The stronger the Soviet government became in Petrograd, the more the
bourgeois groups placed their hopes on military aid from without. The
Petrograd Telegraph Agency, the railroad telegraph, and the
radio-telegraph station of Tsarskoye-Selo brought from every side news
of huge forces marching on Petrograd with the object of crushing the
rebels there and establishing order. Kerensky was making flying trips to
the front, and the bourgeois papers reported that he was leading
innumerable forces against the Bolsheviki. We found ourselves cut off
from the rest of the country, as the telegraphers refused to serve us.
But the soldiers, who arrived by tens and hundreds on commissions from
their respective regiments, invariably said to us: "Have no fears of the
front; it is entirely on your side. You need but give the word, and we
will send to your aid--even this very day--a division or a corps." It
was the same in the army as everywhere else; the masses were for us, and
the upper classes against us. In the hands of the latter was the
military-technical machinery. Various parts of the vast army proved to
be isolated one from another. We were isolated from both the army and
the people. Nevertheless, the news of the Soviet government at Petrograd
and its decrees spread throughout the country and roused the local
Soviets to rebel against the old government.
The reports of Kerensky's advance on Petrograd, at the head of some
forces or other, soon became more persistent and assumed more definite
outlines. We were informed from Tsarskoye-Selo that Cossack echelons
were not far from there, while an appeal, signed by Kerensky and General
Krassnov, was being circulated in Petrograd calling upon the whole
garrison to join the government's forces, which were expected any hour
to enter the capital. The cadet insurrection of October 29th was
undoubtedly connected with Kerensky's undertaking, only that it broke
out too soon, owing to determined action on our part. The Tsarskoye-Selo
garrison was ordered to demand of the approaching Cossack regiments
recognition of the Soviet government. In case of refusal, the Cossacks
were to be disarmed. But that garrison proved to be ill-fitted for
military operations. It had no artillery and no leaders, its officers
being unfriendly toward the Soviet government. The Cossacks took
possession of the radio-telegraph station at Tsarskoye-Selo, the most
powerful one in the country, and marched on. The garrisons of Peterhof,
Krasnoye-Selo and Gatchina displayed neither initiative nor resolution.
After the almost bloodless victory at Petrograd, the soldiers
confidently assumed that matters would take a similar course in the
future. All that was necessary, they thought, was to send an agitator to
the Cossacks, who would lay down their arms the moment the object of the
proletarian revolution was explained to them. Korniloff's
counter-revolutionary uprising was put down by means of speeches and
fraternization. By agitation and well-planned seizure of certain
institutions--without a fight--the Kerensky government was overthrown.
The same methods were now being employed by the leaders of the
Tsarskoye-Selo, Krasnoye-Selo and the Gatchina Soviets with General
Krassnov's Cossacks. But this time they did not work. Though without
determination or enthusiasm, the Cossacks did advance. Individual
detachments approached Gatchina and Krasnoye-Selo, engaged the scanty
forces of the local garrisons, and sometimes disarmed them. About the
numerical strength of Kerensky's forces we at first had no idea
whatever. Some said that General Krassnov headed ten thousand men;
others affirmed that he had no more than a thousand; while the
unfriendly newspapers and circulars announced, in letters an inch big,
that two corps were lined up beyond Tsarskoye-Selo.
There was a general want of confidence in the Petrograd garrison. No
sooner had it won a bloodless victory, than it was called upon to march
out against an enemy of unknown numbers and engage in battles of
uncertain outcome. In the Garrison Conference, the discussion centered
about the necessity of sending out more and more agitators and of
issuing appeals to the Cossacks; for to the soldiers it seemed
impossible that the Cossacks would refuse to rise to the point of view
which the Petrograd garrison was defending in its struggle.
Nevertheless, advanced groups of Cossacks approached quite close to
Petrograd, and we anticipated that the principal battle would take place
in the streets of the city.
The greatest resolution was shown by the Red Guards. They demanded arms,
ammunition, and leadership. But everything in the military machine was
disorganized and out of gear, owing partly to disuse and partly to evil
intent. The officers had resigned. Many had fled. The rifles were in one
place and the cartridges in another. Matters were still worse with
artillery. The cannons, gun carriages and the military stores were all
in different places; and all these had to be groped for in the dark. The
various regiments did not have at their disposal either sappers' tools
or field telephones. The Revolutionary General Staff, which tried to
straighten out things from above, encountered insurmountable obstacles,
the greatest of which was the sabotage of the military-technical
employees.
Then we decided to appeal directly to the working class. We stated that
the success of the revolution was most seriously threatened, and that it
was for them--by their energy, initiative, and self-denial--to save and
strengthen the regime of proletarian and peasant government. This
appeal met with tremendous practical success almost immediately.
Thousands of workingmen proceeded toward Kerensky's forces and began
digging trenches. The munition workers manned the cannon, themselves
obtaining ammunition for them from various stores; requisitioned horses;
brought the guns into the necessary positions and adjusted them;
organized a commissary department; procured gasoline, motors,
automobiles; requisitioned provisions and forage; and put the sanitary
trains on a proper footing--created, in short, the entire war machinery,
which we had vainly endeavored to create from above.
When scores of heavy guns reached the lines, the disposition of our
soldiers changed immediately. Under cover of the artillery they were
ready to repulse the Cossacks' attack. In the first lines were the
sailors and Red Guards. A few officers, politically unrelated to us but
sincerely attached to their regiments, accompanied their soldiers to the
lines and directed their operations against Krassnov's Cossacks.