The Russian Revolution полностью

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 gaily 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!¹⁸⁹

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.

By then, the Winter Palace was the only structure still left in government hands. Lenin insisted that before the Second Congress of Soviets officially opened and proclaimed the Provisional Government deposed, the ministers had to be under arrest. But the Bolshevik forces proved inadequate to the task. It turned out that, for all their claims, they had no men willing to brave fire: their alleged 45,000 Red Guards and tens of thousands of supporters among the garrison were nowhere to be seen. A halfhearted assault on the palace was launched at dawn, but at the first sound of shots the attackers beat a retreat.

66. N. I. Podvoiskii.

Burning with impatience, fearful of intervention by troops from the front, Lenin decided to wait no longer. Between 8 and 9 a.m. he made his way to the Bolshevik operations room. At first no one knew him. Bonch-Bruevich burst with joy when he realized who he was: “Vladimir Ilich, our father,” he shouted as he embraced him, “I did not recognize you, dear one!”¹⁹³ Lenin sat down and drafted, in the name of the Milrevkom, a declaration announcing that the Provisional Government was deposed. Released to the press at 10 a.m. (October 25), it read as follows:

TO THE CITIZENS OF RUSSIA!