"We are the guard," answered one. They all looked very depressed, as undoubtedly they were, from weeks and weeks of all-day all-night argument and debate.

"Are you Kerensky's troops, or the Soviets'?"

There was silence for a moment, as they looked uneasily at each other. Then, "We are neutral," said he.

We went on through the arch of the huge Ekaterina Palace, into the Palace enclosure itself, asking for headquarters. A sentry outside a door in a curving white wing of the Palace said that the commandant was inside.

In a graceful, white, Georgian room, divided into unequal parts by a two-sided fire-place, a group of officers stood anxiously talking. They were pale and distracted, and evidently hadn't slept. To one, an oldish man with a white beard, his uniform studded with decorations, who was pointed out as the Colonel, we showed our Bolshevik papers.

He seemed surprised. "How did you get here without being killed?" he asked politely. "It is very dangerous in the streets just now. Political passion is running very high in Tsarskoye Selo. There was a battle this morning, and there will be another to-morrow morning. Kerensky is to enter the town at eight o'clock."

"Where are the Cossacks?"

"About a mile over that way." He waved his arm.

"And you will defend the city against them?"

"Oh dear no." He smiled. "We are holding the city for Kerensky." Our hearts sank, for our passes stated that we were revolutionary to the core. The Colonel cleared his throat. "About those passes of yours," he went on. "Your lives will be in danger if you are captured. Therefore, if you want to see the battle, I will give you an order for rooms in the officers' hotel, and if you will come back here at seven o'clock in the morning, I will give you new passes."

"So you are for Kerensky?" we said.

"Well, not exactly for Kerensky." The Colonel hesitated. "You see, most of the soldiers in the garrison are Bolsheviki, and to-day, after the battle, they all went away in the direction of Petrograd, taking the artillery with them. You might say that none of the soldiers are for Kerensky; but some of them just don't want to fight at all. The officers have almost all gone over to Kerensky's forces, or simply gone away. We are-ahem-in a most difficult position, as you see...."

We did not believe that there would be any battle.... The Colonel courteously sent his orderly to escort us to the railroad station. He was from the South, born of French immigrant parents in Bessarabia. "Ah," he kept saying, "it is not the danger or the hardships I mind, but being so long, three years, away from my mother...."

Looking out of the window of the train as we sped through the cold dark toward Petrograd, I caught glimpses of clumps of soldiers gesticulating in the light of fires, and of clusters of armoured cars halted together at cross-roads, the chauffeurs hanging out of the turrets and shouting to each other....

All the troubled night over the bleakflats leaderless bands of soldiers and Red Guards wandered, clashing and confused, and the Commissars of the Military Revolutionary Committee hurried from one group to another, trying to organise a defence....

Back in town excited throngs were moving in tides up and down the Nevsky. Something was in the air. From the Warsaw Railway station could be heard far-off cannonade. In the yunker schools there was feverish activity. Duma members went from barracks to barracks, arguing and pleading, narrating fearful stories of Bolshevik violence-massacre of the yunkers in the Winter Palace, rape of the women soldiers, the shooting of the girl before the Duma, the murder of Prince Tumanov.... In the Alexander Hall of the Duma building the Committee for Salvation was in special session; Commissars came and went, running.... All the journalists expelled from Smolny were there, in high spirits. They did not believe our report of conditions in Tsarskoye. Why, everybody knew that Tsarskoye was in Kerensky's hands, and that the Cossacks were now at Pulkovo. A committee was being elected to meet Kerensky at the railway station in the morning....

One confided to me, in strictest secrecy, that the counter-revolution would begin at midnight. He showed me two proclamations, one signed by Gotz and Polkovnikov, ordering the yunker schools, soldier convalescents in the hospitals, and the Knights of St. George to mobilise on a war footing and wait for orders from the Committee for Salvation; the other from the Committee for Salvation itself, which read as follows:

To the Population of Petrograd!

Comrades, workers, soldiers and citizens of revolutionary Petrograd! nary Petrograd!

The Bolsheviki, while appealing for peace at the front, are inciting to civil war in the rear.

Do not dig their provocatory appeals!

Do not dig trenches!

Down with the traitorous barricades!

Lay down your arms!

Soldiers, return to your barracks!

The war begun in Petrograd-is the death of the Revolution!

In the name of liberty, land, and peace, unite around the Committee for Salvation of Country and Revolution!

As we left the Duma a company of Red Guards, stern-faced and desperate, came marching down the dark, deserted street with a dozen prisoners-members of the local branch of the Council of Cossacks, caught red-handed plotting counter-revolution in their headquarters....

A soldier, accompanied by a small boy with a pail of paste, was sticking up great flaring notices:

By virtue of the present, the city of Petrograd and its suburbs are declared in a state of siege. All assemblies or meetings in the streets, and generally in the open air, are forbidden until further orders.

N. PODVOISKY, President of the Military

Revolutionary Committee.

As we went home the air was full of confused sound-automobile horns, shouts, distant shots. The city stirred uneasily, wakeful.

In the small hours of the morning a company of yunkers, disguised as soldiers of the Semionovsky Regiment, presented themselves at the Telephone Exchange just before the hour of changing guard. They had the Bolshevik password, and took charge without arousing suspicion. A few minutes later Antonov appeared, making a round of inspection. Him they captured and locked in a small room. When the relief came it was met by a blast of rifle-fire, several being killed.

Counter-revolution had begun...

Chapter VIII

Counter-Revolution

NEXT morning, Sunday the 11th, the Cossacks entered Tsarskoye Selo, Kerensky (See App. VIII, Sect. 1) himself riding a white horse and all the church-bells clamouring. From the top of a little hill outside the town could be seen the golden spires and many-coloured cupolas, the sprawling grey immensity of the capital spread along the dreary plain, and beyond, the steely Gulf of Finland.

There was no battle. But Kerensky made a fatal blunder. At seven in the morning he sent word to the Second Tsarskoye Selo Rifles to lay down their arms. The soldiers replied that they would remain neutral, but would not disarm. Kerensky gave them ten minutes in which to obey. This angered the soldiers; for eight months they had been governing themselves by committee, and this smacked of the old rgime.... A few minutes later Cossack artillery opened fire on the barracks, killing eight men. From that moment there were no more "neutral" soldiers in Tsarskoye....

Petrograd woke to bursts of rifle-fire, and the tramping thunder of men marching. Under the high dark sky a cold wind smelt of snow. At dawn the Military Hotel and the Telegraph Agency had been taken by large forces of yunkers, and bloodily recaptured. The Telephone Station was besieged by sailors, who lay behind barricades of barrels, boxes and tin sheets in the middle of the Morskaya, or sheltered themselves at the corner of the Gorokhovaya and of St. Isaac's Square, shooting at anything that moved. Occasionally an automobile passed in and out, flying the Red Cross flag. The sailors let it pass....

Albert Rhys Williams was in the Telephone Exchange. He went out with the Red Cross automobile, which was ostensibly full of wounded. After circulating about the city, the car went by devious ways to the Mikhailovsky yunker school, headquarters of the counter-revolution. A French officer, in the court-yard, seemed to be in command.... By this means ammunition and supplies were conveyed to the Telephone Exchange. Scores of these pretended ambulances acted as couriers and ammunition trains for the yunkers.

Five or six armoured cars, belonging to the disbanded British Armoured Car Division, were in their hands. As Louise Bryant was going along St. Isaac's Square one came rolling up from the Admiralty, on its way to the Telephone Exchange. At the corner of the Gogolia, right in front of her, the engine stalled. Some sailors ambushed behind wood-piles began shooting. The machine-gun in the turret of the thing slewed around and spat a hail of bullets indiscriminately into the wood-piles and the crowd. In the archway where Miss Bryant stood seven people were shot dead, among them two little boys. Suddenly, with a shout, the sailors leaped up and rushed into the flaming open; closing around the monster, they thrust their bayonets into the loop-holes, again and again, yelling... The chauffeur pretended to be wounded, and they let him go free-to run to the Duma and swell the tale of Bolshevik atrocities....Among the dead was a British Officer....

Later the newspapers told of another French officer, captured in a yunker armoured car and sent to Peter-Paul. The French Embassy promptly denied this, but one of the City Councillors told me that he himself had procured the officer's release from prison....

Whatever the official attitude of the Allied Embassies, individual French and British officers were active these days, even to the extent of giving advice at executive sessions of the Committee for Salvation.

All day long in every quarter of the city there were skirmishes between yunkers and Red Guards, battles between armoured cars.... Volleys, single shots and the shrill chatter of machine-guns could be heard, far and near. The iron shutters of the shops were drawn, but business still went on. Even the moving-picture shows, all outside lights dark, played to crowded houses. The street-cars ran. The telephones were all working; when you called Central, shooting could be plainly heard over the wire.... Smolny was cut off, but the Duma and the Committee for Salvation were in constant communication with all the yunker schools and with Kerensky at Tsarskoye.

At seven in the morning the Vladimir yunker school was visited by a patrol of soldiers, sailors and Red Guards, who gave the yunkers twenty minutes to lay down their arms. The ultimatum was rejected. An hour later the yunkers got ready to march, but were driven back by a violent fusillade from the corner of the Grebetskaya and the Bolshoy Prospekt. Soviet troops surrounded the building and opened fire, two armoured cars cruising back and forth with machine guns raking it. The yunkers telephoned for help. The Cossacks replied that they dare not come, because a large body of sailors with two cannon commanded their barracks. The Pavlovsk school was surrounded. Most of the Mikhailov yunkers were fighting in the streets....

At half-past eleven three field-pieces arrived. Another demand to surrender was met by the yunkers shooting down two of the Soviet delegates under the white flag. Now began a real bombardment. Great holes were torn in the walls of the school. The yunkers defended themselves desperately; shouting waves of Red Guards, assaulting, crumpled under the withering blast.... Kerensky telephoned from Tsarskoye to refuse all parley with the Military Revolutionary Committee.

Frenzied by defeat and their heaps of dead, the Soviet troops opened a tornado of steel and flame against the battered building. Their own officers could not stop the terrible bombardment. A Commissar from Smolny named Kirilov tried to halt it; he was threatened with lynching. The Red Guards' blood was up.

At half-past two the yunkers hoisted a white flag; they would surrender if they were guaranteed protection. This was promised. With a rush and a shout thousands of soldiers and Red Guards poured through windows, doors and holes in the wall. Before it could be stopped five yunkers were beaten and stabbed to death. The rest, about two hundred, were taken to Peter-Paul under escort, in small groups so as to avoid notice. On the way a mob set upon one party, killing eight more yunkers.... More than a hundred Red Guards and soldiers had fallen....

Two hours later the Duma got a telephone message that the victors were marching toward the Injinierny Zamok-the Engineers' school. A dozen members immediately set out to distribute among them armfuls of the latest proclamation of the Committee for Salvation. Several did not come back.... All the other schools surrendered without resistance, and the yunkers were sent unharmed to Peter-Paul and Cronstadt....

The Telephone Exchange held out until afternoon, when a Bolshevik armoured car appeared, and the sailors stormed the place. Shrieking, the frightened telephone girls ran to and fro; the yunkers tore from their uniforms all distinguishing marks, and one offered Williams anything for the loan of his overcoat, as a disguise.... "They will massacre us! They will massacre us!" they cried, for many of them had given their word at the Winter Palace not to take up arms against the People. Williams offered to mediate if Antonov were released. This was immediately done; Antonov and Williams made speeches to the victorious sailors, inflamed by their many dead-and once more the yunkers went free.... All but a few, who in their panic tried to flee over the roofs, or to hide in the attic, and were found and hurled into the street.

Tired, bloody, triumphant, the sailors and workers swarmed into the switchboard room, and finding so many pretty girls, fell back in an embarrassed way and fumbled with awkward feet. Not a girl was injured, not one insulted. Frightened, they huddled in the corners, and then, finding themselves safe, gave vent to their spite. "Ugh! The dirty, ignorant people! The fools!"... The sailors and Red Guards were embarrassed. "Brutes! Pigs!" shrilled the girls, indignantly putting on their coats and hats. Romantic had been their experience passing up cartridges and dressing the wounds of their dashing young defenders, the yunkers, many of them members of noble families, fighting to restore their beloved Tsar! These were just common workmen, peasants, "Dark People."...

The Commissar of the Military Revolutionary Committee, little Vishniak, tried to persuade the girls to remain. He was effusively polite. "You have been badly treated," he said. "The telephone system is controlled by the Municipal Duma. You are paid sixty rubles a month, and have to work ten hours and more.... From now on all that will be changed. The Government intends to put the telephones under control of the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs. Your wages will be immediately raised to one hundred and fifty rubles, and your working-hours reduced. As members of the working-class you should be happy—"

Members of the working-class indeed! Did he mean to infer that there was anything in common between these-these animals-and us? Remain? Not if they offered a thousand rubles!... Haughty and spiteful the girls left the place....

The employees of the building, the line-men and labourers-they stayed. But the switch-boards must be operated-the telephone was vital.... Only half a dozen trained operators were available. Volunteers were called for; a hundred responded, sailors, soldiers, workers. The six girls scurried backward and forward, instructing, helping, scolding.... So, crippled, halting, but going, the wires slowly began to hum. The first thing was to connect Smolny with the barracks and the factories; the second, to cut off the Duma and the yunker schools.... Late in the afternoon word of it spread through the city, and hundreds of bourgeois called up to scream, "Fools! Devils! How long do you think you will last? Wait till the Cossacks come!"

Dusk was already falling. On the almost deserted Nevsky, swept by a bitter wind, a crowd had gathered before the Kazan Cathedral, continuing the endless debate; a few workmen, some soldiers and the rest shop-keepers, clerks and the like.

"But Lenin won't get Germany to make peace!" cried one.

A violent young soldier replied. "And whose fault is it? Your damn Kerensky, dirty bourgeois! To hell with Kerensky! We don't want him! We want Lenin...."

Outside the Duma an officer with a white arm-band was tearing down posters from the wall, swearing loudly. One read:

To the Population of Petrograd!

At this dangerous hour, when the Municipal Duma ought to use every means to calm the population, to assure it bread and other necessities, the Right Socialist Revolutionaries and the Cadets, forgetting their duty, have turned the Duma into a counter-revolutionary meeting, trying to raise part of the population against the rest, so as to facilitate the victory of Kornilov-Kerensky. Instead of doing their duty, the Right Socialist Revolutionaries and the Cadets have transformed the Duma into an arena of political attack upon the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies, against the revolutionary Government of peace, bread and liberty.

Citizens of Petrograd, we, the Bolshevik Municipal Councillors elected by you-we want you to know that the Right Socialist Revolutionaries and the Cadets are engaged in counter-revolutionary action, have forgotten their duty, and are leading the population to famine, to civil war. We, elected by 183,000 votes, consider it our duty to bring to the attention of our constituents what is going on in the Duma, and declare that we disclaim all responsibility for the terrible but inevitable consequences....

Far away still sounded occasional shots, but the city lay quiet, cold, as if exhausted by the violent spasms which had torn it.

In the Nicolai Hall the Duma session was coming to an end. Even the truculent Duma seemed a little stunned. One after another the Commissars reported-capture of the Telephone Exchange, street-fighting, the taking of the Vladimir school.... "The Duma," said Trupp, "is on the side of the democracy in its struggle against arbitrary violence; but in any case, whichever side wins, the Duma will always be against lynchings and torture...."

Konovski, Cadet, a tall old man with a cruel face: "When the troops of the legal Government arrive in Petrograd, they will shoot down these insurgents, and that will not be lynching!" Protests all over the hall, even from his own party.

Here there was doubt and depression. The counter-revolution was being put down. The Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionary party had voted lack of confidence in its officers; the left wing was in control; Avksentiev had resigned. signed. A courier reported that the Committee of Welcome sent to meet Kerensky at the railway station had been arrested. In the streets could be heard the dull rumble of distant cannonading, south and southwest. Still Kerensky did not come...

Only three newspapers were out-Pravda, Dielo Naroda and Novaya Zhizn. All of them devoted much space to the new "coalition" Government. The Socialist Revolutionary paper demanded a Cabinet without either Cadets or Bolsheviki. Gorky was hopeful; Smolny had made concessions. A purely Socialist Government was taking shape-all elements except the bourgeoisie. As for Pravda, it sneered:

We ridicule these coalitions with political parties whose most prominent members are petty journalists of doubtful reputation; our "coalition" is that of the proletariat and the revolutionary Army with the poor peasants...

On the walls a vainglorious announcement of the Vikzhel, threatening to strike if both sides did not compromise:

The conquerors of these riots, the saviours of the wreck of our country, these will be neither the Bolsheviki, nor the Committee for Salvation, nor the troops of Kerensky-but we, the Union of Railwaymen...

Red Guards are incapable of handling a complicated business like the railways; as for the Provisional Government, it has shown itself incapable of holding the power...

We refuse to lend our services to any party which does not act by authority of ... a Government based on the confidence of all the democracy....

Smolny thrilled with the boundless vitality of inexhaustible humanity in action.

In Trade Union headquarters Lozovsky introduced me to a delegate of the Railway Workers of the Nicolai line, who said that the men were holding huge mass-meetings, condemning the action of their leaders.

"All power to the Soviets!" he cried, pounding on the table. "Theoborontsi in the Central Committee are playing Ko&rgrave;nilov's game. They tried to send a mission to the Stavka, but we arrested them at Minsk.... Our branch has demanded an All-Russian Convention, and they refuse to call it...."

The same situation as in the Soviets, the Army Committees. One after another the various democratic organisations, all over Russia, were cracking and changing. The Cooperatives were torn by internal struggles; the meetings of the Peasants' Executive broke up in stormy wrangling; even among the Cossacks there was trouble....

On the top floor the Military Revolutionary Committee was in full blast, striking and slacking not. Men went in, fresh and vigorous; night and day and night and day they threw themselves into the terrible machine; and came out limp, blind with fatigue, hoarse and filthy, to fall on the floor and sleep.... The Committee for Salvation had been outlawed. Great piles of new proclamations (See App. VIII, Sect. 2) littered the floor:

... The conspirators, who have no support among the garrison or the working-class, above all counted on the suddenness of their attack. Their plan was discovered in time by Sub-Lieutenant Blagonravov, thanks to the revolutionary vigilance of a soldier of the Red Guard, whose name shall be made public. At the centre of the plot was the Committee for Salvation. Colonel Polkovnikov was in command of their forces, and the orders were signed by Gotz, former member of the Provisional Government, allowed at liberty on his word of honour....

Bringing these facts to the attention of the Petrograd population, the Military Revolutionary Committee orders the arrest of all concerned in the conspiracy, who shall be tried before the Revolutionary Tribunal....

From Moscow, word that the yunkers and Cossacks had surrounded the Kremlin and ordered the Soviet troops to lay down their arms. The Soviet forces complied, and as they were leaving the Kremlin, were set upon and shot down. Small forces of Bolsheviki had been driven from the Telephone and Telegraph offices; the yunkers now held the centre of the city. ... But all around them the Soviet troops were mustering. Street-fighting was slowly gathering way; all attempts at compromise had failed.... On the side of the Soviet, ten thousand garrison soldiers and a few Red Guards; on the side of the Government, six thousand yunkers, twenty-five hundred Cossacks and two thousand White Guards.

The Petrograd Soviet was meeting, and next door the new Tsay-ee-kah, acting on the decrees and orders (See App. VIII, Sect. 3) which came down in a steady stream from the Council of People's Commissars in session upstairs; on the Order in Which Laws Are to be Ratified and Published, Establishing an Eight hour Days for Workers, and Lunatcharsky's "Basis for a System of Popular Education." Only a few hundred people were present at the two meetings, most of them armed. Smolny was almost deserted, except for the guards, who were busy at the hall windows, setting up machine-guns to command the flanks of the building.

In the Tsay-ee-kah a delegate of the Vikzhel was speaking: "We refuse to transport the troops of either party.... We have sent a committee to Kerensky to say that if he continues to march on Petrograd we will break his lines of communication...."

He made the usual plea for a conference of all the Socialist parties to form a new Government....

Kameniev answered discreetly. The Bolsheviki would be very glad to attend the conference. The centre of gravity, however, lay not in composition of such a Government, but in its acceptance of the programme of the Congress of Soviets.

... The Tsay-ee-kah had deliberated on the declaration made by the Left Socialist Revolutionaries and the Social Democrats Internationalists, and had accepted the proposition of proportional representation at the conference, even including delegates from the Army Committees and the Peasants' Soviets....

In the great hall, Trotzky recounted the events of the day.

"We offered the Vladimir yunkers a chance to surrender," he said. "We wanted to settle matters without bloodshed. But now that blood has been spilled there is only one way-pitiless struggle. It would be childish to think we can win by any other means.... The moment is decisive. Everybody must cooperate with the Military Revolutionary Committee, report where there are stores of barbed wire, benzine, guns.

... We've won the power; now we must keep it!"

The Menshevik Yoffe tried to read his party's declaration, but Trotzky refused to allow "a debate about principle."

"Our debates are now in the streets," he cried. "The decisive step has been taken. We all, and I in particular, take the responsibility for what is happening...."

Soldiers from the front, from Gatchina, told their stories. One from the Death Battalion, Four Hundred Eighty-first Artillery: "When the trenches hear of this, they will cry, 'This is our Government!'" A yunker from Peterhof said that he and two others had refused to march against the Soviets; and when his comrades had returned from the defence of the Winter Palace they appointed him their Commissar, to go to Smolny and offer their services to the real Revolution....

Then Trotzky again, fiery, indefatigable, giving orders, answering questions.

"The petty bourgeoisie, in order to defeat the workers, soldiers and peasants, would combine with the devil himself!" he said once. Many cases of drunkenness had been remarked the last two days. "No drinking, comrades! No one must be on the streets after eight in the evening, except the regular guards. All places suspected of having stores of liquor should be searched, and the liquor destroyed. (See App. VIII, Sect. 4) No mercy to the sellers of liquor...."

The Military Revolutionary Committee sent for the delegation from the Viborg section; then for the members from Putilov. They clumped out hurriedly.

"For each revolutionist killed," said Trotzky, "we shall kill five counter-revolutionists!"

Down-town again. The Duma brilliantly illuminated and great crowds pouring in. In the lower hall wailing and cries of grief; the throng surged back and forth before the bulletin board, where was posted a list of yunkers killed in the day's fighting-or supposed to be killed, for most of the dead afterward turned up safe and sound.... Up in the Alexander Hall the Committee for Salvation held forth. The gold and red epaulettes of officers were conspicuous, the familiar faces of the Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary intellectuals, the hard eyes and bulky magnificence of bankers and diplomats, officials of the old rgime, and well-dressed women....

The telephone girls were testifying. Girl after girl came to the tribune-over-dressed, fashion-aping little girls, with pinched faces and leaky shoes. Girl after girl, flushing with pleasure at the applause of the "nice" people of Petrograd, of the officers, the rich, the great names of politics-girl after girl, to narrate her sufferings at the hands of the proletariat, and proclaim her loyalty to all that was old, established and powerful....

The Duma was again in session in the Nicolai Hall. The Mayor said hopefully that the Petrograd regiments were ashamed of their actions; propaganda was making headway.

[Graphic page-205 Proclamation for "wine pogroms" ]

Revolutionary law and order. A proclamation of the Finland Regiment, in December, 1917, announcing desperate remedies for "wine pogroms." For translation see Appendix 5.

... Emissaries came and went, reporting horrible deeds by the Bolsheviki, interceding to save the yunkers, busily investigating....

"The Bolsheviki," said Trupp, "will be conquered by moral force, and not by bayonets....."

Meanwhile all was not well on the revolutionary front. The enemy had brought up armoured trains, mounted with cannon. The Soviet forces, mostly raw Red Guards, were without officers and without a definite plan. Only five thousand regular soldiers had joined them; the rest of the garrison was either busy suppressing the yunker revolt, guarding the city, or undecided what to do. At ten in the evening Lenin addressed a meeting of delegates from the city regiments, who voted overwhelmingly to fight. A Committee of five soldiers was elected to serve as General Staff, and in the small hours of the morning the regiments left their barracks in full battle array.... Going home I saw them pass, swinging along with the regular tread of veterans, bayonets in perfect alignment, through the deserted streets of the conquered city....

At the same time, in the headquarters of the Vikzhel down on the Sadovaya, the conference of all the Socialist parties to form a new Government was under way. Abramovitch, for the centre Mensheviki, said that there should be neither conquerors nor conquered-that bygones should be bygones. ...In this were agreed all the left wing parties. Dan, speaking in the name of the right Mensheviki, proposed to the Bolsheviki the following conditions for a truce: The Red Guard to be disarmed, and the Petrograd garrison to be placed at the orders of the Duma; the troops of Kerensky not to fire a single shot or arrest a single man; a Ministry of all the Socialist parties except the Bolsheviki. For Smolny Riazanov and Kameniev declared that a coalition ministry of all parties was acceptable, but protested at Dan's proposals. The Socialist Revolutionaries were divided; but the Executive Committee of the Peasants's Soviets and the Populist Socialists flatly refused to admit the Bolsheviki.... After bitter quarrelling a commission was elected to draw up a workable plan....

All that night the commission wrangled, and all the next day, and the next night. Once before, on the 9th of November, there had been a similar effort at conciliation, led by Martov and Gorky; but at the approach of Kerensky and the activity of the Committee for Salvation, the right wing of the Mensheviki, Socialist Revolutionaries and Populist Socialists suddenly withdrew. Now they were awed by the crushing of the yunker rebellion...

Monday the 12th was a day of suspense. The eyes of all Russia were fixed on the grey plain beyond the gates of Petrograd, where all the available strength of the old order faced the unorganised power of the new, the unknown. In Moscow a truce had been declared; both sides parleyed, awaiting the result in the capital. Now the delegates to the Congress of Soviets, hurrying on speeding trains to the farthest reaches of Asia, were coming to their homes, carrying the fiery cross. In wide-spreading ripples news of the miracle spread over the face of the land, and in its wake towns, cities and far villages stirred and broke, Soviets and Military Revolutionary Committees against Dumas, Zemstvos and Government Commissars-Red Guards against White-street fighting and passionate speech.... The result waited on the word from Petrograd....

Smolny was almost empty, but the Duma was thronged and noisy. The old Mayor, in his dignified way, was protesting against the Appeal of the Bolshevik Councillors.

"The Duma is not a centre of counter-revolution," he said, warmly. "The Duma takes no part in the present struggle between the parties. But at a time when there is no legal power in the land, the only centre of order is the Municipal Self-Government. The peaceful population recognises this fact; the foreign Embassies recognise only such documents as are signed by the Mayor of the town. The mind of a European does not admit of any other situation, as the Municipal self-government is the only organ which is capable of protecting the interests of the citizens. The City is bound to show hospitality, to all organisations which desire to profit by such hospitality, and therefore the Duma cannot prevent the distribution of any newspapers whatever within the Duma building. The sphere of our work is increasing, and we must be given full liberty of action, and our rights must be respected by both parties....

"We are perfectly neutral. When the Telephone Exchange was occupied by the yunkers Colonel Polkovnikov ordered the telephones to Smolny disconnected, but I protested, and the telephones were kept going...."

At this there was ironic laughter from the Bolshevik benches, and imprecations from the right.

"And yet," went on Schreider, "they look upon us as counter-revolutionaries and report us to the population. They deprive us of our means of transport by taking away our last motor-cars. It will not be our fault if there is famine in the town. Protests are of no use...."

Kobozev, Bolshevik member of the Town Board, was doubtful whether the Military Revolutionary Committee had requisitioned the Municipal automobiles. Even granting the fact, it was probably done by some unauthorised individual, in the emergency.

"The Mayor," he continued, "tells us that we must not make political meetings out of the Duma. But every Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary here talks nothing but party propaganda, and at the door they distribute their illegal newspapers, Iskri (Sparks), Soldatski Golos and Rabotchaya Gazeta, inciting to insurrection. What if we Bolsheviki should also begin to distribute our papers here? But this shall not be, for we respect the Duma. We have not attacked the Municipal Self-Government, and we shall not do so. But you have addressed an Appeal to the population, and we are entitled also to do so....

Followed him Shingariov, Cadet, who said that there could be no common language with those who were liable to be brought before the Attorney General for indictment, and who must be tried on the charge of treason.... He proposed again that all Bolshevik members should be expelled from the Duma. This was tabled, however, for there were no personal charges against the members, and they were active in the Municipal administration.

Then two Mensheviki Internationalists, declaring that the Appeal of the Bolshevik Councillors was a direct incitement to massacre. "If everything that is against the Bolsheviki is counter-revolutionary," said Pinkevitch, "then I do not know the difference between revolution and anarchy.... The Bolsheviki are depending upon the passions of the unbridled masses; we have nothing but moral force. We will protest against massacres and violence from both sides, as our task is to find a peaceful issue."

"The notice posted in the streets under the heading 'To the Pillory,' which calls upon the people to destroy the Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries," said Nazariev, "is a crime which you, Bolsheviki, will not be able to wash away. Yesterday's horrors are but a preface to what you are preparing by such a proclamation.... I have always tried to reconcile you with the other parties, but at present I feel for you nothing but contempt!"

The Bolshevik Councillors were on their feet, shouting angrily, assailed by hoarse, hateful voices and waving arms....

Outside the hall I ran into the City Engineer, the Menshevik Gomberg and three or four reporters. They were all in high spirits.

"See!" they said. "The cowards are afraid of us. They don't dare arrest the Duma! Their Military Revolutionary Committee doesn't dare to send a Commissar into this building. Why, on the corner of the Sadovaya to-day, I saw a Red Guard try to stop a boy selling Soldatski Golos.... The boy just laughed at him, and a crowd of people wanted to lynch the bandit. It's only a few hours more, now. Even if Kerensky wouldn't come they haven't the men to run a Government. Absurd! I understand they're even fighting among themselves at Smolny!"

A Socialist Revolutionary friend of mine drew me aside. "I know where the Committee for Salvation is hiding," he said. "Do you want to go and talk with them?"

By this time it was dusk. The city had again settled down to normal-shop-shutters up, lights shining, and on the streets great crowds of people slowly moving up and down and arguing....

At Number 86 Nevsky we went through a passage into a courtyard, surrounded by tall apartment buildings. At the door of apartment 229 my friend knocked in a peculiar way. There was a sound of scuffling; an inside door slammed; then the front door opened a crack and a woman's face appeared. After a minute's observation she led us in-a placid-looking, middle-aged lady who at once cried, "Kyril, it's all right!" In the dining-room, where a samovar steamed on the table and there were plates full of bread and raw fish, a man in uniform emerged from behind the window-curtains, and another, dressed like a workman, from a closet. They were delighted to meet an American reporter. With a certain amount of gusto both said that they would certainly be shot if the Bolsheviki caught them. They would not give me their names, but both were Socialist Revolutionaries....

"Why," I asked, "do you publish such lies in your newspapers?"

Without taking offence the officer replied, "Yes, I know; but what can we do?" He shrugged. "You must admit that it is necessary for us to create a certain frame of mind in the people...."

The other man interrupted. "This is merely an adventure on the part of the Bolsheviki. They have no intellectuals. ... The Ministries won't work.... Russia is not a city, but a whole country.... Realising that they can only last a few days, we have decided to come to the aid of the strongest force opposed to them-Kerensky-and help to restore order."

"That is all very well," I said. "But why do you combine with the Cadets?"

The pseudo-workman smiled frankly. "To tell you the truth, at this moment the masses of the people are following the Bolsheviki. We have no following-now. We can't mobilise a handful of soldiers. There are no arms available.... The Bolsheviki are right to a certain extent; there are at this moment in Russia only two parties with any force-the Bolsheviki and the reactionaries, who are all hiding under the coat-tails of the Cadets. The Cadets think they are using us; but it is really we who are using the Cadets. When we smash the Bolsheviki we shall turn against the Cadets...."

"Will the Bolsheviki be admitted into the new Government?"

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 Constituent-that is, if there is a Constituent."

"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 Constituent Assembly-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 Constituent Assembly, 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 Constituent.... 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 portires, 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 masses, 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 Constituent Assembly-"

"It doesn't matter about the Constituent Assembly!" 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 scraping 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 documents with him. They were supposed to be hidden in the British Embassy....

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 bloody, of women and children massacred by the Bolsheviki. But no one believes him....

"The cruisers Oleg, Avrora and Respublica are anchored 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 passed 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 massed 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 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-worm 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. "It was the Kornilovitz before him. He is not to blame.

"The devil!" cried the Red Guard. "He is Kerensky's man, I tell you. If you won't arrest him, then we will, and we'll take him to Petrograd and put him in Peter-Paul, where he belongs!" At this the other Red Guards growled assent. With a piteous glance at us the Colonel was led away....

Down in front of the Soviet palace an auto-truck was going to the front. Half a dozen Red Guards, some sailors, and a soldier or two, under command of a huge workman, clambered in, and shouted to me to come along. Red Guards issued from headquarters, each of them staggering under an arm-load of small, corrugated-iron bombs, filled with grubit-which, they say, is ten times as strong, and five times as sensitive as dynamite; these they threw into the truck. A three-inch cannon was loaded and then tied onto the tail of the truck with bits of rope and wire.

We started with a shout, at top speed of course; the heavy truck swaying from side to side. The cannon leaped from one wheel to the other, and the grubit bombs went rolling back and forth over our feet, fetching up against the sides of the car with a crash.

The big Red Guard, whose name was Vladimir Nicolaievitch, plied me with questions about America. "Why did America come into the war? Are the American workers ready to throw over the capitalists? What is the situation in the Mooney case now? Will they extradite Berkman to San Francisco?" and other, very difficult to answer, all delivered in a shout above the roaring of the truck, while we held on to each other and danced amid the caroming bombs.

Occasionally a patrol tried to stop us. Soldiers ran out into the road before us, shouted "Shtoi!" and threw up their guns.

We paid no attention. "The devil take you!" cried the Red Guards. "We don't stop for anybody! We're Red Guards!" And we thundered imperiously on, while Vladimir Nicolaievitch bellowed to me about the internationalisation of the Panama Canal, and such matters....

About five miles out we saw a squad of sailors marching back, and slowed down.

"Where's the front, brothers?"

The foremost sailor halted and scratched his head. "This morning," he said, "it was about half a kilometer down the road. But the damn thing isn't anywhere now. We walked and walked and walked, but we couldn't find it."

They climbed into the truck, and we proceeded. It must have been about a mile further that Vladimir Nicolaievitch cocked his ear and shouted to the chauffeur to stop.

"Firing!" he said. "Do you hear it?" For a moment dead silence, and then, a little ahead and to the left, three shots in rapid succession. Along here the side of the road was heavily wooded. Very much excited now, we crept along, speaking in whispers, until the truck was nearly opposite the place where the firing had come from. Descending, we spread out, and every man carrying his rifle, went stealthily into the forest.

Two comrades, meanwhile, detached the cannon and slewed it around until it aimed as nearly as possible at our backs.

It was silent in the woods. The leaves were gone, and the tree-trunks were a pale wan colour in the low, sickly autumn sun. Not a thing moved, except the ice of little woodland pools shivering under our feet. Was it an ambush?

We went uneventfully forward until the trees began to thin, and paused. Beyond, in a little clearing, three soldiers sat around a small fire, perfectly oblivious.

Vladimir Nicolaievitch stepped forward. "Zra'zvuitye, comrades!" he greeted, while behind him one cannon, twenty rifles and a truck-load of grubit bombs hung by a hair. The soldiers scrambled to their feet.

"What was the shooting going on around here?"

One of the soldiers answered, looking relieved, "Why we were just shooting a rabbit or two, comrade...."

The truck hurtled on toward Romanov, through the bright, empty day. At the first cross-roads two soldiers ran out in front of us, waving their rifles. We slowed down, and stopped.

"Passes, comrades!"

The Red Guards raised a great clamour. "We are Red Guards. We don't need any passes.... Go on, never mind them!"

But a sailor objected. "This is wrong, comrades. We must have revolutionary discipline. Suppose some counterrevolutionaries came along in a truck and said: 'We don't need any passes?' The comrades don't know you."

At this there was a debate. One by one, however, the sailors and soldiers joined with the first. Grumbling, each Red Guard produced his dirty bumaga (paper). All were alike except mine, which had been issued by the Revolutionary Staff at Smolny. The sentries declared that I must go with them. The Red Guards objected strenuously, but the sailor who had spoken first insisted. "This comrade we know to be a true comrade," he said. "But there are orders of the Committee, and these orders must be obeyed. That is revolutionary discipline...."

In order not to make any trouble, I got down from the truck, and watched it disappear careening down the road, all the company waving farewell. The soldiers consulted in low tones for a moment, and then led me to a wall, against which they placed me. It flashed upon me suddenly; they were going to shoot me!

In all three directions not a human being was in sight. The only sign of life was smoke from the chimney of a datchya, a rambling wooden house a quarter of a mile up the side road. The two soldiers were walking out into the road. Desperately I ran after them.

"But comrades! See! Here is the seal of the Military Revolutionary Committee!"

They stared stupidly at my pass, then at each other.

"It is different from the others," said one, sullenly. "We cannot read, brother."

I took him by the arm. "Come!" I said. "Let's go to that house. Some one there can surely read." They hesitated. "No," said one. The other looked me over. "Why not?" he muttered. "After all, it is a serious crime to kill an innocent man."

We walked up to the front door of the house and knocked. A short, stout woman opened it, and shrank back in alarm, babbling, "I don't know anything about them! I don't know anything about them!" One of my guards held out the pass. She screamed. "Just to read it, comrade." Hesitatingly she took the paper and read aloud, swiftly: