Desperate for money, the Bolsheviks resorted to harsher measures. On November 7, V. R. Menzhinskii, the new Commissar of Finance, appeared at the State Bank with armed sailors and a military band. He demanded 10 million rubles. The bank refused. He returned four days later with more troops and presented an ultimatum: unless money was forthcoming within twenty minutes, not only would the staff of the State Bank lose their jobs and pensions but those of military age would be drafted. The bank stood firm. The Sovnarkom dismissed some of the bank’s officials, but it still had no money, more than two weeks after assuming governmental responsibilities.
On November 14, the clerical personnel of Petrograd banks met to decide what to do next. Employees of the State Bank voted overwhelmingly to deny recognition to the Sovnarkom and go on with the strike. Clerks of private banks reached the same conclusion. The staff of the State Treasury voted 142–14 to refuse the Bolsheviks access to government funds: they also rejected a Sovnarkom request for a “short-term advance” of 25 million rubles.58
In the face of this resistance, the Bolsheviks had recourse to force. On November 17, Menzhinskii reappeared at the State Bank: he found it deserted, save for some couriers and watchmen. Officers of the bank were brought in under armed guard. When they refused to hand over money, guards compelled them to open the vaults, from which Menzhinskii removed 5 million rubles. He carried it to Smolnyi in a velvet bag, which he triumphantly deposited on Lenin’s desk.59 The whole operation resembled a bank holdup.
The Bolsheviks now had access to Treasury funds, but strikes of bank personnel continued, despite arrests; nearly all banks remained closed. The State Bank, occupied by Bolshevik troops, was inoperative. It was to break the resistance of financial personnel that Lenin initially created, in December 1917, his security police, the Cheka.
A contemporary survey showed that in mid-December work was at a standstill at the ministries (now renamed commissariats) of Foreign Affairs, Enlightenment, Justice, and Supply, while the State Bank was in complete disarray.60 White-collar strikes also broke out in the provincial towns: in mid-November the municipal workers of Moscow struck; their colleagues in Petrograd followed suit on December 3. These work stoppages had one common purpose: modeled on the General Strike of October 1905, they were to force the government to renounce claims to autocracy. It was this powerful demonstration that persuaded Kamenev, Zinoviev, Rykov, and some other associates of Lenin that they had to share power with other socialist parties or the government could not function.
Lenin, however, held his ground and in mid-November ordered a counter-offensive. The Bolsheviks now physically occupied, one by one, every public institution in Petrograd and compelled their employees, under threat of severe punishment, to work for them. The following incident, reported by a contemporary newspaper, was repeated in many places:
On December 28 [OS], the Bolsheviks seized the Department of Customs. Directing the occupied Customs office is an official named Fadenev. On the eve of the Christmas holidays, following a general meeting of departmental employees, Fadenev had ordered everyone to return to work on December 28: those who failed to appear, he threatened, would lose their jobs and be liable to prosecution. On December 28, the department building was occupied by inspectors. The Bolsheviks allowed into the building only those employees who would sign a statement of full subordination to the “Council of People’s Commissars.”61
The directors of the Customs Department were subsequently dismissed and replaced with lower clerical staff. This pattern was repeated as the Bolsheviks conquered, in the literal sense of the word, the apparatus of the central government, often with the support of the junior staff whom they won over with promises of rapid promotion. They broke the strike of white collar employees only in January 1918, after they had dispersed the Constituent Assembly and ended all hope that they would voluntarily surrender or even share power.
