Ten Days That Shook the World

J >> John Reed >> Ten Days That Shook the World

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31

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
[* "God Save the Tsar."
noon.... The place was deserted; in most of the windows there were not
even lights. Occasionally we bumped into a burly figure stumbling
along in the dark, who answered questions with the usual, _"Ya
nieznayu."_

[Graphic page-166 Pass to Reed fromDepartment of Prisons
translation follows]

Pass 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
Institute, room No. 56-

PASS
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 principal 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 massacre 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 glass 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 Institute the Military Revolutionary Committee flashed
baleful fire, pounding like an over-loaded dynamo....

Chapter VII

The Revolutionary Front

SATURDAY, November 10th....

Citizens!

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

Theft, brigandage, assaults and attempts at massacre 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 battleship _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-class 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 participation of the organised peasantry in this criminal
violation of the will of the working-classes....

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
Constituent Assembly.

_Dielo Naroda_said:

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;
nobody, 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
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 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 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 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 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
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 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 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 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 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 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 FACTORYSHOP
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!

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31