Ten Days That Shook the World Part 10

2. All electoral commissions, organs of local self-government, Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies, and soldiers' organisations on the front should make every effort to a.s.sure free and regular elections at the date determined upon.

In the name of the Government of the Russian Republic, _The President of the Council of People's Commissars_,

VLADIMIR ULIANOV-LENIN.

In the Munic.i.p.al building the Duma was in full blast. A member of the Council of the Republic was talking as we came in. The Council, he said, did not consider itself dissolved at all, but merely unable to continue its labours until it secured a new meeting-place. In the meanwhile, its Committee of Elders had determined to enter _en ma.s.se_ the Committee for Salvation.... This, I may remark parenthetically, is the last time history mentions the Council of the Russian Republic....

Then followed the customary string of delegates from the Ministries, the Vikzhel, the Union of Posts and Telegraphs, for the hundredth time reiterating their determination not to work for the Bolshevik usurpers. A yunker who had been in the Winter Palace told a highly-coloured tale of the heroism of himself and his comrades, and disgraceful conduct of the Red Guards-all of which was devoutly believed. Somebody read aloud an account in the Socialist Revolutionary paper Narod, which stated that five hundred million rubles' worth of damage had been done in the Winter Palace, and describing in great detail the loot and breakage.

From time to time couriers came from the telephone with news. The four Socialist Ministers had been released from prison. Krylenko had gone to Peter-Paul to tell Admiral Verderevsky that the Ministry of Marine was deserted, and to beg him, for the sake of Russia, to take charge under the authority of the Council of People's Commissars; and the old seaman had consented.... Kerensky was advancing north from Gatchina, the Bolshevik garrisons falling back before him. Smolny had issued another decree, enlarging the powers of the City Dumas to deal with food supplies.

This last piece of insolence caused an outburst of fury. He, Lenin, the usurper, the tyrant, whose Commissars had seized the Munic.i.p.al garage, entered the Munic.i.p.al ware houses, were interfering with the Supply Committees and the distribution of food-he presumed to define the limits of power of the free, independent, autonomous City Government! One member, shaking his fist, moved to cut off the food of the city if the Bolsheviki dared to interfere with the Supply Committees.... Another, representative of the Special Supply Committee, reported that the food situation was very grave, and asked that emissaries be sent out to hasten food trains.

Diedonenko announced dramatically that the garrison was wavering. The Semionovsky regiment had already decided to submit to the orders of the Socialist Revolutionary party; the crews of the torpedo-boats on the Neva were shaky. Seven members were at once appointed to continue the propaganda....

Then the old Mayor stepped into the tribune: "Comrades and citizens! I have just learned that the prisoners in Peter Paul are in danger. Fourteen yunkers of the Pavlovsk school have been stripped and tortured by the Bolshevik guards. One has gone mad. They are threatening to lynch the Ministers!" There was a whirlwind of indignation and horror, which only grew more violent when a stocky little woman dressed in grey demanded the floor, and lifted up her hard, metallic voice. This was Vera s.l.u.tskaya, veteran revolutionist and Bolshevik member of the Duma.

"That is a lie and a provocation!" she said, unmoved at the torrent of abuse. "The Workers' and Peasants' Government, which has abolished the death penalty, cannot permit such deeds. We demand that this story be investigated, at once; if there is any truth in it, the Government will take energetic measures!"

A commission composed of members of all parties was immediately appointed, and with the Mayor, sent to Peter Paul to investigate. As we followed them out, the Duma was appointing another commission to meet Kerensky--to try and avoid bloodshed when he entered the capital....

It was midnight when we bluffed our past the guards at the gate of the fortress, and went forward under the faint glimmer of rare electric lights along the side of the church where lie the tombs of the Tsars, beneath the slender golden spire and the chimes, which, for months, continued to play Bozhe Tsaria Khrani [*] every day at [* "G.o.d Save the Tsar." noon.... The place was deserted; in most of the windows there were not even lights. Occasionally we b.u.mped into a burly figure stumbling along in the dark, who answered questions with the usual, _"Ya nieznayu."_ [Graphic page-166 Pa.s.s to Reed fromDepartment of Prisons translation follows]

Pa.s.s from the Department of Prisons of the Soviet Government to visit freely all prisons of Petrograd and Cronstadt. (Translation) Commissar Chief Bureau of Prisons 6th of November, 1917. No. 213 Petrograd, Smolny Inst.i.tute, room No. 56- Pa.s.s To the representative of the American Socialist press, JOHN REED, to visit all places of confinement in the cities of Petrograd and Cronstadt, for the purpose of generally investigating the condition of the prisoners, and for thorough social information for the purpose of stopping the flood of newspaper lies against demorcracy. Chief Commissar Secretary On the left loomed the low dark outline of Trubetskoi Bastion, that living grave in which so many martyrs of liberty had lost their lives or their reason in the days of the Tsar, where the Provisional Government had in turn shut up the Ministers of the Tsar, and now the Bolsheviki had shut up the Ministers of the Provisional Government.

A friendly sailor led us to the office of the commandant, in a little house near the Mint. Half a dozen Red Guards, sailors and soldiers were sitting around a hot room full of smoke, in which a samovar steamed cheerfully. They welcomed us with great cordiality, offering tea. The commandant was not in; he was escorting a commission of "sabotazhniki" (sabotageurs) from the City Duma, who insisted that the yunkers were all being murdered. This seemed to amuse them very much. At one side of the room sat a bald-headed, dissipated-looking little man in a frock-coat and a rich fur coat, biting his moustache and staring around him like a cornered rat. He had just been arrested. Somebody said, glancing carelessly at him, that he was a Minister or something.... The little man didn't seem to hear it; he was evidently terrified, although the occupants of the room showed no animosity whatever toward him.

I went across and spoke to him in French. "Count Tolstoy," he answered, bowing stiffly. "I do not understand why I was arrested. I was crossing the Troitsky Bridge on my way home when two of these-of these-persons held me up. I was a Commissar of the Provisional Government attached to the General Staff, but in no sense a member of the Government..."

"Let him go,"said a sailor. "He's harmless...."

"No," responded the soldier who had brought the prisoner. "We must ask the commandant."

"Oh, the commandant!" sneered the sailor. "What did you make a revolution for? To go on obeying officers?"

A praporshtchik of the Pavlovsky regiment was telling us how the insurrection started. "The polk (regiment) was on duty at the General Staff the night of the 6th. Some of my comrades and I were standing guard; Ivan Pavlovitch and another man-I don't remember his name-well, they hid behind the window-curtains in the room where the Staff was having a meeting, and they heard a great many things. For any things. For | | example, they heard orders to bring the Gatchina yunkers to Petrograd by night, and an order for the Cossacks to be ready to march in the morning.... The princ.i.p.al points in the city were to be occupied before dawn. Then there was the business of opening the bridges. But when they began to talk about surrounding Smolny, then Ivan Pavlovitch couldn't stand it any longer. That minute there was a good deal of coming and going, so he slipped out and came down to the guard-room,leaving the other comrade to pick up what he could.

"I was already suspicious that something was going on. Automobiles full of officers kept coming, and all the Ministers were there. Ivan Pavlovitch told me what he had heard. It was half-past two in the morning. The secretary of the regimental Committee was there, so we told him and asked what to do.

"'Arrest everybody coming and going!#' he says. So we began to do it. In an hour we had some officers and a couple of Ministers, whom we sent up to Smolny right away. But the Military Revolutionary Committee wasn't ready; they didn't know what to do; and pretty soon back came the order to let everybody go and not arrest anybody else. Well, we ran all the way to Smolny, and I guess we talked for an hour before they finally saw that it was war. It was five o'clock when we got back to the Staff, and by that time most of them were gone. But we got a few, and the garrison was all on the march...."

A Red Guard from Vasili Ostrov described in great detail what had happened in his district on the great day of the rising. "We didn't have any machine-guns over there," he said, laughing, "and we couldn't get any from Smolny. Comrade Zalking, who was a member of the Uprava (Central Bureau) of the Ward Duma, remembered all at once that there was lying in the meeting-room of the Uprava a machinegun which had been captured from the Germans. So he and I and another comrade went there. The Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries were having a meeting. Well, we opened the door and walked right in on them, as they sat around the table-twelve or fifteen of them, three of us. When they saw us they stopped talking and just stared. We walked right across the room, uncoupled the machine-gun; Comrade Zalkind picked up one part, I the other, we put them on our shoulders and walked out-and not a single man said a word!"

"Do you know how the Winter Palace was captured?" asked a third man, a sailor. "Along about eleven o'clock we found out there weren't any more yunkers on the Neva side. So we broke in the doors and filtered up the different stairways one by one, or in little bunches. When we got to the top of the stairs the yunkers held us up and took away our guns. Still our fellows kept coming up, little by little, until we had a majority. Then we turned around and took away the yunkers' guns...."

Just then the commandant entered-a merry-looking young non-commissioned officer with his arm in a sling, and deep circles of sleeplessness under his eyes. His eye fell first on the prisoner, who at once began to explain.

"Oh, yes," interrupted the other. "You were one of the committee who refused to surrender the Staff Wednesday afternoon. However, we don't want you, citizen. Apologies-" He opened the door and waved his arm for Count Tolstoy to leave. Several of the others, especially the Red Guards, grumbled protests, and the sailor remarked triumphantly, "Vot! There! Didn't I say so?"

Two soldiers now engaged his attention. They had been elected a committee of the fortress garrison to protest. The prisoners, they said, were getting the same food as the guards, when there wasn't even enough to keep a man from being hungry. "Why should the counter-revolutionists be treated so well?"

"We are revolutionists, comrades, not bandits," answered the commandant. He turned to us. We explained that rumours were going about that the yunkers were being tortured, and the lives of the Ministers threatened. Could we perhaps see the prisoners, so as to be able to prove to the world-?"

"No," said the young soldier, irritably. "I am not going to disturb the prisoners again. I have just been compelled to wake them up-they were sure we were going to ma.s.sacre them.... Most of the yunkers have been released anyway, and the rest will go out to-morrow." He turned abruptly away.

"Could we talk to the Duma commission, then?"

The Commandant, who was pouring himself a gla.s.s of tea, nodded. "They are still out in the hall," he said carelessly.

Indeed they stood there just outside the door, in the feeble light of an oil lamp, grouped around the Mayor and talking excitedly.

"Mr. Mayor," I said, "we are American correspondents. Will you please tell us officially the result of your investigations?"

He turned to us his face of venerable dignity.

"There is no truth in the reports," he said slowly. "Except for the incidents which occurred as the Ministers were being brought here, they have been treated with every consideration. As for the yunkers, not one has received the slightest injury...."

Up the Nevsky, in the empty after-midnight gloom, an interminable column of soldiers shuffled in silence-to battle with Kerensky. In dim back streets automobiles without lights flitted to and fro, and there was furtive activity in Fontanka 6, headquarters of the Peasants' Soviet, in a certain apartment of a huge building on the Nevsky, and in the Injinierny Zamok (School of Engineers); the Duma was illuminated....

In Smolny Inst.i.tute the Military Revolutionary Committee flashed baleful fire, pounding like an over-loaded dynamo....

Chapter VII.

The Revolutionary Front.

SAt.u.r.dAY, November 10th....

Citizens!

The Military Revolutionary Committee declares that it will not tolerate any violation of revolutionary order....

Theft, brigandage, a.s.saults and attempts at ma.s.sacre will be severely punished....

Following the example of the Paris Commune, the Committee will destroy without mercy any looter or instigator of disorder....

Quiet lay the city. Not a hold-up, not a robbery, not even a drunken fight. By night armed patrols went through the silent streets, and on the corners soldiers and Red Guards squatted around little fires, laughing and singing. In the daytime great crowds gathered on the sidewalks listening to interminable hot debates between students and soldiers, business men and workmen.

Citizens stopped each other on the street.

"The Cossacks are coming?"

"No...."

"What's the latest?"

"I don't know anything. Where's Kerensky?"

"They say only eight versts from Petrograd.... Is it true that the Bolsheviki have fled to the battles.h.i.+p Avrora?"

"They say so...."

Only the walls screamed, and the few newspapers; denunciation, appeal, decree....

An enormous poster carried the hysterical manifesto of the Executive Committee of the Peasant' Soviets: ....They (the Bolsheviki) dare to say that they are supported by the Soviets of Peasants' Deputies, and that they are speaking on behalf of the Soviets of Peasants' Deputies....

Let all working-cla.s.s Russia know that this is a LIE, AND THAT ALL THE WORKING PEASANTS-in the person of-the EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE ALL-RUSSIAN SOVIETS OF PEASANTS' DEPUTIES-refutes with indignation all partic.i.p.ation of the organised peasantry in this criminal violation of the will of the working-cla.s.ses....

From the Soldier Section of the Socialist Revolutionary party: The insane attempt of the Bolsheviki is on the eve of collapse. The garrison is divided.... The Ministries are on strike and bread is getting scarcer. All factions except the few Bolsheviki have left the Congress. The Bolsheviki are alone....

We call upon all sane elements to group themselves around the Committee for Salvation of Country and Revolution, and to prepare themselves seriously to be ready at the first call of the Central Committee....

In a hand-bill the Council of the Republic recited its wrongs: Ceding to the force of bayonets, the Council of the Republic has been obliged to separate, and temporarily to interrupt its meetings.

The usurpers, with the words "Liberty and Socialism" on their lips, have set up a rule of arbitrary violence. They have arrested the members of the Provisional Government, closed the newspapers, seized the printing-shops....This power must be considered the enemy of the people and the Revolution; it is necessary to do battle with it, and to pull it down....

The Council of the Republic, until the resumption of its labours, invites the citizens of the Russian Republic to group themselves around the....local Committees for Salvation of Country and Revolution, which are organising the overthrow of the Bolsheviki and the creation of a Government capable of leading the country to the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly.

Dielo Narodasaid: A revolution is a rising of all the people.... But here what have we? Nothing but a handful of poor fools deceived by Lenin and Trotzky.... Their decrees and their appeals will simply add to the museum of historical curiosities....

And Narodnoye Slovo(People'sWord-PopulistSocialist): "Workers' and Peasants' Government?" That is only a pipedream; n.o.body, either in Russia or in the countries of our Allies, will recognise this "Government"-or even in the enemy countries....

The bourgeois press had temporarily disappeared....Pravada had an account of the first meeting of the new Tsay-ee-kah, now the parliament of the Russian Soviet Republic. Miliutin, Commissar of Agriculture, remarked that the Peasants' Executive Committee had called an All-Russian Peasant Congress for December 13th.

"But we cannot wait," he said. "We must have the backing of the peasants. I propose that we call the Congress of Peasants, and do it immediately...." The Left Socialist Revolutionaries agreed. An Appeal to the Peasants of Russia was hastily drafted, and a committee of five elected to carry out the project.

The question of detailed plans for distributing the land, and the question of Workers' Control of Industry, were postponed until the experts working on them should submit a report.

Three decrees (See App. VII, Sect. 1) were read and approved: first, Lenin's "General Rules For the Press," ordering the suppression of all newspapers inciting to resistance and disobedience to the new Government, inciting to criminal acts, or deliberately perverting the news; the Decree of Moratorium for House-rents; and the Decree Establis.h.i.+ng a Workers' Militia. Also orders, one giving the Munic.i.p.al Duma power to requisition empty apartments and houses, the other directing the unloading of freight cars in the railroad terminals, to hasten the distribution of necessities and to free the badly-needed rolling-stock....

Two hours later the Executive Committee of the Peasants' Soviets was sending broadcast over Russia the following telegram: The arbitrary organisation of the Bolsheviki, which is called "Bureau of Organisation for the National Congress of Peasants,"is inviting all the Peasants' Soviets to send delegates to the Congress at Petrograd....

The Executive Committee of the Soviets of Peasants' Deputies declares that it considers, now as well as before, that it would be dangerous to take away from the provinces at this moment the forces necessary to prepare for elections to the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, which is the only salvation of the working-cla.s.s and the country. We confirm the date of the Congress of Peasants, December 13th.

At the Duma all was excitement, officers coming and going, the Mayor in conference with the leaders of the Committee for Salvation. A Councillor ran in with a copy of Kerensky's proclamation, dropped by hundreds from an aeroplane low flying down the Nevsky, which threatened terrible vengeance on all who did not submit, and ordered soldiers to lay down their arms and a.s.semble immediately in Mars Field.

The Minister-President had taken Tsarskoye Selo, we were told, and was already in the Petrograd campagna, five miles away. He would enter the city to-morrow-in a few hours. The Soviet troops in contact with his Cossacks were said to be going over to the Provisional Government. Tchernov was somewhere in between, trying to organise the "neutral" troops into a force to halt the civil war.

In the city the garrison regiments were leaving the Bolsheviki, they said. Smolny was already abandoned.... All the Governmental machinery had stopped functioning. The employees of the State Bank had refused to work under Commissars from Smolny, refused to pay out money to them. All the private banks were closed. The Ministries were on strike. Even now a committee from the Duma was making the rounds of business houses, collecting a fund to pay the salaries of the strikers....

Trotzky had gone to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and ordered the clerks to translate the Decree on Peace into foreign languages; six hundred functionaries had hurled their resignations in his face.... Shliapnikov, Commissar of Labour, had commanded all the employees of his Ministry to return to their places within twenty-four hours, or lose their places and their pension-rights; only the door-servants had responded.... Some of the branches of the Special Food Supply Committee had suspended work rather than submit to the Bolsheviki.... In spite of lavish promises of high wages and better conditions, the operators at the Telephone Exchange would not connect Soviet headquarters....

The Socialist Revolutionary Party had voted to expel all members who had remained in the Congress of Soviets, and all who were taking part in the insurrection....

News from the provinces. Moghilev had declared against the Bolsheviki. At Kiev the Cossacks had overthrown the Soviets and arrested all the insurrectionary leaders. The Soviet and garrison of Luga, thirty thousand strong, affirmed its loyalty to the Provisional Government, and appealed to all Russia to rally around it. Kaledin had dispersed all Soviets and Unions in the Don Basin, and his forces were moving north....

Said a representative of the Railway Workers: "Yesterday we sent a telegram all over Russia demanding that war between the political parties cease at once, and insisting on the formation of a coalition Socialist Government. Otherwise we shall call a strike to-morrow night.... In the morning there will be a meeting of all factions to consider the question. The Bolsheviki seem anxious for an agreement...."

"If they last that long!" laughed the City Engineer, a stout, ruddy man....

As we came up to Smolny-not abandoned, but busier than ever, throngs of workers and soldiers running in and out, and doubled guards everywhere-we met the reporters for the bourgeois and "moderate" Socialist papers.

"Threw us out!" cried one, from Volia Naroda. "Bonch-Bruevitch came down to the Press Bureau and told us to leave! Said we were spies!" They all began to talk at once: "Insult! Outrage! Freedom of the press!"

In the lobby were great tables heaped with stacks of appeals, proclamations and orders of the Military Revolutionary Committee. Workmen and soldiers staggered past, carrying them to waiting automobiles.

One began:

TO THE PILLORY!

In this tragic moment through which the Russian ma.s.ses are living, the Mensheviki and their followers and the Right Socialist Revolutionaries have betrayed the working-cla.s.s. They have enlisted on the side of Kornilov, Kerensky and Savinkov....

They are printing orders of the traitor Kerensky and creating a panic in the city, spreading the most ridiculous rumours of mythical victories by that renegade....

Citizens! Don't believe these false rumours. No power can defeat the People's Revolution.... Premier Kerensky and his followers await speedy and well-deserved punishment....

We are putting them in the Pillory. We are abandoning them to the enmity of all workers, soldiers, sailors and peasants, on whom they are trying to rivet the ancient chains. They will never be able to wash from their bodies the stain of the people's hatred and contempt.

Shame and curses to the traitors of the People!...

The Military Revolutionary Committee had moved into larger quarters, room 17 on the top floor. Red Guards were at the door. Inside, the narrow s.p.a.ce in front of the railing was crowded with well-dressed persons, outwardly respectful but inwardly full of murder-bourgeois who wanted permits for their automobiles, or pa.s.sports to leave the city, among them many foreigners.... Bill Shatov and Peters were on duty. They suspended all other business to read us the latest bulletins.

The One Hundred Seventy-ninth Reserve Regiment offers its unanimous support. Five thousand stevedores at the Putilov wharves greet the new Government. Central Committee of the Trade Unions-enthusiastic support. The garrison and squadron at Reval elect Military Revolutionary Committees to cooperate, and despatch troops. Military Revolutionary Committees control in Pskov and Minsk. Greetings from the Soviets of Tsaritzin, Rovensky-on-Don, Tchernogorsk, Sevastopol.... The Finland Division, the new Committees of the Fifth and Twelfth Armies, offer allegiance....

From Moscow the news is uncertain. Troops of the Military Revolutionary Committee occupy the strategic points of the city; two companies on duty in the Kremlin have gone over to the Soviets, but the a.r.s.enal is in the hands of Colonel Diabtsev and his yunkers. The Revolutionary Committee demanded arms for the workers, and Riabtsev parleyed with them until this morning, when suddenly he sent an ultimatum to the Committee, ordering Soviet troops to surrender and the Committee to disband. Fighting has begun....

In Petrograd the Staff submitted to Smolny's Commissars at once. The Tsentroflot, refusing, was stormed by Dybenko and a company of Cronstadt sailors, and a new Tsentroflot set up, supported by the Baltic and the Black Sea battles.h.i.+ps....

But beneath all the breezy a.s.surance there was a chill premonition, a feeling of uneasiness in the air. Kerensky's Cossacks were coming fast; they had artillery. Skripnik, Secretary of the Factory-Shop Committees, his face drawn and yellow, a.s.sured me that there was a whole army corps of them, but he added, fiercely, "They'll never take us alive!" Petrovsky laughed weariedly, "To-morrow maybe we'll get a sleep-a long one...." Lozovsky, with his emaciated, red-bearded face, said, "What chance have we? All alone.... A mob against trained soldiers!"

South and south-west the Soviets had fled before Kerensky, and the garrisons of Gatchina, Pavlovsk, Tsarskoye Selo were divided-half voting to remain neutral, the rest, without officers, falling back on the capital in the wildest disorder.

In the halls they were pasting up bulletins: FROM KRASNOYE SELO, NOVEMBER 10TH, 8 A.M.

_To be communicated to all Commanders of Staffs, Commanders in Chief, Commanders, everywhere and to all, all, all._ The ex-Minister Kerensky has sent a deliberately false telegram to every one everywhere to the effect that the troops of revolutionary Petrograd have voluntarily surrendered their arms and joined the armies of the former Government, the Government of Treason, and that the soldiers have been ordered by the Military Revolutionary Committee to retreat. The troops of a free people do not retreat nor do they surrender.