by Ken Follett
But Grigori thought Lenin was right. In spite of everything, the Bolsheviks had not quite seized power. Once the Congress of Soviets assembled it would have all authority--and then, even if the Bolsheviks were in a majority, the result would be yet another coalition government based on compromise.
The congress was scheduled to begin tomorrow afternoon at two o'clock. Only Lenin seemed to understand the urgency of the situation, Grigori thought with a sense of desperation. He was needed here, at the heart of things.
Grigori decided to go and get him.
It was a freezing night, with a north wind that seemed to blow straight through the leather coat Grigori wore over his sergeant's uniform. The center of the city was shockingly normal: well-dressed middle-class people were coming out of theaters and walking to brightly lit restaurants, while beggars pestered them for change and prostitutes smiled on street corners. Grigori nodded to a comrade who was selling a pamphlet by Lenin called Will the Bolsheviks Be Able to Hold the Power? Grigori did not buy one. He already knew the answer to that question.
Margarita's flat was on the northern edge of the Vyborg district. Grigori could not drive there for fear of calling attention to Lenin's hideout. He walked to the Finland Station, then caught a streetcar. The journey was long, and he spent most of it wondering if Lenin would refuse to come.
However, to his great relief Lenin did not need much persuading. "Without you, I don't believe the other comrades will take the final decisive step," Grigori said, and that was all it took to convince Lenin to come.
He left a note on the kitchen table, so that Margarita would not imagine he had been arrested. It said: "I have gone where you wanted me not to go. Good-bye, Ilich." Party members called him Ilich, his middle name.
Grigori checked his pistol while Lenin put on his wig, a worker's cap, and a shabby overcoat. Then they set out.
Grigori kept a sharp lookout, fearful that they would run into a detachment of police or an army patrol and Lenin would be recognized. He made up his mind that, rather than let Lenin be arrested, he would shoot without hesitation.
They were the only passengers on the streetcar. Lenin questioned the conductress on what she thought of the latest political developments.
Walking from the Finland Station they heard hoofbeats and hid from what turned out to be a troop of loyalist cadets looking for trouble.
Grigori triumphantly delivered Lenin to the Smolny at midnight.
Lenin went at once to Room 36 and called a meeting of the Bolshevik Central Committee. Trotsky reported that Red Guards now controlled many of the city's key points. But that was not enough for Lenin. For symbolic reasons, he argued, the revolutionary troops had to seize the Winter Palace and arrest the ministers of the provisional government. That would be the act that convinced people that power had passed, finally and irrevocably, to the revolutionaries.
Grigori knew he was right.
So did everyone else.
Trotsky began to plan the taking of the Winter Palace.
Grigori did not get home to Katerina that night.
{ V }
There could be no mistakes.
The final act of the revolution had to be decisive, Grigori knew. He made sure the orders were clear and reached their destinations in good time.
The plan was not complicated, but Grigori worried that Trotsky's timetable was optimistic. The bulk of the attacking force would consist of revolutionary sailors. The majority were coming from Helsingfors, capital of the Finnish region, by train and ship. They left at three A.M. More were coming from Kronstadt, the island naval base twenty miles offshore.
The attack was scheduled to begin at twelve noon.
Like a battlefield operation, it would start with an artillery barrage: the guns of the Peter and Paul Fortress would fire across the river and batter down the walls of the palace. Then the sailors and soldiers would take over the building. Trotsky said it would be over by two o'clock, when the Congress of Soviets was due to start.
Lenin wanted to stand up at the opening and announce that the Bolsheviks had already taken power. It was the only way to prevent another indecisive, ineffective compromise government, the only way to ensure that Lenin ended up in charge.
Grigori worried that things might not go as fast as Trotsky hoped.
Security was poor at the Winter Palace, and at dawn Grigori was able to send Isaak inside to reconnoiter. He reported that there were about three thousand loyalist troops in the building. If they were properly organized and fought bravely, there would be a mighty battle.
Isaak also discovered that Kerensky had left town. Because the Red Guards controlled the railway stations he had been unable to leave by train, and he had eventually departed in a commandeered car. "What kind of prime minister can't catch a train in his own capital?" Isaak said.
"Anyway, he's gone," Grigori said with satisfaction. "And I don't suppose he'll ever come back."
However, Grigori's mood turned pessimistic when noon came around and none of the sailors had appeared.
He crossed the bridge to the Peter and Paul Fortress to make sure the cannon were ready. To his horror he found that they were museum pieces, there only for show, and could not be fired. He ordered Isaak to find some working artillery.
He hurried back to the Smolny to tell Trotsky his plan was behind schedule. The guard at the door said: "There was someone here looking for you, comrade. Something about a midwife."
"I can't deal with that now," Grigori said.
Events were moving very fast. Grigori learned that the Red Guards had taken the Marinsky Palace and dispersed the preparliament without bloodshed. Those Bolsheviks in jail had been released. Trotsky had ordered all troops outside Petrograd to remain where they were, and they were obeying him, not their officers. Lenin was writing a manifesto that began: "To the citizens of Russia: The provisional government has been overthrown!"
"But the assault has not begun," Grigori told Trotsky miserably. "I don't see how it can be managed before three o'clock."
"Don't worry," said Trotsky. "We can delay the opening of the congress."
Grigori returned to the square in front of the Winter Palace. At two in the afternoon, at long last, he saw the minelayer Amur sail into the Neva with a thousand sailors from Kronstadt on its deck, and the workers of Petrograd lined the banks to cheer them.
If Kerensky had thought to put a few mines in the narrow channel he could have kept the sailors out of the city and defeated the revolution. But there were no mines, and the sailors in their black pea jackets began to disembark, carrying their rifles. Grigori prepared to deploy them around the Winter Palace.
But the plan was still bedeviled by snags, to Grigori's immense exasperation. Isaak found a cannon and, with much effort, got it dragged into place, only to find that there were no shells for it. Meanwhile, loyalist troops at the palace were building barricades.
Maddened by frustration, Grigori drove back to the Smolny.
An emergency session of the Petrograd soviet was about to start. The spacious hall of the girls' school, painted a virginal white, was packed full with hundreds of delegates. Grigori went up onto the stage and sat beside Trotsky, who was about to open the session. "The assault has been delayed by a series of problems," he said.
Trotsky took the bad news calmly. Lenin would have thrown a fit. Trotsky said: "When can you take the palace?"
"Realistically, six o'clock."
Trotsky nodded calmly and stood up to address the meeting. "On behalf of the Military Revolutionary Committee, I declare that the provisional government no longer exists!" he shouted.
There was a storm of cheering and shouting. Grigori thought: I hope I can make that lie true.
When the noise died down, Trotsky listed the achievements of the Red Guards: the overnight seizure of railway stations and other key buildings, and the dispersal of the preparliament. He also announced that several government ministers had been individually arrested. "The Winter Palace has not been t
aken, but its fate will be decided momentarily!" There were more cheers.
A dissenter shouted: "You are anticipating the will of the Congress of Soviets!"
This was the soft democratic argument, one that Grigori himself would have advanced in the old days, before he became a realist.
Trotsky's response was so quick that he must have expected this criticism. "The will of the congress has already been anticipated by the uprising of workers and soldiers," he replied.
Suddenly there was a murmur around the hall. People began to stand up. Grigori looked toward the door, wondering why. He saw Lenin walking in. The deputies began to cheer. The noise became thunderous as Lenin came up onto the stage. He and Trotsky stood side by side, smiling and bowing in acknowledgment of the standing ovation, as the crowd acclaimed the coup that had not yet taken place.
The tension between the victory being proclaimed in the hall and the reality of muddle and delay outside was too much for Grigori to bear, and he slipped away.
The sailors still had not arrived from Helsingfors, and the cannon at the fortress were not yet ready to fire. As night fell, a cold drizzling rain began. Standing at the edge of Palace Square, with the Winter Palace in front of him and general staff headquarters behind, Grigori saw a force of cadets emerge from the palace. Their uniform badges said they were from the Mikhailovsky Artillery School, and they were leaving, taking four heavy guns with them. Grigori let them go.
At seven o'clock he ordered a force of soldiers and sailors to enter general staff headquarters and seize control. They did so without opposition.
At eight o'clock the two hundred Cossacks on guard at the palace decided to return to their barracks, and Grigori let them through the cordon. He realized that the irksome delays might not be a total catastrophe: the forces he had to overcome were diminishing with time.
Just before ten, Isaak reported that the cannon were finally ready at the Peter and Paul Fortress. Grigori ordered one blank round to be fired, followed by a pause. As he had expected, more troops fled the palace.
Could it be this easy?
Out on the water, an alarm sounded aboard the Amur. Seeking the cause, Grigori looked downriver and saw the lights of approaching ships. His heart went cold. Had Kerensky succeeded in sending loyal forces to save his government at the last gasp? But then a cheer went up on the deck of the Amur, and Grigori realized the newcomers were the sailors from Helsingfors.
When they were safely anchored, he gave the order for the shelling to begin--at last.
There was a thunder of guns. Some shells exploded in midair, lighting up the ships on the river and the besieged palace. Grigori saw a hit on a third-floor corner window, and wondered if there had been anyone in the room. To his amazement, the brightly lit streetcars continued without interruption to trundle across the nearby Troitsky Bridge and Palace Bridge.
It was nothing like the battlefield, of course. At the front there were hundreds of guns firing, perhaps thousands; here, just four. There were long intervals between shots, and it was shocking to see how many were wasted, falling short and dropping harmlessly into the river.
Grigori called a halt and sent small groups of troops into the palace to reconnoiter. They came back to say that those few guards left were offering no resistance.
Shortly after midnight, Grigori led a larger contingent inside. In accordance with prearranged tactics they spread through the palace, running along the grand dark corridors, neutralizing opposition and searching for government ministers. The palace looked like a disorderly barracks, with soldiers' mattresses on the parquet floors of the gilded staterooms, and everywhere a filthy litter of cigarette ends, crusts of bread, and empty bottles with French labels that the guards had presumably taken from the costly cellars of the tsar.
Grigori heard a few scattered shots but there was not much fighting. He found no government ministers on the ground floor. The thought occurred to him they might have sneaked away, and he suffered a panicky moment. He did not want to have to report to Trotsky and Lenin that the members of Kerensky's government had slipped through his fingers.
With Isaak and two other men he ran up a broad staircase to check the next floor. Together they burst through a pair of double doors into a meeting room and there found what was left of the provisional government: a small group of frightened men in suits and ties, sitting at a table and on armchairs around the room, wide-eyed with apprehension.
One of them mustered a remnant of authority. "The provisional government is here--what do you want?" he said.
Grigori recognized Alexander Konovalov, the wealthy textile manufacturer who was Kerensky's deputy prime minister.
Grigori replied: "You are all under arrest." It was a good moment, and he savored it.
He turned to Isaak. "Write down their names." He recognized all of them. "Konovalov, Maliantovich, Nikitin, Tereschenko . . . " When the list was complete he said: "Take them to the Peter and Paul Fortress and put them in the cells. I'll go to the Smolny and give Trotsky and Lenin the good news."
He left the building. Crossing Palace Square, he stopped for a minute, remembering his mother. She had died on this spot twelve years ago, shot by the tsar's guards. He turned around and looked at the vast palace, with its rows of white columns and the moonlight glinting off hundreds of windows. In a sudden fit of rage, he shook his fist at the building. "That's what you get, you devils," he said aloud. "That's what you get for killing her."
He waited until he felt calm again. I don't even know who I'm talking to, he thought. He jumped into his dust-colored armored car, waiting beside a dismantled barricade. "To the Smolny," he told the driver.
As he drove the short distance he began to feel elated. Now we really have won, he told himself. We are the victors. The people have overthrown their oppressors.
He ran up the steps of the Smolny and into the hall. The place was packed, and the Congress of Soviets had opened. Trotsky had not been able to keep on postponing it. That was bad news. It would be just like the Mensheviks, and the other milquetoast revolutionaries, to demand a place in the new government even though they had done nothing to overthrow the old.
A fog of tobacco smoke hung around the chandeliers. The members of the presidium were seated on the platform. Grigori knew most of them, and he studied the composition of the group. The Bolsheviks occupied fourteen of the twenty-five seats, he noted. That meant the party had the largest number of delegates. But he was horrified to see that the chairman was Kamenev--a moderate Bolshevik who had voted against an armed uprising! As Lenin had warned, the congress was shaping up for another feeble compromise.
Grigori scanned the delegates in the hall and spotted Lenin in the front row. He went over and said to the man in the next seat: "I have to talk to Ilich--let me have your chair." The man looked resentful, but after a moment he got up.
Grigori spoke into Lenin's ear. "The Winter Palace is in our hands," he said. He gave the names of the ministers who had been arrested.
"Too late," said Lenin bleakly.
That was what Grigori had feared. "What's happening here?"
Lenin looked black. "Martov proposed the motion." Julius Martov was Lenin's old enemy. Martov had always wanted the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party to be like the British Labour Party, and fight for working people by democratic means; and his quarrel with Lenin over this issue had split the SDLP, back in 1903, into its two factions, Lenin's Bolsheviks and Martov's Mensheviks. "He argued for an end to street fighting followed by negotiations for a democratic government."
"Negotiations?" Grigori said incredulously. "We've seized power!"
"We supported the motion," Lenin said tonelessly.
Grigori was surprised. "Why?"
"We would have lost if we opposed it. We have three hundred of the six hundred and seventy delegates. We're the largest party by a big margin, but we don't have an overall majority."
Grigori could have wept. The coup had come too late. There would be another coalition,
its composition dictated by deals and compromises, and the government would dither on while Russians starved at home and died at the front.
"But they're attacking us anyway," Lenin added.
Grigori listened to the current speaker, someone he did not know. "This congress was called to discuss the new government, yet what do we find?" the man was saying angrily. "An irresponsible seizure of power has already occurred and the will of the congress has been preempted! We must save the revolution from this mad venture."
There was a storm of protest from the Bolshevik delegates. Grigori heard Lenin saying: "Swine! Bastard! Traitor!"
Kamenev called for order.
But the next speech was also bitterly hostile to the Bolsheviks and their coup, and it was followed by more in the same vein. Lev Khinchuk, a Menshevik, called for negotiations with the provisional government, and the eruption of indignation among the delegates was so violent that Khinchuk could not continue for some minutes. Finally, shouting over the noise, he said: "We leave the present congress!" Then he walked out of the hall.
Grigori saw that their tactic would be to say that the congress had no authority once they had withdrawn. "Deserters!" someone shouted, and the cry was taken up around the hall.
Grigori was appalled. They had waited so long for this congress. The delegates represented the will of the Russian people. But it was falling apart.
He looked at Lenin. To Grigori's astonishment, Lenin's eyes glittered with delight. "This is wonderful," he said. "We're saved! I never imagined they would make such a mistake."
Grigori had no idea what he was talking about. Had Lenin become irrational?
The next speaker was Mikhail Gendelman, a leading Socialist Revolutionary. He said: "Taking cognizance of the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, holding them responsible for this insane and criminal action, and finding it impossible to collaborate with them, the Socialist Revolutionary faction is leaving the congress!" And he walked out, followed by all the Socialist Revolutionaries. They were jeered, booed, and whistled at by the remaining delegates.
