Chapter X: The Rise of the Proletariat

Winter and the Bolsheviki came to Russia on the same chill breeze, and each brought a strange new world.

Late one afternoon in early November, I walked through the gray streets of Petrograd, and shivered. It was not cold as the thermometer speaks, but cold as a room where death awaits a tardy undertaker--desolate, ugly, forbidding. Autumn was already dead, and the burial long overdue.

The last copper-colored leaf had been stripped from the trees and trampled in the dust some days since. The gray trunks of the birches were nude, and conscious of it. The city was wrapped in a futile cloak of fog, too thin to hide its nakedness, and every barren shrub and battered cornice pleaded with delayed winter to cover its shame.

I turned my face away from the Summer Garden, and walked quickly past. A million years had passed since that spring day, six months before, when the sparrows occupied themselves with house-building in the green leaves, and Vera and Ivan on the benches below devoted themselves to castle-building.

Death was in the air. At that moment I hated the city, which I had come to love as one loves a naughty child for all its faults and virtues, its hopes, passions, potentialities, and failures--for the sum of its stormy, troubled self.

I hurried back to my blue-and-white room, drew the curtains, turned on all the lights, and curled up on the couch to bury myself in a book of verse and shut it out.

The next afternoon at three o’clock I reached for the desk telephone to call the American consul. There was no answer. I pushed the hook up and down, tempting fate in the shape of an irate operator; but it produced no response.

“Has it come?” I asked myself, and laughed at the question. It had been the current one in Petrograd for weeks. Every time the electric light failed, the water was turned off, or some one banged a door or dropped a block of wood, Petrograd jumped automatically to the same conclusion: it has come!

I put down the receiver, straightened the papers on my desk, and started for the censor’s office. A new sentry was pacing up and down outside the hotel. On the Morskaya, in the block below, the armored car in the courtyard of the telephone exchange had moved nearer the sidewalk, and was flaunting its guns ominously at the passing throng.

I hurried on, bent upon getting my letters ready for the weekly express. Mr. Novometzky, the kindly censor, who softened one’s heart to the whole tribe of blue-pencilers, shook his head despairingly when I entered.

“Well, it has come,” he said. “There is trouble again. These are bad times for poor Russia.”

I left him, and walked briskly toward the Nevsky on the trail of a possible courier who would carry my mail across the world to San Francisco. At the Moika a crowd had gathered around a big limousine. Three soldiers held a brief parley with the chauffeur, then one of them climbed into the vacant seat beside him. Farther down the street another car was stopped, then another, and another.

I dined that night with a French aviator, and afterward we stood in the lobby and watched a Battalion of Death file through the whirling door and encamp on the marble floor.

At ten o’clock we wandered into the black streets. The Nevsky was quiet. The Palace square was almost deserted. Along the Neva, at the entrance to each of the bridges, a group of soldiers crowded around a log fire. Here and there in the center of the circle was a small boy, thrilling as small boys do the world over at the lateness of the hour, the bigness of his companions, and the adventure of the moment. A few steps away from each of these groups was a wagon filled with ammunition.

Back in the hotel, I met Baron B., whose title, estates, and sympathies were all bound up in the hope of a return of the monarchy.

“Well, we have got them on the run this time,” he said.

Only a week before I had sat next to him at a dinner where, before my amazed eyes, they toasted the Tsar and sang the old tabooed national anthem. Our host, an Englishman, had introduced the baron as a great officer and an absolutely fearless human being.

“He helped to stop the retreat from Tarnopol on the southwestern front after the July offensive,” he said. “You ought to have seen him lining up those deserters before the firing squad. He made quick work of the bloody cowards.”

I urged the baron to tell me of his experiences, and shuddered as I listened. He had nothing but contempt for Kerensky, his commander-in-chief, and was eager for his downfall. His only fear was that the Soviet would not take over the government.

“Two weeks of the Bolsheviki, and we will be able to lick these people into shape,” he said. “The worse things get, the sooner they will be willing to listen to reason. You don’t know the Russians.”

“We’ve got them on the run this time”--what could it mean? No good to Kerensky, I was sure--no ultimate good to the masses of the Russian people, if Baron B. could have his way.

There was nothing in the situation that night that augured well for Kerensky’s government. He was like a man poised on a tight-rope. The cry, “All power to the Soviet!” grew louder and more insistent with every passing hour. The Russian workers, the youngest proletarian group in the world, were the most class-conscious and determined, and--they had guns.

The fleet was Bolshevist--I had no doubt of that. The Petrograd garrison was Bolshevist. Every report from the front indicated that the men in the trenches had swung farther and farther to the left. The land and peace hunger clamored for immediate satisfaction.

Kerensky, trying like the true democrat he was to please every one, succeeded in pleasing no one. He had lost touch with the masses. Attacked from above and below, from within and without, there seemed little hope for him. Those who should have been behind him, with every energy and influence they possessed, were secretly willing his downfall, and some of them were plotting to bring it about. Individual members of the Allied military missions, still clinging to the old belief that Russia could be saved by a man on horseback, in spite of the Korniloff fiasco, were meeting behind closed doors, where they discussed, not the way to save Kerensky, but the way to put a dictator in his place. The names of Korniloff and Savinkoff were again bandied about where ever two or three military men were gathered together.

Poor Kerensky! Too big, and not big enough. Any one of his problems was a man-sized job. He was packing the load of a broken industrial and economic machine, inherited from the régime of the Tsar, a corrupt, inefficient, and disloyal bureaucracy, and a betrayed and disillusioned army. His uncomprehending military partners, the Allies, were urging the impossible, and refusing to grant the demand of the Russian masses for a statement of war aims and a publication of the secret treaties, without which Kerensky could no longer hold the faith of his followers.

Dark forces of the old order were working with German intriguers to augment the chaos, and above and beyond and beneath everything was the honest cry of the people for “Peace to the world!” and “Land to the peasants!”

The Bolsheviki promised peace and land. They promised more: they promised that the workers of the world should “arise and put a stop to war and capitalistic exploitation forever.”

They were dreaming big dreams in Russia that night; scheming big schemes; and they were not unaware that the dreams and schemes would be used in the future by the rest of the world, perhaps as patterns by which to model, perhaps only as horrible examples and tragic warnings.

It was an hour in which one needed all of one’s faith to believe that the human march is forward, no matter how many members of the family are lost on the way.

At daybreak a company of Red Guards from the Viborg factory district--men whose only military equipment was a rifle slung over the shoulder, and a conviction that the hour of the proletariat had come, and that they were the defenders of the cause of the workers of the world--came to a halt on the north bank of the Neva. The bridges were guarded by cadets from the Engineers’ School, placed there the night before, when Kerensky had ordered them opened. At the point of their guns, the factory workers ordered the officers to close them again. The engineers obeyed, and the street-cars started blithely on their way back and forth across the river, just as if nothing had happened.

At the same moment, two detachments of Bolshevist soldiers and sailors, acting under orders from the Military Revolutionary Committee, took possession of the telephone exchange and the General Staff. It was all done so swiftly and so quietly that the Bolshevik battle was half won before Petrograd awoke to the knowledge that civil war was on.

It was nine o’clock when Petroff brought me tea and word that the Bolsheviki had that minute taken possession of the hotel. Petroff’s astounding news sent me hurriedly into the hall, and into the arms of a squad of soldiers. The young officer in command detained me.

“Amerikanka Korrespondent,” I explained, and indicated a desire to go downstairs.

“Pazhal’sta, pazhal’sta!” he said, bowing low, and motioning his men to let me pass.

At the head of the winding staircase groups of frightened women were gathered, searching the marble lobby below with troubled eyes. Nobody seemed to know what had happened. The Battalion of Death had walked out in the night, without firing so much as a single shot. Each floor was crowded with soldiers and Red Guardsmen, who went from room to room, searching for arms, and arresting officers suspected of anti-Bolshevik sympathies. The landings were guarded by sentries, and the lobby was swarming with men in faded uniforms. Two husky, bearded peasant soldiers were stationed behind the counter, and one in the cashier’s office kept watch over the safe. Two machine-guns poked their ominous muzzles through the entry-way. My letter of credit was inside the safe, and the only other money I had was an uncashed check for eight hundred rubles.

I started for the National City Bank on the slender chance of finding it open. I was just in time. Within the hour the Bolsheviki captured the State Bank, and all the others promptly closed their doors.

On my way back I walked through the Dvortsovy Square. Four armored cars were drawn up under the shadow of the mighty granite shaft in front of the Winter Palace, their guns pointing significantly at the palace windows. Flaming red flags were freshly painted on their gray sides, and on one in large letters was the word “Proletariat.” A crowd of perhaps twenty mechanics and chauffeurs tinkered with guns and engines, making ready for instant action. Occasionally a man looked up from the nut he was tightening to offer some comment on the situation. The whereabouts of Kerensky was the chief topic of the moment.

“He is not there now,” said one of them, pointing with his wrench in the direction of the palace. “He ran away to Finland in the night.”

“He is not in Finland,” said another scornfully. “He went away to get troops. He is coming back to fight us.”

“They say he escaped to the front disguised as a Red Cross nurse,” said a third, with a sneer that produced a loud burst of laughter from his companions.

Inside the palace, seated around the mahogany table in the great council chamber, where the Tsar of all the Russias had spoken commands that made an empire tremble, fifteen members of the Provisional Government grimly waited. In the hall outside the door ten military school cadets kept watch. These, the women’s regiment, and a company of cadets encamped on the lower floor, were all that stood between them and the rising army of the workers. To them the whereabouts of Kerensky was no secret. He had gone in search of loyal troops who would rise to the protection of the Provisional Government, and upon his success or failure they must stand or fall.

It was noon when I returned to St. Isaac’s Square. The Marinsky Palace, where the Council of the Republic was meeting,--once the home of the Council of the Empire, mouth-piece of absolutism in old Russia,--was surrounded by sailors, soldiers, and Red Guardsmen. The palace guards offered no resistance when a crowd of sailors demanded admission. They swarmed through the entrances, and appeared simultaneously in various parts of the hall. A sailor, a tam-o’-shanter on the back of his head and long ribbon streamers flying out behind, stepped up to President Avksentieff.

“Stop talking. Go home,” he said. “There is no Council of the Republic!”

Avksentieff and his followers demurred for a moment; then, looking around the room at the men in blue, they adjourned, and filed into the square. The Council of the Republic, hope of Tseretelli, Cheidze, and those other moderate Socialists who were trying so desperately to stave off the final break, was at an end.

The more radical Socialist members went to Smolney Institute, where the delegates from all parts of Russia were flocking to the second All-Russian Congress of Soviets.

At three o’clock I started for Smolney, a little old revolutionist whom we Americans all called “Daddy R.,” trotting beside me. We walked down the Morskaya toward the telephone exchange. Just opposite we halted. Coming toward us, in regular marching formation, was a company of military cadets, strapping, handsome fellows from the officers’ school. Before they reached the building, the commander halted them. Half of the number walked deliberately past the armored car, turned, and approached from the other side. A volley of rifle fire broke the stillness, and the crowd scurried to the cover of doorways and side streets. A gray-bearded, benevolent-looking _dvornik_ dragged me inside a courtyard, where a dozen other people sought shelter, and clanged the great iron door shut behind us. A beggar, with legs cut off at the knees, hobbled beside me.

“_Crack! Crack!_” went the rifles again--then a moment of breathless silence. The _dvornik_ cautiously opened the door a few inches, and I put my head out. The street was deserted. The cadets were crouched in kneeling positions on the sidewalks against the wall, guns pointing at the telephone office.

The _dvornik_ pushed the door shut again, and this time he locked it and motioned us to follow. We crossed a courtyard, and turned into a dark, narrow tunnel, through which we picked our way over piles of debris and up and down stone steps till we came into the open a block below.

By another route Daddy R. and I made our way back to the Morskaya. I stepped to the middle of the street to see what was happening, but a Russian officer motioned me away.

“They will fire again in a minute,” he said. “They are trying to take the telephone exchange from the Bolsheviki.”

He had no sooner finished speaking than the front of the building began to belch lead in a shower that sent the cadets hurrying in search of shelter. An armored car hove in sight from the opposite direction, opened fire, and completed the rout of the attacking force.

We hurried toward the Nevsky. The bridge across the Moika was bristling with guns. Four armored cars barred the way, and a crowd of soldiers and sailors worked rapidly, throwing up a barricade across the street. One man was stretched flat on the wooden pavement, prepared to fire a machine-gun from the protection of a telegraph-pole. The Red Guards waved the passengers back from the bridge, but the tracks were left open, and the cars went back and forth unhindered. We tried to make our way through the old France Hotel, which wanders all over the block between the Morskaya and the Moika, and out on to the canal by another entrance. Again we were turned back. Another volley of gunshot sent us scurrying to the shelter of a basement shop.

It was nearly five when we reached the entrance of Smolney. The great building, until a few months before a private seminary where the feminine flower of Russian aristocracy was cultivated in seclusion, had suddenly become an arsenal, bristling with guns and swarming with armed men.

Upstairs the Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Deputies were gathering for the Congress of Soviets. They were coming together to decide whether the Bolshevik demand of “All power to the Soviets” should be granted. It was a question already being answered by the voice of the guns.

The meeting was to open at five. At nine the crowd in the great, chaste white assembly room was still waiting for action. Outside, in the dimly lighted corridors, hundreds of men with muddy boots tramped back and forth, in and out of committee rooms. Soon after nine, a delegate from the Menshevik group announced that his party was still in caucus, unable to come to an agreement, and asked for another hour’s delay. A murmur of disapproval ran through the room. Nerves were at trigger-tension. For once, Russian patience seemed to be about to reach its limit.

Another hour passed. Suddenly through the windows opening on the Neva came a steady _boom! boom! boom!_

“What’s that? What’s that?” asked the sailor of the soldier, and the soldier of the workman.

A man with pale face and blazing eyes fought his way through the crowd on to the platform.

“The cruiser _Aurora_ is shelling our comrades in the Winter Palace. We demand that this bloodshed shall be stopped instantly!” he shouted.

“It’s a lie!” said one of them.

“It’s just another trick of the bourgeois to divide our forces!” said a second.

A few men hurried from the hall; but the crowd had received too many startling rumors that day to be much disturbed by another one.

Again came the _boom! boom! boom!_ from the direction of the Neva. Again the murmur of question.

“It’s a motor-lorry cranking up in the courtyard below,” some one ventured.

“The people upstairs are moving tables around,” another suggested.

That moment the attention of the crowd was diverted by the arrival of a man of medium height, square-shouldered, lean, dark, and tense-looking. His face was white, and his black hair brushed back from a wide forehead, black mustache, and small black beard, his black jacket and flowing black tie, still further emphasized the alabaster whiteness of his skin. He stood within a few feet of me, one hand in his pocket, and with sharp, quick glances took the measure of that strange sea of faces.

“Here’s Trotzky!” whispered the man beside me. “Come, I want you to meet him.”

Before I had time to acquiesce or protest, I found a lean hand grasping mine in a strong, characteristic handshake. We stood there for a few moments, talking of inconsequential things, but all of us charged with the tensity of the hour. There was keen intelligence here, nerve, a certain uncompromising streak of iron, a sense of power; yet I little suspected I was talking to the man whose name within a few brief weeks would be a familiar word on every tongue--the most-talked-of human being in an age of spectacular figures.

At twenty minutes to eleven our conversation was abruptly cut short by the appearance of Dan, who opened the meeting. It was Dan’s swan-song. Only a few weeks before, in this gathering, his voice would have been law; but with the swing of the workers to the left his power was gone. The mass had broken with its leaders, and every comment from the crowd indicated more definitely the irrevocability of that break.

Dan announced that he would not make a speech, declaring that the hour in which his comrades were being shelled in the Winter Palace, and self-sacrificingly sticking to their posts, was not the hour for oratory. He said that five hundred and thirteen delegates had been seated, and the new presidium of twenty-five members would contain fourteen Bolsheviki.

The spokesmen of the various parties then announced the names of their representatives. Leaders of the social patriotic groups, of the Mensheviki, and Socialist Revolutionists refused to take their place in the presidium, and the Menshevik Internationalists declared they would delay joining the presidium until certain questions were settled.

The Bolsheviki, with Nicolai Lenin and Zenovieff at their head, climbed to the platform. A great cheer went up from the Bolshevik supporters. Lenin and Zenovieff, who had been in hiding since the July riots, had that day come out of their holes to take a historic part in this new Revolution.

When the ovation had died down, Dan briefly stated the object of the meeting before relinquishing his place to Trotzky.

“The business of the Convention,” said he, “divides itself into three heads: a governmental crisis, the question of war and peace, and the Constituent Assembly.”

“Take up the question of peace first,” shouted a soldier in the crowd.

It was all that was needed to set the indignation of the Mensheviki flaming.

“Tavarischi, forty minutes have passed since we announced that our comrades were being shelled in the Winter Palace, and the cruiser _Aurora_ is still firing. We demand that this bloodshed be stopped immediately.”

“A committee has already been sent out,” some one else declared.

Martoff, perhaps the ablest of the Menshevik Internationalists, took the platform, and in a voice ringing with indignation demanded immediate settlement of the governmental crisis.

“If this convention wants to be the voice of revolutionary democracy, it must not sit idly by before the rapidly developing civil war that may result in a disastrous explosion of the counter-revolution,” he said. “When the question of the organization of the government is being settled by the conspiracy of a single one of the revolutionary parties, we are challenged by only one problem; the immediate warding off of this impending civil war.”

He proposed the appointment of a committee for negotiating with other Socialist parties and organizations to stop the rapidly developing clash.

The resolution was passed; but, instead of immediately appointing a committee, Trotzky permitted the convention to listen to the opinions of delegate after delegate on a number of subjects not pertaining to the question.

It was a critical moment in the history of the Russian Revolution. Perhaps it was some bitter memory of insults he had suffered at the hands of these other leaders, perhaps it was simply the natural inability of the Russian to compromise, or a combination of these and other motives, that made Trotzky delay action, and thereby toss away his opportunity for compromise. Probably even he himself could not say.

Meanwhile the guns on the Neva continued their eloquent _boom! boom! boom!_

Kharash, a delegate from the Twelfth Army, got the floor.

“While a proposition for peaceful settlement is being introduced here, a battle goes on in the streets of Petrograd,” he said. “The Winter Palace is being shelled. The specter of civil war is rising. The Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionists repudiate all that is going on here, and stubbornly resist all attempts to seize the government.”

“He does not represent the Twelfth Army!” cried a soldier from the ranks. “The army demands all power to the Soviets.”

Twenty others were on their feet the same instant:

“Staff! Staff! He comes from the Staff! He is not a soldier!” they shouted angrily, shaking their fists at the delegate from the Twelfth.

Pandemonium broke loose. The shouts of the men inside the building drowned the boom of the guns outside. In the midst of it a man demanded and got the floor.

“We are leaving the convention,” he said. “We can stand no more! We are going unarmed to die with our comrades in the Winter Palace.”

A hush fell over the crowd. It was broken only by the sound of shuffling feet as the speaker led the way to the door, followed by a hundred or more of the conservative revolutionists, who filed quietly out.

At midnight, with three fellow correspondents, I left the atmosphere of that memorable meeting, gray with smoke and charged with battle, and went in search of passes that would permit me to go to the Winter Palace.