Part 4 (2/2)

One after another, from early morning, the Reserve Guard battalions mutinied before they were led out of the barracks, continuing what the 4th Company of the Pavlovsky regiment had begun the day before. In the doc.u.ments, records, memoirs, this grandiose event of human history has left but a pale, dim imprint. The oppressed ma.s.ses, even when they rise to the very heights of creative action, tell little of themselves and write less. And the overpowering rapture of the victory later erases memory's work. Let us take up what records there are.

The soldiers of the Volynsky regiment were the .rst to revolt. As early as seven o'clock in the morning a battalion commander disturbed Khabalov with a telephone call and this threatening news: the training squad-that is, the unit especially relied on to put down the insurrection-had refused to march out, its commander was killed, or had shot himself in front of the troops. The latter version, by the way, was soon rejected. Having burned their bridges behind them, the Volintzi hastened to broaden the base of the insurrection. In that lay their only salvation. They rushed into the neighbouring barracks of the Litovsky and Preobrazhensky regiments ”calling out” the soldiers, as strikers go from factory to factory calling out the workers. Some time after, Khabalov received a report that the Volynsky regiment had not only refused to surrender their ri.es when ordered by the general, but together with the Litovsky and Preobrazhensky regiments-and what is even more alarming, ”having joined the workers”-had wrecked the barracks of the political police. This meant that yesterday's experiment of the Pavlovtsi had not been in vain: the insurrection had found leaders, and at the same time a plan of action.

In the early hours of the 27th, the workers thought the solution of the problem of the insurrection in.nitely more distant than it really was. It would be truer to say that they saw the problem as almost entirely ahead of them, when it was really, nine-tenths behind. The revolutionary pressure of the workers on the barracks fell in with the existing revolutionary movement of the soldiers to the streets. During the day these two mighty currents united to wash out clean and carry away the walls, the roof, and later the whole groundwork of the old structure.

Chugurin was among the .rst to appear at the Bolshevik headquarters, a ri.e in his hands, a cartridge belt over his shoulder,” all spattered up, but beaming and triumphant.” Why shouldn't he beam? Soldiers with ri.es in their hands are coming over to us! In some places the workers had succeeded in uniting with the soldiers, penetrating the barracks and receiving ri.es and cartridges. The Vyborgtsi together with the most daring of the soldiers, outlined a plan of action: seize the police stations where the armed police have entrenched themselves; disarm all policemen; free the workers held in the police stations, and the political prisoners in the gaols; rout the government troops in the city proper; unite with the still inactive troops and with the workers of other districts.

The Moscow regiment joined the uprising not without inner struggle. Amazing that there was so little struggle among the regiments. The monarchist command impotently fell away from the soldier ma.s.s, and either hid in the cracks or hastened to change its colours. ”At two o'clock,” remembers Korolev, a worker from the ”a.r.s.enal” factory, ”when the Moscow regiment marched out, we armed ourselves.... We took a revolver and ri.e apiece, picked out a group of soldiers who came up some of them asked us to take command and tell them what to do, and set out for Tikhvinskaia street to shoot up the police station.” The workers, it seems, did not have a moment's trouble telling the soldiers ”what to do.”

One after another came the joyful reports of victories. Our own armoured cars have appeared! With red .ags .ying, they are spreading terror through the districts to all who have not yet submitted. Now it will no longer be necessary to crawl under the belly of a Cossack's horse. The revolution is standing up to its full height.

Toward noon Petrograd again became the .eld of military action; ri.es and machine guns rang out everywhere. It was not easy to tell who was shooting or where. One thing was clear: the past and the future were exchanging shots. There was much casual .ring; young boys were shooting off revolvers unexpectedly acquired. The a.r.s.enal was wrecked.

”They say that several tens of thousands of Brownings alone were carried off” From the burning buildings of the District Court and the police stations pillars of smoke rolled to the sky. At some points clashes and skirmishes thickened into real battles. On Sampsonievsky boulevard the workers came up to a barrack occupied by the bicycle men, some of whom crowded into the gate.” Why don't you get on the move, comrades?” The soldiers smiled ”not a good smile,” one of the partic.i.p.ants testi.es and remained silent, while the of.cers rudely commanded the workers to move on. The bicyclists, along with the cavalry, proved to be the most conservative part of, the army in the February, as in the October revolution. A crowd of workers and revolutionary soldiers soon gathered round the fence. ”We must pull out the suspicious battalion!” Someone reported that the armoured cars had been sent for; perhaps there was no other way of getting these bicyclists, who had set up the machine guns. But it is hard for a crowd to wait; it is anxiously impatient, and quite right in its impatience. Shots rang out from both sides. But the board fence stood in the way, dividing the soldiers from the revolution. The attackers decided to break down the fence. They broke down part of it and set .re to the rest. About twenty barracks came into view. The bicyclists were concentrated in two or three of them. The empty barracks were set .re to at once. Six years later Kayurov would recall: ”The .aming barracks and the wreckage of the fence around them, the .re of machine guns and ri.es, the excited faces of the besiegers, a truck load of armed revolutionises das.h.i.+ng up, and .nally an armoured car arriving with its gleaming gun mouths, made a memorable and magni.cent picture.” This was the old czarist, feudal, priestly, police Russia burning down, barracks and fences and all, expiring in .re and smoke, spewing out its soul with the cough of machine-gun shots. No wonder Kayurov, and tens, hundreds, thousands of Kayurovs, rejoiced! The arriving armoured car .red several sh.e.l.ls at the barracks where the bicyclists and of.cers were barricaded. The commander was killed. The of.cers, tearing off their epaulets and other insignia, .ed through the vegetable gardens adjoining the barracks; the rest gave them selves up. This was probably the biggest encounter of the day.

The military revolt had meanwhile become epidemic. Only those did not mutiny that day who did not get around to it. Toward evening the s.e.m.e.novsky regiment joined in, a regiment notorious for its brutal putting down of the Moscow uprising of 1905. Eleven years had not pa.s.sed in vain. Together with the cha.s.seurs, the s.e.m.e.novtsi late at night ”called out” the lzmailovtsi, whom the command were holding locked up in their barracks. This regiment, which on December 3, 1905 had surrounded and arrested the .rst Petrograd soviet, was even now considered one of the most backward.

The czarist garrison of the capital, numbering 150,000 soldiers, was dwindling, melting, disappearing. By night it no longer existed.

After the morning's news of the revolt of the regiments, Khabalov still tried to offer resistance, sending against the revolution a composite regiment of about a thousand men with the most drastic orders. But the fate of that regiment has become quite a mystery. ”Something impossible begins to happen on that day,” the incomparable Khabalov relates after the revolution, ” . . . the regiment starts, starts under a brave, a resolute of.cer (mean-ing Colonel Kutyepov), but ... there are no results.” Companies sent after that regiment also vanished, leaving no trace. The general began to draw up reserves on Palace Square, ”but there were no cartridges and nowhere to get them.” This is taken from Khabalov's au-thentic testimony before the Commission of Inquiry of the Provisional Government. What became of the punitive regiments? It is not hard to guess that as soon as they marched out they were drowned in the insurrection. Workers, women, youths, rebel soldiers, swarmed around Khabalov's troops on all sides, either considering the regiment their own or striving to make it so, and did not let them move any way but with the mult.i.tude. To .ght with this thick swarming, inexhaustible, all-penetrating ma.s.s, which now feared nothing, was as easy as to fence in dough.

Together with reports of more and more military revolts, came demands for reliable troops to put down the rebels, to defend the telephone building, the Litovsky Castle, the Mariinsky Palace, and other even more sacred places. Khabalov demanded by telephone that loyal troops be sent from Kronstadt, but the commandant replied that he himself feared for the fortress. Khabalov did not yet know that the insurrection had spread to the neigh-bouring Garrisons. The general attempted, or pretended to attempt, to convert the Winter Palace into a redoubt, but the plan was immediately abandoned as unrealisable, and the last handful of ”loyal” troops was transferred to the Admiralty. Here at last the dictator occupied himself with a most important and urgent business he printed for publication the last two governmental decrees on the retirement of Protopopov ”owing to illness,” and on the state of siege in Petrograd. With the latter he really had to hurry, for several hours later Khabalov's army lifted the ”siege” and departed from the Admiralty for their homes. It was due only to ignorance that the revolution had not already on the evening of the 27th arrested this formidably empowered but not at all formidable general. This was done without any complications the next day.

Can it be that that was the whole resistance put up by the redoubtable Russian Empire in the face of mortal danger? Yet that was about all-in spite of its great experience in crus.h.i.+ng the people and its meticulously elaborated plans. When the came to themselves later, the monarchists explained the case of the February victory of the people by the peculiar char-acter of the Petrograd garrison. But the whole further course of the revolution refutes this explanation. True, at the beginning of the fatal year, the camarilla had already suggested to the czar the advisability of renovating the garrison. The czar had easily allowed himself to be persuaded that the cavalry of the Guard, considered especially loyal, ”had been under .re long enough” and had earned a rest in its Petrograd barracks. However, after respectful representations from the front, the czar agreed that four regiments of the cavalry Guard should be replaced by three crews of the naval Guard. According to Protopopov's version, this replacement was made by the command without the czar's consent, and with treach-erous design: ” . . . The sailors are recruited from among the workers and const.i.tute the most revolutionary element of' the forces.” But this is sheer nonsense. The highest of.cers of the Guard, and particularly the cavalry, were simply cutting out too good a career for themselves at the front to want to come back. Besides that, they must have thought with some dread of the punitive functions to be allotted to them. In these they would be at the head of troops totally different after their experience at the front from what they used to be on the parade grounds of the capital. As events at the front soon proved, the horse Guard at this time no longer differed from the rest of the cavalry, and the naval Guard, which was transferred to the capital, did not play an active part in the February revolution. The whole truth is that the fabric of the rgime had completely decayed; there was not a live thread left.

During the 27th of February the crowd liberated without bloodshed from the many gaols of the capital, all political prisoners-among them the patriotic group of the Military and Industrial Committee, which had been arrested on the 26th of January, and the members of the Petrograd Committee of the Bolsheviks, seized by Khabalov forty hours earlier. A political division occurred immediately outside the prison gates. The Menshevik-patriots set out for the Duma, where functions and places were to be a.s.signed; the Bolsheviks marched to the districts, to the workers and soldiers, to .nish with them the conquest of the capital. The enemy must have no time to breathe. A revolution, more than any other enterprise, has to be carried through to the end.

It is impossible to say who thought of leading the mutinous troops to the Tauride Palace. This political line of march was dictated by the whole situation. Naturally all the elements of radicalism not bound up with the ma.s.ses gravitated toward the Tauride Palace as the cen-tre of oppositional information. Quite probably these elements, having experienced on the 27th a sudden injection of vital force, became the guides of the mutinous soldiers. This was an honourable ro1e and now hardly a dangerous one. In view of its location, Potemkin's palace was well .tted to be the centre of the revolution. The Tauride' is separated by just one street from the whole military community, containing the barracks of the Guard and a series of military inst.i.tutions. It is true that for many years this part of the city was considered both by the government and the revolutionises to be the military stronghold of the monarchy. And so it was. But now everything had changed. The soldiers' rebellion had begun in the Guard sector. The mutinous troops had only to cross the street in order to reach the park of the Tauride Palace, which in turn was only one block from the Neva River. And beyond the Neva lies the Vyborg district, the very cauldron of the revolution. The workers need only cross Alexander's Bridge, or if that is up, walk over the ice of the river, to reach the Guards' barracks or the Tauride Palace. Thus the heterogeneous, and in its origins contradictory, north east triangle of Petrograd-the Guards, Potemkin's palace, and the giant factories-closely interlocked-became the .eld of action of the revolution.

In the Tauride Palace various centres are already created, or at least sketched out-among them the .eld staff of the insurrection. It has no very serious character. The revolutionary of.cers-that is, those of.cers who had somehow or other, even though by mistake, got con-nected with the revolution in the past, but who have safely slept through the insurrection-hasten after the victory to call attention to themselves, or upon summons from others arrive ”to serve the revolution.” They survey the situation with profound thought and pessimisti-cally shake their heads. These tumultuous crowds of soldiers, often unarmed, are totally un.t for battle. No artillery, no machine guns, no communications, no commanders. One strong regiment is all the enemy needs! To be sure, just now the revolutionary crowds pre-vent any planned manoeuvres in the streets. But the workers will go home for the night, the residents will quiet down, the town will be emptied. If Khabalov were to strike with a strong regiment at the barracks, he might become master of the situation. This idea, by the way, will meet us in different versions throughout all the stages of the revolution. ”Give me a strong regiment,” gallant colonels will more than once exclaim to their friends, ”and in two seconds I will clean up all this mess!” And some of them, as we shall see, will make the attempt. But they will all have to repeat Khabalov's words: ”The regiment starts, starts' under a brave of.cer, but ... there are no results.”

Yes, and how could there be results? The most reliable of all possible forces had been the police and the gendarmes, and the training squads of certain regiments. But these proved as pitiful before the a.s.sault of the real ma.s.ses as the Battalion of St. George and the of.cers' training schools were to prove eight months later in October. Where could the monarchy get that salvation regiment, ready and able to enter a prolonged and desperate duel with a city of two million? The revolution seems defenceless to these verbally so en-terprising colonels, because it is still terri.cally chaotic. Everywhere aimless movements, con.icting currents, whirlpools of people, individuals astounded as though suddenly gone deaf, unfastened trench coats, gesticulating students, soldiers without ri.es, ri.es without soldiers, boys .ring into the air, a thousand-voiced tumult, hurricanes of wild rumour, false alarms, false rejoicing. Enough, you would think, to lift a sword over all that chaos, and it would scatter apart and leave never a trace. But that is a crude error of vision. It is only seeming chaos. Beneath it is proceeding an irresistible crystallisation of the ma.s.ses around new axes. These innumerable crowds have not yet clearly de.ned what they want, but they are saturated with an acid hatred of what they do not want. Behind them is an irreparable historic avalanche. There is no way back. Even if there were someone to scatter them, they would be gathering again in an hour, and the second .ood would be more furious and bloodier than the .rst. After the February days the atmosphere of Petrograd becomes so red hot that every hostile military detachment arriving in that mighty forge, or even coming near to it, scorched by its breath, is transformed, loses con.dence, becomes paralysed, and throws itself upon the mercy of the victor without a struggle. To-morrow General Ivanov, sent from the front by the czar with a battalion of the. Knights of St. George, will .nd this out. In .ve months the same fate will befall General Kornilov, and in eight months it will happen to Kerensky.

On the streets in the preceding days the Cossacks had seemed the most open to persua-sion; it was because they were the most abused. But when it came to the actual insurrection, the cavalry once more justi.ed its conservative reputation and lagged behind the infantry. On the 27th, it was still preserving the appearance of watchful neutrality. Though Khabalov no longer relied upon it, the revolution still feared it.

The fortress of Peter and Paul, which stands on an island in the Neva opposite the Winter Palace and the palaces of the grand dukes, remained a puzzle. Behind its walls the garrison of the fortress was, or seemed to be, a little world completely s.h.i.+elded from outside in.uences. The fortress had no permanent artillery except for that antiquated cannon which daily announced the noon, hour to Petrograd. But to day .eld guns are set up on the walls and aimed at the bridge. What are they getting ready for? The Tauride staff has worried all night what to do about the fortress, and in the fortress they were worrying what will the revolution do with us? By morning the puzzle is solved: ”On condition that of.cers remain inviolable,” the fortress will surrender to the Tauride Palace. Having a.n.a.lysed the situation-not so dif.cult a thing to do-the of.cers of the fort hastened to forestall the inevitable march of events.

Towards evening of the 27th, a stream of soldiers, workers, students and miscellaneous people .ows toward the Tauride, Palace. Here they hope to .nd those who know every-thing to get information and instructions. From all sides ammunition is being carried by armfuls into the palace, and deposited in a room that has been converted into an a.r.s.enal. At nightfall, the revolutionary staff settles down to work. It sends out detachments to guard the railway stations, and despatches reconnoitring squads wherever danger lurks. The soldiers carry out eagerly and without a murmur, although very unsystematically, the orders of the new authorities. But they always demand a written order. The initiative in this probably came from the fragments of the military staff which had remained with the troops, or from the military clerks. But they were right; it is necessary to bring order immediately into the chaos. The staff, as well as the new born Soviet, had as yet no seals. The revolution has still to .t itself out with the implements of bureaucratic management. In time this will be done-alas, too well.

The revolution begins a search for enemies. Arrests are made all over the city-”arbitrarily,” as the liberals will say reproachfully later. But the whole revolution is arbitrary. Streams of people are brought into the Tauride under arrest such people as the Chairman of the State Council, ministers, policemen, secret service men, the ”pro-German” countess, whole broods of gendarme of.cers. Several statesmen, such as Protopopov, will come of their own volition to be arrested: it is safer so. ”The walls of the chamber which had resounded to hymns in praise of absolutism, now heard but sobbing and sighs,” the countess will sub-sequently relate. ”An arrested general sank down exhausted on a near-by chair. Several members of the Duma kindly offered me a cup of tea. Shaken to the depths of his soul, the general was saying excitedly: Countess, we are witnessing the death of a great country.”

Meanwhile, the great country, which had no intention of dying, marched by these people of the past, stamping its boots, clanging the b.u.t.ts of its ri.es, rending the air with its shouts, and stepping all over their feet. A revolution is always distinguished by impoliteness, probably because the ruling cla.s.ses did not take the trouble in good season to teach the people .ne manners.

The Tauride became the temporary .eld headquarters, governmental centre, a.r.s.enal, and prison-fortress of the revolution, which had not yet wiped the blood and sweat from its face. Into this whirlpool some enterprising enemies also made their way. A disguised captain of gendarmes was accidentally discovered taking down notes in a corner-not for history, but for the court-martials. The soldiers and workers wanted to end him right there. But people from the ”staff” interfered, and easily led the gendarme out of the crowd. The revolution was then still good-natured, trustful and kind-hearted. It will become ruthless only after a long series of treasons, deceits and b.l.o.o.d.y trials.

The .rst night of the triumphant revolution was full of alarms. The improvised com-missars of the railway terminals and other points, most of them chosen haphazard from the intelligentsia through personal connection, upstarts and chance acquaintances of the revolution-non-commissioned of.cers, especially of worker origin, would have been more useful-got nervous, saw danger on all sides, nagged the soldiers and ceaselessly telephoned to the Tauride asking for reinforcements. But in the Tauride too they were nervous. They were telephoning. They were sending out reinforcements which for the most part did not arrive. ”Those who receive orders,” said a member of the Tauride night staff, ”do not execute them; those who act, act without orders.”

The workers' districts act without orders. The Revolutionary chiefs who have led out their factories, seized the police stations, ”called out” the soldiers and wrecked the strongholds of the counter-revolution, do not hurry to the Tauride Palace, to the staffs, to the administrative centres. On the contrary, they jerk their heads in that direction with irony and distrust: ”Those brave boys are getting in early to divide the game they didn't kill-before it's even killed.” Worker-Bolsheviks, as well as the best workers of the other Left parties, spend their days on the streets, their nights in the district headquarters, keeping in touch with the barracks and preparing to-morrow's work. On the .rst night of victory they continue, and they enlarge, the same work they have been at for the whole .ve days and nights. They are the young bones of the revolution, still soft, as all revolutions are in the .rst days.

On the 27th, Nabokov, already known to us as a member of the Kadet centre, and at that time working-a legalised deserter-at General Headquarters, went to his of.ce as usual and stayed until three o'clock, knowing nothing of the events. Toward evening shots were heard on the Morskaia. Nabokov listened to them from his apartment. Armoured cars dashed along, individual soldiers and sailors ran past, sidling along the wall. The respected liberal observed them from the side windows of his vestibule. ”The telephone continued to function, and my friends, I remember, kept me in touch with what was going on during the day. At the usual time we went to bed.” This man will soon become one of the inspi-rators of the revolutionary (!) Provisional Government, occupying the position of General Administrator. To-morrow an unknown old man will approach him on the street-a book-keeper, perhaps, or a teacher-bow low and remove his hat, and say to him: ”Thank you for all that you have done for the people.” Nabokov, with modest pride, will relate the incident himself.

Nevsky Prospect, the main avenue of the city. [Trans.]

Vyborgtsi means the men of the Vyborg district the workers just as Pavlovtsi means men of the Pavlovsky regiment. In the singular, Pavlovets. [Trans.]

CHAPTER 8.

WHO LED THE FEBRUARY.

INSURRECTION?.

Lawyers and journalists belonging to the cla.s.ses damaged by the revolution wasted a good deal of ink subsequently trying to prove that what happened in February was essentially a petticoat rebellion, backed up afterwards by a soldiers' mutiny and given out for a revolu-tion. Louis XVI in his day also tried to think that the capture of the Bastille was a rebellion, but they respectfully explained to him that it was a revolution. Those who lose by a rev-olution are rarely inclined to call it by its real name. For that name, in spite of the efforts of spiteful reactionaries, is surrounded in the historic memory of mankind with a halo of liberation from all shackles and all prejudices. The privileged cla.s.ses of every age, as also their lackeys, have always tried to declare the revolution which overthrew them, in contrast to past revolutions, a mutiny, a riot, a revolt of the rabble. Cla.s.ses which have outlived themselves are not distinguished by originality.

Soon after the 27th of February attempts were also made to liken the revolution to the military coup d'etat of the Young Turks, of which, as we know, they had been dream-ing not a little in the upper circles of the Russian bourgeoisie. This comparison was so hopeless, however, that it was seriously opposed even in one of the bourgeois papers. Tugan-Baranovsky, an economist who had studied Marx in his youth, a Russian variety of Sombart, wrote on March 10 in the Birzhevoe Vedomosti: ”The Turkish revolution con-sisted in a victorious uprising of the army, prepared and carried out by the leaders of the army; the soldiers were merely obedient executives of the plans of their of.cers. But the regiments of the Guard which on February 27 overthrew the Russian throne, came without their of.cers. Not the army but the workers began the insurrection; not the generals but the soldiers came to the State Duma. The soldiers supported the workers not because they were obediently ful.lling the commands of their of.cers, but because . . . they felt themselves blood brothers of the workers as a cla.s.s compos

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