Ten Days That Shook The World (25 page)

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 Establishing a Workers' Militia. Also orders, one giving the Municipal 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 organization of the Bolsheviki, which is called "Bureau of Organization 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 Constituent Assembly, which is the only salvation of the working-class 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 airplane low flying down the Nevsky, which threatened terrible vengeance on all who did not submit, and ordered soldiers to lay down their arms and assemble 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 organize 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....

Trotsky 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 Labor, 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 masses are living, the Mensheviki and their followers and the Right Socialist Revolutionaries have betrayed the working-class. 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 rumors of mythical victories by that renegade....

Citizens! Don't believe these false rumors. 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 space 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 passports 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 dispatch 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 Arsenal 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 battleships....

But beneath all the breezy assurance 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, assured 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.

Our troops have left Gatchina in order to avoid bloodshed between themselves and their mistaken brother-Cossacks, and in order to take a more convenient position, which is at present so strong that if Kerensky and his companions in arms should even increase their forces ten times, still there would be no cause for anxiety. The spirit of our troops is excellent.

In Petrograd all is quiet.

Chief of the Defence of Petrograd and the Petrograd District,

Lieutenant-Colonel Muraviov.

As we left the Military Revolutionary Committee Antonov entered, a paper in his hand, looking like a corpse.

"Send this," said he.

TO ALL DISTRICT SOVIETS OF WORKERS' DEPUTIES AND FACTORY SHOP COMMITTEES

The Kornilovist bands of Kerensky are threatening the approaches to the capital. All the necessary orders have been given to crush mercilessly the counter-revolutionary attempt against the people and its conquests.

The Army and the Red Guard of the Revolution are in need of the immediate support of the workers.

WE ORDER THE WARD SOVIETS AND FACTORY-SHOP COMMITTEES:

1.       To move out the greatest possible number of workers for the digging of trenches, the erection of barricades and reinforcing of wire entanglements.

2.       Wherever it shall be necessary for this purpose to stop work at the factories this shall be done immediately.

3.       All common and barbed wire available must be assembled, and also all implements for the digging of trenches and the erection of barricades.

4.       All available arms must be taken.

5.       THE STRICTEST DISCIPLINE IS TO BE OBSERVED, AND EVERY ONE MUST BE READY TO SUPPORT THE ARMY OF THE REVOLUTION BY ALL MEANS.

Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet of Worker's and Soldiers' Deputies,

People's Commissar LEON TROTZKY.

Chairman of the Military Revolutionary Committee,

Commander in Chief PODVOISKY.

As we came out into the dark and gloomy day all around the grey horizon factory whistles were blowing, a hoarse and nervous sound, full of foreboding. By tens of thousands the working-people poured out, men and women; by tens of thousands the humming slums belched out their dun and miserable hordes. Red Petrograd was in danger! Cossacks! South and southwest they poured through the shabby streets toward the Moskovsky Gate, men, women and children, with rifles, picks, spades, rolls of wire, cartridge-belts over their working clothes.... Such an immense, spontaneous outpouring of a city never was seen! They rolled along torrent-like, companies of soldiers borne with them, guns, motor-trucks, wagons-the revolutionary proletariat defending with its breast the capital of the Workers' and Peasants' Republic!

Before the door of Smolny was an automobile. A slight man with thick glasses magnifying his red-rimmed eyes, his speech a painful effort, stood leaning against a mud-guard with his hands in the pockets of a shabby raglan. A great bearded sailor, with the clear eyes of youth, prowled restlessly about, absently toying with an enormous blue-steel revolver, which never left his hand. These were Antonov and Dybenko.

Some soldiers were trying to fasten two military bicycles on the running-board. The chauffeur violently protested; the enamel would get scratched, he said. True, he was a Bolshevik, and the automobile was commandeered from a bourgeois; true, the bicycles were for the use of orderlies. But the chauffeur's professional pride was revolted.... So the bicycles were abandoned....

The People's Commissars for War and Marine were going to inspect the revolutionary front-wherever that was. Could we go with them? Certainly not. The automobile only held five-the two Commissars, two orderlies and the chauffeur. However, a Russian acquaintance of mine, whom I will call Trusishka, calmly got in and sat down, nor could any argument dislodge him....

I see no reason to doubt Trusishka's story of the journey. As they went down the Suvorovsky Prospect some one mentioned food. They might be out three or four days, in a country indifferently well provisioned. They stopped the car. Money? The Commissar of War looked through his pockets-he hadn't a kopek. The Commissar of Marine was broke. So was the chauffeur. Trusishka bought the provisions....

Just as they turned into the Nevsky a tire blew out.

"What shall we do?" asked Antonov.