 25th, behind closed doors, the Central Committee of the Petrograd Soviet
discussed the formation of a special Military Committee to decide the whole question.
The next day a meeting of the Soldiers’ Section of the Petrograd Soviet elected a
Committee, which immediately proclaimed a boycott of the bourgeois newspapers, and
condemned the Tsay-ee-kah for opposing the Congress of Soviets. On the 29th, in open
session of the Petrograd Soviet, Trotzky proposed that the Soviet formally sanction the
Military Revolutionary Committee. “We ought,” he said, “to create our special
organisation to march to battle, and if necessary to die....” It was decided to send to the
front two delegations, one from the Soviet and one from the garrison, to confer with the
Soldiers’ Committees and the General Staff.

At Pskov, the Soviet delegates were met by General Tcheremissov, commander of the
Northern Front, with the curt declaration that he had ordered the Petrograd garrison to
the trenches, and that was all. The garrison committee was not allowed to leave
Petrograd....

A delegation of the Soldiers’ Section of the Petrograd Soviet asked that a

representative be admitted to the Staff of the Petrograd District. Refused. The Petrograd
Soviet demanded that no orders be issued without the approval of the Soldiers’
Section. Refused. The delegates were roughly told, “We only recognize the Tsay-ee-
kah. We do not recognise you; if you break any laws, we shall arrest you.”

On the 30th a meeting of representatives of all the Petrograd regiments passed a

resolution: “The Petrograd garrison no longer recognises the Provisional Government.
The Petrograd Soviet is our Government. We will obey only the orders of the Petrograd
Soviet, through the Military Revolutionary Committee. ” The local military units were
ordered to wait for instructions from the Soldiers’ Section of the Petrograd Soviet.

Next day the Tsay-ee-kah summoned its own meeting, composed largely of officers,
formed a Committee to cooperate with the Staff, and detailed Commissars in all
quarters of the city.
A great soldier meeting at Smolny on the 3d resolved:

Saluting the creation of the Military Revolutionary Committee, the Petrograd garrison
promises it complete support in all its actions, to unite more closely the front and the
rear in the interests of the Revolution.

The garrison moreover declares that with the revolutionary

proletariat it assures the maintenance of revolutionary order in

Petrograd. Every attempt at provocation on the part of the

Kornilovtsi or the bourgeoisie will be met with merciless resistance.

Now conscious of its power, the Military Revolutionary Committee peremptorily

summoned the Petrograd Staff to submit to its control. To all printing plants it gave
orders not to publish any appeals or proclamations without the Committee’s
authorisation. Armed Commissars visited the Kronversk arsenal and seized great
quantities of arms and ammunition, halting a shipment of ten thousand bayonets which
was being sent to Novotcherkask, headquarters of Kaledin....

Suddenly awake to the danger, the Government offered immunity if the Committee
would disband. Too late. At midnight November 5th Kerensky himself sent Malevsky to
offer the Petrograd Soviet representation on the Staff. The Military Revolutionary
Committee accepted. An hour later General Manikovsky, acting Minister of war,
countermanded the offer....

Tuesday morning, November 6th, the city was thrown into excitement by the
appearance of a placard signed, “Military Revolutionary Committee attached to the
Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.”

To the Population of Petrograd. Citizens!

Counter-revolution has raised its criminal head. The Kornilovtsi are mobilising their
forces in order to crush the All-Russian Congress of Soviets and break the Constituent
Assembly. At the same time the pogromists may attempt to call upon the people of
Petrograd for trouble and bloodshed. The Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’
Deputies takes upon itself the guarding of revolutionary order in the city against counter-
revolutionary and pogrom attempts.
The Petrograd garrison will not allow any violence or disorders. The population is invited
to arrest hooligans and Black Hundred agitators and take them to the Soviet
Commissars at the nearest barracks. At the first attempt of the Dark Forces to make
trouble on the streets of Petrograd, whether robbery or fighting, the criminals will be
wiped off the face of the earth!

Citizens! We call upon you to maintain complete quiet and self-possession. The cause
of order and Revolution is in strong hands.

List of regiments where there are Commissars of the Military Revolutionary

Committee....

On the 3rd the leaders of the Bolsheviki had another historic meeting behind closed
doors. Notified by Zalkind, I waited in the corridor outside the door; and Volodarsky as
he came out told me what was going on.

Lenin spoke: “November 6th will be too early. We must have an all-Russian basis for the
rising; and on the 6th all the delegates to the Congress will not have arrived.... On the
other hand, November 8th will be too late. By that time the Congress will be organised,
and it is difficult for a large organised body of people to take swift, decisive action. We
must act on the 7th, the day the Congress meets, so that we may say to it, "Here is the
power! What are you going to do with it?’”

In a certain upstairs room sat a thin-faced, long-haired individual, once an officer in the
armies of the Tsar, then revolutionist and exile, a certain Avseenko, called Antonov,
mathematician and chess-player; he was drawing careful plans for the seizure of the
capital.

On its side the Government was preparing. Inconspicuously certain of the most loyal
regiments, from widely-separated divisions, were ordered to Petrograd. The yunker
artillery was drawn into the Winter Palace. Patrols of Cossacks made their appearance
in the streets, for the first time since the July days. Polkovnikov issued order after order,
threatening to repress all insubordination with the

“utmost energy.” Kishkin, Minister of Public Instruction, the worst-hated member of the
Cabinet, was appointed Special Commissar to keep order in Petrograd; he named as
assistants two men no less unpopular, Rutenburg and Paltchinsky. Petrograd, Cronstadt
and Finland were declared in a state of siege— upon which the bourgeois Novoye
Vremya (New Times) remarked ironically:
Why the state of siege? The Government is no longer a power. It has no moral authority
and it does not possess the necessary apparatus to use force.... In the most favourable
circumstances it can only negotiate with any one who consents to parley. Its authority
goes no farther....

Monday morning, the 5th, I dropped in at the Marinsky Palace, to see what was
happening in the Council of the Russian Republic. Bitter debate on Terestchenko’s
foreign policy. Echoes of the Burtzev-Verkhovski affair. All the diplomats present except
the Italian ambassador, who everybody said was prostrated by the Carso disaster....

As I came in, the Left Socialist Revolutionary Karelin was reading aloud an editorial
from the London Times which said, “The remedy for Bolshevism is bullets!” Turning to
the Cadets he cried, “That’s what you think, too!”

Voices from the Right, “Yes! Yes!”

“Yes, I know you think so,” answered Karelin, hotly. “But you haven’t the courage to try
it!”

Then Skobeliev, looking like a matinee idol with his soft blond beard and wavy yellow
hair, rather apologetically defending the Soviet nakaz. Terestchenko followed, assailed
from the Left by cries of “Resignation! Resignation!” He insisted that the delegates of
the Government and of the Tsay-ee-kah to Paris should have a common point of view—
his own. A few words about the restoration of discipline in the army, about war to
victory.... Tumult, and over the stubborn opposition of the truculent Left, the Council of
the Republic passed to the simple order of the day.

There stretched the rows of Bolshevik seats— empty since that first day when they left
the Council, carrying with them so much life. As I went down the stairs it seemed to me
that in spite of the bitter wrangling, no real voice from the rough world outside could
penetrate this high, cold hall, and that the Provisional Government was wrecked— on
the same rock of War and Peace that had wrecked the Miliukov Ministry.... The doorman
grumbled as he put on my coat, “I don’t know what is becoming of poor Russia. All
these Mensheviki and Bolsheviki and Trudoviki.... This Ukraine and this Finland and the
German imperialists and the English imperialists. I am forty-five years old, and in all my
life I never heard so many words as in this place....”

In the corridor I met Professor Shatsky, a rat-faced individual in a dapper frock coat,
very influential in the councils of the Cadet party. I asked him what he thought of the
much-talked-of Bolshevik vystuplennie. He shrugged, sneering.
“They are cattle— canaille, ” he answered. “They will not dare, or if they dare they will
soon be sent flying. From our point of view it will not be bad, for then they will ruin
themselves and have no power in the Constituent Assembly....

“But, my dear sir, allow me to outline to you my plan for a form of Government to be
submitted to the Constituent Assembly. You see, I am chairman of a commission
appointed from this body, in conjunction with the Provisional Government, to work out a
constitutional project.... We will have a legislative assembly of two chambers, such as
you have in the United States. In the lower chamber will be territorial representatives; in
the upper, representatives of the liberal professions, zemstvos, Cooperatives— and
Trade Unions....”

Outside a chill, damp wind came from the west, and the cold mud underfoot soaked
through my shoes. Two companies of yunkers passed swinging up the Morskaya,
tramping stiffly in their long coats and singing an oldtime crashing chorus, such as the
soldiers used to sing under the Tsar.... At the first cross street I noticed that the City
Militiamen were mounted, and armed with revolvers in bright new holsters; a little group
of people stood silently staring at them. At the corner of the Nevsky I bought a pamphlet
by Lenin, “Will the Bolsheviki be Able to Hold the Power?” paying for it with one of the
stamps which did duty for small change. The usual street-cars crawled past, citizens
and soldiers clinging to the outside in a way to make Theodore P. Shonts green with
envy.... Along the sidewalk a row of deserters in uniform sold cigarettes and sunflower
seeds....

Up the Nevsky in the sour twilight crowds were battling for the latest papers, and knots
of people were trying to make out the multitudes of appeals (See App. Ill, Sect. 6) and
proclamations pasted in every flat place; from the Tsay-ee-kah, the Peasants’ Soviets,
the “moderate” Socialist parties, the Army Committees— threatening, cursing,
beseeching the workers and soldiers to stay home, to support the Government....

An armoured automobile went slowly up and down, siren screaming. On every corner, in
every open space, thick groups were clustered; arguing soldiers and students. Night
came swiftly down, the wide-spaced street-lights flickered on, the tides of people flowed
endlessly.... It is always like that in Petrograd just before trouble....

The city was nervous, starting at every sharp sound. But still no sign from the
Bolsheviki; the soldiers stayed in the barracks, the workmen in the factories.... We went
to a moving picture show near the Kazan Cathedral— a bloody Italian film of passion
and intrigue. Down front were some soldiers and sailors, staring at the screen in
childlike wonder, totally unable to comprehend why there should be so much violent
running about, and so much homicide....
From there I hurried to Smolny. In room 10 on the top floor, the Military Revolutionary
Committee sat in continuous session, under the chairmanship of a tow-headed,
eighteen-year-old boy named Lazimir. He stopped, as he passed, to shake hands rather
bashfully.

“Peter-Paul Fortress has just come over to us,” said he, with a pleased grin. “A minute
ago we got word from a regiment that was ordered by the Government to come to
Petrograd. The men were suspicious, so they stopped the train at Gatchina and sent a
delegation to us. ‘What’s the matter?’ they asked. ‘What have you got to say? We have
just passed a resolution, “All Power to the Soviets.’”... The Military Revolutionary
Committee sent back word, ‘Brothers! We greet you in the name of the Revolution. Stay
where you are until further instructions!”’

All telephones, he said, were cut off: but communication with the factories and barracks
was established by means of military telephonograph apparatus....

A steady stream of couriers and Commissars came and went. Outside the door waited a
dozen volunteers, ready to carry word to the farthest quarters of the city. One of them, a
gypsy-faced man in the uniform of a lieutenant, said in French, “Everything is ready to
move at the push of a button....”

There passed Podvoisky, the thin, bearded civillian whose brain conceived the strategy
of insurrection; Antonov, unshaven, his collar filthy, drunk with loss of sleep; Krylenko,
the squat, wide-faced soldier, always smiling, with his violent gestures and tumbling
speech; and Dybenko, the giant bearded sailor with the placid face. These were the
men of the hour— and of other hours to come.

Downstairs in the office of the Factory-Shop Committees sat Seratov, signing orders on
the Government Arsenal for arms— one hundred and fifty rifles for each factory....
Delegates waited in line, forty of them....

In the hall I ran into some of the minor Bolshevik leaders. One showed me a revolver.
“The game is on,” he said, and his face was pale. “Whether we move or not the other
side knows it must finish us or be finished....”

The Petrograd Soviet was meeting day and night. As I came into the great hall Trotzky
was just finishing.

“We are asked,” he said, “if we intend to have a vystuplermie. I can give a clear answer
to that question. The Petrograd Soviet feels that at last the moment has arrived when
the power must fall into the hands of the Soviets. This transfer of government will be
accomplished by the All-Russian Congress. Whether an armed demonstration is
necessary will depend on... those who wish to interfere with the All-Russian Congress....

“We feel that our Government, entrusted to the personnel of the Provisional Cabinet, is
a pitiful and helpless Government, which only awaits the sweep of the broom of History
to give way to a really popular Government. But we are trying to avoid a conflict, even
now, to-day. We hope that the All-Russian Congress will take... into its hands that power
and authority which rests upon the organised freedom of the people. If, however, the
Government wants to utilise the short period it is expected to live— twenty-four, forty-
eight, or seventy-two hours— to attack us, then we shall answer with counter-attacks,
blow for blow, steel for iron!”

Amid cheers he announced that the Left Socialist Revolutionaries had agreed to send
representatives into the Military Revolutionary Committee....

As I left Smolny, at three o’clock in the morning, I noticed that two rapid-firing guns had
been mounted, one on each side of the door, and that strong patrols of soldiers guarded
the gates and the near-by street-corners. Bill Shatov[12] came bounding up the steps.
“Well,” he cried, “We’re off! Kerensky sent the yunkers to close down our papers, Soldat
and Rabotchi Put. But our troops went down and smashed the Government seals, and
now we’re sending detachments to seize the bourgeois newspaper offices!” Exultantly
he slapped me on the shoulder, and ran in....

[12] Well known in the American labor movement.

On the morning of the 6th I had business with the censor, whose office was in the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Everywhere, on all the walls, hysterical appeals to the people
to remain “calm.” Polkovnikov emitted prikaz after prikaz:

I order all military units and detachments to remain in their barracks until further orders
from the Staff of the Military District.... All officers who act without orders from their
superiors will be court-martialled for mutiny. I forbid absolutely any execution by soldiers
of instructions from other organisations....

The morning papers announced that the Government had suppressed the papers
Novaya Rus, Zhivoye Slovo, Rabotchi Put and Soldat, and decreed the arrest of the
leaders of the Petrograd Soviet and the members of the Military Revolutionary
Committee....

As I crossed the Palace Square several batteries of yunker artillery came through the
Red Arch at a jingling trot, and drew up before the Palace. The great red building of the
General Staff was unusually animated, several armoured automobiles ranked before the
door, and motors full of officers were coming and going.... The censor was very much
excited, like a small boy at a circus. Kerensky, he said, had just gone to the Council of
the Republic to offer his resignation. I hurried down to the Marinsky Palace, arriving at
the end of that passionate and almost incoherent speech of Kerensky’s, full of self-
justification and bitter denunciation of his enemies.

“I will cite here the most characteristic passage from a whole series of articles published
in Rabotchi Put by Ulianov-Lenin, a state criminal who is in hiding and whom we are
trying to find.... This state criminal has invited the proletariat and the Petrograd garrison
to repeat the experience of the 16th-18th of July, and insists upon the immediate
necessity for an armed rising.... Moreover, other Bolshevik leaders have taken the floor
in a series of meetings, and also made an appeal to immediate insurrection. Particularly
should be noticed the activity of the present president of the Petrograd Soviet,
Bronstein-Trotzky....

“I ought to bring to your notice... that the expressions and the style of a whole series of
articles in Rabotchi Put and Soldat resemble absolutely those of Novaya Rus.... We
have to do not so much with the movement of such and such political party, as with the
exploitation of the political ignorance and criminal instincts of a part of the population, a
sort of organisation whose object it is to provoke in Russia, cost what it may, an
inconscient movement of destruction and pillage; for given the state of mind of the
masses, any movement at Petrograd will be followed by the most terrible massacres,
which will cover with eternal shame the name of free Russia....

“... By the admission of Ulianov-Lenin himself, the situation of the extreme left wing of
the Social Democrats in Russia is very favourable.” (Here Kerensky read the following
quotation from Lenin’s article.):

Think of it!... The German comrades have only one Liebknecht, without newspapers,
without freedom of meeting, without a Soviet.... They are opposed by the incredible
hostility of all classes of society— and yet the German comrades try to act; while we,
having dozens of newspapers, freedom of meeting, the majority of the Soviets, we, the
best-placed international proletarians of the entire world, can we refuse to support the
German revolutionists and insurrectionary organisations?...

Kerensky then continued:

“The organisers of rebellion recognise thus implicitly that the most perfect conditions for
the free action of a political party obtain now in Russia, administered by a Provisional
Government at the head of which is, in the eyes of this party, "a usurper and a man who
has sold himself to the bourgeoisie, the Minister-President Kerensky....’
“... The organisers of the insurrection do not come to the aid of the German proletariat,
but of the German governing classes, and they open the Russian front to the iron fists of
Wilhelm and his friends.... Little matter to the Provisional Government the motives of
these people, little matter if they act consciously or unconsciously; but in any case, from
this tribune, in full consciousness of my responsibility, I quality such acts of a Russian
political party as acts of treason to Russia!

"... I place myself at the point of view of the Right, and I propose immediately to proceed
to an investigation and make the necessary arrests.” (Uproar from the Left.) “Listen to
me!” he cried in a powerful voice. “At the moment when the state is in danger, because
of conscious or unconscious treason, the Provisional Government, and myself among
others, prefer to be killed rather than betray the life, the honour and the independence
of Russia....”

At this moment a paper was handed to Kerensky.

“I have just received the proclamation which they are distributing to the regiments. Here
is the contents.” Reading: “‘The Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies is
menaced. We order immediately the regiments to mobilise on a war footing and to await
new orders. All delay or non-execution of this order will be considered as an act of
treason to the Revolution. The Military Revolutionary Committee. For the President,
Podvoisky. The Secretary, Antonov. ’

“In reality, this is an attempt to raise the populace against the existing order of things, to
break the Constituent and to open the front to the regiments of the iron fist of Wilhelm....

“I say p‘ opulace’ intentionally, because the conscious democracy and its Tsay-ee- kah,
all the Army organisations, all that free Russia glorifies, the good sense, the honour and
the conscience of the great Russian democracy, protests against these things....

“I have not come here with a prayer, but to state my firm conviction that the Provisional
Government, which defends at this moment our new liberty— that the new Russian
state, destined to a brilliant future, will find unanimous support except among those who
have never dared to face the truth....

The Provisional Government has never violated the liberty of all citizens of the State to
use their political rights.... But now the Provisional Government.... declares: in this
moment those elements of the Russian nation, those groups and parties who have
dared to lift their hands against the free will of the Russian people, at the same time
threatening to open the front to Germany, must be liquidated with decision!...
“Let the population of Petrograd understand that it will encounter a firm power, and
perhaps at the last moment good sense, conscience and honour will triumph in the
hearts of those who still possess them....”

All through this speech, the hall rang with deafening clamour. When the Minister-
President had stepped down, pale-faced and wet with perspiration, and strode out with
his suite of officers, speaker after speaker from the Left and Centre attacked the Right,
all one angry roaring. Even the Socialist Revolutionaries, through Gotz:

“The policy of the Bolsheviki is demagogic and criminal, in their exploitation of the
popular discontent. But there is a whole series of popular demands which have received
no satisfaction up to now.... The questions of peace, land and the democratization of the
army ought to be stated in such a fashion that no soldier, peasant or worker would have
the least doubt that our Government is attempting, firmly and infallibly, to solve them....

“We Mensheviki do not wish to provoke a Cabinet crisis, and we are ready to defend the
Provisional Government with all our energy, to the last drop of our blood— if only the
Provisional Government, on all these burning questions, will speak the clear and precise
words awaited by the people with such impatience....”

Then Martov, furious:

“The words of the Minister-President, who allowed himself to speak of

p‘opulace’ when it is question of the movement of important sections of the proletariat

and the army— although led in the wrong direction— are nothing but an incitement to
civil war.”

The order of the day proposed by the Left was voted. It amounted practically to a vote of
lack of confidence.

1. The armed demonstration which has been preparing for some days past has for its
object a coup d’etat, threatens to provoke civil war, creates conditions favourable to
pogroms and counterrevolution, the mobilization of counter revolutionary forces, such
as the Black Hundreds, which will inevitably bring about the impossibility of convoking
the Constituent, will cause a military catastrophe, the death of the Revolution, paralyse
the economic life of the country and destroy Russia;

2. The conditions favourable to this agitation have been created by delay in passing
urgent measures, as well as objective conditions caused by the war and the general
disorder. It is necessary before everything to promulgate at once a decree transmitting
the land to the peasants’ Land Committees, and to adopt an energetic course of action
abroad in proposing to the Allies to proclaim their peace terms and to begin peace-
parleys;

3. To cope with Monarchist manifestations and pogromist movements, it is

indispensable to take immediate measures to suppress these movements, and for this
purpose to create at Petrograd a Committee of Public Safety, composed of
representatives of the Municipality and the organs of the revolutionary democracy,
acting in contact with the Provisional Government....

It is interesting to note that the Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries all rallied to this
resolution.... When Kerensky saw it, however, he summoned Avksentiev to the Winter
Palace to explain. If it expressed a lack of confidence in the Provisional Government, he
begged Avksentiev to form a new Cabinet. Dan, Gotz and Avksentiev, the leaders of the
“compromisers,” performed their last compromise.... They explained to Kerensky that it
was not meant as a criticism of the Government!

At the corner of the Morskaya and the Nevsky, squads of soldiers with fixed bayonets
were stopping all private automobiles, turning out the occupants, and ordering them
toward the Winter Palace. A large crowd had gathered to watch them. Nobody knew
whether the soldiers belonged to the Government or the Military Revolutionary
Committee. Up in front of the Kazan Cathedral the same thing was happening,
machines being directed back up the Nevsky. Five or six sailors with rifles came along,
laughing excitedly, and fell into conversation with two of the soldiers. On the sailors’ hat
bands were Avrora and Zaria Svobody,— the names of the leading Bolshevik cruisers of
the Baltic Fleet. One of them said, “Cronstadt is coming!”... It was as if, in 1792, on the
streets of Paris, some one had said: “The Marseillais are coming!” For at Cronstadt
were twenty-five thousand sailors, convinced Bolsheviki and not afraid to die....

Rabotchi i Soldat was just out, all its front page one huge proclamation: SOLDIERS!
WORKERS! CITIZENS!

The enemies of the people passed last night to the offensive. The Kornilovists of the
Staff are trying to draw in from the suburbs yunkers and volunteer battalions. The
Oranienbaum yunkers and the Tsarskoye Selo volunteers refused to come out. A stroke
of high treason is being contemplated against the Petrograd Soviet.... The campaign of
the counter-revolutionists is being directed against the All-Russian Congress of Soviets
on the eve of its opening, against the Constituent Assembly, against the people. The
Petrograd Soviet is guarding the Revolution. The Military Revolutionary Committee is
directing the repulse of the conspirators’ attack. The entire garrison and proletariat of
Petrograd are ready to deal the enemy of the people a crushing blow.
The Military Revolutionary Committee decrees:

1. All regimental, division and battle-ship Committees, together with the Soviet
Commissars, and all revolutionary organisations, shall meet in continuous session,
concentrating in their hands all information about the plans of the conspirators.

2. Not one soldier shall leave his division without permission of the Committee.

3. To send to Smolny at once two delegates from each military unit and five from each
Ward Soviet.

4. All members of the Petrograd Soviet and all delegates to the All-Russian Congress
are invited immediately to Smolny for an extraordinary meeting.

Counter-revolution has raised its criminal head.

A great danger threatens all the conquests and hopes of the soldiers and workers. But
the forces of the Revolution by far exceed those of its enemies.

The cause of the People is in strong hands. The conspirators will be crushed. No
hesitation or doubts! Firmness, steadfastness, discipline, determination! Long live the
Revolution!

The Military Revolutionary Committee.

The Petrograd Soviet was meeting continuously at Smolny, a centre of storm, delegates
falling down asleep on the floor and rising again to take part in the debate, Trotzky,
Kameniev, Volodarsky speaking six, eight, twelve hours a day....

I went down to room 18 on the first floor where the Bolshevik delegates were holding
caucus, a harsh voice steadily booming, the speaker hidden by the crowd: “The
compromisers say that we are isolated. Pay no attention to them. Once it begins they
must be dragged along with us, or else lose their following....”

Here he held up a piece of paper. “We are dragging them! A message has just come
from the Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries! They say that they condemn our
action, but that if the Government attacks us they will not oppose the cause of the
proletariat!” Exultant shouting....

As night fell the great hall filled with soldiers and workmen, a monstrous dun mass,
deep-humming in a blue haze of smoke. The old Tsay-ee-kah had finally decided to
welcome the delegates to that new Congress which would mean its own ruin— and
perhaps the ruin of the revolutionary order it had built. At this meeting, however, only
members of the Tsay-ee-kah could vote....

It was after midnight when Gotz took the chair and Dan rose to speak, in a tense
silence, which seemed to me almost menacing.

“The hours in which we live appear in the most tragic colours,” he said. “The enemy is at
the gates of Petrograd, the forces of the democracy are trying to organise to resist him,
and yet we await bloodshed in the streets of the capital, and famine threatens to
destroy, not only our homogeneous Government, but the Revolution itself....

“The masses are sick and exhausted. They have no interest in the Revolution. If the
Bolsheviki start anything, that will be the end of the Revolution...” (Cries, “That’s a lie!)”
“The counter-revolutionists are waiting with the Bolsheviki to begin riots and
massacres.... If there is any vystuplennie, there will be no Constituent Assembly....”
(Cries, “Lie! Shame!”)

“It is inadmissible that in the zone of military operations the Petrograd garrison shall not
submit to the orders of the Staff.... You must obey the orders of the Staff and of the
Tsay-ee-kah elected by you. All Power to the Soviets— that means death! Robbers and
thieves are waiting for the moment to loot and burn.... When you have such slogans put
before you, ‘Enter the houses, take away the shoes and clothes from the bourgeoisie—
’” (Tumult. Cries, “No such slogan! A lie! A lie!”) “Well, it may start differently, but it will
end that way!

“The Tsay-ee-kah has full power to act, and must be obeyed.... We are not afraid of
bayonets.... The Tsay-ee-kah will defend the Revolution with its body....” (Cries, “It was a
dead body long ago!”)

Immense continued uproar, in which his voice could be heard screaming, as he

pounded the desk, “Those who are urging this are committing a crime!”

Voice: “You committed a crime long ago, when you captured the power and turned it
over to the bourgeoisie!”

Gotz, ringing the chairman’s bell: “Silence, or I’ll have you put out!” Voice: “Try it!”
(Cheers and whistling.)

“Now concerning our policy about peace.” (Laughter.) “Unfortunately Russia can no
longer support the continuation of the war. There is going to be peace, but not
permanent peace— not a democratic peace.... To-day, at the Council of the Republic, in
order to avoid bloodshed, we passed an order of the day demanding the surrender of
the land to the Land Committees and immediate peace negotiations....” (Laughter, and
cries, “Too late!”)

Then for the Bolsheviki, Trotzky mounted the tribune, borne on a wave of roaring
applause that burst into cheers and a rising house, thunderous. His thin, pointed face
was positively Mephistophelian in its expression of malicious irony.

“Dan’s tactics prove that the masses— the great, dull, indifferent masses— are
absolutely with him!” (Titantic mirth.) He turned toward the chairman, dramatically.
“When we spoke of giving the land to the peasants, you were against it. We told the
peasants, ‘If they don’t give it to you, take it yourselves!’ and the peasants followed our
advice. And now you advocate what we did six months ago....

“I don’t think Kerensky’s order to suspend the death penalty in the army was dictated by
his ideals. I think Kerensky was persuaded by the Petrograd garrison, which refused to
obey him....

“To-day Dan is accused of having made a speech in the Council of the Republic which
proves him to be a secret Bolshevik.... The time may come when Dan will say that the
flower of the Revolution participated in the rising of July 16th and 18th.... In Dan’s
resolution to-day at the Council of the Republic there was no mention of enforcing
discipline in the army, although that is urged in the propaganda of his party....

“No. The history of the last seven months shows that the masses have left the
Mensheviki. The Mensheviki and the Socialist Revolutionaries conquered the Cadets,
and then when they got the power, they gave it to the Cadets....

“Dan tells you that you have no right to make an insurrection. Insurrection is the right of
all revolutionists! When the down-trodden masses revolt, it is their right....”

Then the long-faced, cruel-tongued Lieber, greeted with groans and laughter. “Engels
and Marx said that the proletariat had no right to take power until it was

ready for it. In a bourgeois revolution like this.... the seizure of power by the masses
means the tragic end of the Revolution.... Trotzky, as a Social Democratic theorist, is
himself opposed to what he is now advocating....” (Cries, “Enough! Down with him!”)
Martov, constantly interrupted: “The Internationalists are not opposed to the
transmission of power to the democracy, but they disapprove of the methods of the
Bolsheviki. This is not the moment to seize the power....”

Again Dan took the floor, violently protesting against the action of the Military
Revolutionary Committee, which had sent a Commissar to seize the office of Izviestia
and censor the paper. The wildest uproar followed. Martov tried to speak, but could not
be heard. Delegates of the Army and the Baltic Fleet stood up all over the hall, shouting
that the Soviet was their Government....

Amid the wildest confusion Ehrlich offered a resolution, appealing to the workers and
soldiers to remain calm and not to respond to provocations to demonstrate, recognising
the necessity of immediately creating a Committee of Public Safety, and asking the
Provisional Government at once to pass decrees transferring the land to the peasants
and beginning peace negotiations....

Then up leaped Volodarsky, shouting harshly that the Tsay-ee-kah, on the eve of the
Congress, had no right to assume the functions of the Congress. The Tsay-ee- kah was
practically dead, he said, and the resolution was simply a trick to bolster up its waning
power....

“As for us, Bolsheviki, we will not vote on this resolution!” Whereupon all the Bolsheviki
left the hall and the resolution was passed....

Toward four in the morning I met Zorin in the outer hall, a rifle slung from his shoulder.

“We’re moving!” (See App. Ill, Sect. 7) said he, calmly but with satisfaction. “We pinched
the Assistant Minister of Justice and the Minister of Religions. They’re down cellar now.
One regiment is on the march to capture the Telephone Exchange, another the
Telegraph Agency, another the State Bank. The Red Guard is out....”

On the steps of Smolny, in the chill dark, we first saw the Red Guard— a huddled group
of boys in workmen’s clothes, carrying guns with bayonets, talking nervously together.

Far over the still roofs westward came the sound of scattered rifle fire, where the
yunkers were trying to open the bridges over the Neva, to prevent the factory workers
and soldiers of the Viborg quarter from joining the Soviet forces in the centre of the city;
and the Cronstadt sailors were closing them again....

Behind us great Smolny, bright with lights, hummed like a gigantic hive....
Chapter IV

The Fall of the Provisional Government

Wednesday, November 7th, I rose very late. The noon cannon boomed from Peter-Paul
as I went down the Nevsky. It was a raw, chill day. In front of the State Bank some
soldiers with fixed bayonets were standing at the closed gates.

“What side do you belong to?” I asked. “The Government?”

“No more Government,” one answered with a grin, “Slava Bogu! Glory to God!” That
was all I could get out of him....

The street-cars were running on the Nevsky, men, women and small boys hanging on
every projection. Shops were open, and there seemed even less uneasiness among the
street crowds than there had been the day before. A whole crop of new appeals against
insurrection had blossomed out on the walls during the night— to the peasants, to the
soldiers at the front, to the workmen of

Petrograd. One read:

FROM THE PETROGRAD MUNICIPAL DUMA:

The Municipal Duma informs the citizens that in the extraordinary meeting of November
6th the Duma formed a Committee of Public Safety, composed of members of the
Central and Ward Dumas, and representatives of the following revolutionary democratic
organizations: The Tsay-ee-kah, the All-Russian Executive Committee of Peasant
Deputies, the Army organisations, the Tsentroflot, the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and
Soldiers’ Deputies (!), the Council of Trade Unions, and others.

Members of the Committee of Public Safety will be on duty in the building of the
Municipal Duma. Telephones No. 15-40, 223-77, 138-36. November 7th, 1917.

Though I didn’t realize it then, this was the Duma’s declaration of war against the
Bolsheviki.

I bought a copy of Rabotchi Put, the only newspaper which seemed on sale, and a little
later paid a soldier fifty kopeks for a second-hand copy of Dien. The Bolshevik paper,
printed on large-sized sheets in the conquered office of the Russkaya Volia, had huge
headlines: “ALL POWER— TO THE SOVIETS OF WORKERS, SOLDIERS AND
PEASANTS! PEACE! BREAD! LAND!” The leading article was signed “Zinoviev,”—
Lenin’s companion in hiding. It began: Every soldier, every worker, every real Socialist,
every honest democrat realises

that there are only two alternatives to the present situation.

Either— the power will remain in the hands of the bourgeois-landlord crew, and this will
mean every kind of repression for the workers, soldiers and peasants, continuation of
the war, inevitable hunger and death....

Or— the power will be transferred to the hands of the revolutionary workers, soldiers
and peasants; and in that case it will mean a complete abolition of landlord tyranny,
immediate check of the capitalists, immediate proposal of a just peace. Then the land is
assured to the peasants, then control of industry is assured to the workers, then bread
is assured to the hungry, then the end of this nonsensical war!...

Dien contained fragmentary news of the agitated night. Bolsheviki capture of the
Telephone Exchange, the Baltic station, the Telegraph Agency; the Peterhof yunkers
unable to reach Petrograd; the Cossacks undecided; arrest of some of the Ministers;
shooting of Chief of the City Militia Meyer; arrests, counter-arrests, skirmishes between
clashing patrols of soldiers, yunkers and Red Guards. (See App. IV, Sect. 1)

On the corner of the Morskaya I ran into Captain Gomberg, Menshevik oboronetz,
secretary of the Military Section of his party. When I asked him if the insurrection had
really happened he shrugged his shoulders in a tired manner and replied, “Tchort
znayet! The devil knows! Well, perhaps the Bolsheviki can seize the power, but they
won’t be able to hold it more than three days. They haven’t the men to run a
government. Perhaps it’s a good thing to let them try— that will furnish them....”

The Military Hotel at the corner of St. Isaac’s Square was picketed by armed sailors. In
the lobby were many of the smart young officers, walking up and down or muttering
together; the sailors wouldn’t let them leave....

Suddenly came the sharp crack of a rifle outside, followed by a scattered burst of firing.
I ran out. Something unusual was going on around the Marinsky Palace, where the
Council of the Russian Republic met. Diagonally across the wide square was drawn a
line of soldiers, rifles ready, staring at the hotel roof.

“Provacatzia! Shot at us!” snapped one, while another went running toward the door.

At the western corner of the Palace lay a big armoured car with a red flag flying from it,
newly lettered in red paint: “S.R.S.D.” (Soviet Rabotchikh Soldatskikh Deputatov); all the
guns trained toward St. Isaac’s. A barricade had been heaped up across the mouth of
Novaya Ulitza— boxes, barrels, an old bed-spring, a wagon. A pile of lumber barred the
end of the Moika quay. Short logs from a neighbouring wood-pile were being built up
along the front of the building to form breastworks....

“Is there going to be any fighting?” I asked.

“Soon, soon,” answered a soldier, nervously. “Go away, comrade, you’ll get hurt. They
will come from that direction,” pointing toward the Admiralty.

“Who will?”

“That I couldn’t tell you, brother,” he answered, and spat.

Before the door of the Palace was a crowd of soldiers and sailors. A sailor was telling of
the end of the Council of the Russian Republic. “We walked in there,” he said, “and filled
all the doors with comrades. I went up to the counter revolutionist Kornilovitz who sat in
the president’s chair. ‘No more Council,’ I says. ‘Run along home now!”’

There was laughter. By waving assorted papers I managed to get around to the door of
the press gallery. There an enormous smiling sailor stopped me, and when I showed my
pass, just said, “If you were Saint Michael himself, comrade, you couldn’t pass here!”
Through the glass of the door I made out the distorted face and gesticulating arms of a
French correspondent, locked in.... Around in front stood a little, grey-moustached man
in the uniform of a general, the centre of a knot of soldiers. He was very red in the face.

“I am General Alexeyev,” he cried. “As your superior officer and as a member of the
Council of the Republic I demand to be allowed to pass!” The guard scratched his head,
looking uneasily out of the corner of his eye; he beckoned to an approaching officer,
who grew very agitated when he saw who it was and saluted before he realised what he
was doing.

“Vashe Vuisokoprevoskhoditelstvo—your High Excellency— ” he stammered, in the

manner of the old regime, “Access to the Palace is strictly forbidden— I have no right—
”

An automobile came by, and I saw Gotz sitting inside, laughing apparently with great
amusement. A few minutes later another, with armed soldiers on the front seat, full of
arrested members of the Provisional Government. Peters, Lettish member of the Military
Revolutionary Committee, came hurrying across the Square.
“I thought you bagged all those gentlemen last night,” said I, pointing to them. “Oh,” he
answered, with the expression of a disappointed small boy. “The damn

fools let most of them go again before we made up our minds....”

Down the Voskressensky Prospect a great mass of sailors were drawn up, and behind
them came marching soldiers, as far as the eye could reach.

We went toward the Winter Palace by way of the Admiralteisky. All the entrances to the
Palace Square were closed by sentries, and a cordon of troops stretched clear across
the western end, besieged by an uneasy throng of citizens. Except for far-away soldiers
who seemed to be carrying wood out of the Palace courtyard and piling it in front of the
main gateway, everything was quiet.

We couldn’t make out whether the sentries were pro-Government or pro-Soviet. Our
papers from Smolny had no effect, however, so we approached another part of the line
with an important air and showed our American passports, saying “Official business!”
and shouldered through. At the door of the Palace the same old shveitzari, in their
brass-buttoned blue uniforms with the red-and-gold collars, politely took our coats and
hats, and we went up-stairs. In the dark, gloomy corridor, stripped of its tapestries, a few
old attendants were lounging about, and in front of Kerensky’s door a young officer
paced up and down, gnawing his moustache. We asked if we could interview the
Minister-president. He bowed and clicked his heels.

“No, I am sorry,” he replied in French. “Alexander Feodorvitch is extremely occupied just

now....” He looked at us for a moment. “In fact, he is not here....”

“Where is he?”

“He has gone to the Front. (See App. IV, Sect. 2) And do you know, there wasn’t enough
gasoline for his automobile. We had to send to the English Hospital and borrow some.”

“Are the Ministers here?”

“They are meeting in some room— I don’t know where.’ “Are the Bolsheviki coming?”

“Of course. Certainly, they are coming. I expect a telephone call every minute to say
that they are coming. But we are ready. We have yunkers in the front of the Palace.
Through that door there.”

“Can we go in there?”
“No. Certainly not. It is not permitted.” Abruptly he shook hands all around and walked
away. We turned to the forbidden door, set in a temporary partition dividing the hall and
locked on the outside. On the other side were voices, and somebody laughing. Except
for that the vast spaces of the old Palace were silent as the grave. An old shveitzar ran
up. “No, barin, you must not go in there.”

“Why is the door locked?”

“To keep the soldiers in,” he answered. After a few minutes he said something about
having a glass of tea and went back up the hall. We unlocked the door.

Just inside a couple of soldiers stood on guard, but they said nothing. At the end of the
corridor was a large, ornate room with gilded cornices and enormous crystal lustres,
and beyond it several smaller ones, wainscoted with dark wood. On both sides of the
parquetted floor lay rows of dirty mattresses and blankets, upon which occasional
soldiers were stretched out; everywhere was a litter of cigarette-butts, bits of bread,
cloth, and empty bottles with expensive French labels. More and more soldiers, with the
red shoulder-straps of the yunker- schools, moved about in a stale atmosphere of
tobacco-smoke and unwashed humanity. One had a bottle of white Burgundy, evidently
filched from the cellars of the Palace. They looked at us with astonishment as we
marched past, through room after room, until at last we came out into a series of great
state-salons, fronting their long and dirty windows on the Square. The walls were
covered with huge canvases in massive gilt frames— historical battle-scenes.... “12
October 1812” and “6 November 1812” and “16/28 August 1813.” ... One had a gash
across the upper right hand corner.

The place was all a huge barrack, and evidently had been for weeks, from the look of
the floor and walls. Machine guns were mounted on window-sills, rifles stacked between
the mattresses.

As we were looking at the pictures an alcoholic breath assailed me from the region of
my left ear, and a voice said in thick but fluent French, “I see, by the way you admire the
paintings, that you are foreigners.” He was a short, puffy man with a baldish head as he
removed his cap.

“Americans? Enchanted. I am Stabs— Capitan Vladimir Artzibashev, absolutely at your

service.” It did not seem to occur to him that there was anything unusual in four
strangers, one a woman, wandering through the defences of an army awaiting attack.
He began to complain of the state of Russia.

“Not only these Bolsheviki,” he said, “but the fine traditions of the Russian army are
broken down. Look around you. These are all students in the officers’ training schools.
But are they gentlemen? Kerensky opened the officers’ schools to the ranks, to any
soldier who could pass an examination. Naturally there are many, many who are
contaminated by the Revolution....”

Without consequence he changed the subject. “I am very anxious to go away from

Russia. I have made up my mind to join the American army. Will you please go to your
Consul and make arrangements? I will give you my address.” In spite of our
protestations he wrote it on a piece of paper, and seemed to feel better at once. I have it
still— “Oranien-baumskaya Shkola Praporshtchikov 2nd, Staraya Peterhof.”

“We had a review this morning early,” he went on, as he guided us through the rooms
and explained everything. “The Women’s Battalion decided to remain loyal to the
Government.”

“Are the women soldiers in the Palace?”

“Yes, they are in the back rooms, where they won’t be hurt if any trouble comes.” He
sighed. “It is a great responsibility,” said he.

For a while we stood at the window, looking down on the Square before the Palace,
where three companies of long-coated yunkers were drawn up under arms, being
harangued by a tall, energetic-looking officer I recognised as Stankievitch, chief Military
Commissar of the Provisional Government. After a few minutes two of the companies
shouldered arms with a clash, barked three sharp shouts, and went swinging off across
the Square, disappearing through the Red Arch into the quiet city.

“They are going to capture the Telephone Exchange,” said some one. Three cadets
stood by us, and we fell into conversation. They said they had entered the schools from
the ranks, and gave their names— Robert Olev, Alexei Vasilienko and Erni Sachs, an
Esthonian. But now they didn’t want to be officers any more, because officers were very
unpopular. They didn’t seem to know what to do, as a matter of fact, and it was plain
that they were not happy.

But soon they began to boast. “If the Bolsheviki come we shall show them how to fight.
They do not dare to fight, they are cowards. But if we should be overpowered, well,
every man keeps one bullet for himself....”

At this point there was a burst of rifle-fire not far off. Out on the Square all the people
began to run, falling flat on their faces, and the izvoshtchiki, standing on the corners,
galloped in every direction. Inside all was uproar, soldiers running here and there,
grabbing up guns, rifle-belts and shouting, “Here they come! Here they come!” ... But in
a few minutes it quieted down again. The izvoshtchiki came back, the people lying down
stood up. Through the Red Arch appeared the yunkers, marching a little out of step, one
of them supported by two comrades.

It was getting late when we left the Palace. The sentries in the Square had all
disappeared. The great semi-circle of Government buildings seemed deserted. We went
into the Hotel France for dinner, and right in the middle of soup the waiter, very pale in
the face, came up and insisted that we move to the main dining-room at the back of the
house, because they were going to put out the lights in the cafe. “There will be much
shooting,” he said.

When we came out on the Morskaya again it was quite dark, except for one flickering
street-light on the corner of the Nevsky. Under this stood a big armored automobile, with
racing engine and oil-smoke pouring out of it. A small boy had climbed up the side of the
thing and was looking down the barrel of a machine gun. Soldiers and sailors stood
around, evidently waiting for something. We walked back up to the Red Arch, where a
knot of soldiers was gathered staring at the brightly-lighted Winter Palace and talking in
loud tones.

“No, comrades,” one was saying. “How can we shoot at them? The Women’s Battalion
is in there— they will say we have fired on Russian women.”

As we reached the Nevsky again another armoured car came around the corner, and a
man poked his head out of the turret-top.

“Come on!” he yelled. “Let’s go on through and attack!”

The driver of the other car came over, and shouted so as to be heard above the roaring
engine. “The Committee says to wait. They have got artillery behind the wood-piles in
there....”

Here the street-cars had stopped running, few people passed, and there were no lights;
but a few blocks away we could see the trams, the crowds, the lighted shop-windows
and the electric signs of the moving-picture shows— life going on as usual. We had
tickets to the Ballet at the Marinsky Theatre— all theatres were open— but it was too
exciting out of doors....

In the darkness we stumbled over lumber-piles barricading the Police Bridge, and
before the Stroganov Palace made out some soldiers wheeling into position a three-inch
field-gun. Men in various uniforms were coming and going in an aimless way, and doing
a great deal of talking....
Up the Nevsky the whole city seemed to be out promenading. On every corner
immense crowds were massed around a core of hot discussion. Pickets of a dozen
soldiers with fixed bayonets lounged at the street-crossings, red-faced old men in rich
fur coats shook their fists at them, smartly-dressed women screamed epithets; the
soldiers argued feebly, with embarrassed grins.... Armoured cars went up and down the
street, named after the first Tsars— Oleg, Rurik, Svietoslav— and daubed with huge red
letters, “R. S. D. R. P.” (Rossiskaya Partiu)[13]. At the Mikhailovsky a man appeared
with an armful of newspapers, and was immediately stormed by frantic people, offering
a rouble, five roubles, ten roubles, tearing at each other like animals. It was Rabotchi i
Soldat, announcing the victory of the Proletarian Revolution, the liberation of the
Bolsheviki still in prison, calling upon the Army front and rear for support... a feverish
little sheet of four pages, running to enormous type, containing no news....

[13] (Russian Social Democratic Labor Party).

On the corner of the Sadovaya about two thousand citizens had gathered, staring up at
the roof of a tall building, where a tiny red spark glowed and waned.

“See!” said a tall peasant, pointing to it. “It is a provocator. Presently he will fire on the
people....” Apparently no one thought of going to investigate.

The massive facade of Smolny blazed with lights as we drove up, and from every street
converged upon it streams of hurrying shapes dim in the gloom. Automobiles and
motorcycles came and went; an enormous elephant-coloured armoured automobile,
with two red flags flying from the turret, lumbered out with screaming siren. It was cold,
and at the outer gate the Red Guards had built themselves a bon-fire. At the inner gate,
too, there was a blaze, by the light of which the sentries slowly spelled out our passes
and looked us up and down. The canvas covers had been taken off the four rapid-fire
guns on each side of the doorway, and the ammunition-belts hung snakelike from their
breeches. A dun herd of armoured cars stood under the trees in the court-yard, engines
going. The long, bare, dimly-illuminated halls roared with the thunder of feet, calling,
shouting.... There was an atmosphere of recklessness. A crowd came pouring down the
staircase, workers in black blouses and round black fur hats, many of them with guns
slung over their shoulders, soldiers in rough dirt-coloured coats and grey fur shapki
pinched flat, a leader or so— Lunatcharsky, Kameniev— hurrying along in the centre of
a group all talking at once, with harassed anxious faces, and bulging portfolios under
their arms. The extraordinary meeting of the Petrograd Soviet was over. I stopped
Kameniev— a quick moving little man, with a wide, vivacious face set close to his
shoulders. Without preface he read in rapid French a copy of the resolution just passed:

The Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, saluting the victorious
Revolution of the Petrograd proletariat and garrison, particularly emphasises the unity,
organisation, discipline, and complete cooperation shown by the masses in this rising;
rarely has less blood been spilled, and rarely has an insurrection succeeded so well.

The Soviet expresses its firm conviction that the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government
which, as the government of the Soviets, will be created by the Revolution, and which
will assure the industrial proletariat of the support of the entire mass of poor peasants,
will march firmly toward Socialism, the only means by which the country can be spared
the miseries and unheard-of horrors of war.

The new Workers’ and Peasants’ Government will propose immediately a just and
democratic peace to all the belligerent countries.

It will suppress immediately the great landed property, and transfer the land to the
peasants. It will establish workmen’s control over production and distribution of
manufactured products, and will set up a general control over the banks, which it will
transform into a state monopoly.

The Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies calls upon the workers and
the peasants of Russia to support with all their energy and all their devotion the
Proletarian Revolution. The Soviet expresses its conviction that the city workers, allies
of the poor peasants, will assure complete revolutionary order, indispensable to the
victory of Socialism. The Soviet is convinced that the proletariat of the countries of
Western Europe will aid us in conducting the cause of Socialism to a real and lasting
victory.

“You consider it won then?”

He lifted his shoulders. “There is much to do. Horribly much. It is just beginning....”

On the landing I met Riazanov, vice-president of the Trade Unions, looking black and
biting his grey beard. “It’s insane! Insane!” he shouted. “The European working-class
won’t move! All Russia— ” He waved his hand distractedly and ran off. Riazanov and
Kameniev had both opposed the insurrection, and felt the lash of Lenin’s terrible
tongue....

It had been a momentous session. In the name of the Military Revolutionary Committee
Trotzky had declared that the Provisional Government no longer existed.

“The characteristic of bourgeois governments,” he said, “is to deceive the people. We,
the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, are going to try an
experiment unique in history; we are going to found a power which will have no other
aim but to satisfy the needs of the soldiers, workers, and peasants.”

Lenin had appeared, welcomed with a mighty ovation, prophesying world-wide Social
Revolution.... And Zinoviev, crying, “This day we have paid our debt to the international
proletariat, and struck a terrible blow at the war, a terrible body blow at all the
imperialists and particularly at Wilhelm the Executioner....”

Then Trotzky, that telegrams had been sent to the front announcing the victorious
insurrection, but no reply had come. Troops were said to be marching against Petrograd
— a delegation must be sent to tell them the truth.

Cries, “You are anticipating the will of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets!”

Trotzky, coldly, “The will of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets has been anticipated by
the rising of the Petrograd workers and soldiers!”

So we came into the great meeting-hall, pushing through the clamorous mob at

the door. In the rows of seats, under the white chandeliers, packed immovably in

the aisles and on the sides, perched on every window-sill, and even the edge of

the platform, the representatives of the workers and soldiers of all Russia waited in
anxious silence or wild exultation the ringing of the chairman’s bell. There was no heat
in the hall but the stifling heat of unwashed human bodies. A foul blue cloud of cigarette
smoke rose from the mass and hung in the thick air. Occasionally some one in authority
mounted the tribune and asked the comrades not to smoke; then everybody, smokers
and all, took up the cry “Don’t smoke, comrades!” and went on smoking. Petrovsky,
Anarchist delegate from the Obukhov factory, made a seat for me beside him.
Unshaven and filthy, he was reeling from three nights’ sleepless work on the Military
Revolutionary Committee.

On the platform sat the leaders of the old Tsay-ee-kah—for the last time dominating the
turbulent Soviets, which they had ruled from the first days, and which were now risen
against them. It was the end of the first period of the Russian revolution, which these
men had attempted to guide in careful ways.... The three greatest of them were not
there: Kerensky, flying to the front through country towns all doubtfully heaving up;
Tcheidze, the old eagle, who had contemptuously retired to his own Georgian
mountains, there to sicken with consumption; and the high-souled Tseretelli, also
mortally stricken, who, nevertheless, would return and pour out his beautiful eloquence
for a lost cause. Gotz sat there, Dan, Lieber, Bogdanov, Broido, Fillipovsky,— white-
faced, hollow-eyed and indignant. Below them the second siezd of the All-Russian
Soviets boiled and swirled, and over their heads the Military Revolutionary Committee
functioned white-hot, holding in its hands the threads of insurrection and striking with a
long arm.... It was 10.40 P. M.

Dan, a mild-faced, baldish figure in a shapeless military surgeon’s uniform, was ringing
the bell. Silence fell sharply, intense, broken by the scuffling and disputing of the people
at the door....

“We have the power in our hands,” he began sadly, stopped for a moment, and then
went on in a low voice. “Comrades! The Congress of Soviets in meeting in such unusual
circumstances and in such an extraordinary moment that you will understand why the
Tsay-ee-kah considers it unnecessary to address you with a political speech. This will
become much clearer to you if you will recollect that I am a member of the Tsay-ee-kah,
and that at this very moment our party comrades are in the Winter Palace under
bombardment, sacrificing themselves to execute the duty put on them by the Tsay-ee-
kah. ” (Confused uproar.)

“I declare the first session of the Second Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’
Deputies open!”

The election of the presidium took place amid stir and moving about. Avanessov
announced that by agreement of the Bolsheviki, Left Socialist Revolutionaries and
Mensheviki Internationalists, it was decided to base the presidium upon proportionality.
Several Mensheviki leaped to their feet protesting. A bearded soldier shouted at them,
“Remember what you did to us Bolsheviki when we were the minority!” Result— 14
Bolsheviki, 7 Socialist Revolutionaries, 3 Mensheviki and 1 Internationalist (Gorky’s
group). Hendelmann, for the right and centre Socialist Revolutionaries, said that they
refused to take part in the presidium; the same from Kintchuk, for the Mensheviki; and
from the Mensheviki Internationalists, that until the verification of certain circumstances,
they too could not enter the presidium. Scattering applause and hoots. One voice,
“Renegades, you call yourselves Socialists!” A representative of the Ukrainean
delegates demanded, and received, a place. Then the old Tsay-ee-kah stepped down,
and in their places appeared Trotzky, Kameniev, Lunatcharsky, Madame Kollentai,
Nogin.... The hall rose, thundering. How far they had soared, these Bolsheviki, from a
despised and hunted sect less than four months ago, to this supreme place, the helm of
great Russia in full tide of insurrection!

The order of the day, said Kameniev, was first, Organisation of Power; second, War and
Peace; and third, the Constituent Assembly. Lozovsky, rising, announced that upon
agreement of the bureau of all factions, it was proposed to hear and discuss the report
of the Petrograd Soviet, then to give the floor to members of the Tsay-ee-kah and the
different parties, and finally to pass to the order of the day.

But suddenly a new sound made itself heard, deeper than the tumult of the crowd,
persistent, disquieting,— the dull shock of guns. People looked anxiously toward the
clouded windows, and a sort of fever came over them. Martov, demanding the floor,
croaked hoarsely, “The civil war is beginning, comrades! The first question must be a
peaceful settlement of the crisis. On principle and from a political standpoint we must
urgently discuss a means of averting civil war. Our brothers are being shot down in the
streets! At this moment, when before the opening of the Congress of Soviets the
question of Power is being settled by means of a military plot organised by one of the
revolutionary parties — ” for a moment he could not make himself heard above the
noise, “All of the revolutionary parties must face the fact! The first vopros (question)
before the Congress is the question of Power, and this question is already being settled
by force of arms in the streets!... We must create a power which will be recognised by
the whole democracy. If the Congress wishes to be the voice of the revolutionary
democracy it must not sit with folded hands before the developing civil war, the result of
which may be a dangerous outburst of counter revolution.... The possibility of a peaceful
outcome lies in the formation of a united democratic authority.... We must elect a
delegation to negotiate with the other Socialist parties and organisation....”

Always the methodical muffled boom of cannon through the windows, and the
delegates, screaming at each other.... So, with the crash of artillery, in the dark, with
hatred, and fear, and reckless daring, new Russia was being born.

The Left Socialist Revolutionaries and the United Social Democrats supported Martov’s
proposition. It was accepted. A soldier announced that the All-Russian Peasants’
Soviets had refused to send delegates to the Congress; he proposed that a committee
be sent with a formal invitation. “Some delegates are present,” he said. “I move that
they be given votes.” Accepted.

Kharash, wearing the epaulets of a captain, passionately demanded the floor. “The
political hypocrites who control this Congress,” he shouted, “told us we were to settle
the question of Power— and it is being settled behind our backs, before the Congress
opens! Blows are being struck against the Winter Palace, and it is by such blows that
the nails are being driven into the coffin of the political party which has risked such an
adventure!” Uproar. Followed him Gharra: “While we are here discussing propositions of
peace, there is a battle on in the streets.... The Socialist Revolutionaries and the
Mensheviki refuse to be involved in what is happening, and call upon all public forces to
resist the attempt to capture the power....” Kutchin, delegate of the 12th Army and
representative of the Troudoviki: “I was sent here only for information, and I am
returning at once to the Front, where all the Army Committees consider that the taking
of power by the Soviets, only three weeks before the Constituent Assembly, is a stab in
the back of the Army and a crime against the people— !” Shouts of “Lie! You lie!”...
When he could be heard again, “Let’s make an end of this adventure in Petrograd! I call
upon all delegates to leave this hall in order to save the country and the Revolution!” As
he went down the aisle in the midst of a deafening noise, people surged in upon him,
threatening.... Then Khintchuk, an officer with a long brown goatee, speaking suavely
and persuasively: “I speak for the delegates from the Front. The Army is imperfectly
represented in this Congress, and furthermore, the Army does not consider the
Congress of Soviets necessary at this time, only three weeks before the opening of the
Constituent— ” shouts and stamping, always growing more violent. “The Army does not
consider that the Congress of Soviets has the necessary authority— ” Soldiers began to
stand up all over the hall.

“Who are you speaking for? What do you represent?” they cried.

“The Central Executive Committee of the Soviet of the Fifth Army, the Second F —
regiment, the First N— Regiment, the Third S— Rifles....”

“When were you elected? You represent the officers, not the soldiers! What do the
soldiers say about it?” Jeers and hoots.

“We, the Front group, disclaim all responsibility for what has happened and is
happening, and we consider it necessary to mobilise all self-conscious revolutionary
forces for the salvation of the Revolution! The Front group will leave the Congress....
The place to fight is out on the streets!”

Immense bawling outcry. “You speak for the Staff— not for the Army!” “I appeal to all
reasonable soldiers to leave this Congress!”

“Kornilovitz! Counter-revolutionist! Provocator!” were hurled at him.

On behalf of the Mensheviki, Khintchuk then announced that the only possibility of a
peaceful solution was to begin negotiations with the Provisional Government for the
formation of a new Cabinet, which would find support in all strata of society. He could
not proceed for several minutes. Raising his voice to a shout he read the Menshevik
declaration:

“Because the Bolsheviki have made a military conspiracy with the aid of the Petrograd
Soviet, without consulting the other factions and parties, we find it impossible to remain
in the Congress, and therefore withdraw, inviting the other groups to follow us and to
meet for discussion of the situation!”
“Deserter!” At intervals in the almost continuous disturbance Hendelman, for the
Socialist Revolutionaries, could be heard protesting against the bombardment of the
Winter Palace.... “We are opposed to this kind of anarchy....”

Scarcely had he stepped down than a young, lean-faced soldier, with flashing eyes,
leaped to the platform, and dramatically lifted his hand:

“Comrades!” he cried and there was a hush. “My familia (name) is Peterson— I speak
for the Second Lettish Rifles. You have heard the statements of two representatives of
the Army committees; these statements would have some value if their authors had
been representatives of the Army—” Wild applause. “But they do not represent the
soldiers!” Shaking his fist. “The Twelfth Army has been insisting for a long time upon
the re-election of the Great Soviet and the Army Committee, but just as your own Tsay-
ee-kah, our Committee refused to call a meeting of the representatives of the masses
until the end of September, so that the reactionaries could elect their own false
delegates to this Congress. I tell you now, the Lettish soldiers have many times said,
‘No more resolutions! No more talk! We want deeds— the Power must be in our hands!’
Let these impostor delegates leave the Congress! The Army is not with them!”

The hall rocked with cheering. In the first moments of the session, stunned by the
rapidity of events, startled by the sound of cannon, the delegates had hesitated. For an
hour hammer-blow after hammer-blow had fallen from that tribune, welding them
together but beating them down. Did they stand then alone? Was Russia rising against
them? Was it true that the Army was marching on Petrograd? Then this clear-eyed
young soldier had spoken, and in a flash they knew it for the truth.... This was the voice
of the soldiers— the stirring millions of uniformed workers and peasants were men like
them, and their thoughts and feelings were the same...

More soldiers ... Gzhelshakh; for the Front delegates, announcing that they had only
decided to leave the Congress by a small majority, and that the Bolshevik members had
not even taken part in the vote, as they stood for division according to political parties,
and not groups. “Hundreds of delegates from the Front,” he said, “are being elected
without the participation of the soldiers because the Army Committees are no longer the
real representatives of the rank and file....” Lukianov, crying that officers like Kharash
and Khintchuk could not represent the Army in this congress,— but only the high
command. “The real inhabitants of the trenches want with all their hearts the transfer of
Power into the hands of the Soviets, and they expect very much from it!”... The tide was
turning.

Then came Abramovitch, for the Bund, the organ of the Jewish Social

Democrats— his eyes snapping behind thick glasses, trembling with rage.
“What is taking place now in Petrograd is a monstrous calamity! The Bund group joins
with the declaration of the Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries and will leave the
Congress!” He raised his voice and hand. “Our duty to the Russian proletariat doesn’t
permit us to remain here and be responsible for these crimes. Because the firing on the
Winter Palace doesn’t cease, the Municipal Duma together with the Mensheviki and
Socialist Revolutionaries, and the Executive Committee of the Peasants’ Soviet, has
decided to perish with the Provisional Government, and we are going with them!
Unarmed we will expose our breasts to the machine guns of the Terrorists.... We invite
all delegates to this Congress— ” The rest was lost in a storm of hoots, menaces and
curses which rose to a hellish pitch as fifty delegates got up and pushed their way out....

Kameniev jangled the bell, shouting, “Keep your seats and we’ll go on with our
business!” And Trotzky, standing up with a pale, cruel face, letting out his rich voice in
cool contempt, “All these so-called Socialist compromisers, these frightened
Mensheviki, Socialist Revolutionaries, Bund—let them go! They are just so much refuse
which will be swept into the garbage-heap of history!”

Riazanov, for the Bolsheviki, stated that at the request of the City Duma the Military
Revolutionary Committee had sent a delegation to offer negotiations to the Winter
Palace. “In this way we have done everything possible to avoid blood-shed....”

We hurried from the place, stopping for a moment at the room where the Military
Revolutionary Committee worked at furious speed, engulfing and spitting out panting
couriers, despatching Commissars armed with power of life and death to all the corners
of the city, amid the buzz of the telephonographs. The door opened, a blast of stale air
and cigarette smoke rushed out, we caught a glimpse of dishevelled men bending over
a map under the glare of a shaded electric-light.... Comrade Josephov-Dukhvinski, a
smiling youth with a mop of pale yellow hair, made out passes for us. When we came
into the chill night, all the front of Smolny was one huge park of arriving and departing
automobiles, above the sound of which could be heard the far-off slow beat of the
cannon. A great motor-truck stood there, shaking to the roar of its engine. Men were
tossing bundles into it, and others receiving them, with guns beside them.

“Where are you going?” I shouted.

“Down-town— all over— everywhere!” answered a little workman, grinning, with a large
exultant gesture.

We showed our passes. “Come along!” they invited. “But there’ll probably be shooting—
” We climbed in; the clutch slid home with a raking jar, the great car jerked forward, we
all toppled backward on top of those who were climbing in; past the huge fire by the
gate, and then the fire by the outer gate, glowing red on the faces of the workmen with
rifles who squatted around it, and went bumping at top speed down the Suvorovsky
Prospect, swaying from side to side.... One man tore the wrapping from a bundle and
began to hurl handfuls of papers into the air. We imitated him, plunging down through
the dark street with a tail of white papers floating and eddying out behind. The late
passerby stooped to pick them up; the patrols around bonfires on the corners ran out
with uplifted arms to catch them. Sometimes armed men loomed up ahead, crying
“Shtoi!” and raising their guns, but our chauffeur only yelled something unintelligible and
we hurtled on....

1 picked up a copy of the paper, and under a fleeting street-light read:

TO THE CITIZENS OF RUSSIA!

The Provisional Government is deposed. The State Power has passed into the hands of
the organ of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, the Military
Revolutionary Committee, which stands at the head of the Petrograd proletariat and
garrison.

The cause for which the people were fighting: immediate proposal of a democratic
peace, abolition of landlord property-rights over the land, labor control over production,
creation of a Soviet Government— that cause is securely achieved.

LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION OF W ORKMEN, SOLDIERS AND PEASANTS!

Military Revolutionary Committee

Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. [Graphic, page 96: Proclamation in
Russian, title follows]

Proclamation of the Fall of the Provisional Government issued by the Military

Revolutionary Committee on the night of November 7th (our calendar), which we helped
to distribute from a motor-truck just after the surrender of the Winter Palace.

A slant-eyed, Mongolian-faced man who sat beside me, dressed in a goat-skin

Caucasian cape, snapped, “Look out! Here the provocators always shoot from the
windows!” We turned into Znamensky Square, dark and almost deserted, careened
around Trubetskoy’s brutal statue and swung down the wide Nevsky, three men
standing up with rifles ready, peering at the windows. Behind us the street was alive
with people running and stooping. We could no longer hear the cannon, and the nearer
we drew to the Winter Palace end of the city the quieter and more deserted were the
streets. The City Duma was all brightly lighted. Beyond that we made out a dark mass
of people, and a line of sailors, who yelled furiously at us to stop. The machine slowed
down, and we climbed out.

It was an astonishing scene. Just at the corner of the Ekaterina Canal, under an arc-
light, a cordon of armed sailors was drawn across the Nevsky, blocking the way to a
crowd of people in column of fours. There were about three or four hundred of them,
men in frock coats, well-dressed women, officers— all sorts and conditions of people.
Among them we recognised many of the delegates from the Congress, leaders of the
Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries; Avksentiev, the lean, red-bearded president of
the Peasants’ Soviets, Sarokin, Kerensky’s spokesman, Khintchuk, Abramovitch; and
at the head white-bearded old Schreider, Mayor of Petrograd, and Prokopovitch,
Minister of Supplies in the Provisional Government, arrested that morning and released.
I caught sight of Malkin, reporter for the Russian Daily News. “Going to die in the Winter
Palace,” he shouted cheerfully. The procession stood still, but from the front of it came
loud argument. Schreider and Prokopovitch were bellowing at the big sailor who
seemed in command.

“We demand to pass!” they cried. “See, these comrades come from the Congress of
Soviets! Look at their tickets! We are going to the Winter Palace!”

The sailor was plainly puzzled. He scratched his head with an enormous hand,
frowning. “I have orders from the Committee not to let anybody go to the Winter
Palace,” he grumbled. “But I will send a comrade to telephone to Smolny....”

“We Insist upon passing! We are unarmed! We will march on whether you permit us or
not!” cried old Schreider, very much excited.

“I have orders— ” repeated the sailor sullenly.

“Shoot us if you want to! We will pass! Forward!” came from all sides. “We are ready to
die, if you have the heart to fire on Russians and comrades! We bare our breasts to
your guns!”

“No,” said the sailor, looking stubborn, “I can’t allow you to pass.” “What will you do if we
go forward? Will you shoot?”

“No, I’m not going to shoot people who haven’t any guns. We won’t shoot unarmed
Russian people....”
“We will go forward! What can you do?”

“We will do something,” replied the sailor, evidently at a loss. “We can’t let you pass. We
will do something.”

“What will you do? What will you do?”

Another sailor came up, very much irritated. “We will spank you!” he cried, energetically.
“And if necessary we will shoot you too. Go home now, and leave us in peace!”

At this there was a great clamour of anger and resentment, Prokopovitch had mounted
some sort of box, and, waving his umbrella, he made a speech:

“Comrades and citizens!” he said. “Force is being used against us! We cannot have our
innocent blood upon the hands of these ignorant men! It is beneath our dignity to be
shot down here in the street by switchmen— ” (What he meant by “switchmen” I never
discovered.) “Let us return to the Duma and discuss the best means of saving the
country and the Revolution!”

Whereupon, in dignified silence, the procession marched around and back up the
Nevsky, always in column of fours. And taking advantage of the diversion we slipped
past the guards and set off in the direction of the Winter Palace.

Here it was absolutely dark, and nothing moved but pickets of soldiers and Red Guards
grimly intent. In front of the Kazan Cathedral a three-inch field-gun lay in the middle of
the street, slewed sideways from the recoil of its last shot over the roofs. Soldiers were
standing in every doorway talking in low tones and peering down toward the Police
Bridge. I heard one voice saying: “It is possible that we have done wrong....” At the
corners patrols stopped all passersby— and the composition of these patrols was
interesting, for in command of the regular troops was invariably a Red Guard.... The
shooting had ceased.

Just as we came to the Morskaya somebody was shouting: “The yunkers have sent
word they want us to go and get them out!” Voices began to give commands, and in the
thick gloom we made out a dark mass moving forward, silent but for the shuffle of feet
and the clinking of arms. We fell in with the first ranks.

Like a black river, filling all the street, without song or cheer we poured through the Red
Arch, where the man just ahead of me said in a low voice: “Look out, comrades! Don’t
trust them. They will fire, surely!” In the open we began to run, stooping low and
bunching together, and jammed up suddenly behind the pedestal of the Alexander
Column.

“How many of you did they kill?” I asked. “I don’t know. About ten....”

After a few minutes huddling there, some hundreds of men, the army seemed reassured
and without any orders suddenly began again to flow forward. By this time, in the light
that streamed out of all the Winter Palace windows, I could see that the first two or three
hundred men were Red Guards, with only a few scattered soldiers. Over the barricade
of firewood we clambered, and leaping down inside gave a triumphant shout as we
stumbled on a heap of rifles thrown down by the yunkers who had stood there. On both
sides of the main gateway the doors stood wide open, light streamed out, and from the
huge pile came not the slightest sound.

Carried along by the eager wave of men we were swept into the right hand entrance,
opening into a great bare vaulted room, the cellar of the East wing, from which issued a
maze of corridors and stair-cases. A number of huge packing cases stood about, and
upon these the Red Guards and soldiers fell furiously, battering them open with the
butts of their rifles, and pulling out carpets, curtains, linen, porcelain plates, glassware....
One man went strutting around with a bronze clock perched on his shoulder; another
found a plume of ostrich feathers, which he stuck in his hat. The looting was just
beginning when somebody cried, “Comrades! Don’t touch anything! Don’t take anything!
This is the property of the People!” Immediately twenty voices were crying, “Stop! Put
everything back! Don’t take anything! Property of the People!” Many hands dragged the
spoilers down. Damask and tapestry were snatched from the arms of those who had
them; two men took away the bronze clock. Roughly and hastily the things were
crammed back in their cases, and self-appointed sentinels stood guard. It was all utterly
spontaneous. Through corridors and up stair-cases the cry could be heard growing
fainter and fainter in the distance, “Revolutionary discipline! Property of the People....”

We crossed back over to the left entrance, in the West wing. There order was also being
established. “Clear the Palace!” bawled a Red Guard, sticking his head through an inner
door. “Come, comrades, let’s show that we’re not thieves and bandits. Everybody out of
the Palace except the Commissars, until we get sentries posted.”

Two Red Guards, a soldier and an officer, stood with revolvers in their hands. Another
soldier sat at a table behind them, with pen and paper. Shouts of “All out! All out!” were
heard far and near within, and the Army began to pour through the door, jostling,
expostulating, arguing. As each man appeared he was seized by the self-appointed
committee, who went through his pockets and looked under his coat. Everything that
was plainly not his property was taken away, the man at the table noted it on his paper,
and it was carried into a little room. The most amazing assortment of objects were thus
confiscated; statuettes, bottles of ink, bed-spreads worked with the Imperial monogram,
candles, a small oil-painting, desk blotters, gold-handled swords, cakes of soap, clothes
of every description, blankets. One Red Guard carried three rifles, two of which he had
taken away from yunkers; another had four portfolios bulging with written documents.
The culprits either sullenly surrendered or pleaded like children. All talking at once the
committee explained that stealing was not worthy of the people’s champions; often
those who had been caught turned around and began to help go through the rest of the
comrades. (See App. IV, Sect. 3)

Yunkers came out, in bunches of three or four. The committee seized upon them with an
excess of zeal, accompanying the search with remarks like, “Ah, Provocators!
Kornilovists! Counter-revolutionists! Murderers of the People!” But there was no
violence done, although the yunkers were terrified. They too had their pockets full of
small plunder. It was carefully noted down by the scribe, and piled in the little room....
The yunkers were disarmed. “Now, will you take up arms against the People any more?”
demanded clamouring voices.

“No,” answered the yunkers, one by one. Whereupon they were allowed to go free.

We asked if we might go inside. The committee was doubtful, but the big Red Guard
answered firmly that it was forbidden. “Who are you anyway?” he asked. “How do I
know that you are not all Kerenskys? (There were five of us, two women.)

“Pazhal’st’, touarishtchi! Way, Comrades!” A soldier and a Red Guard appeared in the
door, waving the crowd aside, and other guards with fixed bayonets. After them followed
single file half a dozen men in civilian dress— the members of the Provisional
Government. First came Kishkin, his face drawn and pale, then Rutenberg, looking
sullenly at the floor; Terestchenko was next, glancing sharply around; he stared at us
with cold fixity.... They passed in silence; the victorious insurrectionists crowded to see,
but there were only a few angry mutterings. It was only later that we learned how the
people in the street wanted to lynch them, and shots were fired— but the sailors brought
them safely to Peter-Paul....

In the meanwhile unrebuked we walked into the Palace. There was still a great deal of
coming and going, of exploring new-found apartments in the vast edifice, of searching
for hidden garrisons of yunkers which did not exist. We went upstairs and wandered
through room after room. This part of the Palace had been entered also by other
detachments from the side of the Neva. The paintings, statues, tapestries and rugs of
the great state apartments were unharmed; in the offices, however, every desk and
cabinet had been ransacked, the papers scattered over the floor, and in the living rooms
beds had been stripped of their coverings and ward-robes wrenched open. The most
highly prized loot was clothing, which the working people needed. In a room where
furniture was stored we came upon two soldiers ripping the elaborate Spanish leather
upholstery from chairs. They explained it was to make boots with....

The old Palace servants in their blue and red and gold uniforms stood nervously about,
from force of habit repeating, “You can’t go in there, barin'. It is forbidden — ” We
penetrated at length to the gold and malachite chamber with crimson brocade hangings
where the Ministers had been in session all that day and night, and where the shveitzari
had betrayed them to the Red Guards. The long table covered with green baize was just
as they had left it, under arrest. Before each empty seat was pen and ink and paper; the
papers were scribbled over with beginnings of plans of action, rough drafts of
proclamations and manifestos. Most of these were scratched out, as their futility
became evident, and the rest of the sheet covered with absent-minded geometrical
designs, as the writers sat despondently listening while Minister after Minister proposed
chimerical schemes. I took one of these scribbled pages, in the hand writing of
Konovalov, which read, “The Provisional Government appeals to all classes to support
the Provisional Government— ”

All this time, it must be remembered, although the Winter Palace was surrounded, the
Government was in constant communication with the Front and with provincial Russia.
The Bolsheviki had captured the Ministry of War early in the morning, but they did not
know of the military telegraph office in the attic, nor of the private telephone line
connecting it with the Winter Palace. In that attic a young officer sat all day, pouring out
over the country a flood of appeals and proclamations; and when he heard that the
Palace had fallen, put on his hat and walked calmly out of the building....

Interested as we were, for a considerable time we didn’t notice a change in the attitude
of the soldiers and Red Guards around us. As we strolled from room to room a small
group followed us, until by the time we reached the great picture- gallery where we had
spent the afternoon with the yunkers, about a hundred men surged in after us. One
giant of a soldier stood in our path, his face dark with sullen suspicion.

[Graphic, page 104: Doodling by Konavalov, title follows]

Facsimile of the beginning of a proclamation, written in pencil by A.I. Konovalov,

Minister of Commerce and Industry in he Provisional Government, and then scratched
out as the hopelessness of the situation became more and more evident. The
geometrical figure beneath was probably idly drawn while the Ministers were waiting for
the end.

“Who are you?” he growled. “What are you doing here?” The others massed slowly
around, staring and beginning to mutter. “Provocatori!” I heard somebody say. “Looters!”
I produced our passes from the Military Revolutionary Committee. The soldier took them
gingerly, turned them upside down and looked at them without comprehension.
Evidently he could not read. He handed them back and spat on the floor. “Bumagi!
Papers!” said he with contempt. The mass slowly began to close in, like wild cattle
around a cowpuncher on foot. Over their heads I caught sight of an officer, looking
helpless, and shouted to him. He made for us, shouldering his way through.

“I’m the Commissar,” he said to me. “Who are you? What is it?” The others held back,
waiting. I produced the papers.

“You are foreigners?” he rapidly asked in Franch. “It is very dangerous....” Then he
turned to the mob, holding up our documents. “Comrades!” he cried. “These people are
foreign comrades— from America. They have come here to be able to tell their
countrymen about the bravery and the revolutionary discipline of the proletarian army!”

“How do you know that?” replied the big soldier. “I tell you they are provocators! They
say they came here to observe the revolutionary discipline of the proletarian army, but
they have been wandering freely through the Palace, and how do we know they haven’t
got their pockets full of loot?”

“Pravilno!” snarled the others, pressing forward.

“Comrades! Comrades!” appealed the officer, sweat standing out on his forehead. “I am
Commissar of the Military Revolutionary Committee. Do you trust me? Well, I tell you
that these passes are signed with the same names that are signed to my pass!”

He led us down through the Palace and out through a door opening onto the Neva quay,
before which stood the usual committee going through pockets... “You have narrowly
escaped,” he kept muttering, wiping his face.

“What happened to the Women’s Battalion?” we asked.

“Oh— the women!” He laughed. “They were all huddled up in a back room. We had a
terrible time deciding what to do with them— many were in hysterics, and so on. So
finally we marched them up to the Finland Station and put them on a train for
Levashovo, where they have a camp. (See App. IV, Sect. 4)....”

We came out into the cold, nervous night, murmurous with obscure armies on the move,
electric with patrols. From across the river, where loomed the darker mass of Peter-
Paul, came a hoarse shout.... Underfoot the sidewalk was littered with broken stucco,
from the cornice of the Palace where two shells from the battleship Avrora had struck;
that was the only damage done by the bombardment....
It was now after three in the morning. On the Nevsky all the street-lights were again
shining, the cannon gone, and the only signs of war were Red Guards and soldiers
squatting around fires. The city was quiet— probably never so quiet in its history; on
that night not a single hold-up occurred, not a single robbery.

But the City Duma Building was all illuminated. We mounted to the galleried Alexander
Hall, hung with its great, gold-framed, red-shrouded Imperial portraits. About a hundred
people were grouped around the platform, where Skobeliev was speaking. He urged
that the Committee of Public Safety be expanded, so as to unite all the anti-Bolshevik
elements in one huge organisation, to be called the Committee for Salvation of Country
and Revolution. And as we looked on, the Committee for Salvation was formed— that
Committee which was to develop into the most powerful enemy of the Bolsheviki,
appearing, in the next week, sometimes under its own partisan name, and sometimes
as the strictly non-partisan Committee of Public Safety....

Dan, Gotz, Avkesntiev were there, some of the insurgent Soviet delegates, members of
the Executive Committee of the Peasants’ Soviets, old Prokopovitch, and even
members of the Council of the Republic— among whom Vinaver and other Cadets.
Lieber cried that the convention of Soviets was not a legal convention, that the old Tsay-
ee-kah was still in office.... An appeal to the country was drafted.

We hailed a cab. “Where to?” But when we said “Smolny,” the izvoshtchik shook his
head. “Niet!” said he, “there are devils....” It was only after weary wandering that we
found a driver willing to take us— and he wanted thirty rubles, and stopped two blocks
away.

The windows of Smolny were still ablaze, motors came and went, and around the still-
leaping fires the sentries huddled close, eagerly asking everybody the latest news. The
corridors were full of hurrying men, hollow-eyed and dirty. In some of the committee-
rooms people lay sleeping on the floor, their guns beside them. In spite of the seceding
delegates, the hall of meetings was crowded with people, roaring like the sea. As we
came in, Kameniev was reading the list of arrested Ministers. The name of
Terestchenko was greeted with thunderous applause, shouts of satisfaction, laughter;
Rutenburg came in for less; and at the mention of Paltchinsky, a storm of hoots, angry
cries, cheers burst forth.... It was announced that Tchudnovsky had been appointed
Commissar of the Winter Palace.

Now occurred a dramatic interruption. A big peasant, his bearded face convulsed with
rage, mounted the platform and pounded with his fist on the presidium table.

“We, Socialist Revolutionaries, insist upon the immediate release of the Socialist
Ministers arrested in the Winter Palace! Comrades! Do you know that four comrades
who risked their lives and their freedom fighting against tyranny of the Tsar, have been
flung into Peter-Paul prison— the historical tomb of Liberty?” In the uproar he pounded
and yelled. Another delegate climbed up beside him, and pointed at the presidium.

“Are the representatives of the revolutionary masses going to sit quietly here while the
Okhrana of the Bolsheviki tortures their leaders?”

Trotzky was gesturing for silence. “These ‘comrades’ who are now caught plotting the
crushing of the Soviets with the adventurer Kerensky— is there any reason to handle
them with gloves? After July 16th and 18th they didn’t use much ceremony with us!”
With a triumphant ring in his voice he cried, “Now that the oborontsi and the faint-
hearted have gone, and the whole task of defending and saving the Revolution rests on
our shoulders, it is particularly necessary to work— work— work! We have decided to
die rather than give up!” Followed him a Commissar from Tsarskoye Selo, panting and
covered with the

mud of his ride. “The garrison of Tsarskoye Selo is on guard at the gates of Petrograd,
ready to defend the Soviets and the Military Revolutionary Committee!” Wild cheers.
“The Cycle Corps sent from the front has arrived at Tsarskoye, and the soldiers are now
with us; they recognise the power of the Soviets, the necessity of immediate transfer of
land to the peasants and industrial control to the workers. The Fifth Battalion of Cyclists,
stationed at Tsarskoye, is ours....”

Then the delegate of the Third Cycle Battalion. In the midst of delirious enthusiasm he
told how the cycle corps had been ordered three days before from the South-west front
to the “defence of Petrograd.” They suspected, however, the meaning of the order; and
at the station of Peredolsk were met by representatives of the Fifth Battalion from
Tsarskoye. A joint meeting was held, and it was discovered that “among the cyclists not
a single man was found willing to shed the blood of his brothers, or to support a
Government of bourgeois and land owners!”

Kapelinski, for the Mensheviki Internationalists, proposed to elect a special committee to

find a peaceful solution to the civil war. “There isn’t any peaceful solution!” bellowed the
crowed. “Victory is the only solution!” The vote was overwhelmingly against, and the
Mensheviki Internationalists left the Congress in a Whirlwind of Jocular insults. There
was no longer any panic fear.... Kameniev from the platform shouted after them, “The
Mensheviki Internationalists claimed ‘emergency’ for the question of a p‘ eaceful
solution,’ but they always voted for suspension of the order of the day in favour of
declarations of factions which wanted to leave the Congress. It is evident,” finished
Kameniev, “that the withdrawal of all these renegades was decided upon beforehand!”
The assembly decided to ignore the withdrawal of the factions, and proceed to the
appeal to the workers, soldiers and peasants of all Russia:

TO W ORKERS, SOLDIERS AND PEASANTS

The Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies has
opened. It represents the great majority of the Soviets. There are also a number of
Peasant deputies. Based upon the will of the great majority of the workers’, soldiers
and peasants, based upon the triumphant uprising of the Petrograd workmen and
soldiers, the Congress assumes the Power.

The Provisional Government is deposed. Most of the members of the Provisional

Government are already arrested.

The Soviet authority will at once propose an immediate democratic peace to all nations,
and an immediate truce on all fronts. It will assure the free transfer of landlord, crown
and monastery lands to the Land Committees, defend the soldiers rights, enforcing a
complete democratisation of the Army, establish workers’ control over production,
ensure the convocation of the Constituent Assembly at the proper date, take means to
supply bread to the cities and articles of first necessity to the villages, and secure to all
nationalities living in Russia a real right to independent existence.

The Congress resolves: that all local power shall be transferred to the Soviets of
Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, which must enforce revolutionary order.

The Congress calls upon the soldiers in the trenches to be watchful and steadfast. The
Congress of Soviets is sure that the revolutionary Army will know how to defend the
Revolution against all attacks of Imperialism, until the new Government shall have
brought about the conclusion of the democratic peace which it will directly propose to all
nations. The new Government will take all necessary steps to secure everything needful
to the revolutionary Army, by means of a determined policy of requisition and taxation of
the propertied classes, and also to improve the situation of soldiers’ families.

The Kornilovitz-Kerensky, Kaledin and others, are endeavouring to lead troops against
Petrograd. Several regiments, deceived by Kerensky, have sided with the insurgent
People.

Soldiers! Make active resistance to the Kornilovitz-Kerensky! Be on guard! Railway

men! Stop all troop-trains being sent by Kerensky against

Petrograd!
Soldiers, Workers, Clerical employees! The destiny of the Revolution and democratic
peace is in your hands!

Long live the Revolution!

The All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. Delegates

from the Peasants’ Soviets.

It was exactly 5:17 A.M. when Krylenko, staggering with fatigue, climbed to the tribune
with a telegram in his hand.

“Comrades! From the Northern Front. The Twelfth Army sends greetings to the
Congress of Soviets, announcing the formation of a Military Revolutionary Committee
which has taken over the command of the Northern Front!” Pandemonium, men
weeping, embracing each other. “General Tchermissov has recognised the Committee-
Commissar of the Provisional Government Voitinsky has resigned!”

So. Lenin and the Petrograd workers had decided on insurrection, the Petrograd Soviet
had overthrown the Provisional Government, and thrust the coup d’etat upon the
Congress of Soviets. Now there was all great Russia to win— and then the world!
Would Russia follow and rise? And the world— what of it? Would the peoples answer
and rise, a red world-tide?

Although it was six in the morning, night was yet heavy and chill. There was only a faint
unearthly pallor stealing over the silent streets, dimming the watch- fires, the shadow of
a terrible dawn grey-rising over Russia....