From October to Brest-Litovsk

by Leon Trotsky

The skirmishes were assuming an indefinitely prolonged character, and this threatened the revolutionary detachments with demoralization. It was necessary, therefore, to adopt the most determined measures. The task of disarming the cadets was assigned to the commandant of Petropavlovsk fortress, Ensign B. He closely surrounded the cadet schools, brought up some armored cars and artillery, and gave the cadets ten minutes' time to surrender. Renewed firing from the windows was the answer at first. At the expiration of the ten minutes, B. ordered an artillery charge. The very first shots made yawning breaches in the walls of the schoolhouse. The cadets surrendered, though many of them tried to save themselves by flight, firing as they fled.

Considerable rancor was created, such as always accompanies civil war. The sailors undoubtedly committed many outrages upon individual cadets. The bourgeois press later accused the sailors and the Soviet government of inhumanity and brutality. It never mentioned, however, the fact that the revolt of October 25th-26th had been brought about with hardly any firing or sacrifice, and that only the counter-revolutionary conspiracy which was organized by the bourgeoisie and which threw the young generation into the flame of civil war against the workers, soldiers and sailors, led to unavoidable severities and sacrifices.

The 29th of October marked a decided change in the mood of the inhabitants of Petrograd. Events took on a more tragic character. At the same time, our enemies realized that the situation was far more serious than they thought at first and that the Soviet had not the slightest intention of relinquishing the power it had won just to oblige the junkers and the capitalistic newspapers.

The work of clearing Petrograd of counter-revolutionary centers was carried on intensively. The cadets were almost all disarmed, the participators in the insurrection were arrested and either imprisoned in the Petropavlovsk fortress or deported to Kronstadt. All publications which openly preached revolt against Soviet authority were promptly suppressed. Orders were issued for the arrest of such of the leaders of the former Soviet parties whose names figured on the intercepted counter-revolutionary edicts. All military resistance in the capital was crushed absolutely.

Next came a long and exhausting struggle against the sabotage of the bureaucrats, technical workers, clerks, etc. These elements, which by their earning capacity belong largely to the downtrodden class of society, align themselves with the bourgeois class by the conditions of their life and by their general psychology. They had sincerely and faithfully served the government and its institutions when it was headed by Czarism. They continued to serve the government when the authority passed over into the hands of the bourgeois imperialists. They were inherited with all their knowledge and technical skill, by the coalition government in the next period of the revolution. But when the revolting workingmen, soldiers and peasants flung the parties of the exploiting classes away from the rudder of State and tried to take the management of affairs into their own hands, then the bureaucrats and clerks flew into a passion and absolutely refused to support the new government in any way. More and more extensive became this sabotage, which was organized mostly by Social-Revolutionists and Mensheviki, and which was supported by funds furnished by the banks and the Allied Embassies.

KERENSKY'S ADVANCE ON PETROGRAD

The stronger the Soviet government became in Petrograd, the more the bourgeois groups placed their hopes on military aid from without. The Petrograd Telegraph Agency, the railroad telegraph, and the radio-telegraph station of Tsarskoye-Selo brought from every side news of huge forces marching on Petrograd with the object of crushing the rebels there and establishing order. Kerensky was making flying trips to the front, and the bourgeois papers reported that he was leading innumerable forces against the Bolsheviki. We found ourselves cut off from the rest of the country, as the telegraphers refused to serve us. But the soldiers, who arrived by tens and hundreds on commissions from their respective regiments, invariably said to us: "Have no fears of the front; it is entirely on your side. You need but give the word, and we will send to your aid—even this very day—a division or a corps." It was the same in the army as everywhere else; the masses were for us, and the upper classes against us. In the hands of the latter was the military-technical machinery. Various parts of the vast army proved to be isolated one from another. We were isolated from both the army and the people. Nevertheless, the news of the Soviet government at Petrograd and its decrees spread throughout the country and roused the local Soviets to rebel against the old government.

The reports of Kerensky's advance on Petrograd, at the head of some forces or other, soon became more persistent and assumed more definite outlines. We were informed from Tsarskoye-Selo that Cossack echelons were not far from there, while an appeal, signed by Kerensky and General Krassnov, was being circulated in Petrograd calling upon the whole garrison to join the government's forces, which were expected any hour to enter the capital. The cadet insurrection of October 29th was undoubtedly connected with Kerensky's undertaking, only that it broke out too soon, owing to determined action on our part. The Tsarskoye-Selo garrison was ordered to demand of the approaching Cossack regiments recognition of the Soviet government. In case of refusal, the Cossacks were to be disarmed. But that garrison proved to be ill-fitted for military operations. It had no artillery and no leaders, its officers being unfriendly toward the Soviet government. The Cossacks took possession of the radio-telegraph station at Tsarskoye-Selo, the most powerful one in the country, and marched on. The garrisons of Peterhof, Krasnoye-Selo and Gatchina displayed neither initiative nor resolution.

After the almost bloodless victory at Petrograd, the soldiers confidently assumed that matters would take a similar course in the future. All that was necessary, they thought, was to send an agitator to the Cossacks, who would lay down their arms the moment the object of the proletarian revolution was explained to them. Korniloff's counter-revolutionary uprising was put down by means of speeches and fraternization. By agitation and well-planned seizure of certain institutions—without a fight—the Kerensky government was overthrown. The same methods were now being employed by the leaders of the Tsarskoye-Selo, Krasnoye-Selo and the Gatchina Soviets with General Krassnov's Cossacks. But this time they did not work. Though without determination or enthusiasm, the Cossacks did advance. Individual detachments approached Gatchina and Krasnoye-Selo, engaged the scanty forces of the local garrisons, and sometimes disarmed them. About the numerical strength of Kerensky's forces we at first had no idea whatever. Some said that General Krassnov headed ten thousand men; others affirmed that he had no more than a thousand; while the unfriendly newspapers and circulars announced, in letters an inch big, that two corps were lined up beyond Tsarskoye-Selo.

There was a general want of confidence in the Petrograd garrison. No sooner had it won a bloodless victory, than it was called upon to march out against an enemy of unknown numbers and engage in battles of uncertain outcome. In the Garrison Conference, the discussion centered about the necessity of sending out more and more agitators and of issuing appeals to the Cossacks; for to the soldiers it seemed impossible that the Cossacks would refuse to rise to the point of view which the Petrograd garrison was defending in its struggle. Nevertheless, advanced groups of Cossacks approached quite close to Petrograd, and we anticipated that the principal battle would take place in the streets of the city.