We began to move at noon, a spread-out column of some two hundred people, walking in the middle of the street. The deputies were accompanied by a few journalists, friends, and wives, who had obtained entry tickets to Taurida Palace. The distance to the palace did not exceed one kilometer: the closer one approached, the fewer pedestrians were to be seen and the more soldiers, Red Army men and sailors. They were armed to the teeth: guns slung over the shoulder, bombs, grenades, and bullets, in front and on the side, everywhere, wherever they could be attached or inserted. Individual passersby on the sidewalk, upon encountering the unusual procession, rarely greeted it with shouts: more often they followed it sympathetically with their eyes and then hurried on. The armed men approached, wanting to know who goes and where, and then returned to their stations and bivouacs.…
The entire square in front of Taurida Palace was filled with artillery, machine guns, field kitchens. Machine gun cartridge belts were piled up pell-mell. All the gates to the palace were shut, except for a wicket gate on the extreme left, through which people with passes were let in. The armed guards attentively studied one’s face before permitting entry: they inspected one’s rear, felt the backside.… After going through the left door more controls.… The guards directed the delegates across the vestibule and Catherine’s Hall into the Assembly Hall. Everywhere there were armed men, mostly sailors and Latvians. They were armed, as those on the street, with guns, grenades, munition bags, and revolvers. The number of armed men and weapons, the sound of clanking, created the impression of an encampment getting ready either to defend itself or to attack.116
The Bolshevik delegation, headed by Lenin, arrived at Taurida at 1 p.m. Lenin wanted to be on hand to make quick decisions as the situation unfolded. Sitting in what during the Duma period had been the “government loge,” he directed Bolshevik actions for the next nine hours. Bonch-Bruevich remembered him “excited and pale like a corpse.… In this extreme white paleness of his face and neck, his head appeared even larger, his eyes were distended and aflame, burning with a steady fire.”117 It was, indeed, a decisive moment in which the fate of the Bolshevik dictatorship hung in the balance.
The Assembly was to open at midday, but Lenin, through Uritskii, refused to allow it to begin proceedings until he knew what happened outside, on the streets of Petrograd, where, in defiance of Bolshevik orders, a massive demonstration had been gathering all morning. Although its organizers stressed in their appeals that they intended it to be “peaceful” and confrontations were to be avoided,118 Lenin had no assurance that his forces would not fold at the first sign of mass resistance. He must have had a contingency plan in mind in the event the demonstrators overwhelmed his forces: the SR Sokolov believes that if that happened, Lenin intended to come to terms with the Assembly.119
The Union instructed the demonstrators to gather by 10 a.m. at nine points in various parts of the city and from there proceed to the central gathering place, the Champs de Mars. At noon, they were to move in a body, under banners calling for “All Power to the Constituent Assembly,” along Panteleimon Street to Liteinyi Prospect, immediately turn right onto Kirochnaia Street, left on Potemkin Street, and right on Shpalernaia, which runs in front of Taurida Palace. After passing the palace, they were to turn right onto Taurida Street and proceed to Nevsky, where they were to disperse.
The crowd which gathered that morning throughout Petrograd was impressive (some counted as many as 50,000 participants), but neither as large nor as enthusiastic as the organizers had hoped: the troops stayed in the barracks, fewer workers than expected turned up, with the result that the participants were mainly students, civil servants, and other intellectuals, all somewhat dispirited. Bolshevik threats and displays of force had made an impression.120
