It fell to Kamenev, ironically enough, to announce the arrest of the ministers to the Soviet Congress. The Bolsheviks cheered as their names were read out. But a large peasant, his face convulsed with rage, got up on behalf of the SRs to denounce the arrest of the socialist ministers. ‘Do you know that four comrades, who risked their lives and their freedom fighting against the tyranny of the Tsar, have been flung into the Peter and Paul prison — the historical tomb of Liberty?’ There was pandemonium as people shouted out, while Trotsky, gesturing for silence, answered by denouncing them as false ‘comrades’ and claimed there was no reason ‘to handle them with gloves’. After the July Days ‘they didn’t use much ceremony with us!’ Kamenev then announced that the Cyclist Battalion had come over to the ‘side of the revolution’. There were reports of more vital troops joining from the Northern Front. And then Lunacharsky read out Lenin’s Manifesto ‘To All Workers, Soldiers, and Peasants’, in which ‘Soviet Power’ was proclaimed, and its promises on land, bread and peace were announced. The reading of this historic proclamation, which was constantly interrupted by the thunderous cheers of the delegates, played an enormous symbolic role. It provided the illusion that the insurrection was the culmination of a revolution by ‘the masses’. When it had been passed, shortly after 5 a.m. on the 26th, the weary but elated delegates emerged from the Tauride Palace. ‘The night was yet heavy and chill,’ wrote John Reed. ‘There was only a faint unearthly pallor stealing over the silent streets, dimming the watch-fires, the shadow of a terrible dawn rising over Russia.’28
*
How many people took part in the insurrection? Historians have always been sharply divided on this question, with those on the Left depicting October as a popular revolution driven from below, and those on the Right depicting it as a coup d’étât without any mass support. At the root of the question is the nature — and thus the ‘legitimacy’ — of the Soviet system. And in this sense it is one of the fundamental questions of the twentieth century.
The number of active participants in the insurrection was not very large — although of course it must be borne in mind that large numbers were not needed for the task, given the almost complete absence of any military forces in the capital prepared to defend the Provisional Government. Trotsky himself claimed that 25,000 to 30,000 people ‘at the most’ were actively involved — that is about 5 per cent of all the workers and soldiers in the city — and this broadly tallies with the calculations based on the number of Red Guard units, Fleet crews and regiments which were mobilized. Most of them were involved in a limited fashion, such as guarding factories and strategic buildings, manning the pickets and generally ‘standing by’. During the evening of the 25th, there were probably something in the region of 10,000 to 15,000 people milling around in the Palace Square; but not all of them were actually involved in the ‘storming’ of the palace, although many more would later claim that they had taken part.fn5 Of course, once the palace had been seized, larger crowds of people did become involved, although, as we shall see, this was largely a question of looting its wine stores.29
