Victory
_Order Number I_
To the Troops of the Pulkovo Detachment.
November 13, 1917. 38 minutes past 9 a. m.
After a cruel fight the troops of the Pulkovo detachment completely
routed the counter-revolutionary forces, who retreated from their
positions in disorder, and under cover of Tsarskoye Selo fell back
toward Pavlovsk II and Gatchina.
Our advanced units occupied the northeastern extremity of Tsarskoye
Selo and the station Alexandrovskaya. The Colpinno detachment was on
our left, the Krasnoye Selo detachment to our right.
I ordered the Pulkovo forces to occupy Tsarskoye Selo, to fortify its
approaches, especially on the side of Gatchina.
Also to pass and occupy Pavlovskoye, fortifying its southern side, and
to take up the railroad as far as Dno.
The troops must take all measures to strengthen the positions occupied
by them, arranging trenches and other defensive works.
They must enter into close liaison with the detachments of Colpinno and
Krasnoye Selo, and also with the Staff of the Commander in Chief for
the Defence of Petrograd.
Signed,
_Commander in Chief aver all Forces acting against the
Counter-revolutionary Troops of Kerensky,_
Lieutenant-Colonel MURAVIOV.
Tuesday morning. But how is this? Only two days ago the Petrograd
campagna was full of leaderless bands, wandering aimlessly; without
food, without artillery, without a plan. What had fused that
disorganised mass of undisciplined Red Guards, and soldiers without
officers, into an army obedient to its own elected high command,
tempered to meet and break the assault of cannon and Cossack cavalry?
(See App. IX, Sect. 1)
People in revolt have a way of defying military precedent. The ragged
armies of the French Revolution are not forgotten—Valmy and the Lines
of Weissembourg. Massed against the Soviet forces were _yunkers,_
Cossacks, land-owners, nobility, Black Hundreds—the Tsar come again,
_Okhrana_ and Siberian chains; and the vast and terrible menace of the
Germans…. Victory, in the words of Carlyle, meant “Apotheosis and
Millennium without end!”
Sunday night, the Commissars of the Military Revolutionary Committee
returning desperately from the field, the garrison of Petrograd elected
its Committee of Five, its Battle Staff, three soldiers and two
officers, all certified free from counter-revolutionary taint. Colonel
Muraviov, ex-patriot, was in command—an efficient man, but to be
carefully watched. At Colpinno, at Obukhovo, at Pulkovo and Krasnoye
Selo were formed provisional detachments, increased in size as the
stragglers came in from the surrounding country—mixed soldiers, sailors
and Red Guards, parts of regiments, infantry, cavalry and artillery all
together, and a few armoured cars.
Day broke, and the pickets of Kerensky’s Cossacks came in touch.
Scattered rifle-fire, summons to surrender. Over the bleak plain on the
cold quiet air spread the sound of battle, falling upon the ears of
roving bands as they gathered about their little fires, waiting…. So it
was beginning! They made toward the battle; and the worker hordes
pouring out along the straight roads quickened their pace…. Thus upon
all the points of attack automatically converged angry human swarms, to
be met by Commissars and assigned positions, or work to do. This was
_their_ battle, for _their_ world; the officers in command were elected
by _them._ For the moment that incoherent multiple will was one will….
Those who participated in the fighting described to me how the sailors
fought until they ran out of cartridges, and then stormed; how the
untrained workmen rushed the charging Cossacks and tore them from their
horses; how the anonymous hordes of the people, gathering in the
darkness around the battle, rose like a tide and poured over the
enemy…. Before midnight of Monday the Cossacks broke and were fleeing,
leaving their artillery behind them, and the army of the proletariat,
on a long ragged front, moved forward and rolled into Tsarskoye, before
the enemy had a chance to destroy the great Government wireless
station, from which now the Commissars of Smolny were hurling out to
the world paeans of triumph….
TO ALL SOVIETS OF WORKERS’ AND SOLDIERS’ DEPUTIES
The 12th of November, in a bloody combat near Tsarskoye Selo, the
revolutionary army defeated the counter-revolutionary troops of
Kerensky and Kornilov. In the name of the Revolutionary Government I
order all regiments to take the offensive against the enemies of the
revolutionary democracy, and to take all measures to arrest Kerensky,
and also to oppose any adventure which might menace the conquests of
the Revolution and the victory of the proletariat.
Long live the Revolutionary Army!
MURAVIOV.
News from the provinces….
At Sevastopol the local Soviet had assumed the power; a huge meeting of
the sailors on the battleships in the harbour had forced their officers
to line up and swear allegiance to the new Government. At Nizhni
Novgorod the Soviet was in control. From Kazan came reports of a battle
in the streets, _yunkers_ and a brigade of artillery against the
Bolshevik garrison….
Desperate fighting had broken out again in Moscow. The _yunkers_ and
White Guards held the Kremlin and the centre of the town, beaten upon
from all sides by the troops of the Military Revolutionary Committee.
The Soviet artillery was stationed in Skobeliev Square, bombarding the
City Duma building, the Prefecture and the Hotel Metropole. The
cobblestones of the Tverskaya and Nikitskaya had been torn up for
trenches and barricades. A hail of machine-gun fire swept the quarters
of the great banks and commercial houses. There were no lights, no
telephones; the bourgeois population lived in the cellars…. The last
bulletin said that the Military Revolutionary Committee had delivered
an ultimatum to the Committee of Public Safety, demanding the immediate
surrender of the Kremlin, or bombardment would follow.
“Bombard the Kremlin?” cried the ordinary citizen. “They dare not!”
From Vologda to Chita in far Siberia, from Pskov to Sevastopol on the
Black Sea, in great cities and little villages, civil war burst into
flame. From thousands of factories, peasant communes, regiments and
armies, ships on the wide sea, greetings poured into
Petrograd—greetings to the Government of the People.
The Cossack Government at Novotcherkask telegraphed to Kerensky, _“The
Government of the Cossack troops invites the Provisional Government and
the members of the Council of the Republic to come, if possible, to
Novotcherkask, where we can organise in common the struggle against the
Bolsheviki.”_
In Finland, also, things were stirring. The Soviet of Helsingfors and
the _Tsentrobalt_ (Central Committee of the Baltic Fleet), jointly
proclaimed a state of siege, and declared that all attempts to
interfere with the Bolshevik forces, and all armed resistance to its
orders, would be severely repressed. At the same time the Finnish
Railway Union called a countrywide general strike, to put into
operation the laws passed by the Socialist Diet of June, 1917,
dissolved by Kerensky….
Early in the morning I went out to Smolny. Going up the long wooden
sidewalk from the outer gate I saw the first thin, hesitating
snow-flakes fluttering down from the grey, windless sky. “Snow!” cried
the soldier at the door, grinning with delight. “Good for the health!”
Inside, the long, gloomy halls and bleak rooms seemed deserted. No one
moved in all the enormous pile. A deep, uneasy sound came to my ears,
and looking around, I noticed that everywhere on the floor, along the
walls, men were sleeping. Rough, dirty men, workers and soldiers,
spattered and caked with mud, sprawled alone or in heaps, in the
careless attitudes of death. Some wore ragged bandages marked with
blood. Guns and cartridge-belts were scattered about…. The victorious
proletarian army!
In the upstairs buffet so thick they lay that one could hardly walk.
The air was foul. Through the clouded windows a pale light streamed. A
battered samovar, cold, stood on the counter, and many glasses holding
dregs of tea. Beside them lay a copy of the Military Revolutionary
Committee’s last bulletin, upside down, scrawled with painful
hand-writing. It was a memorial written by some soldier to his comrades
fallen in the fight against Kerensky, just as he had set it down before
falling on the floor to sleep. The writing was blurred with what looked
like tears….
Alexei Vinogradov
D. Maskvin
S. Stolbikov
A. Voskressensky
D. Leonsky
D. Preobrazhensky
V. Laidansky
M. Berchikov
These men were drafted into the Army on November 15th, 1916. Only three
are left of the above.
Mikhail Berchikov
Alexei Voskressensky
Dmitri Leonsky
_Sleep, Warrior eagles, sleep with peaceful soul._
_You have deserved, our own ones, happiness and_
_Eternal peace. Under the earth of the grave_
_You have straitly closed your ranks. Sleep, Citizens!_
Only the Military Revolutionary Committee still functioned, unsleeping.
Skripnik, emerging from the inner room, said that Gotz had been
arrested, but had flatly denied signing the proclamation of the
Committee for Salvation, as had Avksentiev; and the Committee for
Salvation itself had repudiated the Appeal to the garrison. There was
still disafiection among the city regiments, Skripnik reported; the
Volhynsky Regiment had refused to fight against Kerensky.
Several detachments of “neutral” troops, with Tchernov at their head,
were at Gatchina, trying to persuade Kerensky to halt his attack on
Petrograd.
Skripnik laughed. “There can be no ‘neutrals’ now,” he said. “We’ve
won!” His sharp, bearded face glowed with an almost religious
exaltation. “More than sixty delegates have arrived from the Front,
with assurances of support by all the armies except the troops on the
Rumanian front, who have not been heard from. The Army Committees have
suppressed all news from Petrograd, but we now have a regular system of
couriers….”
[Graphic, page 224: Certificate approving telegram transmission]
Order given me at Staff headquarters by command of the Council of
People’s Commissars, to transmit the first despatch out of Perograd
after the November Revolution, over the Government wires to America.
(Translation)
STAFF
Military Revolutionary
Commitee
Sov. W. & S. D.
2 November, 1917
No. 1860
CERTIFICATE
Is given by the present to the journalist of the New York Socialist
press JOHN REED, that the text of the telegram (herewith) has been
examined by the Government of People’s Commissars, and there is no
objection to its transmission, and also it is recommended that all
cooperate in every way to transmit same to its destination.
For the Commander in Chief, ANTONOV
Chief of Staff, VLAD. BONCH-BRUEVITCH
Down in the front hall Kameniev was just entering, worn out by the
all-night session of the Conference to Form a New Government, but
happy. “Already the Socialist Revolutionaries are inclined to admit us
into the new Government,” he told me. “The right wing groups are
frightened by the Revolutionary Tribunals; they demand, in a sort of
panic, that we dissolve them before going any further. … We have
accepted the proposition of the _Vikzhel_ to form a homogeneous
Socialist Ministry, and they’re working on that now. You see, it all
springs from our victory. When we were down, they would’t have us at
any price; not everybody’s in favour of some agreement with the
Soivets…. What we need is a really decisive victory. Kerensky wants an
armistice, but he’ll have to surrender (See App. IX, Sect. 2) ….”
That was the temper of the Bolshevik leaders. To a foreign journalist
who asked Trotzky what statement he had to make to the world, Trotzky
replied: “At this moment the only statement possible is the one we are
making through the mouths of our cannon!”
But there was an undercurrent of real anxiety in the tide of victory;
the question of finances. Instead of opening the banks, as had been
ordered by the Military Revolutionary Committee, the Union of Bank
Employees had held a meeting and declared a formal strike. Smolny had
demanded some thirty-five millions of rubles from the State Bank, and
the cashier had locked the vaults, only paying out money to the
representatives of the Provisional Government. The reactionaries were
using the State Bank as a political weapon; for instance, when the
_Vikzhel_ demanded money to pay the salaries of the employees of the
Government railroads, it was told to apply to Smolny….
I went to the State Bank to see the new Commissar, a redhaired
Ukrainean Bolshevik named Petrovitch. He was trying to bring order out
of the chaos in which affairs had been left by the striking clerks. In
all the offices of the huge place perspiring volunteer workers,
soldiers and sailors, their tongues sticking out of their mouths in the
intensity of their effort, were poring over the great ledgers with a
bewildered air….
The Duma building was crowded. There were still isolated cases of
defiance toward the new Government, but they were rare. The Central
Land Committee had appealed to the Peasants, ordering them not to
recognise the Land Decree passed by the Congress of the Soviets,
because it would cause confusion and civil war. Mayor Schreider
announced that because of the Bolshevik insurrection, the elections to
the Constituent Assembly would have to be indefinitely postponed.
Two questions seemed to be uppermost in all minds, shocked by the
ferocity of the civil war; first, a truce to the bloodshed (See App.
IX, Sect. 3)—second, the creation of a new Government. There was no
longer any talk of “destroying the Bolsheviki”—and very little about
excluding them from the Government, except from the Populist Socialists
and the Peasants’ Soviets. Even the Central Army Committee at the
_Stavka,_ the most determined enemy of Smolny, telephoned from
Moghilev: “If, to constitute the new Ministry, it is necessary to come
to an understanding with the Bolsheviki, we agree to admit them _in a
minority_ to the Cabinet.”
_Pravda,_ ironically calling attention to Kerensky’s “humanitarian
sentiments,” published his despatch to the Committee for Salvation:
In accord with the proposals of the Committee for Salvation and all the
democratic organisations united around it, I have halted all military
action against the rebels. A delegate of the Committee has been sent to
enter into negotiations. Take all measures to stop the useless shedding
of blood.
The _Vikzhel_ sent a telegram to all Russia:
The Conference of the Union of Railway Workers with the representatives
of both the belligerent parties, who admit the necessity of an
agreement, protest energetically against the use of political terrorism
in the civil war, especially when it is carried on between different
factions of the revolutionary democracy, and declare that political
terrorism, in whatever form, is in contradiction to the very idea of
the negotiations for a new Government….
[Graphic, page 227: Leaflet]
Popular leaflet sold in the streets just after the Bolshevik
insurrection, containing rhymes and jokes about the defeated
bourgeoisie and the “moderate” Socialist leaders, Called, “How THE
BOORZHUI (BOURGEOISIE) LOST THE POWER.”
Delegations from the Conference were sent to the Front, to Gatchina. In
the Conference itself everything seemed on the point of final
settlement. It had even been decided to elect a Provisional People’s
Council, composed of about four hundred members—seventy-five
representing Smolny, seventy-five the old _Tsay-ee-kah,_ and the rest
split up among the Town Dumas, the Trade Unions, Land Committees and
political parties. Tchernov was mentioned as the new Premier. Lenin and
Trotzky, rumour said, were to be excluded….
About noon I was again in front of Smolny, talking with the driver of
an ambulance bound for the revolutionary front. Could I go with him?
Certainly! He was a volunteer, a University student, and as we rolled
down the street shouted over his shoulder to me phrases of execrable
German: _“Also, gut! Wir nach die Kasernen zu essen gehen!”_ I made out
that there would be lunch at some barracks.
On the Kirotchnaya we turned into an immense courtyard surrounded by
military buildings, and mounted a dark stairway to a low room lit by
one window. At a long wooden table were seated some twenty soldiers,
eating _shtchi_ (cabbage soup) from a great tin wash-tub with wooden
spoons, and talking loudly with much laughter.
“Welcome to the Battalion Committee of the Sixth Reserve Engineers’
Battalion!” cried my friend, and introduced me as an American
Socialist. Whereat every one rose to shake my hand, and one old soldier
put his arms around me and gave me a hearty kiss. A wooden spoon was
produced and I took my place at the table. Another tub, full of
_kasha,_ was brought in, a huge loaf of black bread, and of course the
inevitable tea-pots. At once every one began asking me questions about
America: Was it true that people in a free country sold their votes for
_money?_ If so, how did they get what they wanted? How about this
“Tammany”? Was it true that in a free country a little group of people
could control a whole city, and exploited it for their personal
benefit? Why did the people stand it? Even under the Tsar such things
could not happen in Russia; true, here there was always graft, but to
buy and sell a whole city full of people! And in a free country! Had
the people no revolutionary feeling? I tried to explain that in my
country people tried to change things by law.
“Of course,” nodded a young sergeant, named Baklanov, who spoke French.
“But you have a highly developed capitalist class? Then the capitalist
class must control the legislatures and the courts. How then can the
people change things? I am open to conviction, for I do not know your
country; but to me it is incredible….”
I said that I was going to Tsarskoye Selo. “I, too,” said Baklanov,
suddenly. “And I—and I—” The whole roomful decided on the spot to go to
Tsarskoye Selo.
Just then came a knock on the door. It opened, and in it stood the
figure of the Colonel. No one rose, but all shouted a greeting. “May I
come in?” asked the Colonel. “_Prosim! Prosim!_” they answered
heartily. He entered, smiling, a tall, distinguished figure in a
goat-skin cape embroidered with gold. “I think I heard you say that you
were going to Tsarskoye Selo, comrades,” he said. “Could I go with
you?”
Baklanov considered. “I do not think there is anything to be done here
to-day,” he answered. “Yes, comrade, we shall be very glad to have
you.” The Colonel thanked him and sat down, filling a glass of tea.
In a low voice, for fear of wounding the Colonel’s pride, Baklanov
explained to me. “You see, I am the chairman of the Committee. We
control the Battalion absolutely, except in action, when the Colonel is
delegated by us to command. In action his orders must be obeyed, but he
is strictly responsible to us. In barracks he must ask our permission
before taking any action…. You might call him our Executive Officer….”
Arms were distributed to us, revolvers and rifles—“we might meet some
Cossacks, you know”—and we all piled into the ambulance, together with
three great bundles of newspapers for the front. Straight down the
Liteiny we rattled, and along the Zagorodny Prospekt. Next to me sat a
youth with the shoulder-straps of a Lieutenant, who seemed to speak all
European languages with equal fluency. He was a member of the Battalion
Committee.
“I am not a Bolshevik,” he assured me, emphatically. “My family is a
very ancient and noble one. I, myself, am, you might say, a Cadet….”
“But how—?” I began, bewildered.
“Oh, yes, I am a member of the Committee. I make no secret of my
political opinions, but the others do not mind, because they know I do
not believe in opposing the will of the majority…. I have refused to
take any action in the present civil war, however, for I do not believe
in taking up arms against my brother Russians….”
“Provocator! Kornilovitz!” the others cried at him gaily, slapping him
on the shoulder….
Passing under the huge grey stone archway of the Moskovsky Gate,
covered with golden hieroglyphics, ponderous Imperial eagles and the
names of Tsars, we sped out on the wide straight highway, grey with the
first light fall of snow. It was thronged with Red Guards, stumbling
along on foot toward the revolutionary front, shouting and singing; and
others, greyfaced and muddy, coming back. Most of them seemed to be
mere boys. Women with spades, some with rifles and bandoleers, others
wearing the Red Cross on their arm-bands—the bowed, toil-worn women of
the slums. Squads of soldiers marching out of step, with an
affectionate jeer for the Red Guards; sailors, grim-looking; children
with bundles of food for their fathers and mothers; all these, coming
and going, trudged through the whitened mud that covered the cobbles of
the highway inches deep. We passed cannon, jingling southward with
their caissons; trucks bound both ways, bristling with armed men;
ambulances full of wounded from the direction of the battle, and once a
peasant cart, creaking slowly along, in which sat a white-faced boy
bent over his shattered stomach and screaming monotonously. In the
fields on either side women and old men were digging trenches and
stringing barbed wire entanglements.
Back northward the clouds rolled away dramatically, and the pale sun
came out. Across the flat, marshy plain Petrograd glittered. To the
right, white and gilded and coloured bulbs and pinnacles; to the left,
tall chimneys, some pouring out black smoke; and beyond, a lowering sky
over Finland. On each side of us were churches, monasteries….
Occasionally a monk was visible, silently watching the pulse of the
proletarian army throbbing on the road.
At Pulkovo the road divided, and there we halted in the midst of a
great crowd, where the human streams poured from three directions,
friends meeting, excited and congratulatory, describing the battle to
one another. A row of houses facing the cross-roads was marked with
bullets, and the earth was trampled into mud half a mile around. The
fighting had been furious here…. In the near distance riderless Cossack
horses circled hungrily, for the grass of the plain had died long ago.
Right in front of us an awkward Red Guard was trying to ride one,
falling off again and again, to the childlike delight of a thousand
rough men.
The left road, along which the remnants of the Cossacks had retreated,
led up a little hill to a hamlet, where there was a glorious view of
the immense plain, grey as a windless sea, tumultuous clouds towering
over, and the imperial city disgorging its thousands along all the
roads. Far over to the left lay the little hill of Kranoye Selo, the
parade-ground of the Imperial Guards’ summer camp, and the Imperial
Dairy. In the middle distance nothing broke the flat monotony but a few
walled monasteries and convents, some isolated factories, and several
large buildings with unkempt grounds that were asylums and orphanages….
“Here,” said the driver, as we went on over a barren hill, “here was
where Vera Slutskaya died. Yes, the Bolshevik member of the Duma. It
happened early this morning. She was in an automobile, with Zalkind and
another man. There was a truce, and they started for the front
trenches. They were talking and laughing, when all of a sudden, from
the armoured train in which Kerensky himself was riding, somebody saw
the automobile and fired a cannon. The shell struck Vera Slutskaya and
killed her….”
And so we came into Tsarskoye, all bustling with the swaggering heroes
of the proletarian horde. Now the palace where the Soviet had met was a
busy place. Red Guards and sailors filled the court-yard, sentries
stood at the doors, and a stream of couriers and Commissars pushed in
and out. In the Soviet room a samovar had been set up, and fifty or
more workers, soldiers, sailors and officers stood around, drinking tea
and talking at the top of their voices. In one corner two clumsy-handed
workingmen were trying to make a multigraphing machine go. At the
centre table, the huge Dybenko bent over a map, marking out positions
for the troops with red and blue pencils. In his free hand he carried,
as always, the enormous bluesteel revolver. Anon he sat himself down at
a typewriter and pounded away with one finger; every little while he
would pause, pick up the revolver, and lovingly spin the chamber.
A couch lay along the wall, and on this was stretched a young workman.
Two Red Guards were bending over him, but the rest of the company did
not pay any attention. In his breast was a hole; through his clothes
fresh blood came welling up with every heart-beat. His eyes were closed
and his young, bearded face was greenish-white. Faintly and slowly he
still breathed, with every breath sighing, _“Mir boudit! Mir boudit!_
(Peace is coming! Peace is coming!)”
Dybenko looked up as we came in. “Ah,” he said to Baklanov. “Comrade,
will you go up to the Commandant’s headquarters and take charge? Wait;
I will write you credentials.” He went to the typewriter and slowly
picked out the letters.
The new Commandant of Tsarskoye Selo and I went toward the Ekaterina
Palace, Baklanov very excited and important. In the same ornate, white
room some Red Guards were rummaging curiously around, while my old
friend, the Colonel, stood by the window biting his moustache. He
greeted me like a long-lost brother. At a table near the door sat the
French Bessarabian. The Bolsheviki had ordered him to remain, and
continue his work.
“What could I do?” he muttered. “People like myself cannot fight on
either side in such a war as this, no matter how much we may
instinctively dislike the dictatorship of the mob…. I only regret that
I am so far from my mother in Bessarabia!”
Baklanov was formally taking over the office from the Commandant.
“Here,” said the Colonel nervously, “are the keys to the desk.”
A Red Guard interrupted. “Where’s the money?” he asked rudely. The
Colonel seemed surprised. “Money? Money? Ah, you mean the chest. There
it is,” said the Colonel, “just as I found it when I took possession
three days ago. Keys?” The Colonel shrugged. “I have no keys.”
The Red Guard sneered knowingly. “Very convenient,” he said.
“Let us open the chest,” said Baklanov. “Bring an axe. Here is an
American comrade. Let him smash the chest open, and write down what he
finds there.”
I swung the axe. The wooden chest was empty.
“Let’s arrest him,” said the Red Guard, venomously. “He is Kerensky’s
man. He has stolen the money and given it to Kerensky.”
Baklanov did not want to. “Oh, no,” he said. “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:
The bearer of this pass, John Reed, is a representative of the American
Social-Democracy, an internationalist….
Out on the road again the two soldiers held another consultation. “We
must take you to the Regimental Committee,” they said. In the
fast-deepening twilight we trudged along the muddy road. Occasionally
we met squads of soldiers, who stopped and surrounded me with looks of
menace, handling my pass around and arguing violently as to whether or
not I should be killed….
It was dark when we came to the barracks of the Second Tsarskoye Selo
Rifles, low sprawling buildings huddled along the post-road. A number
of soldiers slouching at the entrance asked eager questions. A spy? A
provocator? We mounted a winding stair and emerged into a great, bare
room with a huge stove in the centre, and rows of cots on the floor,
where about a thousand soldiers were playing cards, talking, singing,
and asleep. In the roof was a jagged hole made by Kerensky’s cannon….
I stood in the doorway, and a sudden silence ran among the groups, who
turned and stared at me. Of a sudden they began to move, slowly and
then with a rush, thundering, with faces full of hate. “Comrades!
Comrades!” yelled one of my guards. “Committee! Committee!” The throng
halted, banked around me, muttering. Out of them shouldered a lean
youth, wearing a red arm-band.
“Who is this?” he asked roughly. The guards explained. “Give me the
paper!” He read it carefully, glancing at me with keen eyes. Then he
smiled and handed me the pass. “Comrades, this is an American comrade.
I am Chairman of the Committee, and I welcome you to the Regiment….” A
sudden general buzz grew into a roar of greeting, and they pressed
forward to shake my hand.
“You have not dined? Here we have had our dinner. You shall go to the
Officers’ Club, where there are some who speak your language….”
He led me across the court-yard to the door of another building. An
aristocratic-looking youth, with the shoulder straps of a Lieutenant,
was entering. The Chairman presented me, and shaking hands, went back.
“I am Stepan Georgevitch Morovsky, at your service,” said the
Lieutenant, in perfect French. From the ornate entrance hall a
ceremonial staircase led upward, lighted by glittering lustres. On the
second floor billiard-rooms, card-rooms, a library opened from the
hall. We entered the dining-room, at a long table in the centre of
which sat about twenty officers in full uniform, wearing their gold-
and silver-handled swords, the ribbons and crosses of Imperial
decorations. All rose politely as I entered, and made a place for me
beside the Colonel, a large, impressive man with a grizzled beard.
Orderlies were deftly serving dinner. The atmosphere was that of any
officers’ mess in Europe. Where was the Revolution?
“You are not Bolsheviki?” I asked Morovsky.
A smile went around the table, but I caught one or two glancing
furtively at the orderly.
“No,” answered my friend. “There is only one Bolshevik officer in this
regiment. He is in Petrograd to-night. The Colonel is a Menshevik.
Captain Kherlov there is a Cadet. I myself am a Socialist Revolutionary
of the right wing…. I should say that most of the officers in the Army
are not Bolsheviki, but like me they believe in democracy; they believe
that they must follow the soldier-masses….”
Dinner over, maps were brought, and the Colonel spread them out on the
table. The rest crowded around to see.
“Here,” said the Colonel, pointing to pencil marks, “were our positions
this morning. Vladimir Kyrilovitch, where is your company?”
Captain Kherlov pointed. “According to orders, we occupied the position
along this road. Karsavin relieved me at five o’clock.”
Just then the door of the room opened, and there entered the Chairman
of the Regimental Committee, with another soldier. They joined the
group behind the Colonel, peering at the map.
“Good,” said the Colonel. “Now the Cossacks have fallen back ten
kilometres in our sector. I do not think it is necessary to take up
advanced positions. Gentlemen, for to-night you will hold the present
line, strengthening the positions by—”
“If you please,” interrupted the Chairman of the Regimental Committee.
“The orders are to advance with all speed, and prepare to engage the
Cossacks north of Gatchina in the morning. A crushing defeat is
necessary. Kindly make the proper dispositions.”
There was a short silence. The Colonel again turned to the map. “Very
well,” he said, in a different voice. “Stepan Georgevitch, you will
please—” Rapidly tracing lines with a blue pencil, he gave his orders,
while a sergeant made shorthand notes. The sergeant then withdrew, and
ten minutes later returned with the orders typewritten, and one carbon
copy. The Chairman of the Committee studied the map with a copy of the
orders before him.
“All right,” he said, rising. Folding the carbon copy, he put it in his
pocket. Then he signed the other, stamped it with a round seal taken
from his pocket, and presented it to the Colonel….
Here was the Revolution!
I returned to the Soviet palace in Tsarskoye in the Regimental Staff
automobile. Still the crowds of workers, soldiers and sailors pouring
in and out, still the choking press of trucks, armoured cars, cannon
before the door, and the shouting, the laughter of unwonted victory.
Half a dozen Red Guards forced their way through, a priest in the
middle. This was Father Ivan, they said, who had blessed the Cossacks
when they entered the town. I heard afterward that he was shot…. (See
App. IX, Sect. 4)
Dybenko was just coming out, giving rapid orders right and left. In his
hand he carried the big revolver. An automobile stood with racing
engine at the kerb. Alone, he climbed in the rear seat, and was off-off
to Gatchina, to conquer Kerensky.
Toward nightfall he arrived at the outskirts of the town, and went on
afoot. What Dybenko told the Cossacks nobody knows, but the fact is
that General Krasnov and his staff and several thousand Cossacks
surrendered, and advised Kerensky to do the same. (See App. IX, Sect.
5)
As for Kerensky—I reprint here the deposition made by General Krasnov
on the morning of November 14th:
“Gatchina, November 14, 1917. To-day, about three o’clock (A. M.), I
was summoned by the Supreme Commander (Kerensky). He was very agitated,
and very nervous.
“‘General,’ he said to me, ‘you have betrayed me. Your Cossacks declare
categorically that they will arrest me and deliver me to the sailors.’
“‘Yes,’ I answered, ‘there is talk of it, and I know that you have no
sympathy anywhere.’
“‘But the officers say the same thing.’
“‘Yes, most of all it is the officers who are discontented with you.’
“‘What shall I do? I ought to commit suicide!’
“‘If you are an honorable man, you will go immediately to Petrograd
with a white flag, you will present yourself to the Military
Revolutionary Committee, and enter into negotiations as Chief of the
Provisional Government.’
“‘All right. I will do that, General.’
“‘I will give you a guard and ask that a sailor go with you.’
“‘No, no, not a sailor. Do you know whether it is true that Dybenko is
here?’
“‘I don’t know who Dybenko is.’
“‘He is my enemy.
“‘There is nothing to do. If you play for high stakes you must know how
to take a chance.’
“‘Yes. I’ll leave to-night!’
“‘Why? That would be a flight. Leave calmly and openly, so that every
one can see that you are not running away.’
“‘Very well. But you must give me a guard on which I can count.’
“‘Good.’
“I went out and called the Cossack Russkov, of the Tenth Regiment of
the Don, and ordered him to pick out ten Cossacks to accompany the
Supreme Commander. Half an hour later the Cossacks came to tell me that
Kerensky was not in his quarters, that he had run away.
“I gave the alarm and ordered that he be searched for, supposing that
he could not have left Gatchina, but he could not be found….”
And so Kerensky fled, alone, “disguised in the uniform of a sailor,”
and by that act lost whatever popularity he had retained among the
Russian masses….
I went back to Petrograd riding on the front seat of an auto truck,
driven by a workman and filled with Red Guards. We had no kerosene, so
our lights were not burning. The road was crowded with the proletarian
army going home, and new reserves pouring out to take their places.
Immense trucks like ours, columns of artillery, wagons, loomed up in
the night, without lights, as we were. We hurtled furiously on,
wrenched right and left to avoid collisions that seemed inevitable,
scraping wheels, followed by the epithets of pedestrians.
Across the horizon spread the glittering lights of the capital,
immeasurably more splendid by night than by day, like a dike of jewels
heaped on the barren plain.
The old workman who drove held the wheel in one hand, while with the
other he swept the far-gleaming capital in an exultant gesture.
“Mine!” he cried, his face all alight. “All mine now! My Petrograd!”