248. “The existing government of landlords and capitalists must be replaced by a new government, a government of workers and peasants,” Stalin’s confiscated editorial stated. “If all of you act solidly and staunchly, no one will dare to resist the will of the people.” Sochineniia, III: 390. See also Rech’, October 25, 1917: 2; Kerensky, The Catastrophe, 325–6; Izvestiia, October 25, 1917: 7.
249. Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, III: 121. See also Stankevich, Vospominaniia, 258. On October 17, the interior minister had reported that he commanded sufficient reliable troops to beat back any insurrection, although not enough to crush the left preemptively. On the night of October 21–22 Kerensky assured Supreme Commander General Dukhonin that he would still come out to meet him at Mogilyov, undeterred “by fear of some kind of unrest, rebellions, and the like.” Browder and Kerensky, Russian Provisional Government, III: 1744. But nerves were on edge. “I only wish that [the Bolsheviks] would come out and I will put them down,” Kerensky told British ambassador Buchanan. Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, II: 201. During mass meetings on October 22, proclaimed a “Day of the Petrograd Soviet,” Sukhanov recorded “a mood bordering on ecstasy.” Sukhanov, Russian Revolution, II: 584.
250. “The government of M. Kerensky fell before the Bolshevik insurgents,” the Manchester Guardian correspondent correctly reported, “because it had no supporters in the country.” M. Philips Price, Manchester Guardian, November 20, 1917, reprinted in Price and Rose, Dispatches from the Revolution, 88. “The ease with which Lenin and Trotsky overthrew the last coalition Government of Kerensky revealed its inward impotence. The degree of this impotence was an amazement at the time even to well-informed people.” Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, III: 870 (quoting Nabokov, without citation).
251. Reed, Ten Days [1919], 73; Wade, Red Guards and Workers’ Militias, 196–207.
252. Daniels, Red October, 166; “Stavka 25-26 oktiabria 1917 g.”
253. Garrison troops numbered about 160,000 in the city proper, and another 85,000 in the outskirts. Sukhanov estimates that in the city one-tenth took part at most, “very likely fewer.” Sukhanov, Zapiski, VII: 161; Solov’ev, “Samoderzhavie i dvorianskii vopros,” 77; Erykalov, Oktiabr’skoe vooruzhennoe vosstanie, 435.
254. Mel’gunov, Kak bol’sheviki zakhvatili vlast’, 87–9. About thirty shells were fired from Peter and Paul Fortress and two made contact (one hit a cornice). No one was wounded, let alone killed in the shelling. Avdeev, Revoliutsiia 1917, V: 189.
255. Miliukov, Istoriia, III: 256.
256. Lutovinov, Likvidatisiia miatezha Kerenskogo-Krasnogo, 7.
257. Erykalov, Oktiabr’skoe vooruzhennoe vosstanie, 435; Rabinowitch, Bolsheviks Come to Power, 305. General Cheremisov on October 14 had issued an order implying that units of the Petrograd garrison would be deployed to the front.
258. Rakh’ia, “Poslednoe podpol’e Vladimira Il’icha,” 89–90; Rakh’ia, “Moi predoktiabr’skie i posleoktiabr’skie vstrechi s Leninym,” 35–6; Daniels, Red October, 158–61: Rabinowitch, Bolsheviks Come to Power, 266.
259. Kotel’nikov, Vtoroi vserossiiskii s”ezd sovetov, 144–53.
260. Kotel’nikov, Vtoroi vserossiiskii s”ezd sovetov, 4, 34–5; Sukhanov, Zapiski, VII: 198–9; Mstislavskii, Piat’ dnei, 72; Mstislavskii, Five Days, 125.
261. Sukhanov, Zapiski, VII: 203; Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, III: 311 (quoting Sukhanov).
262. Nikolaevskii, “Stranitsy proshlogo,” Sotsialisticheskii vestnik, July–August 1958: 150. The Bolshevik who confronted Martov was Ivan Akulov.
263. Park, Bolshevism in Turkestan, 12–3; Khalid, “Tashkent 1917,” 279; Stalin, “Vsia vlast’ sovetam!” Rabochii put’, September 17, 1917, in Sochineniia, III: 297–99; Blank, “Contested Terrain.”
264. Daniels, Red October, 226; Wade, Russian Revolution, 302–3.
265. “We left not knowing where or why,” Sukhanov wrote a few years later, “cutting ourselves off from the Soviet, getting mixed up with elements of the counterrevolution, discrediting and debasing ourselves in the eyes of the masses. . . . Moreover, in departing, we left the Bolsheviks a totally free hand and complete masters of the situation.” Sukhanov, Zapiski, VII: 219–20. See also Schapiro, Origins of the Communist Autocracy [1965], 66–8. The congress walkouts set up a “Committee for Salvation of the Fatherland and the Revolution,” but it lacked the magical resonance of the Soviet. On October 29, military school cadets (junkers) under their command seized the telephone station, the state bank, and the Astoria Hotel, then set their sights on Smolny, but the Military Revolutionary Committee retook all these points and easily dispersed the junkers. Novaia zhizn’, October 30, 1917: 3.
266. History has nowhere recorded precisely how many delegates had left the hall. Kotel’nikov, Vtoroi vserossiiskii s”ezd sovetov, 53–4; Browder and Kerensky, Russian Provisional Government, III: 1797–8; Dekrety Sovetskoi vlasti, I: 1–2. On the eve, Lunacharsky had come out against the insurrection, in print, alongside Kamenev and Zinoviev.
267. Kotel’nikov, Vtoroi vserossiiskii s”ezd sovetov, 164–5; Izvestiia, October 26, 1917: 5–6, October 27: 4, October 28: 4; Rabinowitch, Bolsheviks Come to Power, 273–304; Daniels, Red October, 187–96. Even though most textbooks place the arrests in the cabinet room (Malachite Hall, on the river side), the government ministers had moved to Tsar Nicholas II’s private dining room, facing the inner courtyard. M. Levin, “Poslednie chasy vremennogo pravitel’stva v 1917 g.,” Krasnyi arkhiv, 1933, no. 56: 136–8 (P. I. Palchinsky notes).
268. Rabinowitch, Bolsheviks Come to Power, 269–92; Figes, A People’s Tragedy, 485–95. John Reed, his wife Louise Bryant, and Albert Rhys Williams just walked into the Winter Palace, hoping to interview Kerensky, strolled around, and left, while Red Guards stood outside; the Red Guards finally entered through windows and unlocked doors. See Delo naroda, October 29, 1917: 1–2 (S. L. Maslov).
269. Trotsky, Stalin, 228–34; Radzinsky, Stalin, 115–19.
270. Lenin had arrived at the Finland Station in April 1917 wearing a dressy hat (it appears in the photograph taken of him en route in Stockholm). Nikolai I. Podvoiskii, “V. I. Lenin v 1917,” Istoricheskii arkhiv, 1956, no. 6: 111–32 (at 115).
271. Reed, Ten Days [1919], 125–7; Kotel’nikov, Vtoroi vserossiiskii s”ezd sovetov, 59, 165–6; Avdeev, Revoliutsiia 1917 goda, V: 179–80; Izvestiia, October 26, 1917: 7. Lenin had also appeared (after Trotsky) at the parallel session of the Petrograd Soviet held on October 25 around 2:35 a.m.
272. Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, xxxvi (citing Obshchee delo [Paris], February 21, 1921).
273. Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, xxxvi, (citing Velikii Lenin [Moscow, 1982]), 16–7.
274. Kotel’nikov, Vtoroi vserossiiskii s”ezd sovetov, 15–21, 59–68.
275. Kotel’nikov, Vtoroi vserossiiskii s”ezd sovetov, 22.
276. Sukhanov, Zapiski, III: 361.
277. Kotel’nikov, Vtoroi vserossiiskii s”ezd sovetov, 25–30, 82–7.
278. McCauley, Russian Revolution, 282–3, translation of K. G. Idman, Maame itsenaistymisen vuosilta (Porvoo-Helsiniki, 1953), 216.
279. Fulop-Miller, Mind and Face of Bolshevism [1927], 29. Robert Service observed that Lenin had “not been a nonentity [in Russia] in 1917; but his celebrity had grown inside the confines of Russia’s clandestine political groups.” Service, Lenin, I: 1.
280. Pavel Malyantovich (a Menshevik), just recently named justice minister, cabled a signed decree to all provincial prosecutors that the arrest order for Lenin was still in effect in September 1917. He was executed by firing squad on January 21, 1940, the anniversary of Lenin’s death.
281. On Lenin as a “revolutionary of genius,” see Schapiro, “Lenin After Fifty Years,” 8.
282. “Had I not been present in 1917 in Petersburg, the
October Revolution would still have taken place—on the condition that Lenin was present and in command,” Trotsky confided in his diary in late March 1935. “If neither Lenin nor I had been present in Petersburg, there would have been no October Revolution.” Trotsky’s Diary in Exile [1963], 53–4.
283. Bolshevik Propaganda: Hearings Before a Subcommittee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 790; Hard, Raymond Robins’ Own Story, 52.
284. Waters, Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, 367.
285. Brinton, Anatomy of Revolution. Brinton’s radicalization process—through three stages (rosy, polarization, radicalization)—ended in counterrevolution (Thermidor), however.
286. Lyttelton, Seizure of Power, 86.
287. Wildman, End of the Russian Imperial Army, II: xv. During the eight months of the Provisional Government’s tortured existence, Russia experienced more than a thousand strikes—far more strike activity than before the monarchy’s fall: 41,000 workers in March 1917; 384,000 in July; 965,000 in September; and 441,000 in October. Orlovsky, “Russia in War and Revolution,” 244. But strikes did not overturn the Provisional Government any more than they had cashiered the monarchy.
288. Maklakov, “The Agrarian Problem.”
289. “Okruzhili mia tel’tsy mnozi tuchny,” Rabochii put’, October 20, 1917, reprinted in Sochineniia, III: 383–6.
290. Protokoly Tsentral’nogo komiteta RSDRP (b), 107 (October 20, 1917).
291. Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, III: 211. “I spent the decisive night of October 25–26 together with Kamenev in the offices of the Military Revolutionary Committee, answering inquiries on the telephone and sending out instructions.” Trotsky added: “I simply cannot answer the question of what precisely was Stalin’s role in those decisive days.” Trotskii, Stalinskaia shkola fal’sifakatsii, 26. Even Stalin’s relations undersold him. “In those days,” wrote Fyodor Alliluyev, who witnessed Stalin’s catnaps in his family’s apartment, “comrade Stalin was genuinely known only to the small circle of people who had come across him in work in the political underground.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d, 668, l. 30 (F. S. Alliluev, “V Moskve [Vstrecha s t. Stalinym],” undated typescript). All the key Bolshevik men on the frontlines in October—Raskol’nikov, Dybenko, Podvoisky, Krylenko—would be murdered by Stalin’s regime.
292. The notion, stated by Tucker, that “Stalin was not really in his element in the turbulent mass politics of 1917,” is belied by Stalin’s Chiatura experience back in 1905. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 178.
293. De Lon, “Stalin and Social Democracy,” 204. After the Constituent Assembly was dispersed in January 1918, Sagirashvili dejectedly left Petrograd for Tiflis.
294. Kotel’nikov, Vtoroi vserossiiskii s”ezd sovetov, 90, 174–5. The list was likely submitted by Kamenev.
CHAPTER 7: 1918: DADA AND LENIN
1. Motherwell, Dada Painters and Poets, 78–9, 81.
2. Malkov, Reminiscences, 178.
3. Miliukov added that “experience showed that this light-minded self-assurance was a profound error.” Miliukov, Istoriia vtoroi, I/iii: 179. John Reed wrote that it “never occurred to anybody—except perhaps to Lenin, Trotzky, the Petersburg workers and the simpler soldiers”—that “the Bolsheviki would remain in power longer than three days.” Reed, Ten Days [1919], 117.
4. “I prefer Lenin, an open enemy, to Kerensky, that wolf in sheep’s clothing,” one official wrote on October 31, 1917. Nielsen and Weil, Russkaia revoliutsiia glazami Petrogradskogo chinovnika, 21. Kerensky bitterly denounced such types as “Bolsheviks of the Right.”
5. Trotsky, On Lenin, 114; Miliutin, O Lenine, 4–5; Rigby, Lenin’s Government, 23.
6. Figes, “Failure of February’s Men.” See also the bitter remarks of Chernov, Great Russian Revolution, 256–7.
7. In 1918, the Julian calendar was thirteen days behind the Gregorian; Wednesday, January 31, 1918, in Russia was followed by Thursday, February 14. Thereafter, the “February Revolution” would be celebrated on March 13 (at least through 1927, after which official commemoration of February ceased), while the “October Revolution” would be celebrated on November 7. Orthodox Christmas became January 7.
8. Larin, “Ukolybeli,” 16–7; Pestkovskii, “Ob oktiabr’skikh dniakh v Pitere,” 99–100; Mal’kov, Zapiski [1967], 42–7; Chugaev, Petrogradskii voenno-revoliutsionnyi komitet, I: 485.
9. Gil’, Shest' let s V. I. Leninym, 10–3. Lenin also had a luxurious Delaunay-Belleville 70, a six-cylinder ahead of its time, that had been purchased for Nicholas II.
10. Krupskaia, “Lenin v 1917 godu,” Izvestiia, January 20, 1960, reprinted in O Lenine, 54. She made the remarks in 1934.
11. Iroshnikov, Sozdanie, 156–61. The best contemporary accounts are M. Latsis, Proletarskaia revoliutsiia, 1925, no. 2: esp. 144.
12. The Petrograd Soviet had set up a commission on June 11, 1917, to manage affairs with the Ukrainian Rada (which was demanding autonomy).
13. The original plan for nationalities may have been for a mere “commission,” rather than a full-fledged commissariat. Gorodetskii, Rozhdenie, 158.
14. “Lenin,” Pestkowski ingratiatingly wrote, “could not get along without Stalin for even a single day.” Pestkovskii, “Vospominaniia o rabote v narkomnaste,” 128.
15. Trotskii, Moia zhizn’, II; 62–4; Sukhanov, Zapiski, VII: 266; Zalkind, “N.K.I.D. v semnadtsatom godu.” See also Deutscher, Prophet Armed, 325.
16. Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 5: 155 (August 26, 1918, letter to Vologda party committee). Sagirashvili speculated that Stalin coveted Sverdlov’s position, relating hearsay from Stalin’s close comrade Orjonikidze. De Lon, “Stalin and Social Democracy,” 199. Sverdlov was often out at meetings on behalf of the party’s secretariat and seldom on the premises at Smolny.
17. In 1918 Lenin was paid 24,683.33 rubles: 9,683.33 in salary as chair of Sovnarkom and 15,000 as an honorarium for publications; the payments were made via Bonch Bruevich, who handled party money. RGASPI, f. 2, op. 1, d. 11186, l. 2 (September 20, 1919).
18. Bunyan and Fisher, Bolshevik Revolution, 185–7; Sobranie uzakonenii i rasporiazhenii rabochego i krest'ianskogo pravitel'stva, 1917, no. 1: 10–1; Goikhbarg [Hoichberg], Sotsial’noe zakonodatel’stvo sovetskoi respubliki; Goikhbarg, A Year in Soviet Russia; Trotsky, My Life, 342.
19. Magerovsky, “The People’s Commissariat,” I: 29–31.
20. Pestkovskii, “Ob Oktiabr’skikh dniakh v Pitere,” 104; Trotsky, Stalin, 245.
21. Izvestiia, November 27, 1917: 6. Pestkowski was named to the bank job through Wieczysław Mezynski, yet another high-placed Pole.
22. Codrescu, Posthuman Dada Guide, 11.
23. Sandqvist, Dada East; Dickerman, Dada.
24. Nielson and Boris, Russkaia revoliutsiia glazami Petrogradskogo chinovnika, 13 (October 22, 1917).
25. Jan Gross correctly surmised that “the architects of the Soviet state discovered early that one accumulates power simply by denying it to others.” Gross, “War as Social Revolution,” 32.
26. Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence [1965], 331, 338; Marx and Engels, Selected Works. See Gouldner, The Two Marxisms, 350–1. Louis Auguste Blanqui, the original Leninist, had spent the commune’s entire existence in prison.
27. McLellan, Karl Marx: Selected Writings, 592–4; Marx and Engels, The Civil War in France, in Selected Works, I: 473–545; and Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence [1965], 318–20 (letters to Kugelmann, April 12 and 17, 1871).
28. Zagranichnaia gazeta, March 23, 1908.
29. Lenin, Collected Works, XXIV: 170, n24.
30. Lenin, Collected Works, XXVII: 135.
31. Sakwa, “The Commune State in Moscow.”
32. Warth, The Allies, 159. The head of the Provisional Government chancellery, when asked if he could provide
a car for Kerensky’s flight from Russia, thought it a ruse by a thief to steal one! Startsev, “Begstvo Kerenskogo”; Medlin and Powers, V. D. Nabokov, 157–8. Kerensky reached Tsarskoe Selo (and its crucial radio transmitter), but had to retreat farther, to Pskov (Northern Front Headquarters), where Nicholas II had abdicated. Brief fighting broke out in the Pulkovo Heights near Petrograd on October 30, but anti-Bolshevik forces were easily turned back. Kerensky never returned to Petrograd.
33. P. N. Krasnov, “Na vnutrennom fronte,” in Gessen, Arkhiv Russkoi revoliutsii, I: 148–51; Kerensky, The Catastrophe, 340–3; Daniels, Red October, 205–6.
34. Novaia zhizn’, October 30, 1917: 3.
35. Izvestiia, November 3, 1917: 5; Kerensky, Russia and History’s Turning Point, 443–6.
36. Novaia zhizn’, October 30, 1917: 3; Delo naroda, Ocotber 30, 1917: 2; Izvestiia, October 30, 1917: 2; Williams, Through the Russian Revolution, 119–49. See also Reed, Ten Days [1919], 193–207; and Gindin, Kak bol’sheviki ovladeli gosudarstvennym bankom.
37. Malyshev, Oborona Petrograda.
38. De Lon, “Stalin and Social Democracy,” 257–8.
39. Novaia zhizn’, October 30, 1917: 2; Keep, Debate on Soviet Power, 44–5; Vompe, Dni oktiabrskoi revoliutsii i zheleznodorozhniki, 10.
40. Izvestiia, October 31, 1917: 7–8; Avdeev, Revoliutsiia 1917 goda, VI: 23, 45.
41. Protokoly Tsentral’nogo komiteta RSDRP (b) 1958, 122–3. The Bolsheviks and the October Revolution: Central Committee Minutes, 127–8.
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