Foremost among the Party organisations in the preparations for the assault was the Petrograd Committee. The leading workers of the Petrograd organisations were familiar with Lenin’s letters on the insurrection. Lenin had already addressed himself to the Petrograd Committee on more than one occasion. The Committee of the Vyborg District, where Lenin went to live at the beginning of October, had these letters duplicated. The workers read them in groups and copied them by hand. Intense work was carried on in rallying the rank and file of the Party membership around Lenin’s call for preparation for insurrection.
On October 5, the Petrograd Committee discussed Lenin’s letter to the Bolsheviks in the two capitals. M. M. Lashevich, who subsequently became a prominent Trotskyite, opposed the idea of insurrection. He advanced the same arguments as those advanced by Kamenev and Zinoviev: our forces were inadequate; Petrograd and Finland were not the whole of Russia; the peasants would not follow us, and even if they did and were willing to deliver grain, we would not be able to transport it to the towns; economically, industrially and as regards food supplies, the country was heading for the abyss; power was coming into our hands, but we must not precipitate events.
In other words, the waverers stood for a policy of drift. Instead of organising the insurrection, they advocated waiting to see how things would develop; instead of rapidly and perseveringly mobilising all forces, they advocated drifting with the stream; instead of leading the revolution, they advocated trailing in its wake.
Lashevich supported Trotsky’s proposal to postpone the insurrection until the opening of the Congress of Soviets, but he frankly advanced the arguments which Trotsky had endeavoured to conceal. These arguments clearly revealed how identical the position of Zinoviev and Kamenev was with that of Trotsky. One merged with the other. When dislodged from one platform its authors took shelter on the other.
The Petrograd Committee sternly rebuffed the opponents of insurrection.
“The situation at present,” said M. I. Kalinin, “is that we are heading for the seizure of power. We shall not capture power by peaceful means. It is hard for us to say whether we shall be able to commence operations tomorrow. But we must not miss the present opportunity to wage the struggle. The question of seizing power stands squarely before us. Our only problem is to decide on the strategical moment for the assault.”[1]
The general temper of the Petrograd Committee was expressed by Comrade Molotov in the following precise and lucid terms:
“Our task at the present time is not to restrain the masses, but to choose the most opportune moment for capturing power. Lenin’s theses state that we must not allow ourselves to be fascinated by dates, but must choose the opportune moment for capturing power; that we should not wait until the masses break into anarchy. It is impossible to determine the moment with precision. Perhaps the moment will come when the Provisional Government removes to Moscow. But we must be prepared for action at any moment.”[2]
The Petrograd Committee resolved to convene a City Conference of the Bolsheviks in the capital. This Conference, the third that year, was in session from October 7 to 11. About 50,000 Party members were represented: over 7,000 in the Narva District, slightly under 7,000 in the Vyborg District, 3,000 in the Petersburg District, etc., etc. The general situation was so tense that the Conference was held in semi-secrecy, no visitors being allowed to attend. The Conference revealed that only a few individuals in the Petrograd organisations were opposed to insurrection. The Petrograd Bolsheviks marched in step with the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party.
Lenin addressed a letter to the delegates at the Conference setting forth his arguments in favour of insurrection. The leader’s call met with an enthusiastic response. On October 10 the Conference adopted a resolution which fully supported Lenin’s line. The resolution stated:
“The moment has arrived for the last decisive struggle which will determine the fate not only of the Russian, but of the world revolution. In view of this, the Conference declares that only if the Kerensky government, together with the spurious Council of the Republic, is superceded by a Workers’ and Peasants’ Revolutionary Government will it be possible: a) to transfer the land to the peasants . . . b) immediately propose a just peace. . . .”[3]
This resolution was adopted on the very same evening that the Central Committee endorsed the call for insurrection.
The Petrograd Committee of the Bolshevik Party resolutely set to work to prepare for the insurrection. Members of the Committee visited the districts, inspected the Red Guard and procured arms. In the Vyborg District, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov (Skryabin), was active. An old Bolshevik, who had served several terms in exile, Comrade Molotov worked on the editorial board of Zvezda and Pravda, the first legal Bolshevik newspapers. During the war he was in exile in Eastern Siberia, but in 1916 he escaped to Petrograd, where he was co-opted as a member of the Bureau of the Central Committee of the Party. During the February Revolution he led the Petrograd Bolsheviks. It was on his initiative that the representatives of the workers and soldiers were merged in a single Soviet.
At the period of which we are writing, Comrade Molotov was a member of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet and of the Petrograd Committee of the Bolshevik Party.
When the Party set its course for armed insurrection Molotov was elected a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee and placed in charge of the Education Department. While directing agitational work among the garrison, he continued his work on the District as well as on the Petrograd Committee. He familiarised the active Bolsheviks in Petrograd with the contents of Lenin’s letters and worked to secure the defeat of the opponents of insurrection.
Andrei Andreyevich Andreyev was active among the metal-workers of Petrograd, who were entirely under the influence of the Bolsheviks and rendered enormous assistance in organising the Red Guards.
On October 15 the Petrograd Committee of the Party discussed the Party’s call for immediate insurrection. There were 35 comrades present at this meeting, representing all the districts of the city, the Central Council of Trade Unions, the City Duma and the national sections of the Party organisation in the capital. The question under discussion was not whether action should be taken—that was already settled—but the practical problems connected with the insurrection. After hearing a statement on the resolution which had been adopted by the Central Committee, the meeting heard the reports of delegates from the various districts.
The representatives of the Vyborg District confidently stated: “The masses will support us.” The representatives from the Vasilyevsky Island District stated that military training was in full swing at all the factories and mills in that district.
M. I. Kalinin reported on the contacts that were being established with the armed forces:
“The Army Committees,” he said, “are not in our hands . . . but delegations come from the army independently of the army organisations and put forward demands which indicate that a militant spirit prevails among them.”[4]
The representatives of the Obukhov District stated:
“. . . formerly, the Obukhov Works was a stronghold of the Defencists. Now, however, sentiment has changed in our favour. The meetings . . . are attended by five to seven thousand men. . . . Two thousand men have joined the Red Guards. We have 500 rifles, a machine gun and an armoured car. . . . Our workers will undoubtedly come out in response to the call of the Petrograd Soviet.”[5]
Eino Rahja stated very emphatically on behalf of the Finns: “The feeling among the Finns is: the sooner the better.”[6]
The Lettish representatives reported that their organisation had 1,200 members. The workers had been enlisted in the Red Guard in their respective factories.
All the districts were seething with activity. The masses were impatiently waiting for the Party’s call:
“To arms!”
Summing up the reports Kalinin stated:
“I am convinced that the people will display their constructive ability in the very near future.”
The general feeling was such that even those who only recently had been wavering now voted with the entire organisation in favour of insurrection.
The Petrograd Committee resolved immediately to call together all the active Party workers and to acquaint them with the slogans for their daily militant agitation. On organisational questions it was resolved:
1. to set up a small sub-committee;
2. to arrange for members to be on constant duty at the centre and in the localities;
3. to organise a military information centre at the Headquarters of every District Committee;
4. that all the districts establish closer connections with the factory committees and the Secretariat of the Central Committee;
5. to improve communications with the railwaymen, postal workers and all mass working-class organisations;
6. to intensify agitation and accelerate the mass training of the workers in the use of arms;
7. to improve communications between the district Party organisations and the army units.
In conformity with the decisions of the Petrograd Committee, its Executive Sub-Committee elected an Insurrection Committee of three and instructed it to inspect the army barracks and military schools and take stock of the available arms and munitions.
This was followed by the formation of a General Committee of Insurrection consisting of members of the Central Committee, the Petrograd Committee and the military organisation of the Bolshevik Party.
The District Committees of the Petrograd Party organisation soon buzzed with intense activity.
The Petrograd Committee had called for the “intensification of agitation,” and, in response, the calls to the workers in the factories became louder and more insistent. At the leading factories meetings were held every day. At the Pipe Works, where M. I. Kalinin was a member of the factory committee, 20,000 workers had only recently followed the Socialist-Revolutionaries. Now Bolshevik speakers were frequent visitors at the plant. Feeling among the workers soon underwent a change. They listened to the Bolshevik speakers with close attention, and every now and again they would ask: “When are the Bolsheviks going to take action?”
The Petrograd Committee of the Bolshevik Party had called for “closer contact with the masses of the soldiers,” and accordingly, the District Party Committees conducted energetic work among the army units. The Socialist-Revolutionaries had strongly entrenched themselves in one of the companies of the Izmailovsky Regiment and the men continued to pass defencist resolutions. The District Committee sent some of its workers to the company. In the evenings factory workers began to gather near the barracks and explain to the soldiers the meaning of the events that were rapidly maturing. At first the soldiers would not give the Party’s speakers a hearing, but soon their plain and convincing arguments proved effective, and a week or two later the soldiers themselves expressed surprise that they had allowed the compromisers to lead them by the nose so long.
The Bolsheviks’ strongholds were the big plants in the Vyborg, Narva and other working-class districts of Petrograd. The Vyborg District had a special Agitators’ Bureau which sent speakers to the factories at their request. Non-party workers came to the Bureau in quest of literature, and every now and again Red Guardsmen arrived with requests for instructors to be sent to their units. From here groups of men went off for rifle practice. The offices of the District Committee, which shared premises with the Staff of the Red Guard in No. 13, Lesnoi Prospect, were always crowded with people.
The three rooms which the Committee occupied became inadequate and so it removed to the premises of what was formerly the “Quiet Valley” Tavern at No. 33, Sampsonievsky Prospect, where it occupied two floors. On the ground floor tea-rooms were arranged for Red Guardsmen. The premises, consisting of two large halls, one on each floor, and of several small rooms, had the advantage of being in the very centre of the district.
At the factories, the members of the District Committee arranged for military training for the workers, and for guards to be on constant duty. Increased efforts were made to procure arms and military equipment.
The workers concealed arms in the most unlikely places. On Okhta Island, for instance, arms were kept in premises which bore the sign “Cooperative Store.” In this store there was only one case of macaroni. All the other cases were filled with rifles and cartridges.
The Vyborg District Committee was in constant communication with the Petrograd Committee and with the members of the Central Committee. Representatives of the District Committee were regularly on duty at the Smolny.
The premises of the Vyborg District Committee were open day and night. The members of the Committee, of the District Soviet and of the Staff of the Red Guard, often worked whole nights at a stretch. They received information about the temper of the workers in the factories, heard reports from speakers as to how their meetings had gone off, counted up their fighting forces and checked up on the progress made in recruiting men for the Red Guard.
The Vyborg District became a Bolshevik fortress. It was not by mere chance that the Central Committee put Lenin in the care of the Vyborg Red Guards.
“An outstanding role in the October insurrection was played by the Baltic sailors and the Red Guards of the Vyborg District. In view of the extraordinary daring of these men, the role of the Petrograd garrison was reduced mainly to that of giving moral and partly military support to the front rank fighters,” such was Stalin’s estimation of the sailors and Red Guardsmen of the Vyborg District.[7]
Nor did preparations lag in the other districts of Petrograd. The Rozhdestvensky District Committee met every three days and at every meeting the first items on the agenda were: reports about the temper prevailing among the factory workers; whom to send, and where, to change the situation in favour of the Bolsheviks. Every day hurried conferences of two or three of the leading members of the Committee were held to arrange for current agitation. Representatives from the big plants were constantly on duty at the Committee’s Headquarters ready to inform all the factories as soon as action became necessary.
The question of armed insurrection as such was not discussed at the meetings of the Committee; the line of the Bolshevik Party was clear to every member without exception. The only question discussed was how to obtain arms, and whom to arm.
An N.C.O. who sympathised with the Bolsheviks acted as instructor in this district and conducted rifle practice every day. Red Guards also came to the District Committee for instructions.
During the last days before the insurrection, regular conferences with the non-party representatives of the factories were held at which the delegates were instructed how to answer the “tricky” questions put by the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. These conferences helped the District Committee to establish connections with wide sections of the workers.
Tension in the district was so high that workers hastened to the Committee even at night to enquire whether the insurrection had commenced.
The District Committees worked with exceptional revolutionary enthusiasm. Everywhere it was felt that the decisive battle was approaching. In all the working-class districts of Petrograd, Revolutionary Military Staffs were formed, which served as the district centres of the insurrection. Workers’ combat groups were formed, armed and trained with feverish intensity.
Soon after the Military Revolutionary Committee was formed in the Vyborg District a similar committee was formed in the Narva-Peterhof District. Its formation was welcomed with enthusiasm by the workers in the district. At the Putilov Works—the largest in the district—the workers in every shop passed resolutions declaring that they would render the Committee full and unreserved support.
The District Military Revolutionary Committee had its headquarters in No. 21, Novosivkovskaya Street, next door to the offices of the District Committee of the Bolshevik Party. It was in constant communication with the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, and issued orders to the local staffs of the Red Guard. On it devolved the task of guarding the district, and all the Red Guard units were subordinate to it. It operated under the direct guidance of the Narva District Committee of the Bolshevik Party.
Several days before the October Revolution a Revolutionary Staff was formed in the Petrograd District. This Staff also worked in close contact with and under the direct guidance of the District Committee of the Bolshevik Party.
The Staff had its headquarters in the premises of the District Soviet and was in command of all the Red Guard units in the district. It inspected the fighting fitness of the units, supplied them with arms, organised the protection of the bridges and kept the local hotbeds of counter-revolution—such as the Vladimirsky and Pavlovsky Military Schools—under constant surveillance.
In the Moskovskaya Zastava District, the Staff of the District Military Revolutionary Committee was endorsed at a joint conference of the District Committee of the Party and representatives of the factories and mills in the district. At this time the overwhelming majority of the workers employed in the largest plants in the district, such as Rechkin’s Works, the Skorokhod Shoe Factory, and others, already unreservedly followed the Bolsheviks. In October the Bolshevik group at the Skorokhod Factory numbered about 500. The District Committee energetically proceeded to form combat groups. Similar activities were conducted by the Revolutionary Staffs in the other districts of the capital.
In all the factories and mills in Petrograd military training of Red Guards was conducted under the supervision of the factory committees, factory groups, and district staffs of the Red Guard. At the Obukhov Works, the Red Guard consisted of 400 men under arms, although the total number of men on the rolls was about 2,000. The men were divided into ten units, each headed by Bolsheviks who conducted regular military training.
In October there were in the Moskovskaya Zastava District 2,000 Red Guards out of a total of 13,000 workers in the district.
At the Putilov Works there were about 1,500 Red Guards. Military training was conducted on definite days, after working hours, under the direction of Bolshevik N.C.O.’s and privates. Hundreds and thousands of splendid organisers and agitators sprang up from the ranks of the workers and soldiers. The factory committee set up a military committee of three, which enlisted men for the Red Guard. In this, the committee found large numbers of voluntary helpers in the various shops of the plant.
In the Vasilyevsky Island District, one of the best organised fighting units was the Red Guard at the Pipe Works. Non-party workers as well as members of the Bolshevik Party willingly undertook military training. On the outbreak of the revolution, the works had at its command a complete battalion, numbering nearly 2,000 men.
One of the outstanding figures in the Vasilyevsky Island District was Vera Slutskaya, a brilliant propagandist and a devoted member of the Bolshevik Party. The Party had assigned her to this district, where she came early every morning and spent the whole day with the workers in the factories. Often she stayed in the district the whole night. She was very popular among the working women in the district who called her “Iron Vera.” One woman worker, in her reminiscences of Vera, related:
“In the morning I would come into the common room and hear somebody say: ‘Our Iron Vera had no sleep again last night. She sat at the table and dozed for a couple of hours, and then rushed off to some factory or other.’”[8]
On the eve of the October Revolution the factories and mills in the Vasilyevsky Island District, like those in the other districts of the capital, bristled with Red Guard bayonets.
In those days the factories resembled armed camps more than industrial enterprises. They teamed with armed men, and the constant rattling of rifle bolts was heard. The Red Guards stood at their machines with cartridge belts strapped across their shoulders. In the factory yards metal sheets were attached to the sides of motor trucks, converting them into improvised armoured cars on which machine guns were mounted.
“We are not scared by the struggle which will break out soon. . . . We are firmly convinced that we shall win.
“Long live the power of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies!”—declared the workers of the Stary Parviainen Works in their resolution.[9]
Similar resolutions were adopted by the workers in the other districts of Petrograd. Everywhere there prevailed an atmosphere of high revolutionary enthusiasm combined with well organised activity and confidence in victory.
The workers prepared for action.
The military preparations of the Petrograd Committee revealed that in the impending decisive battles the proletariat of the capital would have a staunch and experienced leader.
[1] The Proceedings of the First Legal St. Petersburg Committee of the Bolshevik Party of 1917. A Collection of Materials on and Minutes of Proceedings of the St. Petersburg Committee of the R.S.D.L.P. and of its Executive Committee during 1917, together with the speeches of V. I. Lenin, State Publishers, Moscow-Leningrad, 1927, p. 302.
[2] Ibid., p. 303.
[3] The Second and Third Petrograd City Conferences of the Bolshevik Party in July and October 1917. Minutes of Proceedings and Materials, State Publishers, Moscow-Leningrad, 1927, p. 119.
[4] The Proceedings of the First Legal St. Petersburg Committee of the Bolshevik Party in 1917. A Collection of Materials on and Minutes of Proceedings of the St. Petersburg Committee of the R.S.D.L.P. and of its Executive Committee during 1917, together with the speeches of V. I. Lenin, State Publishers, Moscow-Leningrad, 1927, p. 313.
[5] Ibid., p. 314.
[6] Ibid., p. 315.
[7] J. Stalin, On the October Revolution, Articles and Speeches, Party Publishers, Moscow, 1932, p. 20.
[8] Vera Slutskaya (Materials on the History of the Party). Published in Compendium In the Fray. A Collection of Reminiscences of the Heroic Defence put up by the workers of Vasilyevsky Island (1917-32). Published by the Vasilyevsky Island District Soviet, 1932, p. 68.
[9] “Resolution Passed at the General Meeting of Workers of the Stari Parviainen Works on October 12,” Rabochy Put, No. 39, October 18, 1917.
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