Eyewitnesses to the Russian Revolution by Todd Chretien

Author:Todd Chretien
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Published: 2017-09-14T04:00:00+00:00

24.

The Soviets Take Power

John Reed was one of the best-known radical journalists in the United States prior to World War I. He supported the Industrial Workers of the World, rode with Pancho Villa during the Mexican Revolution, and helped found the Communist Labor Party in 1919 upon returning from Russia. His book Ten Days that Shook the World introduced tens of thousands to the October Revolution and included an introduction from Lenin himself. “Unreservedly do I recommend it to the workers of the world,” wrote Lenin. “Here is a book which I should like to see published in millions of copies and translated into all languages. It gives a truthful and most vivid exposition of the events so significant to the comprehension of what really is the Proletarian Revolution and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.” These selections focus on the debate between the Bolsheviks, Left SRs, Mensheviks, and others at the opening of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets.1

October 24—The fall of the Provisional Government

The massive facade of Smolny blazed with lights as we drove up, and from every street converged upon it streams of hurrying shapes dim in the gloom. Automobiles and motorcycles came and went; an enormous elephant-colored armored automobile, with two red flags flying from the turret, lumbered out with screaming siren. It was cold, and at the outer gate the Red Guards had built themselves a bonfire. At the inner gate, too, there was a blaze, by the light of which the sentries slowly spelled out our passes and looked us up and down. The canvas covers had been taken off the four rapid-fire guns on each side of the doorway, and the ammunition belts hung snakelike from their breeches. A dun herd of armored cars stood under the trees in the courtyard, engines going. The long, bare, dimly-illuminated halls roared with the thunder of feet, calling, shouting. […] There was an atmosphere of recklessness. A crowd came pouring down the staircase, workers in black blouses and round black fur hats, many of them with guns slung over their shoulders, soldiers in rough dirt-colored coats and grey fur shapki pinched flat, a leader or so—Lunacharsky, Kameniev—hurrying along in the center of a group all talking at once, with harassed anxious faces, and bulging portfolios under their arms. The extraordinary meeting of the Petrograd Soviet was over. I stopped Kameniev—a quick moving little man, with a wide, vivacious face set close to his shoulders. Without preface he read in rapid French a copy of the resolution just passed:

The Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, saluting the victorious Revolution of the Petrograd proletariat and garrison, particularly emphasizes the unity, organization, discipline, and complete cooperation shown by the masses in this rising; rarely has less blood been spilled, and rarely has an insurrection succeeded so well […]

“You consider it won then?”

He lifted his shoulders. “There is much to do. Horribly much. It is just beginning.”

On the landing I met Riazanov, vice-president of the Trade Unions, looking black and biting his grey beard.

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