And so Kerensky fled, alone, “disguised in the uniform of a sailor,” and by that act lost whatever popularity he had retained among the Russian masses….
I went back to Petrograd riding on the front seat of an auto truck, driven by a workman and filled with Red Guards. We had no kerosene, so our lights were not burning. The road was crowded with the proletarian army going home, and new reserves pouring out to take their places. Immense trucks like ours, columns of artillery, wagons, loomed up in the night, without lights, as we were. We hurtled furiously on, wrenched right and left to avoid collisions that seemed inevitable, scraping wheels, followed by the epithets of pedestrians.
Across the horizon spread the glittering lights of the capital, immeasurably more splendid by night than by day, like a dike of jewels heaped on the barren plain.
The old workman who drove held the wheel in one hand, while with the other he swept the far-gleaming capital in an exultant gesture.
“Mine!” he cried, his face all alight. “All mine now! My Petrograd!”
Chapter X
Moscow
The Military Revolutionary Committee, with a fierce intensity, followed up its victory:
November 14th.
To all Army, corps, divisional and regimental Committees, to all Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, to all, all, all.
Conforming to the agreement between the Cossacks, yunkers, soldiers, sailors and workers, it has been decided to arraign Alexander Feodorvitch Kerensky before a tribunal of the people. We demand that Kerensky be arrested, and that he be ordered, in the name of the organisations hereinafter mentioned, to come immediately to Petrograd and present himself to the tribunal.