“I am a doomed man, it doesn’t matter what happens to me, and I have the audacity to say that the other enigmatic part is that of the unbelievable provocation created in the city by the Bolsheviki!”
[11] This was not quite candid. The Provisional Government had suppressed Bolshevik papers before, in July, and was planning to do so again.
On November 2d only fifteen delegates to the Congress of Soviets had arrived. Next day there were a hundred, and the morning after that a hundred and seventy-five, of whom one hundred and three were Bolsheviki…. Four hundred constituted a quorum, and the Congress was only three days off….
I spent a great deal of time at Smolny. It was no longer easy to get in. Double rows of sentries guarded the outer gates, and once inside the front door there was a long line of people waiting to be let in, four at a time, to be questioned as to their identity and their business. Passes were given out, and the pass system was changed every few hours; for spies continually sneaked through….
[Graphic, page 49: Russian Pass to Reed, translation follows]
Pass to Smolny Institute, issued by the Military Revolutionary Committee, giving me the right of entry at any time. (Translation)
Military Revolutionary Committee
attached to the
Petrograd Soviet of W. & S. D.
Commandant’s office
16th November, 1917
No. 955
Smolny Institute
PASS
Is given by the present to John Reed, correspondent of the American Socialist press, until December 1, the right of free entry into Smolny Institute. Commandant Adjutant
One day as I came up to the outer gate I saw Trotzky and his wife just ahead of me. They were halted by a soldier. Trotzky searched through his pockets, but could find no pass.