Moscow
The Military Revolutionary Committee, with a fierce intensity, followed
up its victory:
November 14th.
To all Army, corps, divisional and regimental Committees, to all
Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, to all, all,
all.
Conforming to the agreement between the Cossacks, _yunkers,_ soldiers,
sailors and workers, it has been decided to arraign Alexander
Feodorvitch Kerensky before a tribunal of the people. We demand that
Kerensky be arrested, and that he be ordered, in the name of the
organisations hereinafter mentioned, to come immediately to Petrograd
and present himself to the tribunal.
Signed,
_The Cossacks of the First Division of Ussuri Cavalry; the Committee of
Yunkers of the Petrograd detachment of Franc-Tireurs; the delegate of
the Fifth Army._
People’s Commissar DYBENKO.
The Committee for Salvation, the Duma, the Central Committee of the
Socialist Revolutionary party—proudly claiming Kerensky as a member—all
passionately protested that he could only be held responsible to the
Constituent Assembly.
On the evening of November 16th I watched two thousand Red Guards swing
down the Zagorodny Prospekt behind a military band playing the
_Marseillaise_—and how appropriate it sounded—with blood-red flags over
the dark ranks of workmen, to welcome home again their brothers who had
defended “Red Petrograd.” In the bitter dusk they tramped, men and
women, their tall bayonets swaying; through streets faintly lighted and
slippery with mud, between silent crowds of bourgeois, contemptuous but
fearful….
All were against them—business men, speculators, investors,
land-owners, army officers, politicians, teachers, students,
professional men, shop-keepers, clerks, agents. The other Socialist
parties hated the Bolsheviki with an implacable hatred. On the side of
the Soviets were the rank and file of the workers, the sailors, all the
undemoralised soldiers, the landless peasants, and a few—a very
few—intellectuals….
From the farthest corners of great Russia, whereupon desperate
street-fighting burst like a wave, news of Kerensky’s defeat came
echoing back the immense roar of proletarian victory. Kazan, Saratov,
Novgorod, Vinnitza—where the streets had run with blood; Moscow, where
the Bolsheviki had turned their artillery against the last strong-hold
of the bourgeoisie—the Kremlin.
“They are bombarding the Kremlin!” The news passed from mouth to mouth
in the streets of Petrograd, almost with a sense of terror. Travellers
from “white and shining little mother Moscow” told fearful tales.
Thousands killed; the Tverskaya and the Kuznetsky Most in flames; the
church of Vasili Blazheiny a smoking ruin; Usspensky Cathedral
crumbling down; the Spasskaya Gate of the Kremlin tottering; the Duma
burned to the ground. (See App. X, Sect. 1)
Nothing that the Bolsheviki had done could compare with this fearful
blasphemy in the heart of Holy Russia. To the ears of the devout
sounded the shock of guns crashing in the face of the Holy Orthodox
Church, and pounding to dust the sanctuary of the Russian nation….
On November 15th, Lunatcharsky, Commissar of Education, broke into
tears at the session of the Council of People’s Commissars, and rushed
from the room, crying, “I cannot stand it! I cannot bear the monstrous
destruction of beauty and tradition….”
That afternoon his letter of resignation was published in the
newspapers:
I have just been informed, by people arriving from Moscow, what has
happened there.
The Cathedral of St. Basil the Blessed, the Cathedral of the
Assumption, are being bombarded. The Kremlin, where are now gathered
the most important art treasures of Petrograd and of Moscow, is under
artillery fire. There are thousands of victims.
The fearful struggle there has reached a pitch of bestial ferocity.
What is left? What more can happen?
I cannot bear this. My cup is full. I am unable to endure these
horrors. It is impossible to work under the pressure of thoughts which
drive me mad!
That is why I am leaving the Council of People’s Commissars.
I fully realise the gravity of this decision. But I can bear no more….
(See App. X, Sect. 2)
That same day the White Guards and _yunkers_ in the Kremlin
surrendered, and were allowed to march out unharmed. The treaty of
peace follows:
1. The Committee of Public Safety ceases to exist.
2. The White Guard gives up its arms and dissolves. The officers retain
their swords and regulations side-arms. In the Military Schools are
retained only the arms necessary for instruction; all others are
surrendered by the _yunkers._ The Military Revolutionary Committee
guarantees the liberty and inviolability of the person.
3. To settle the question of disarmament, as set forth in section 2, a
special commission is appointed, consisting of representatives from all
organisations which took part in the peace negotiations.
4. From the moment of the signature of this peace treaty, both parties
shall immediately give order to cease firing and halt all military
operations, taking measures to ensure punctual obedience to this order.
5. At the signature of the treaty, all prisoners made by the two
parties shall be released….
For two days now the Bolsheviki had been in control of the city. The
frightened citizens were creeping out of their cellars to seek their
dead; the barricades in the streets were being removed. Instead of
diminishing, however, the stories of destruction in Moscow continued to
grow…. And it was under the influence of these fearful reports that we
decided to go there.
Petrograd, after all, in spite of being for a century the seat of
Government, is still an artificial city. Moscow is real Russia, Russia
as it was and will be; in Moscow we would get the true feeling of the
Russian people about the Revolution. Life was more intense there.
For the past week the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee, aided
by the rank and file of the Railway Workers, had seized control of the
Nicolai Railroad, and hurled trainload after trainload of sailors and
Red Guards southwest…. We were provided with passes from Smolny,
without which no one could leave the capital…. When the train backed
into the station, a mob of shabby soldiers, all carrying huge sacks of
eatables, stormed the doors, smashed the windows, and poured into all
the compartments, filling up the aisles and even climbing onto the
roof. Three of us managed to wedge our way into a compartment, but
almost immediately about twenty soldiers entered…. There was room for
only four people; we argued, expostulated, and the conductor joined
us—but the soldiers merely laughed. Were they to bother about the
comfort of a lot of _boorzhui_ (bourgeois)? We produced the passes from
Smolny; instantly the soldiers changed their attitude.
“Come, comrades,” cried one, “these are American _tovarishtchi._ They
have come thirty thousand versts to see our Revolution, and they are
naturally tired….”
With polite and friendly apologies the soldiers began to leave. Shortly
afterward we heard them breaking into a compartment occupied by two
stout, well-dressed Russians, who had bribed the conductor and locked
their door….
About seven o’clock in the evening we drew out of the station, an
immense long train drawn by a weak little locomotive burning wood, and
stumbled along slowly, with many stops. The soldiers on the roof kicked
with their heels and sang whining peasant songs; and in the corridor,
so jammed that it was impossible to pass, violent political debates
raged all night long. Occasionally the conductor came through, as a
matter of habit, looking for tickets. He found very few except ours,
and after a half-hour of futile wrangling, lifted his arms despairingly
and withdrew. The atmosphere was stifling, full of smoke and foul
odours; if it hadn’t been for the broken windows we would doubtless
have smothered during the night.
In the morning, hours late, we looked out upon a snowy world. It was
bitter cold. About noon a peasant woman got on with a basket-full of
bread-chunks and a great can of luke warm coffee-substitute. From then
on until dark there was nothing but the packed train, jolting and
stopping, and occasional stations where a ravenous mob swooped down on
the scantily-furnished buffet and swept it clean…. At one of these
halts I ran into Nogin and Rykov, the seceding Commissars, who were
returning to Moscow to put their grievances before their own Soviet,
and further along was Bukharin, a short, red-bearded man with the eyes
of a fanatic—“more Left than Lenin,” they said of him….
Then the three strokes of the bell and we made a rush for the train,
worming our way through the packed and noisy aisle…. A good-natured
crowd, bearing the discomfort with humorous patience, interminably
arguing about everything from the situation in Petrograd to the British
Trade-Union system, and disputing loudly with the few _boorzhui_ who
were on board. Before we reached Moscow almost every car had organised
a Committee to secure and distribute food, and these Committees became
divided into political factions, who wrangled over fundamental
principles….
The station at Moscow was deserted. We went to the office of the
Commissar, in order to arrange for our return tickets. He was a sullen
youth with the shoulder-straps of a Lieutenant; when we showed him our
papers from Smolny, he lost his temper and declared that he was no
Bolshevik, that he represented the Committee of Public Safety…. It was
characteristic—in the general turmoil attending the conquest of the
city, the chief railway station had been forgotten by the victors….
Not a cab in sight. A few blocks down the street, however, we woke up a
grotesquely-padded _izvostchik_ asleep upright on the box of his little
sleigh. “How much to the centre of the town?”
He scratched his head. “The _barini_ won’t be able to find a room in
any hotel,” he said. “But I’ll take you around for a hundred rubles….”
Before the Revolution it cost _two!_ We objected, but he simply
shrugged his shoulders. “It takes a good deal of courage to drive a
sleigh nowadays,” he went on. We could not beat him down below fifty….
As we sped along the silent, snowy half-lighted streets, he recounted
his adventures during the six days’ fighting. “Driving along, or
waiting for a fare on the corner,” he said, “all of a sudden _pooff!_ a
cannon ball exploding here, _pooff!_ a cannon ball there, _ratt-ratt!_
a machine-gun…. I gallop, the devils shooting all around. I get to a
nice quiet street and stop, doze a little, _pooff!_ another cannon
ball, _ratt-ratt_…. Devils! Devils! Devils! Brrr!”
In the centre of the town the snow-piled streets were quiet with the
stillness of convalescence. Only a few arc-lights were burning, only a
few pedestrians hurried along the side-walks. An icy wind blew from the
great plain, cutting to the bone. At the first hotel we entered an
office illuminated by two candles.
“Yes, we have some very comfortable rooms, but all the windows are shot
out. If the _gospodin_ does not mind a little fresh air….”
Down the Tverskaya the shop-windows were broken, and there were
shell-holes and torn-up paving stones in the street. Hotel after hotel,
all full, or the proprietors still so frightened that all they could
say was, “No, no, there is no room! There is no room!” On the main
streets, where the great banking-houses and mercantile houses lay, the
Bolshevik artillery had been indiscriminately effective. As one Soviet
official told me, “Whenever we didn’t know just where the _yunkers_ and
White Guards were, we bombarded their pocketbooks….”
At the big Hotel National they finally took us in; for we were
foreigners, and the Military Revolutionary Committee had promised to
protect the dwellings of foreigners…. On the top floor the manager
showed us where shrapnel had shattered several windows. “The animals!”
said he, shaking his first at imaginary Bolsheviki. “But wait! Their
time will come; in just a few days now their ridiculous Government will
fall, and then we shall make them suffer!”
We dined at a vegetarian restaurant with the enticing name, “I Eat
Nobody,” and Tolstoy’s picture prominent on the walls, and then sallied
out into the streets.
The headquarters of the Moscow Soviet was in the palace of the former
Governor-General, an imposing white building fronting Skobeliev Square.
Red Guards stood sentry at the door. At the head of the wide, formal
stairway, whose walls were plastered with announcements of
committee-meetings and addresses of political parties, we passed
through a series of lofty ante-rooms, hung with red-shrouded pictures
in gold frames, to the splendid state salon, with its magnificent
crystal lustres and gilded cornices. A low-voiced hum of talk,
underlaid with the whirring bass of a score of sewing machines, filled
the place. Huge bolts of red and black cotton cloth were unrolled,
serpentining across the parqueted floor and over tables, at which sat
half a hundred women, cutting and sewing streamers and banners for the
Funeral of the Revolutionary Dead. The faces of these women were
roughened and scarred with life at its most difficult; they worked now
sternly, many of them with eyes red from weeping…. The losses of the
Red Army had been heavy.
At a desk in one corner was Rogov, an intelligent, bearded man with
glasses, wearing the black blouse of a worker. He invited us to march
with the Central Executive Committee in the funeral procession next
morning….
“It is impossible to teach the Socialist Revolutionaries and the
Mensheviki anything!” he exclaimed. “They compromise from sheer habit.
Imagine! They proposed that we hold a joint funeral with the
_yunkers!”_
[Graphic, page 251: Questionaire for the Bourgeoioisie]
Distributed to all bourgeois households in Moscow by the Moscow
Military Revolutionary Commitee, so as to provide a basis for the
requisition of clothing for the Army and the poor workers. For
translation see Appendix 3. (See App. X, Sect. 3)
Across the hall came a man in a ragged soldier-coat and _shapka,_ whose
face was familiar; I recognised Melnichansky, whom I had known as the
watch-maker George Melcher in Bayonne, New Jersey, during the great
Standard Oil strike. Now, he told me, he was secretary of the Moscow
Metal-Workers’ Union, and a Commissar of the Military Revolutionary
Committee during the fighting….
“You see me!” he cried, showing his decrepit clothing. “I was with the
boys in the Kremlin when the _yunkers_ came the first time. They shut
me up in the cellar and swiped my overcoat, my money, watch and even
the ring on my finger. This is all I’ve got to wear!”
From him I learned many details of the bloody six-day battle which had
rent Moscow in two. Unlike in Petrograd, in Moscow the City Duma had
taken command of the _yunkers_ and White Guards. Rudnev, the Mayor, and
Minor, president of the Duma, had directed the activities of the
Committee of Public Safety and the troops. Riabtsev, Commandant of the
city, a man of democratic instincts, had hesitated about opposing the
Military Revolutionary Committee; but the Duma had forced him…. It was
the Mayor who had urged the occupation of the Kremlin; “They will never
dare fire on you there,” he said….
One garrison regiment, badly demoralised by long inactivity, had been
approached by both sides. The regiment held a meeting to decide what
action to take. Resolved, that the regiment remain neutral, and
continue its present activities—which consisted in peddling rubbers and
sunflower seeds!
“But worst of all,” said Melnichansky, “we had to organise while we
were fighting. The other side knew just what it wanted; but here the
soldiers had their Soviet and the workers theirs…. There was a fearful
wrangle over who should be Commander-in-chief; some regiments talked
for days before they decided what to do; and when the officers suddenly
deserted us, we had no battle-staff to give orders….”
Vivid little pictures he gave me. On a cold grey day he had stood at a
corner of the Nikitskaya, which was swept by blasts of machine-gun
fire. A throng of little boys were gathered there—street waifs who used
to be newsboys. Shrill, excited as if with a new game, they waited
until the firing slackened, and then tried to run across the street….
Many were killed, but the rest dashed backward and forward, laughing,
daring each other….
Late in the evening I went to the _Dvorianskoye Sobranie_—the Nobles’
Club—where the Moscow Bolsheviki were to meet and consider the report
of Nogin, Rykov and the others who had left the Council of People’s
Commissars.
The meeting-place was a theatre, in which, under the old régime, to
audiences of officers and glittering ladies, amateur presentations of
the latest French comedy had once taken place.
At first the place filled with the intellectuals—those who lived near
the centre of the town. Nogin spoke, and most of his listeners were
plainly with him. It was very late before the workers arrived; the
working-class quarters were on the outskirts of the town, and no
street-cars were running. But about midnight they began to clump up the
stairs, in groups of ten or twenty—big, rough men, in coarse clothes,
fresh from the battle-line, where they had fought like devils for a
week, seeing their comrades fall all about them.
Scarcely had the meeting formally opened before Nogin was assailed with
a tempest of jeers and angry shouts. In vain he tried to argue, to
explain; they would not listen. He had left the Council of People’s
Commissars; he had deserted his post while the battle was raging. As
for the bourgeois press, here in Moscow there was no more bourgeois
press; even the City Duma had been dissolved. (See App. X, Sect. 4)
Bukharin stood up, savage, logical, with a voice which plunged and
struck, plunged and struck…. Him they listened to with shining eyes.
Resolution, to support the action of the Council of People’s
Commissars, passed by overwhelming majority. So spoke Moscow….
[Graphic, page 254: Pass to the Kremlin]
By this the Military Revolutionary Commitee requests to give a pass for
the purpose of investigating the Kremlin, the representatives of the
American Socialist party attached to the Socialist press, comrades Reed
and Bryant. Chief of the Military Revolutionary Committee For the
Secretary
Late in the night we went through the empty streets and under the
Iberian Gate to the great Red Square in front of the Kremlin. The
church of Vasili Blazheiny loomed fantastic, its bright-coloured,
convoluted and blazoned cupolas vague in the darkness. There was no
sign of any damage…. Along one side of the square the dark towers and
walls of the Kremlin stood up. On the high walls flickered redly the
light of hidden flames; voices reached us across the immense place, and
the sound of picks and shovels. We crossed over.
Mountains of dirt and rock were piled high near the base of the wall.
Climbing these we looked down into two massive pits, ten or fifteen
feet deep and fifty yards long, where hundreds of soldiers and workers
were digging in the light of huge fires.
A young student spoke to us in German. “The Brotherhood Grave,” he
explained. “To-morrow we shall bury here five hundred proletarians who
died for the Revolution.”
He took us down into the pit. In frantic haste swung the picks and
shovels, and the earth—mountains grew. No one spoke. Overhead the night
was thick with stars, and the ancient Imperial Kremlin wall towered up
immeasurably.
“Here in this holy place,” said the student, “holiest of all Russia, we
shall bury our most holy. Here where are the tombs of the Tsars, our
Tsar—the People—shall sleep….” His arm was in a sling, from a
bullet-wound gained in the fighting. He looked at it. “You foreigners
look down on us Russians because so long we tolerated a mediæval
monarchy,” said he. “But we saw that the Tsar was not the only tyrant
in the world; capitalism was worse, and in all the countries of the
world capitalism was Emperor…. Russian revolutionary tactics are
best….”
As we left, the workers in the pit, exhausted and running with sweat in
spite of the cold, began to climb wearily out. Across the Red Square a
dark knot of men came hurrying. They swarmed into the pits, picked up
the tools and began digging, digging, without a word….
So, all the long night volunteers of the People relieved each other,
never halting in their driving speed, and the cold light of the dawn
laid bare the great Square, white with snow, and the yawning brown pits
of the Brotherhood Grave, quite finished.
We rose before sunrise, and hurried through the dark streets to
Skobeliev Square. In all the great city not a human being could be
seen; but there was a faint sound of stirring, far and near, like a
deep wind coming. In the pale half-light a little group of men and
women were gathered before the Soviet headquarters, with a sheaf of
gold-lettered red banners—the Central Executive Committee of the Moscow
Soviets. It grew light. From afar the vague stirring sound deepened and
became louder, a steady and tremendous bass. The city was rising. We
set out down the Tverskaya, the banners flapping overhead. The little
street chapels along our way were locked and dark, as was the Chapel of
the Iberian Virgin, which each new Tsar used to visit before he went to
the Kremlin to crown himself, and which, day or night, was always open
and crowded, and brilliant with the candles of the devout gleaming on
the gold and silver and jewels of the ikons. Now, for the first time
since Napoleon was in Moscow, they say, the candles were out.
The Holy Orthodox Church had withdrawn the light of its countenance
from Moscow, the nest of irreverent vipers who had bombarded the
Kremlin. Dark and silent and cold were the churches; the priests had
disappeared. There were no popes to officiate at the Red Burial, there
had been no sacrament for the dead, nor were any prayers to be said
over the grave of the blasphemers. Tikhon, Metropolitan of Moscow, was
soon to excommunicate the Soviets….
Also the shops were closed, and the propertied classes stayed at
home—but for other reasons. This was the Day of the People, the rumour
of whose coming was thunderous as surf….
Already through the Iberian Gate a human river was flowing, and the
vast Red Square was spotted with people, thousands of them. I remarked
that as the throng passed the Iberian Chapel, where always before the
passerby had crossed himself, they did not seem to notice it….
We forced our way through the dense mass packed near the Kremlin wall,
and stood upon one of the dirt-mountains. Already several men were
there, among them Muranov, the soldier who had been elected Commandant
of Moscow—a tall, simple-looking, bearded man with a gentle face.
Through all the streets to the Red Square the torrents of people
poured, thousands upon thousands of them, all with the look of the poor
and the toiling. A military band came marching up, playing the
_Internationale,_ and spontaneously the song caught and spread like
wind-ripples on a sea, slow and solemn. From the top of the Kremlin
wall gigantic banners unrolled to the ground; red, with great letters
in gold and in white, saying, “Martyrs of the Beginning of World Social
Revolution,” and “Long Live the Brotherhood of Workers of the World.”
A bitter wind swept the Square, lifting the banners. Now from the far
quarters of the city the workers of the different factories were
arriving, with their dead. They could be seen coming through the Gate,
the blare of their banners, and the dull red—like blood—of the coffins
they carried. These were rude boxes, made of unplaned wood and daubed
with crimson, borne high on the shoulders of rough men who marched with
tears streaming down their faces, and followed by women who sobbed and
screamed, or walked stiffly, with white, dead faces. Some of the
coffins were open, the lid carried behind them; others were covered
with gilded or silvered cloth, or had a soldier’s hat nailed on the
top. There were many wreaths of hideous artificial flowers….
Through an irregular lane that opened and closed again the procession
slowly moved toward us. Now through the Gate was flowing an endless
stream of banners, all shades of red, with silver and gold lettering,
knots of crepe hanging from the top—and some Anarchist flags, black
with white letters. The band was playing the Revolutionary Funeral
March, and against the immense singing of the mass of people, standing
uncovered, the paraders sang hoarsely, choked with sobs….
Between the factory-workers came companies of soldiers with their
coffins, too, and squadrons of cavalry, riding at salute, and artillery
batteries, the cannon wound with red and black—forever, it seemed.
Their banners said, “Long live the Third International!” or “We Want an
Honest, General, Democratic Peace!”
Slowly the marchers came with their coffins to the entrance of the
grave, and the bearers clambered up with their burdens and went down
into the pit. Many of them were women—squat, strong proletarian women.
Behind the dead came other women—women young and broken, or old,
wrinkled women making noises like hurt animals, who tried to follow
their sons and husbands into the Brotherhood Grave, and shrieked when
compassionate hands restrained them. The poor love each other so!
All the long day the funeral procession passed, coming in by the
Iberian Gate and leaving the Square by way of the Nikolskaya, a river
of red banners, bearing words of hope and brotherhood and stupendous
prophecies, against a back-ground of fifty thousand people,—under the
eyes of the world’s workers and their descendants forever….
One by one the five hundred coffins were laid in the pits. Dusk fell,
and still the banners came drooping and fluttering, the band played the
Funeral March, and the huge assemblage chanted. In the leafless
branches of the trees above the grave the wreaths were hung, like
strange, multi-coloured blossoms. Two hundred men began to shovel in
the dirt. It rained dully down upon the coffins with a thudding sound,
audible beneath the singing….
The lights came out. The last banners passed, and the last moaning
women, looking back with awful intensity as they went. Slowly from the
great Square ebbed the proletarian tide….
I suddenly realised that the devout Russian people no longer needed
priests to pray them into heaven. On earth they were building a kingdom
more bright than any heaven had to offer, and for which it was a glory
to die….