“Revolutionary sentries” were posted round the house. The Vice-President of the Committee, Koltchinsky, led four armed “comrades” into the house for the purpose of arresting General Markov, but then began to hesitate, and confined himself to leaving in the reception-room of the Chief-of-Staff two “experts” from the Frontal Committee to control his work. The following wireless was sent to the Government: “General Denikin and all his staff have been subjected to personal detention at his Stavka. In the interests of the defence the guidance of the activity of the troops has been left in their hands, but is strictly controlled by the delegates of the Committee.”
Now began a series of long, endless, wearisome hours. They will never be forgotten. Nor can words express the depth of the pain which now enveloped our hearts.
At 4 p.m. on the 29th Markov asked me into the reception-room, where Assistant-Commissary Kostitsin came with ten to fifteen armed Committee members and read me an “order from the Commissary of the South-Western Front, Iordansky,” according to which I, Markov, and Quartermaster-General Orlov were to be subjected to preliminary arrest for an attempt at an armed rising against the Provisional Government. As a man of letters Iordansky seemed to have become ashamed of the arguments about “land,” “freedom,” and “Nicholas II.,” designed exclusively for inflaming the passions of the mob.
I replied that a Commander-in-Chief could be removed from his post only by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief or by the Provisional Government; that Commissary Iordansky was acting altogether illegally, but that I was obliged to submit to force.
Motor-cars drove up, accompanied by armoured cars, and Markov and I took our seats. Then came the long waiting for Orlov, who was handing over the files; then the tormenting curiosity of the passers-by. Then we drove on to Lyssaya Gora. The car wandered about for a long time, halting at one building after another, until at last we drove up to the guard-house; we passed through a crowd of about a hundred men who were awaiting our arrival, and were greeted with looks full of hatred and with coarse abuse. We were taken into separate cells; Kostitsin very civilly offered to send me any of my things I might require, but I brusquely declined any services from him; the door was slammed to, the key turned noisily in the lock, and I was alone.
In a few days the Stavka was liquidated. Kornilov, Lukomsky, Romanovsky, and others were taken off to the Bykhov Prison.
The Revolutionary Democracy was celebrating its victory.
Yet at that very time the Government was opening wide the doors of the prisons in Petrograd and liberating many influential Bolsheviks—to enable them to continue, publicly and openly, their work of destroying the Russian Empire.
On September 1 the Provisional Government arrested General Kornilov; on September 4 the Provisional Government liberated Bronstein Trotsky. These two dates should be memorable for Russia.