Signed,
The Cossacks of the First Division of Ussuri Cavalry; the Committee of Yunkers of the Petrograd detachment of Franc-Tireurs; the delegate of the Fifth Army.
People’s Commissar DYBENKO.
The Committee for Salvation, the Duma, the Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionary party—proudly claiming Kerensky as a member—all passionately protested that he could only be held responsible to the Constituent Assembly.
On the evening of November 16th I watched two thousand Red Guards swing down the Zagorodny Prospekt behind a military band playing the Marseillaise—and how appropriate it sounded—with blood-red flags over the dark ranks of workmen, to welcome home again their brothers who had defended “Red Petrograd.” In the bitter dusk they tramped, men and women, their tall bayonets swaying; through streets faintly lighted and slippery with mud, between silent crowds of bourgeois, contemptuous but fearful….
All were against them—business men, speculators, investors, land-owners, army officers, politicians, teachers, students, professional men, shop-keepers, clerks, agents. The other Socialist parties hated the Bolsheviki with an implacable hatred. On the side of the Soviets were the rank and file of the workers, the sailors, all the undemoralised soldiers, the landless peasants, and a few—a very few—intellectuals….
From the farthest corners of great Russia, whereupon desperate street-fighting burst like a wave, news of Kerensky’s defeat came echoing back the immense roar of proletarian victory. Kazan, Saratov, Novgorod, Vinnitza—where the streets had run with blood; Moscow, where the Bolsheviki had turned their artillery against the last strong-hold of the bourgeoisie—the Kremlin.
“They are bombarding the Kremlin!” The news passed from mouth to mouth in the streets of Petrograd, almost with a sense of terror. Travellers from “white and shining little mother Moscow” told fearful tales. Thousands killed; the Tverskaya and the Kuznetsky Most in flames; the church of Vasili Blazheiny a smoking ruin; Usspensky Cathedral crumbling down; the Spasskaya Gate of the Kremlin tottering; the Duma burned to the ground. (See App. X, Sect. 1)
Nothing that the Bolsheviki had done could compare with this fearful blasphemy in the heart of Holy Russia. To the ears of the devout sounded the shock of guns crashing in the face of the Holy Orthodox Church, and pounding to dust the sanctuary of the Russian nation….
On November 15th, Lunatcharsky, Commissar of Education, broke into tears at the session of the Council of People’s Commissars, and rushed from the room, crying, “I cannot stand it! I cannot bear the monstrous destruction of beauty and tradition….”