The Russian Revolution

by Richard Pipes

  In essence, our strategy was offensive. We prepared to assault the government, but our agitation rested on the claim that the enemy was getting ready to disperse the Congress of Soviets and it was necessary mercilessly to repulse him.

  161

  And according to Stalin:

  The Revolution [read: the Bolshevik Party] disguised its offensive actions behind a smoke screen of defenses in order to make it easier to attract into its orbit uncertain, hesitating elements.

  162

  Curzio Malaparte describes the bewilderment of the English novelist, Israel Zangwill, who happened to be visiting Italy as the Fascists were taking power. Struck by the absence of “barricades, street fighting and corpses on the pavement,” Zangwill refused to believe that he was witnessing a revolution.163 But, according to Malaparte, the characteristic quality of modern revolutions is precisely the bloodless, almost silent seizure of strategic points by small detachments of trained shock troops. The assault is carried out with such surgical precision that the public at large has no inkling of what is happening.

  This description fits the October coup in Russia (which Malaparte had studied and used as one of his models). In October, the Bolsheviks gave up on massive armed demonstrations and street skirmishes, which they had employed, on Lenin’s insistence, in April and July, because the crowds had proven difficult to control and provoked a backlash. They relied instead on small, disciplined units of soldiers and workers under the command of their Military Organization, disguised as the Military-Revolutionary Committee, to occupy Petrograd’s principal communication and transport centers, utilities and printing plants—the nerve centers of the modern metropolis. Merely by severing the telephone lines connecting the government with its Military Staff they made it impossible to organize a counterattack. The entire operation was carried out so smoothly and efficiently that even as it was in progress the cafés and restaurants along with the opera, theaters, and cinemas were open for business and thronged with crowds in search of amusement.

  The Milrevkom, which its secretary, the Bolshevik Antonov-Ovseenko, later described as a “fine formal cover for the military work of the Party,”164 held only two meetings, just enough to allow the Bolshevik Military Organization to claim for itself the “soviet” label.165 Antonov-Ovseenko concedes that it operated directly under the Bolshevik Central Committee and was “in fact its organ”: so much so that for a while consideration was given to transforming the Milrevkom into a branch of the Military Organization.166 As he describes it, its headquarters located in rooms 10 and 17 of Smolnyi, were crowded all day long with young men coming and going, creating conditions which precluded serious work even if such had been intended.

  In Communist accounts, the Milrevkom is given credit for mobilizing all or nearly all of the Petrograd garrison for the armed insurrection: thus, Trotsky claims that in October “the overwhelming majority of the garrison were standing openly on the side of the workers.”167 Contemporary evidence indicates, however, that Bolshevik influence on the garrison was much more modest. The mood of the Petrograd garrison was anything but revolutionary. Overwhelmingly, the 160,000 men billeted in the city and the 85,000 deployed in the environs168 declared “neutrality” in the looming conflict. A count of the garrison units which on the eve of October inclined toward the Bolsheviks shows that they constituted a small minority: Sukhanov estimates that at best one-tenth of the garrison took part in the October coup, and “very likely many fewer.”169 The author’s own calculations indicate that the actively pro-Bolshevik element in the garrison (exclusive of the Kronshtadt naval base) amounted to perhaps 10,000 men, or 4 percent. The pessimists on the Central Committee opposed an armed insurrection precisely on the grounds that even with their advocacy of an immediate armistice, on which Lenin counted to win over the troops, the Bolsheviks did not enjoy the garrison’s support.

  But the optimists proved right, because the Bolsheviks did not so much need to win the support of the garrison as to deny it to the government: if they had only 4 percent of the garrison on their side, the government had even less. The Bolsheviks’ principal concern was to prevent the government from calling out the troops against them as it had been able to do in July. To this end, they needed to delegitimize the Military Staff. This they accomplished on October 21–22, when, claiming to act in the name of the Soviet and its Soldiers’ Section, they had the Milrevkom assert exclusive authority over the garrison.

  To begin with, the Milrevkom dispatched 200 “commissars” to military units in and near Petrograd: most were junior officers from the Bolshevik Military Organization who had taken part in the July putsch and had been recently freed from prison on parole.170 Next, on October 21, it convened at Smolnyi a meeting of regimental committees. Addressing the troops, Trotsky stressed the danger of a “counterrevolution” and urged the garrison to rally around the Soviet and its organ, the Milrevkom. He introduced a motion so vaguely worded that it received ready approval:

  Welcoming the formation of the Military-Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, the Petrograd garrison pledges the committee full support in all its efforts to bring closer the front and rear in the interest of the Revolution.

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  Who could possibly be against bringing the front and rear closer in the interest of the February Revolution? But the Bolsheviks meant to interpret the resolution as empowering the Milrevkom to assume the functions of the staff of the Petrograd Military District. According to Podvoiskii, who directed the Military Organization, these measures marked the onset of the armed insurrection.172

  The following night (October 21–22), a deputation from the Milrevkom appeared at the headquarters of the Military Staff. Its spokesman, the Bolshevik Lieutenant Dashkevich, informed the commander of the Petrograd Military District, Colonel G. P. Polkovnikov, that by authority of the garrison meeting the staffs orders to the garrison would henceforth acquire force only if countersigned by the Milrevkom. The troops, of course, had made no such decision, and even if they had, it would have had no validity: the deputation actually acted on behalf of the Bolshevik Central Committee. Polkovnikov replied that his staff did not recognize the delegation. After he threatened to have them arrested, the Bolshevik delegates left and returned to Smolnyi.173

  Having heard the delegation’s report, the Milrevkom convened a second meeting of garrison delegates. Who came and on whose behalf cannot be determined. But it did not matter: by now, any casually assembled group could claim to represent the “Revolution.” On the Milrevkom’s motion, the meeting approved a fraudulent statement which claimed that although on October 21 the garrison had designated the Milrevkom as its “organ,” the staff refused both to recognize and to cooperate with it. No mention was made of the fact that the delegation had asked not for “recognition” or “cooperation,” but for authority to countermand the Staffs orders. The resolution went on:

  In this manner, the staff has broken with the revolutionary garrison and the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. Having broken with the organized garrison of the capital, the staff has turned into a direct weapon of counterrevolutionary forces.… Soldiers of Petrograd! (1) The defense of the revolutionary order against counterrevolutionary attempts falls on you, under the leadership of the Military-Revolutionary Committee. (2) All orders concerning the garrison lacking the signature of the Military-Revolutionary Committee are invalid …

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  The resolution achieved three objectives: it designated the Provisional Government, allegedly in the name of the Soviet, as “counterrevolutionary”; it divested it of authority over the garrison; and it provided the Milrevkom with an excuse to conceal its bid for power as a defense of the Revolution. It was a declaration of war.

  On October 22, having learned of the Milrevkom’s attempt to take over the garrison, the Military Staff gave the Soviet an ultimatum: either retract its orders or face “decisive measures.”175 Thinking it prudent to play for t
ime, the Bolsheviks accepted the ultimatum “in principle” and offered to negotiate even as they were proceeding with the coup.176 Later that day, the staff and the Milrevkom reached agreement on creating a “consultative body” of Soviet representatives to sit on the staff. On October 23, a delegation from the Milrevkom was sent to the staff, ostensibly for talks, but in fact to carry out “reconnaissance.”177 These actions produced the desired effect, which was to prevent the government from arresting the Milrevkom. During the night of October 23–24, the cabinet (which seems to have led a kind of shadowy existence since the Kornilov days) ordered the closing of the two leading Bolshevik dailies and, for the sake of balance, an equal number of right-wing papers, including Zhivoe slovo, which in July had published information on Lenin’s contacts with the Germans. Troops were sent for to protect strategic points, including the Winter Palace. But when Kerensky asked for authority to have the Milrevkom arrested, he was dissuaded on the grounds that the staff was negotiating its differences with the Milrevkom.178

  Kerensky greatly underestimated the threat posed by the Bolsheviks: he not only did not fear a Bolshevik coup, he actually hoped for one, confident that it would enable him to crush and be rid of them once and for all. In mid-October, military commanders kept reporting to him that the Bolsheviks were making unmistakable preparations for an armed uprising. At the same time they assured him that in view of the Petrograd garrison’s “overwhelming” opposition to a coup, such an uprising would be promptly liquidated.179 On the basis of these assessments, which misinterpreted opposition to Bolshevik plans to mean support for his government, Kerensky offered reassurances to colleagues and foreign ambassadors. Nabokov recalls him prepared to “offer prayers to produce this uprising” because he had ample forces to crush it.180 To George Buchanan, Kerensky said more than once: “I only wish that [the Bolsheviks] would come out, and I will then put them down.”181

  But Kerensky’s self-assurance in the face of a clear and present danger was inspired not only by overconfidence: now, as during the rest of 1917, fear of the “counterrevolution” provides a key to his behavior and that of the entire non-Bolshevik left. Once Kerensky had charged Kornilov and other generals with treason and asked the Soviet for help against them, in the eyes of professional officers he was no longer distinguishable from the Bolsheviks. After August 27, therefore, any military action against the Bolsheviks was certain to result in Kerensky’s downfall. Aware of this, Kerensky hesitated far too long in rallying the military. General A. I. Verkhovskii, the Minister of War, told the British Ambassador after the event that “Kerensky had not wanted the Cossacks to suppress the [October] rising by themselves, as that would have meant the end of the revolution.”182 On the basis of shared fears, a fatal bond was thus forged between two mortal enemies, “February” and “October.” The only hope that Kerensky and his associates still entertained was that at the last moment the Bolsheviks would lose their nerve and back out, as they had done in July. P. I. Palchinskii, who directed the defense of the Winter Palace on October 24–26, jotted down during the siege of the palace or immediately after its fall his impression of the government’s attitude: “Helplessness of Polkovnikov and the lack of any plans. Hope that the senseless step will not be taken. Ignorance of what to do if, nevertheless, it is.”183

  No serious military preparations were made to stave off a blow which everyone knew was coming. Kerensky later claimed that on October 24 he had requested reinforcements from front-line commanders, but historical researches have shown that he had issued no such orders until nighttime (October 24–25), by which time it was too late, for by then the coup was already being completed.184 General Alekseev estimated that there were in Petrograd 15,000 officers, one-third of them ready to fight the Bolsheviks: his offer to organize them was ignored, and as a result, as the city was being taken over they either sat on their hands or reveled in drunken orgies.185 Most astonishing of all, the nerve center of the government’s defense, the Military Staff, located in the Engineers’ (Mikhailovskii) Palace, was left unguarded: any passerby was free to enter it without being asked for identification.186

  The final phase of the Bolshevik coup got underway in the morning of Tuesday, October 24, after the Military Staff had carried out the halfhearted measures ordered by the government the preceding night.

  In the early hours of October 24, iunkers took over guard duty at key points. Two or three detachments were sent to protect the Winter Palace, where they were joined by the so-called Women’s Death Battalion consisting of 140 volunteers, some Cossacks, a bicycle unit, forty war invalids commanded by an officer with artificial legs, and several artillery pieces. Surprisingly, no machine guns were deployed. Iunkers shut down the printing plants of Rabochiipuf (ex-Pravda) and Soldat The telephone lines to Smolnyi were disconnected. Orders went out to raise the bridges over the Neva to prevent pro-Bolshevik workers and soldiers from penetrating the city’s center. The staff forbade the garrison to take any instructions from the Milrevkom. It also ordered, without effect, the arrest of the Milrevkom’s commissars.187

  These preparations produced an atmosphere of crisis. That day most offices closed by 2:30 p.m. and the streets emptied as people rushed home.

  This was the “counterrevolutionary” signal the Bolsheviks had been waiting for. They first moved to reopen their two newspapers: this they accomplished by 11 a.m. Next, the Milrevkom sent armed detachments to take over the Central Telegraph Office and the Russian Telegraphic Agency. The telephone lines from Smolnyi were reconnected. Thus, the earliest objectives of the coup were centers of information and lines of communication.

  The only violence that day occurred in the afternoon as units of the Milrevkom forced the lowering of the bridges across the Neva.

  While the uprising was already in its final and decisive phase, in the evening of October 24 the Milrevkom issued a statement that, rumors notwithstanding, it was not staging an uprising but solely acting to defend the “interests of the Petrograd garrison and democracy” from the counterrevolution.188

  Possibly under the influence of this disinformation, Lenin, who must have been completely out of touch, wrote a despairing note to his colleagues urging them to do what they were in fact doing:

  I am writing these lines in the evening of the 24th [of October], the situation is most extremely critical. It is clearer than clear that now, truly, to delay the uprising is death.

  With all my strength I want to convince my comrades that now everything hangs on a hair, that we are confronting questions that are not resolved by consultations, not by congresses (even by congresses of soviets), but exclusively by the people, by the masses, by the struggle of the armed masses.

  The bourgeois pressure of the Kornilovites, the dismissal of Verkhovskii indicate that one cannot wait. It is necessary, no matter what, this evening, this night, to arrest the government, to disarm the

  iunkers

  (vanquishing them if they resist), etc.…

  Who should take power?

  This is not important right now: let the Military-Revolutionary Committee take it or “some other institution” …

  Power seizure is the task of the uprising: its political goal will become clear after power has been taken.

  It would be perdition or a formality to await the uncertain voting of October 25. The people have the right and duty to solve such questions not by voting but by force …

  *

  Later that night Lenin made his way to Smolnyi: he was heavily disguised, his bandaged face said to have made him look like a patient in a dentist’s office. En route, he was almost arrested by a government patrol but he saved himself by pretending to be drunk. In Smolnyi he stayed out of sight, in one of the back rooms, accessible only to closest associates. Trotsky recalls that Lenin grew apprehensive when he heard about the ongoing negotiations with the Military Staff, but as soon as he was assured that these talks were a feint, he beamed with pleasure:

  “Oh, that is goo-oo-d,” Lenin responded gai
ly in a singsong voice, and began to pace up and down the room, rubbing his hands in excitement. “That is verr-rr-ry good.” Lenin liked military cunning: to deceive the enemy, to make a fool of him—what delightful work!

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  Lenin spent the night relaxing on the floor while Podvoiskii, Antonov-Ovseenko, and G. I. Chudnovskii, a friend of Trotsky’s, under Trotsky’s overall command, directed the operation.

  That night (October 24–25), the Bolsheviks systematically took over all the objectives of strategic importance by the simple device of posting pickets: it was a model modern coup d’état as described by Malaparte. Iunker guards were told to go home: they either withdrew voluntarily or were disarmed. Thus, under cover of darkness, one by one, railroad stations, post offices, telephone centers, banks, and bridges fell under Bolshevik control. No resistance was encountered, no shots fired. The Bolsjieviks took the Engineers’ Palace in the most casual manner imaginable: “They entered and took their seats while those who were sitting there got up and left; thus the staff was taken.”190

  At the Central Telephone Exchange, the Bolsheviks disconnected the lines from the Winter Palace, but they missed two which were not registered. Using these lines, the ministers, gathered in the Malachite Room, maintained contact with the outside. Although in his public pronouncements he exuded confidence, to an eyewitness Kerensky appeared old and tired as he stared into the void, seeing no one, his half-closed eyes hiding “suffering and controlled fear.”191 At 9 p.m., a delegation from the Soviet, headed by Theodore Dan and Abraham Gots, turned up to tell the ministers that under the influence of the “reactionary” Military Staff they greatly overestimated the Bolshevik threat. Kerensky showed them the door.192 That night, Kerensky at last contacted front-line commanders and asked for aid. In vain: none was available. At 9 a.m. on October 25 he slipped out of the Winter Palace disguised as a Serbian officer and in a car borrowed from a U.S. Embassy official, flying the American flag, drove off to the front in search of help.