The noose tightens

The Soviet had declared that Sunday October 22nd would be a ‘Soviet Day’ in order to peacefully review its strength of support at mass meetings in the barracks and factories. In response, and clearly with the intention of provoking disturbances, a counter announcement was made calling for a ‘church procession,’ to ask for divine support to ‘protect the nation’, on the same day.

The Bolsheviks knew that the counter-revolution and the clergy would only be able to muster a tiny handful, largely from the remnants of the Black Hundred reactionaries. But the experienced hands of the Intelligence Service and Cossack Officers could still easily use the event to incite armed clashes. As a precaution, security at the Smolny building housing the Soviet was tightened.

A meeting of the Garrison Conference was held on the 21^st to discuss how best to prevent clashes, including through strengthening its influence over the Cossack regiments. Welcome news came when the delegates from the most leftward unit of the Cossacks announced that it would not take part in the procession. Only the most backward regiment – the Uralsky, brought to Petrograd to try to crush the Bolsheviks in July – were absent from the Conference.

“Upon the proposal of Trotsky, the Conference adopted three short resolutions: (1) ‘The garrison of Petrograd and its environs promises the Military Revolutionary Committee full support in all its steps…’; (2) October 22^nd is to be a day devoted to a peaceful review of forces.. The garrison appeals to the Cossacks: ‘We invite you to our meeting tomorrow. You are welcome, brother Cossacks!’;  (3) ‘The All-Russian Congress of Soviets must take the power in its hands and guarantee to the people peace, land and bread.’  Hundreds of hands were raised for this resolution which sealed the programme of the insurrection. Fifty-seven men abstained. These were the “neutrals” – that is, the wavering enemy. Not one hand was raised against the resolution. The noose around the neck of the February régime was being drawn in a reliable knot” [Volume Three, Chapter Four ¹⁸].

News then came confirming that the reactionary ‘procession’ had been called off. This was an important moral victory, one that showed what a useful weapon the Garrison Conference was proving to be for combating the dwindling forces of reaction in the barracks.

Breaking with headquarters

The MRC had appointed three commissars – Sadovsky, Mekhonoshin and Lazimir – to Petrograd’s military headquarters. Any orders from its commander, Polkovnikov, were to be followed only when countersigned by one of the three commissars. However, when a delegation from Smolny went to inform Polkovnikov of the arrangements, he would have none of it, believing the troops would still obey his orders without Soviet authority.

A special session of the Garrison Conference responded to this snub by agreeing to formally break with the authority of headquarters. An appeal announced to all districts that only orders countersigned by the commissars were to be obeyed, explaining that: “ ‘Having broken with the organised garrison of the capital, headquarters is a direct instrument of the counter-revolutionary forces.’ The Military Revolutionary Committee standing at  the head of the garrison takes upon itself ‘the defence of revolutionary order against counter-revolutionary attempts.’ ” [Volume Three, Chapter Four ¹⁸].

This breach was another important step towards insurrection. But headquarters chose to console themselves with the idea that this was nothing more than just another quarrel between the Petrograd Soviet and the Central Executive Committee. But the MRC nevertheless alerted barracks close to Smolny to be ready to come to their aid, just in case the Government decided to try some desperate attack.

October 22^nd - ‘Soviet Day’

The bourgeois press had already ‘cried wolf’ about impending uprisings on the 17^th and the 20^th. Now they decided that the Bolsheviks’ show of strength on the 22^nd would become the foretold scene of bloodshed. But the Bolshevik press made very clear that it was to be a peaceful assessment of the strength of revolutionary forces.

Trotsky’s ‘History’ gives a stirring impression of the success of that day’s mobilisation:

“This fully answered the plan of the Military Revolutionary Committee: to carry out a gigantic review without clashes, without employing weapons, even without showing them. They wanted to show the masses their own numbers, their strength, their resolution. They wanted to erase from the consciousness of the workers and soldiers the last hindering recollections of the July Days – to bring it about that having seen themselves the masses should say: Nothing and nobody can any longer oppose us” [Volume Three, Chapter Four ¹⁸].

When Sunday arrived, only the bourgeoisie remained at home, scared by their own press. “All the rest of the population thronged out to meetings from early morning to night – young and old, men and women, boys and girls, mothers with children in their arms. No meetings like this had been seen before throughout the revolution. All Petrograd, with the exception of its upper strata, was one solid meeting” [Volume Three, Chapter Four ¹⁸].

“In those auditoriums, continually packed to the doors, the audiences would be entirely renewed in the course of a few hours. Fresh and ever fresh waves of workers, soldiers and sailors would roll up to the buildings and flood them full. The petty bourgeoisie of the town bestirred themselves, too, aroused by these waves and by those warnings which were supposed to frighten them.  Down with Kerensky! Down with the war! Power to the Soviets! None of the Compromisers any longer dared appear before these red hot crowds.  The Bolsheviks had the floor. All the oratorical forces of the party, including delegates to the Congress who were beginning to arrive from the provinces, were brought into action. Occasionally Left Social Revolutionaries spoke – in some places anarchists – but they both tried as little as possible to distinguish themselves from Bolsheviks” [Volume Three, Chapter Four ¹⁸].

“The people of the slums, of the attics and basements, stood still by the hour in threadbare coat or grey uniform, with caps or heavy shawls still on their heads, the mud of the streets soaked through their shoes, an autumn cough catching at their throats. They stood there packed shoulder to shoulder, listening tirelessly, hungrily. The experience of the revolution, the war, the heavy struggle of a whole bitter lifetime, rose from the deeps of memory in each of those poverty-driven men and women, expressing itself in simple and imperious thoughts: This way we can go no farther, we must break a road into the future” [Volume Three, Chapter Four ¹⁸].

The events of that day left a lasting impression on everyone who took part in them. In meetings both large and small throughout the city and its suburbs, hundreds of thousands raised their hands in a vote of support for Soviet rule. Similar votes had been taken before in separate meetings “but that day … welded in one gigantic cauldron … the authentic popular masses. The masses saw themselves and their leaders; the leaders saw and listened to the masses. Each side was satisfied with the other. The leaders were convinced: We can postpone no longer! The masses said to themselves: This time the thing will be done!” [Volume Three, Chapter Four ¹⁸].

Securing the garrison

The success of the 22^nd shattered Polkovnikov’s short-lived confidence. With the agreement of the government and the Central E.C., headquarters attempted to reopen negotiations with Smolny over the commissars. However, their attempts were now too little, too late. The MRC proclaimed to the city that the decisions of its commissars, acting as representatives of the Soviet were sacrosanct and further, that citizens should report any disturbances to the nearest commissar to call out armed forces.

With effective control of the garrison, the MRC was now acting like a sovereign power, but still did not give the signal for insurrection. “The Committee is crowding out the government with the pressure of the masses, with the weight of the garrison. It is taking all that it can without a battle.  The Military Revolutionary Committee was tying up the arms and legs of the enemy régime before striking him on the head. It was possible to apply this tactic of ‘peaceful penetration’ … only because of the indubitable superiority of forces on the side of the Committee and because they were increasing hour by hour” [Volume Three, Chapter Four ¹⁸].

However, the Bolsheviks still had to urgently resolve an issue that had been brought to their attention back on the 19^th. When the Central E.C. had then convened their own garrison meeting, they had only been able to win minority support. However, the Bolsheviks noted that the Compromisers had been given the backing of most of the committees representing the troops in the Peter and Paul fortress, together with those of the armoured car division.

These were dangerous points of weakness that had to be addressed. The fortress stood opposite the Winter Palace and next door to the well-stocked Kronverksky arsenal. Armoured cars could also be of great significance in any street battle. The Bolsheviks had been left to consider how they could win over these last pockets of opposition.

As feared, the commandant of the Peter and Paul fortress had refused to recognise the authority of Corporal Blagonravov, the commissar appointed by the MRC. Antonov proposed a military operation to take control of the fortress, but this could have provoked bloody clashes which might have broken the hard-won unity of the garrison.

Antonov himself recalls in his memoirs:  “ ‘Trotsky was called  in to consider this question.  [He] was then playing the decisive rôle. The advice he gave us was a product of his revolutionary intuition: that we capture the fortress from within. “It cannot be that the troops there are not sympathetic”, he said. And he was right’ ” [Volume Three, Chapter Four ¹⁸].

When Trotsky and Lashevich spoke to the soldiers in the fortress on the afternoon of Monday 23^rd, they won them over. To relief at Smolny, the garrison of the fortress agreed to take orders only from the MRC. Trotsky explains however how: “that change in the mood of the fortress troops was not of course the result of one or two speeches. It had been well prepared in the past. The soldiers turned out to be far to the left of their committees. It was only the cracked shell of the old discipline that held out a little longer behind the fortress walls than in the city barracks. One tap was enough to shatter it” [Volume Three, Chapter Four ¹⁸].

Blagonravov was now able to establish his headquarters within the fortress and set up communications with nearby barracks and the district soviet. Delegations from factories and other military units also came to procure weapons from Kronverksky’s arsenal of 100,000 rifles. Meanwhile, military headquarters found their requests for supplies being ignored. Other more backward units, like the Preobrazhentsi, first to fall for the slander about ‘German gold’ back in July, also now declared their support for the MRC.

The balance of forces was now so favourable that Monday evening’s session of the Soviet was able to discuss with remarkable frankness their plans – if still couched in terms of ‘defence’ of the coming Congress of Soviets – rather than ‘insurrection’. Reports were given of troops sent from the front against Petrograd being successfully persuaded to turn back.

Kerensky still tried to light-mindedly reassure his Ministers that everything was under control. Kadet papers also declared that any ‘coming-out’ would be quickly put down, leaving the Bolsheviks broken before elections to the Constituent Assembly. But, this time, the Compromisers and the Central Executive Committee were unable to come to the rescue of the bourgeoisie.

A unique situation

Trotsky explains how: “the first task of every insurrection is to bring the troops over to its side. The chief means of accomplishing this are the general strike, mass processions, street encounters, battles at the barricades. The unique thing about the October revolution … was that, thanks to a happy combination of circumstances, the proletarian vanguard had won over the garrison of the capital before the moment of open insurrection [and] fortified this conquest through the organisation of the Garrison Conference. It is impossible to understand the mechanics of the October revolution without fully realising that the … task … was fully accomplished in Petrograd before the beginning of the armed struggle” [Volume Three, Chapter Six ²⁰].

But even with the support of the overwhelming majority of the garrison, an insurrection was still required. The minority that was opposed to the revolution could not be won over politically, they had to be defeated militarily. And those enemies were the best trained elements of the army – the officers, junkers (the students of the officer schools), shock battalions and, although their allegiance was still to be tested, perhaps the Cossacks too. Forces could also be brought from the front.

Zinoviev and Kamenev were quick to point to the strength of this military opposition. But Trotsky counters that “if an army as a whole is a copy of society, then when society openly splits, both armies are copies of the two warring camps. The army of the possessors contained the wormholes of isolation and decay” [Volume Three, Chapter Six ²⁰].

The reactionary monarchist officers bitterly hated the Bolsheviks but, as the Kornilov events had already proved, were too demoralised to provide a serious fighting force. The junkers, the students at the officers’ schools, were also divided between hereditary fighters, sons of officers, and those that had signed up to the schools from a less privileged background.

The few socialist junkers in the schools kept Smolny informed of developments. They reported that, as the critical moments arrived, even the junkers began to debate whether it was worthwhile risking their lives to come   to this Government’s aid.

Nevertheless, the Bolsheviks needed to be sure of a reliable fighting force. But, on the whole, this was not going to be found within the garrison. Even though sympathetic to Bolshevism, the rupture between the soldier ranks and their hostile officers had created a breakdown of military organisation that left many units incapable of organising a serious struggle – on anybody’s side!

Nevertheless, scattered amongst the garrison were strong revolutionary nuclei that were able to draw the more passive mass after them. A few individual units had still preserved their discipline and fighting capacity. This proved sufficient to put on a show of force in October, before the army completely fell apart.

The Red Guard

A workers’ militia offered a more reliable force than the demoralised garrison, as long as they had arms with which to fight. Revolvers and rifles had found their way into the workers’ hands when military stores had been raided during the February revolution and through the support of friendly regiments since then.

In Petrograd, the workers’ militias were, for much of 1917, of little consequence compared to the strength of the Government state apparatus. However, in some of the industrial provinces, the Workers’ Guard had succeeded in arresting managers, preventing sabotage and defending machinery and raw materials.

The threat of armed workers frightened both the property owners and the Compromisers who strived hard to control the distribution of arms within the capital. After the July Days, the disarming of workers’ districts was carried out by force. “However, what the workers gave up as weapons was mostly old rubbish. All the very valuable guns were carefully concealed. Rifles were distributed among the most reliable members of the party. Machine-guns smeared with tallow were buried in the ground. Detachments of the Guard closed up shop and went underground, closely adhering to the Bolsheviks” [Volume Three, Chapter Six ²⁰].

Before July, the arming of the workers had been the responsibility of factory and district party committees. Once the prospect of armed insurrection emerged, the Military Organisation of the Bolsheviks took up the organisation of the Red Guard. It was the Kornilov insurrection that allowed the Guard to operate openly and legally, with about 25,000 workers enrolled in companies.

“Drill in the art of handling a rifle … formerly carried on in flats and tenements, was now brought out into the … parks, the boulevards.  While the old czarist army was disintegrating, the foundation of a future Red Army was being laid in the factories” [Volume Three, Chapter Six ²⁰].

Of course, once the Kornilov threat was over, the Compromisers tried to clamp down again on the supply of arms. For example, the 30,000 men of the Putilov factory were only issued 500 rifles. The organisation of the Red Guard then ebbed somewhat, although its cadres were still firmly in place in every factory.

Once the Bolsheviks won a majority in the Soviet, the Red Guard became its official instrument and quickly flowered again. Intense rifle practice took place in factories and workplaces across Petrograd. By mid-October, when the Bolsheviks were firmly set on a course for insurrection, some factories had almost every worker enrolled in the Guard. Formally, it remained a non-party organisation. In practice, with its command elected by each company, the Bolsheviks provided its leadership.

Even as the insurrection drew near, the Red Guard still remained relatively small, with around 20,000 fighters represented at its Petrograd Conference on October 22^nd. The supply of weapons was even more limited, to the annoyance of the volunteers. But it was impossible to directly seize weapons from the arsenals without openly starting the insurrection.

As well as the riflemen, specialised units of machine-gunners, telegraphers, sappers and so on were recruited. The working women created Red Cross divisions. Sentries were on duty in the factories night and day. Patrols kept guard on key posts with the particularly keenly organised Vyborg district even stealing the keys of the drawbridges over the river in preparation for battle.

“The organisation of the Red Guard remained, of course, extremely far from complete.  But the Red Guard, recruited from the most self-sacrificing workers, was burning to carry the job through this time to the end. And that was the decisive thing. Whereas the garrison represented a compulsory assemblage of old soldiers defending themselves against war, the divisions of the Red Guard were newly constructed by individual selection on a new basis and with new aims” [Volume Three, Chapter Six ²⁰].

The balance of forces

As well as the garrison and the Red Guard, the MRC also had the sailors of the Baltic Fleet at its disposal. Unlike the peasant soldiers, the sailors were often from a working-class background, possessed a much higher political level and were still in active military service.

“For active operations it was possible to count firmly upon the armed Bolsheviks, upon the divisions of the Red Guard, upon the advanced group of the sailors, and upon the better preserved regiments. The different elements of this collective army supplemented each other. The numerous garrisons lacked the will to fight. The sailor detachments lacked numbers. The Red Guard lacked skill. The workers together with the sailors contributed energy, daring and enthusiasm. The regiments of the garrison constituted a rather inert reserve, imposing in its numbers and overwhelming in its mass. The very plan of the insurrection was based to a considerable degree upon a calculation of these differences” [Volume Three, Chapter Six ²⁰].

Against these forces stood the forces of the possessing classes. But the property holders themselves, even their sons and students, however deep their hostility to the Bolsheviks, weren’t accustomed to actually fighting for themselves! But now that the Compromisers had lost control of the garrison and the soviets, the ruling-class was left with no army to defend itself.

The Compromisers still had some base within the higher ranks of the railway clerks and railworkers and even the Kadets had some support in the post and telegraph service. However, in both sectors, the lower ranks bore some class hostility to their managers. The MRC estimated that if the rail and post clerks saw the Bolsheviks taking decisive action, then they would follow their lead.

The only other hope for the bourgeoisie was to rely on troops from outside the capital to put down an insurrection in Petrograd. The Bolsheviks knew this threat could not be entirely discounted but, again, their calculations suggested that Petrograd would be able to take, and hold, the power.

A conference of soviets of the Petrograd province held early in October and attended by delegates from the surrounding garrisons had indicated that, through the bridge of the Left SRs, these troops were swiftly moving towards the Bolsheviks. Although indicating some weak points, the report given to the Bolshevik C.C. on October 16th also gave a generally encouraging picture of the political allegiance of nearby garrisons.

Things were even better on the Northern front and in Finland where, thanks to the work of Smilga, Antonov and Dybenko, the soviets had already won total control of the Helsingfors garrison and the Baltic fleet. Through them, the sailors in the naval base at Reval were also being brought on side.

After discussions at the Northern Regional Congress about how to take advantage of this position of strength, Smilga had returned to Helsingfors to organise a detachment of sailors, infantry and artillery ready to move on Petrograd when summoned.

Elsewhere on the front, the troops were also swinging sharply towards Bolshevism. Throughout October, elections to the army committees had been held and were everywhere removing the old Compromisist leaders and replacing them with Bolsheviks. Even on the remote south-western front, the handful of Bolshevik sympathisers were able to convince thousands to come out in support of insurrection. Even the rank-and-file Cossacks, the last hope of the government for salvation, were turning against their Kornilovist officers.

“Of that front which in the early days of March had kissed the hands and feet of liberal priests, had carried Kadet ministers on its shoulders, got drunk on the speeches of Kerensky, and believed that the Bolsheviks were German agents – of that there was nothing left. Those rosy illusions had been drowned in the mud of the trenches, which the soldiers refused to go on kneading with their leaky boots” [Volume Three, Chapter Six ²⁰].