Ten Days That Shook the World Part 13

He scratched his head. "That's a problem," he admitted. "Of course if they are not admitted, they'sll probably do this all over again. At any rate, they will have a chance to hold the balance of power in the Const.i.tuent-that is, if there is a Const.i.tuent."

"And then, too," said the officer, "that brings up the question of admitting the Cadets into the new Government-and for the same reasons. You know the Cadets do not really want the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly-not if the Bolsheviki can be destroyed now." He shook his head. "It is not easy for us Russians, politics. You Americans are born politicians; you have had politics all your lives. But for us-well, it has only been a year, you know!"

"What do you think of Kerensky?" I asked.

"Oh, Kerensky is guilty of the sins of the Provisional Government," answered the other man. "Kerensky himself forced us to accept coalition with the bourgeoisie. If he had resigned, as he threatened, it would have meant a new Cabinet crisis only sixteen weeks before the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, and that we wanted to avoid."

"But didn't it amount to that anyway?"

"Yes, but how were we to know? They tricked us-the Kerenskys and Avksentievs. Gotz is a little more radical. I stand with Tchernov, who is a real revolutionist.... Why, only to-day Lenin sent word that he would not object to Tchernov entering the Government.

"We wanted to get rid of the Kerensky Government too, but we thought it better to wait for the Const.i.tuent.... At the beginning of this affair I was with the Bolsheviki, but the Central Committee of my party voted unanimously against it-and what could I do? It was a matter of party discipline....

"In a week the Bolshevik Government will go to pieces; if the Socialist Revolutionaries could only stand aside and wait, the Government would fall into their hands. But if we wait a week the country will be so disorganised that the German imperialists will be victorious. That is why we began our revolt with only two regiments of soldiers promising to support us-and they turned against us.... That left only the yunkers...."

"How about the Cossacks?"

The officer sighed. "They did not move. At first they said they would come out if they had infantry support. They said moreover that they had their men with Kerensky, and that they were doing their part.... Then, too, they said that the Cossacks were always accused of being the hereditary enemies of democracy.... And finally, 'The Bolsheviki promise that they will not take away our land. There is no danger to us. We remain neutral.'"

During this talk people were constantly entering and leaving-most of them officers, their shoulder-straps torn off. We could see them in the hall, and hear their low, vehement voices. Occasionally, through the half-drawn portieres, we caught a glimpse of a door opening into a bath-room, where a heavily-built officer in a colonel's uniform sat on the toilet, writing something on a pad held in his lap. I recognised Colonel Polkovnikov, former commandant of Petrograd, for whose arrest the Military Revolutionary Committee would have paid a fortune.

"Our programme?" said the officer. "This is it. Land to be turned over to the Land Committees. Workmen to have full representation in the control of industry. An energetic peace programme, but not an ultimatum to the world such as the Bolsheviki issued. The Bolsheviki cannot keep their promises to the ma.s.ses, even in the country itself. We won't let them.... They stole our land programme in order to get the support of the peasants. That is dishonest. If they had waited for the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly-"

"It doesn't matter about the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly!" broke in the officer. "If the Bolsheviki want to establish a Socialist state here, we cannot work with them in any event! Kerensky made the great mistake. He let the Bolsheviki know what he was going to do by announcing in the Council of the Republic that he had ordered their arrest....

"But what," I said, "do you intend to do now?"

The two men looked at one another. "You will see in a few days. If there are enough troops from the front on our side, we shall not compromise with the Bolsheviki. If not, perhaps we shall be forced to...."

Out again on the Nevsky we swung on the step of a streetcar bulging with people, its platforms bent down from the weight and sc.r.a.ping along the ground, which crawled with agonising slowness the long miles to Smolny.

Meshkovsky, a neat, frail little man, was coming down the hall, looking worried. The strikes in the Ministries, he told us, were having their effect. For instance, the Council of People's Commissars had promised to publish the Secret Treaties; but Neratov, the functionary in charge, had disappeared, taking the doc.u.ments with him. They were supposed to be hidden in the British Emba.s.sy....

Worst of all, however, was the strike in the banks. "Without money," said Menzhinsky, "we are helpless. The wages of the railroad men, of the postal and telegraph employees, must be paid.... The banks are closed; and the key to the situation, the State Bank, is also shut. All the bank-clerks in Russia have been bribed to stop work....

"But Lenin has issued an order to dynamite the State Bank vaults, and there is a Decree just out, ordering the private banks to open to-morrow, or we will open them ourselves!"

The Petrograd Soviet was in full swing, thronged with armed men, Trotzky reporting: "The Cossacks are falling back from Krasnoye Selo." (Sharp, exultant cheering.) "But the battle is only beginning. At Pulkovo heavy fighting is going on. All available forces must be hurried there....

"From Moscow, bad news. The Kremlin is in the hands of the yunkers, and the workers have only a few arms. The result depends upon Petrograd.

"At the front, the decrees on Peace and Land are provoking great enthusiasm. Kerensky is flooding the trenches with tales of Petrograd burning and b.l.o.o.d.y, of women and children ma.s.sacred by the Bolsheviki. But no one believes him....

"The cruisers Oleg, Avrora and Respublica are anch.o.r.ed in the Neva, their guns trained on the approaches to the city...."

"Why aren't you out there with the Red Guards?" shouted a rough voice.

"I'm going now!" answered Trotzky, and left the platform. His face a little paler than usual, he pa.s.sed down the side of the room, e room, | | surrounded by eager friends, and hurried out to the waiting automobile.

Kameniev now spoke, describing the proceedings of the reconciliation conference. The armistice conditions proposed by the Mensheviki, he said, had been contemptuously rejected. Even the branches of the Railwaymen's Union had voted against such a proposition....

"Now that we've won the power and are sweeping all Russia," he declared, "all they ask of us are three little things: 1. To surrender the power. 2. To make the soldiers continue the war. 3. To make the peasants forget about the land...."

Lenin appeared for a moment, to answer the accusations of the Socialist Revolutionaries: "They charge us with stealing their land programme.... If that is so, we bow to them. It is good enough for us...."

So the meeting roared on, leader after leader explaining, exhorting, arguing, soldier after soldier, workman after workman, standing up to speak his mind and his heart.... The audience flowed, changing and renewed continually. From time to time men came in, yelling for the members of such and such a detachment, to go to the front; others, relieved, wounded, or coming to Smolny for arms and equipment, poured in....

It was almost three o'clock in the morning when, as we left the hall, Holtzman, of the Military Revolutionary Committee, came running down the hall with a transfigured face.

"It's all right!" he shouted, grabbing my hands. "Telegram from the front. Kerensky is smashed! Look at this!"

He held out a sheet of paper, scribbled hurriedly in pencil, and then, seeing we couldn't read it, he declaimed aloud: Pulkovo. Staff. 2.10 A.M.

The night of October 30th to 31st will go down in history. The attempt of Kerensky to move counter-revolutionary troops against the capital of the Revolution has been decisively repulsed. Kerensky is retreating, we are advancing. The soldiers, sailors and workers of Petrograd have shown that they can and will with arms in their hands enforce the will and authority of the democracy. The bourgeoisie tried to isolate the revolutionary army. Kerensky attempted to break it by the force of the Cossacks. Both plans met a pitiful defeat.

The grand idea of the domination of the worker and peasant democracy closed the ranks of the army and hardened its will. All the country from now on will be convinced that the Power of the Soviets is no ephemeral thing, but an invincible fact.... The repulse of Kerensky is the repulse of the land-owners, the bourgeoisie and the Kornilovists in general. The repulse of Kerensky is the confirmation of the right of the people to a peaceful free life, to land, bread and power. The Pulkovo detachment by its valorous blow has strengthened the cause of the Workers' and Peasants's Revolution. There is no return to the past. Before us are struggles, obstacles and sacrifices. But the road is clear and victory is certain.

Revolutionary Russia and the Soviet Power can be proud of their Pulkovo detachment, acting under the command of Colonel Walden. Eternal memory to those who fell! Glory to the warriors of the Revolution, the soldiers and the officers who were faithful to the People!

Long live revolutionary, popular, Socialist Russia!

In the name of the Council, L. TROTZKY, People's Commissar....

Driving home across Znamensky Square, we made out an unusual crowd in front of the Nicolai Railway Station. Several thousand sailors were ma.s.sed there, bristling with rifles.

Standing on the steps, a member of the Vikzhel was pleading with them.

"Comrades, we cannot carry you to Moscow. We are neutral. We do not carry troops for either side. We cannot take you to Moscow, where already there is terrible civil war...."

All the seething Square roared at him; the sailors began to surge forward. Suddenly another door was flung wide; in it stood two or three brakeman, a fireman or so.

"This way, comrades!" cried one. "We will take you to Moscow-or Vladivostok, if you like! Long live the Revolution!"

Chapter IX.

Victory.

Order Number I.

To the Troops of the Pulkovo Detachment.

November 13, 1917. 38 minutes past 9 a. m.

After a cruel fight the troops of the Pulkovo detachment completely routed the counter-revolutionary forces, who retreated from their positions in disorder, and under cover of Tsarskoye Selo fell back toward Pavlovsk II and Gatchina.

Our advanced units occupied the northeastern extremity of Tsarskoye Selo and the station Alexandrovskaya. The Colpinno detachment was on our left, the Krasnoye Selo detachment to our right.

I ordered the Pulkovo forces to occupy Tsarskoye Selo, to fortify its approaches, especially on the side of Gatchina.

Also to pa.s.s and occupy Pavlovskoye, fortifying its southern side, and to take up the railroad as far as Dno.

The troops must take all measures to strengthen the positions occupied by them, arranging trenches and other defensive works.

They must enter into close liaison with the detachments of Colpinno and Krasnoye Selo, and also with the Staff of the Commander in Chief for the Defence of Petrograd.

Signed, _Commander in Chief aver all Forces acting against the Counter-revolutionary Troops of Kerensky,_ Lieutenant-Colonel MURAVIOV.

Tuesday morning. But how is this? Only two days ago the Petrograd campagna was full of leaderless bands, wandering aimlessly; without food, without artillery, without a plan. What had fused that disorganised ma.s.s of undisciplined Red Guards, and soldiers without officers, into an army obedient to its own elected high command, tempered to meet and break the a.s.sault of cannon and Cossack cavalry? (See App. IX, Sect. 1) People in revolt have a way of defying military precedent. The ragged armies of the French Revolution are not forgotten-Valmy and the Lines of Weissembourg. Ma.s.sed against the Soviet forces were yunkers, Cossacks, land-owners, n.o.bility, Black Hundreds-the Tsar come again, Okhrana and Siberian chains; and the vast and terrible menace of the Germans.... Victory, in the words of Carlyle, meant "Apotheosis and Millennium without end!"

Sunday night, the Commissars of the Military Revolutionary Committee returning desperately from the field, the garrison of Petrograd elected its Committee of Five, its Battle Staff, three soldiers and two officers, all certified free from counter-revolutionary taint. Colonel Muraviov, ex-patriot, was in command-an efficient man, but to be carefully watched. At Colpinno, at Obukhovo, at Pulkovo and Krasnoye Selo were formed provisional detachments, increased in size as the stragglers came in from the surrounding country-mixed soldiers, sailors and Red Guards, parts of regiments, infantry, cavalry and artillery all together, and a few armoured cars.

Day broke, and the pickets of Kerensky's Cossacks came in touch. Scattered rifle-fire, summons to surrender. Over the bleak plain on the cold quiet air spread the sound of battle, falling upon the ears of roving bands as they gathered about their little fires, waiting.... So it was beginning! They made toward the battle; and the worker hordes pouring out along the straight roads quickened their pace.... Thus upon all the points of attack automatically converged angry human swarms, to be met by Commissars and a.s.signed positions, or work to do. This was their battle, for their world; the officers in command were elected by them. For the moment that incoherent multiple will was one will....

Those who partic.i.p.ated in the fighting described to me how the sailors fought until they ran out of cartridges, and then stormed; how the untrained workmen rushed the charging Cossacks and tore them from their horses; how the anonymous hordes of the people, gathering in the darkness around the battle, rose like a tide and poured over the enemy.... Before midnight of Monday the Cossacks broke and were fleeing, leaving their artillery behind them, and the army of the proletariat, on a long ragged front, moved forward and rolled into Tsarskoye, before the enemy had a chance to destroy the great Government wireless station, from which now the Commissars of Smolny were hurling out to the world paeans of triumph....

TO ALL SOVIETS OF WORKERS' AND SOLDIERS' DEPUTIES.

The 12th of November, in a b.l.o.o.d.y combat near Tsarskoye Selo, the revolutionary army defeated the counter-revolutionary troops of Kerensky and Kornilov. In the name of the Revolutionary Government I order all regiments to take the offensive against the enemies of the revolutionary democracy, and to take all measures to arrest Kerensky, and also to oppose any adventure which might menace the conquests of the Revolution and the victory of the proletariat.

Long live the Revolutionary Army! MURAVIOV.

News from the provinces....

At Sevastopol the local Soviet had a.s.sumed the power; a huge meeting of the sailors on the battles.h.i.+ps in the harbour had forced their officers to line up and swear allegiance to the new Government. At Nizhni Novgorod the Soviet was in control. From Kazan came reports of a battle in the streets, yunkers and a brigade of artillery against the Bolshevik garrison....

Desperate fighting had broken out again in Moscow. The yunkers and White Guards held the Kremlin and the centre of the town, beaten upon from all sides by the troops of the Military Revolutionary Committee. The Soviet artillery was stationed in Skobeliev Square, bombarding the City Duma building, the Prefecture and the Hotel Metropole. The cobblestones of the Tverskaya and Nikitskaya had been torn up for trenches and barricades. A hail of machine-gun fire swept the quarters of the great banks and commercial houses. There were no lights, no telephones; the bourgeois population lived in the cellars.... The last bulletin said that the Military Revolutionary Committee had delivered an ultimatum to the Committee of Public Safety, demanding the immediate surrender of the Kremlin, or bombardment would follow.

"Bombard the Kremlin?" cried the ordinary citizen. "They dare not!"

From Vologda to Chita in far Siberia, from Pskov to Sevastopol on the Black Sea, in great cities and little villages, civil war burst into flame. From thousands of factories, peasant communes, regiments and armies, s.h.i.+ps on the wide sea, greetings poured into Petrograd-greetings to the Government of the People.

The Cossack Government at Novotcherkask telegraphed to Kerensky, _"The Government of the Cossack troops invites the Provisional Government and the members of the Council of the Republic to come, if possible, to Novotcherkask, where we can organise in common the struggle against the Bolsheviki."_ In Finland, also, things were stirring. The Soviet of Helsingfors and the Tsentrobalt (Central Committee of the Baltic Fleet), jointly proclaimed a state of siege, and declared that all attempts to interfere with the Bolshevik forces, and all armed resistance to its orders, would be severely repressed. At the same time the Finnish Railway Union called a countrywide general strike, to put into operation the laws pa.s.sed by the Socialist Diet of June, 1917, dissolved by Kerensky....

Early in the morning I went out to Smolny. Going up the long wooden sidewalk from the outer gate I saw the first thin, hesitating snow-flakes fluttering down from the grey, windless sky. "Snow!" cried the soldier at the door, grinning with delight. "Good for the health!" Inside, the long, gloomy halls and bleak rooms seemed deserted. No one moved in all the enormous pile. A deep, uneasy sound came to my ears, and looking around, I noticed that everywhere on the floor, along the walls, men were sleeping. Rough, dirty men, workers and soldiers, spattered and caked with mud, sprawled alone or in heaps, in the careless att.i.tudes of death. Some wore ragged bandages marked with blood. Guns and cartridge-belts were scattered about.... The victorious proletarian army!

In the upstairs buffet so thick they lay that one could hardly walk. The air was foul. Through the clouded windows a pale light streamed. A battered samovar, cold, stood on the counter, and many gla.s.ses holding dregs of tea. Beside them lay a copy of the Military Revolutionary Committee's last bulletin, upside down, scrawled with painful hand-writing. It was a memorial written by some soldier to his comrades fallen in the fight against Kerensky, just as he had set it down before falling on the floor to sleep. The writing was blurred with what looked like tears....

Alexei Vinogradov.

D. Maskvin.

S. s...o...b..kov.

A. Voskressensky.

D. Leonsky.

D. Preobrazhensky.

V. Laidansky.

M. Berchikov.

These men were drafted into the Army on November 15th, 1916. Only three are left of the above.

Mikhail Berchikov.

Alexei Voskressensky.

Dmitri Leonsky.

Sleep, Warrior eagles, sleep with peaceful soul.

You have deserved, our own ones, happiness and.

Eternal peace. Under the earth of the grave.

You have straitly closed your ranks. Sleep, Citizens!

Only the Military Revolutionary Committee still functioned, unsleeping. Skripnik, emerging from the inner room, said that Gotz had been arrested, but had flatly denied signing the proclamation of the Committee for Salvation, as had Avksentiev; and the Committee for Salvation itself had repudiated the Appeal to the garrison. There was still disafiection among the city regiments, Skripnik reported; the Volhynsky Regiment had refused to fight against Kerensky.

Several detachments of "neutral" troops, with Tchernov at their head, were at Gatchina, trying to persuade Kerensky to halt his attack on Petrograd.

Skripnik laughed. "There can be no 'neutrals' now," he said. "We've won!" His sharp, bearded face glowed with an almost religious exaltation. "More than sixty delegates have arrived from the Front, with a.s.surances of support by all the armies except the troops on the Rumanian front, who have not been heard from. The Army Committees have suppressed all news from Petrograd, but we now have a regular system of couriers...."

[Graphic page-224 Certificate approving telegram transmission] Order given me at Staff headquarters by command of the Council of People's Commissars, to transmit the first despatch out of Perograd after the November Revolution, over the Government wires to America. (Translation) STAFF Military Revolutionary Commitee Sov. W. & S. D. 2 November, 1917 No. 1860 CERTIFICATE Is given by the present to the journalist of the New York Socialist press JOHN REED, that the text of the telegram (herewith) has been examined by the Government of People's Commissars, and there is no objection to its transmission, and also it is recommended that all cooperate in every way to transmit same to its destination. For the Commander in Chief, ANTONOV Chief of Staff, VLAD. BONCH-BRUEVITCH Down in the front hall Kameniev was just entering, worn out by the all-night session of the Conference to Form a New Government, but happy. "Already the Socialist Revolutionaries are inclined to admit us into the new Government," he told me. "The right wing groups are frightened by the Revolutionary Tribunals; they demand, in a sort of panic, that we dissolve them before going any further. ... We have accepted the proposition of the Vikzhel to form a h.o.m.ogeneous Socialist Ministry, and they're working on that now. You see, it all springs from our victory. When we were down, they would't have us at any price; not everybody's in favour of some agreement with the Soivets.... What we need is a really decisive victory. Kerensky wants an armistice, but he'll have to surrender (See App. IX, Sect. 2) ...."

That was the temper of the Bolshevik leaders. To a foreign journalist who asked Trotzky what statement he had to make to the world, Trotzky replied: "At this moment the only statement possible is the one we are making through the mouths of our cannon!"

But there was an undercurrent of real anxiety in the tide of victory; the question of finances. Instead of opening the banks, as had been ordered by the Military Revolutionary Committee, the Union of Bank Employees had held a meeting and declared a formal strike. Smolny had demanded some thirty-five millions of rubles from the State Bank, and the cas.h.i.+er had locked the vaults, only paying out money to the representatives of the Provisional Government. The reactionaries were using the State Bank as a political weapon; for instance, when the Vikzhel demanded money to pay the salaries of the employees of the Government railroads, it was told to apply to Smolny....

I went to the State Bank to see the new Commissar, a redhaired Ukrainean Bolshevik named Petrovitch. He was trying to bring order out of the chaos in which affairs had been left by the striking clerks. In all the offices of the huge place perspiring volunteer workers, soldiers and sailors, their tongues sticking out of their mouths in the intensity of their effort, were poring over the great ledgers with a bewildered air....

The Duma building was crowded. There were still isolated cases of defiance toward the new Government, but they were rare. The Central Land Committee had appealed to the Peasants, ordering them not to recognise the Land Decree pa.s.sed by the Congress of the Soviets, because it would cause confusion and civil war. Mayor Schreider announced that because of the Bolshevik insurrection, the elections to the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly would have to be indefinitely postponed.

Two questions seemed to be uppermost in all minds, shocked by the ferocity of the civil war; first, a truce to the bloodshed (See App. IX, Sect. 3)-second, the creation of a new Government. There was no longer any talk of "destroying the Bolsheviki"-and very little about excluding them from the Government, except from the Populist Socialists and the Peasants' Soviets. Even the Central Army Committee at the Stavka, the most determined enemy of Smolny, telephoned from Moghilev: "If, to const.i.tute the new Ministry, it is necessary to come to an understanding with the Bolsheviki, we agree to admit them in a minority to the Cabinet."

Pravda, ironically calling attention to Kerensky's "humanitarian sentiments," published his despatch to the Committee for Salvation: In accord with the proposals of the Committee for Salvation and all the democratic organisations united around it, I have halted all military action against the rebels. A delegate of the Committee has been sent to enter into negotiations. Take all measures to stop the useless shedding of blood.