Blood on the Snow by Robert Service

Author:Robert Service
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Macmillan

32. SPREADING ‘SOVIET POWER’: CITY SOVIETS AND THE SOVNARKOM COALITION

Across most of Russia on 25 October 1917 life carried on much as usual. It was a dry day in the Totma countryside and Alexander Zamaraev was working at home. The recent snow had melted and he needed to tackle some domestic tasks. His newspaper told him that Kerensky’s government was introducing a state sugar monopoly. Usually sceptical about ministerial announcements, Zamaraev hoped to be able to buy a bag of sugar in town in the near future. Next day he went into the woods and chopped some timber. On 27 October he took his horse into Totma and stocked up on salt and kerosene. There Zamaraev learned that the Bolsheviks had put Provisional Government ministers and other personnel under arrest but that Kerensky was sustaining his effort to suppress the insurrection. Zamaraev was doubtful about his chances: ‘There’s no exercise of strong power. No one is listening to anyone else and nobody is showing compliance.’1

While Vologda province waited mostly undisturbed, Moscow was in tumult. Nikolai Okunev wrote on 27 October: ‘Utter disorder has broken out. Moscow’s streets are decorated with proclamations from two governments: Kerensky’s and Lenin’s. Each talks of the illegality of the other. So this is the situation of your humble son of the fatherland! Who is to have his obedience?’ The Moscow Soviet, led by Bolsheviks, had set up a Military-Revolutionary Committee that included Georgi Lomov who was a Bolshevik Central Committee deputy member. Okunev was no better informed about Bolshevism’s leadership than most people: ‘God only knows who these people are but they’re taking supreme power in Moscow.’ Against the Military-Revolutionary Committee stood an anti-Bolshevik coalition that emerged from the City Duma and formed a Committee of Public Safety that drew some support from the soldiers’ section of the Moscow Soviet.2

Violent clashes took place in the city’s central districts. Several in the Moscow Bolshevik leadership, including Nogin who had resigned from the Central Committee, wished for a grand socialist coalition. But the party’s militant wing rejected any compromise and continued the fight. Their will was stiffened when many Socialist-Revolutionaries rallied to the Committee of Public Safety.

After ten days of hard conflict the Bolsheviks ground out a victory for Sovnarkom’s cause in Russia’s second city.3 In the rest of central and northern Russia, Soviet administrations were also taking control. The great textile centre of Ivanovo-Voznesensk, 200 miles to the north-east of Moscow, already had a duma where the Bolsheviks held a majority. By 4 November the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries had been edged out of the leadership. Novgorod, 150 miles to the south of Petrograd, was declared a Soviet domain by mid-November. In the Urals, a region where the Bolshevik party had risen in strength over late summer, the transition to Bolshevik rule was almost as quick in Yekaterinburg as it had been in the capital.4

Alexander Zamaraev observed the process in Totma. A soviet of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies was created which held its sessions in the crafts school.

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