Ten Days that Shook the World — 12 - 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 pass 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 mass of undisciplined Red Guards, and soldiers without officers, into an army obedient to its own elected high command, tempered to meet and break the assault 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.

Massed against the Soviet forces were _yunkers,_ Cossacks, land-owners, nobility, 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 assigned 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 participated 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 bloody 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 assumed the power; a huge meeting of the sailors on the battleships 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, ships 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 passed 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 attitudes 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 glasses 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.

Stolbikov 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 assurances 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 homogeneous 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 cashier 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 passed 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 Constituent Assembly 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 constitute 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.

The _Vikzhel_ sent a telegram to all Russia: The Conference of the Union of Railway Workers with the representatives of both the belligerent parties, who admit the necessity of an agreement, protest energetically against the use of political terrorism in the civil war, especially when it is carried on between different factions of the revolutionary democracy, and declare that political terrorism, in whatever form, is in contradiction to the very idea of the negotiations for a new Government….

[Graphic, page 227: Leaflet] Popular leaflet sold in the streets just after the Bolshevik insurrection, containing rhymes and jokes about the defeated bourgeoisie and the “moderate” Socialist leaders, Called, “How THE BOORZHUI (BOURGEOISIE) LOST THE POWER.

” Delegations from the Conference were sent to the Front, to Gatchina.

In the Conference itself everything seemed on the point of final settlement.

It had even been decided to elect a Provisional People’s Council, composed of about four hundred members—seventy-five representing Smolny, seventy-five the old _Tsay-ee-kah,_ and the rest split up among the Town Dumas, the Trade Unions, Land Committees and political parties.

Tchernov was mentioned as the new Premier.

Lenin and Trotzky, rumour said, were to be excluded….

About noon I was again in front of Smolny, talking with the driver of an ambulance bound for the revolutionary front.

Could I go with him?

Certainly!

He was a volunteer, a University student, and as we rolled down the street shouted over his shoulder to me phrases of execrable German: _“Also, gut!

Wir nach die Kasernen zu essen gehen!

”_ I made out that there would be lunch at some barracks.

On the Kirotchnaya we turned into an immense courtyard surrounded by military buildings, and mounted a dark stairway to a low room lit by one window.

At a long wooden table were seated some twenty soldiers, eating _shtchi_ (cabbage soup) from a great tin wash-tub with wooden spoons, and talking loudly with much laughter.

“Welcome to the Battalion Committee of the Sixth Reserve Engineers’ Battalion!

” cried my friend, and introduced me as an American Socialist.

Whereat every one rose to shake my hand, and one old soldier put his arms around me and gave me a hearty kiss.

A wooden spoon was produced and I took my place at the table.

Another tub, full of _kasha,_ was brought in, a huge loaf of black bread, and of course the inevitable tea-pots.

At once every one began asking me questions about America: Was it true that people in a free country sold their votes for _money?

_ If so, how did they get what they wanted?

How about this “Tammany”?

Was it true that in a free country a little group of people could control a whole city, and exploited it for their personal benefit?

Why did the people stand it?

Even under the Tsar such things could not happen in Russia; true, here there was always graft, but to buy and sell a whole city full of people!

And in a free country!

Had the people no revolutionary feeling?

I tried to explain that in my country people tried to change things by law.

“Of course,” nodded a young sergeant, named Baklanov, who spoke French.

“But you have a highly developed capitalist class?

Then the capitalist class must control the legislatures and the courts.

How then can the people change things?

I am open to conviction, for I do not know your country; but to me it is incredible….

” I said that I was going to Tsarskoye Selo.

“I, too,” said Baklanov, suddenly.

“And I—and I—” The whole roomful decided on the spot to go to Tsarskoye Selo.

Just then came a knock on the door.

It opened, and in it stood the figure of the Colonel.

No one rose, but all shouted a greeting.

“May I come in?

” asked the Colonel.

“_Prosim!

Prosim!

_” they answered heartily.

He entered, smiling, a tall, distinguished figure in a goat-skin cape embroidered with gold.

“I think I heard you say that you were going to Tsarskoye Selo, comrades,” he said.

“Could I go with you?

” Baklanov considered.

“I do not think there is anything to be done here to-day,” he answered.

“Yes, comrade, we shall be very glad to have you.

” The Colonel thanked him and sat down, filling a glass of tea.

In a low voice, for fear of wounding the Colonel’s pride, Baklanov explained to me.

“You see, I am the chairman of the Committee.

We control the Battalion absolutely, except in action, when the Colonel is delegated by us to command.

In action his orders must be obeyed, but he is strictly responsible to us.

In barracks he must ask our permission before taking any action….

You might call him our Executive Officer….

” Arms were distributed to us, revolvers and rifles—“we might meet some Cossacks, you know”—and we all piled into the ambulance, together with three great bundles of newspapers for the front.

Straight down the Liteiny we rattled, and along the Zagorodny Prospekt.

Next to me sat a youth with the shoulder-straps of a Lieutenant, who seemed to speak all European languages with equal fluency.

He was a member of the Battalion Committee.

“I am not a Bolshevik,” he assured me, emphatically.

“My family is a very ancient and noble one.

I, myself, am, you might say, a Cadet….

” “But how—?

” I began, bewildered.

“Oh, yes, I am a member of the Committee.

I make no secret of my political opinions, but the others do not mind, because they know I do not believe in opposing the will of the majority….

I have refused to take any action in the present civil war, however, for I do not believe in taking up arms against my brother Russians….

” “Provocator!

Kornilovitz!

” the others cried at him gaily, slapping him on the shoulder….

Passing under the huge grey stone archway of the Moskovsky Gate, covered with golden hieroglyphics, ponderous Imperial eagles and the names of Tsars, we sped out on the wide straight highway, grey with the first light fall of snow.

It was thronged with Red Guards, stumbling along on foot toward the revolutionary front, shouting and singing; and others, greyfaced and muddy, coming back.

Most of them seemed to be mere boys.

Women with spades, some with rifles and bandoleers, others wearing the Red Cross on their arm-bands—the bowed, toil-worn women of the slums.

Squads of soldiers marching out of step, with an affectionate jeer for the Red Guards; sailors, grim-looking; children with bundles of food for their fathers and mothers; all these, coming and going, trudged through the whitened mud that covered the cobbles of the highway inches deep.

We passed cannon, jingling southward with their caissons; trucks bound both ways, bristling with armed men;

ambulances full of wounded from the direction of the battle, and once a peasant cart, creaking slowly along, in which sat a white-faced boy bent over his shattered stomach and screaming monotonously.

In the fields on either side women and old men were digging trenches and stringing barbed wire entanglements.

Back northward the clouds rolled away dramatically, and the pale sun came out.

Across the flat, marshy plain Petrograd glittered.

To the right, white and gilded and coloured bulbs and pinnacles; to the left, tall chimneys, some pouring out black smoke; and beyond, a lowering sky over Finland.

On each side of us were churches, monasteries….

Occasionally a monk was visible, silently watching the pulse of the proletarian army throbbing on the road.

At Pulkovo the road divided, and there we halted in the midst of a great crowd, where the human streams poured from three directions, friends meeting, excited and congratulatory, describing the battle to one another.

A row of houses facing the cross-roads was marked with bullets, and the earth was trampled into mud half a mile around.

The fighting had been furious here….

In the near distance riderless Cossack horses circled hungrily, for the grass of the plain had died long ago.

Right in front of us an awkward Red Guard was trying to ride one, falling off again and again, to the childlike delight of a thousand rough men.

The left road, along which the remnants of the Cossacks had retreated, led up a little hill to a hamlet, where there was a glorious view of the immense plain, grey as a windless sea, tumultuous clouds towering over, and the imperial city disgorging its thousands along all the roads.

Far over to the left lay the little hill of Kranoye Selo, the parade-ground of the Imperial Guards’ summer camp, and the Imperial Dairy.

In the middle distance nothing broke the flat monotony but a few walled monasteries and convents, some isolated factories, and several large buildings with unkempt grounds that were asylums and orphanages….

“Here,” said the driver, as we went on over a barren hill, “here was where Vera Slutskaya died.

Yes, the Bolshevik member of the Duma.

It happened early this morning.

She was in an automobile, with Zalkind and another man.

There was a truce, and they started for the front trenches.

They were talking and laughing, when all of a sudden, from the armoured train in which Kerensky himself was riding, somebody saw the automobile and fired a cannon.

The shell struck Vera Slutskaya and killed her….

” And so we came into Tsarskoye, all bustling with the swaggering heroes of the proletarian horde.

Now the palace where the Soviet had met was a busy place.

Red Guards and sailors filled the court-yard, sentries stood at the doors, and a stream of couriers and Commissars pushed in and out.

In the Soviet room a samovar had been set up, and fifty or more workers, soldiers, sailors and officers stood around, drinking tea and talking at the top of their voices.

In one corner two clumsy-handed workingmen were trying to make a multigraphing machine go.

At the centre table, the huge Dybenko bent over a map, marking out positions for the troops with red and blue pencils.

In his free hand he carried, as always, the enormous bluesteel revolver.

Anon he sat himself down at a typewriter and pounded away with one finger; every little while he would pause, pick up the revolver, and lovingly spin the chamber.

A couch lay along the wall, and on this was stretched a young workman.

Two Red Guards were bending over him, but the rest of the company did not pay any attention.

In his breast was a hole; through his clothes fresh blood came welling up with every heart-beat.

His eyes were closed and his young, bearded face was greenish-white.

Faintly and slowly he still breathed, with every breath sighing, _“Mir boudit!

Mir boudit!

_ (Peace is coming!

Peace is coming!

)” Dybenko looked up as we came in.

“Ah,” he said to Baklanov.

“Comrade, will you go up to the Commandant’s headquarters and take charge?

Wait;

I will write you credentials.

” He went to the typewriter and slowly picked out the letters.

The new Commandant of Tsarskoye Selo and I went toward the Ekaterina Palace, Baklanov very excited and important.

In the same ornate, white room some Red Guards were rummaging curiously around, while my old friend, the Colonel, stood by the window biting his moustache.

He greeted me like a long-lost brother.

At a table near the door sat the French Bessarabian.

The Bolsheviki had ordered him to remain, and continue his work.

“What could I do?

” he muttered.

“People like myself cannot fight on either side in such a war as this, no matter how much we may instinctively dislike the dictatorship of the mob….

I only regret that I am so far from my mother in Bessarabia!

” Baklanov was formally taking over the office from the Commandant.

“Here,” said the Colonel nervously, “are the keys to the desk.

” A Red Guard interrupted.

“Where’s the money?

” he asked rudely.

The Colonel seemed surprised.

“Money?

Money?

Ah, you mean the chest.

There it is,” said the Colonel, “just as I found it when I took possession three days ago.

Keys?

” The Colonel shrugged.

“I have no keys.

” The Red Guard sneered knowingly.

“Very convenient,” he said.

“Let us open the chest,” said Baklanov.

“Bring an axe.

Here is an American comrade.

Let him smash the chest open, and write down what he finds there.

” I swung the axe.

The wooden chest was empty.

“Let’s arrest him,” said the Red Guard, venomously.

“He is Kerensky’s man.

He has stolen the money and given it to Kerensky.

” Baklanov did not want to.

“Oh, no,” he said.