THE ZINOVIEV-KAMENEV TREACHERY
THE OCTOBER DAYS 1917
Defeated in the Central Committee, Zinoviev and Kamenev committed a monstrous act of treachery. They sent a statement to the Menshevik newspaper, Nasha Zhizn (Our Life), in which they announced that the Bolsheviks were preparing for insurrection and that they considered the uprising a rash venture. This statement was received by Sukhanov, the editor, who handed it over to his fellow party members. The secret of the contemplated uprising was divulged to the enemy. A meeting of the Bureau of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets was called immediately. The Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, who dominated this meeting, passed a decision to postpone the convocation of the Second Congress of Soviets from October 20 to October 25 [November 2 to November 7], and to invite all Regional organizations and primarily the military organizations to participate in it.
Defeated in the Central Committee, Zinoviev and Kamenev committed a monstrous act of treachery. They sent a statement to the Menshevik newspaper, Nasha Zhizn (Our Life), in which they announced that the Bolsheviks were preparing for insurrection and that they considered the uprising a rash venture. This statement was received by Sukhanov, the editor, who handed it over to his fellow party members. The secret of the contemplated uprising was divulged to the enemy. A meeting of the Bureau of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets was called immediately. The Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, who dominated this meeting, passed a decision to postpone the convocation of the Second Congress of Soviets from October 20 to October 25 [November 2 to November 7], and to invite all Regional organizations and primarily the military organizations to participate in it.
This maneuver of the petty-bourgeois counter-revolutionaries was very simple. The Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks hoped that by postponing the Congress to October 25 they would be able to bring an element of disorganization into the ranks of the soldiers of the revolution. On the other hand, they counted on using the additional time to pack the Congress with Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. Hitherto the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks had been opposed to the Congress, had ignored the Congress; at present, however, they began making feverish preparations for it in the expectation of gaining control over it.
Due to the treachery of Zinoviev and Kamenev, the Provisional Government learned of the preparations that were being made by the Bolsheviks. Kerensky was at General Headquarters in Moghilev; he was immediately called back to the capital.
On the morning of October 18 the Menshevik paper, the Novaya Zhizn (The New Life), came out carrying Zinoviev’s and Kamenev’s statement. Simultaneously with the appearance of the paper, the garrison regiments received an urgent and strictly confidential order, signed by Colonel Polkovnikov of General Headquarters, who was in command of the Petrograd Military Area. This order called for the following steps to be taken: (1) all attempts at demonstrations in the city were to be suppressed, (2) any one found carrying on agitation for an armed uprising was to be arrested and sent to Area Headquarters, (3) the city was to be divided into districts, in each of which horse and foot patrols were to be posted with the aim of suppressing all signs of unrest, and (4) all meetings and gatherings were to be prohibited.
In addition to this, Junkers from the military schools in adjoining towns were called out to Petrograd. The Winter Palace Garrison was reinforced, and now numbered 1,600 men. A telegram was sent to the front, demanding the dispatch of troops. Communication was established by direct wire with General Cheremisov, who was in command of the Northern Front and who was to dispatch cavalry and bicycle detachments to help put down the uprising. The militia was placed under the military authorities and augmented by about 600 picked officers, loyal to the Provisional Government.
In short, such measures were taken as to make it impossible for the uprising to begin within the next few days. If the Bolsheviks had launched the offensive on October 19 or 20 they would have fallen into the trap set by the enemy. The uprising had to be postponed. Such was the practical effect of Zinoviev’s and Kamenev’s treachery.
The postponement of the uprising, however, did not mean that preparations were to cease.
The Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party used this enforced delay to mobilize still greater forces and to prepare still more thoroughly. The first thing that was done was to go over the plan for the armed uprising with an eye to the eventuality that the enemy might somehow get wind of the details of this plan. The decision was made to use not only the 12,000 registered Red Guards, but also the many thousands of workers who wanted to join them but had not been enrolled because of the shortage of arms.
THE ARMING OF THE WORKERS
A large quantity of arms was stored in the Peter and Paul Fortress and the Kronwerk Arsenal. The arsenal workers had informed the Revolutionary Military Committee that the government was dispatching over 10,000 rifles to the Don region. This was really so, for taking into account the possibility of a Bolshevik victory in Petrograd the counter-revolutionaries had prepared a place d’armes in the Don region beforehand and were dispatching artillery, machine-guns and rifles there.
At the suggestion of the Party Center, a representative of the Revolutionary Military Committee was sent as a commissar to the Peter and Paul Fortress. His job was to exercise control over the actions of the commandant of the Fortress, and, above all, to prevent the shipment of arms to the Don. The commandant contemptuously refused to see the commissar, whereupon the latter went out onto the square and delivered a rousing speech to the soldiers and workers of the Arsenal. This thirty minute talk was sufficient to make the irate soldiers and workers return with the commissar to the commandant’s office in the Fortress. The commandant immediately rushed to the telephone to report this latest development to his superiors, while the commissar sat down at the commandant’s desk and began to sign orders for the issuance of arms. Several trucks seemingly sprang up from the very ground, and cases of arms were quickly loaded on them and dispatched to the Putilov, Obukhov and other large factories of Petrograd. Thanks to the vigilance of the workers, the rifles that were to have gone to the Don were in the hands of the Bolsheviks.
The Revolutionary Military Committee sent commissars to the Garrison regiments in order to win over the entire Garrison to its side. Late in the night of October 20, these commissars appeared in the various regiments. In a very short time there were two hundred of them and in the course of the next few days their number increased to six hundred.
The task of the commissars was to isolate the officers, arresting them if they showed resistance, to create a firm nucleus in every regiment of soldiers who were loyal to the revolution, to arm them and to be ready for action at the word of the Revolutionary Military Committee. In order to make a thorough job of winning over the Garrison, a permanent body – the Council of Regimental Delegates – was set up. Every day at six p.m. hundreds of regimental delegates would come to the Smolny where they would hear the fiery speeches of Bolshevik agitators. They would leave these meetings for their various regiments carrying with them a spirit of the most ardent revolutionary enthusiasm. As a result of all these measures, not only picked units but the overwhelming majority of the Petrograd Garrison fought on the side of the Bolsheviks in the October Revolution.
The success with which the commissars met made it possible to send military commissars into Staff Headquarters of the Petrograd Military Area, the very heart of the counterrevolution. Acting on instructions of the Revolutionary Military Committee, three of its representatives turned up at Area Headquarters and announced that not a single order would be carried out unless it was countersigned by the Revolutionary Military Committee.
Colonel Polkovnikov refused to accept the commissars, and on October 22 Area Headquarters tried to send out its orders over their heads. But within the space of thirty minutes, Colonel Polkovnikov was convinced that the Bolsheviks had not been joking. All the orders that had been sent out by him came back with the inscription: “Not valid unless countersigned by the Revolutionary Military Committee.”
Greatly alarmed, Polkovnikov reported this to Konovalov, vice-chairman of the Council of Ministers. The latter rushed to the Winter Palace to report to Kerensky.
The appointment of regimental commissars and the demand which the Revolutionary Military Committee made on Area Headquarters to submit all its orders to the former for endorsement was regarded by the government as the beginning of the actual seizure of power by the Soviets.
The Provisional Government had been living in a state of constantly growing alarm these last days. The Bolsheviks had been keeping the government in the greatest tension.
All the newspapers were filled with rumors from “reliable sources,” hints and prophecies. On October 15, the Ryech[1] the Cadet newspaper, carried the following item:
“Around 1 a.m. on the morning of October 15, Militia Headquarters of the capital began to receive reports from various commissariats about suspicious movements of armed Red Guards.”
On the following day, the same newspaper wrote:
“The Bolsheviks are preparing to act. Formerly, in order to keep up appearances they claimed that they were against direct action. Now they have broken all bounds and stop at nothing.”
On October 18:
“The Bolsheviks are feverishly, stubbornly and persistently preparing a blood bath. They are procuring arms, drawing up a plan of action and occupying vantage grounds.”
On October 19:
“The Bolsheviks are hastily arming the factory and mill workers for the impending outbreak. On October 17 and 18, arms – rifles and revolvers – were issued to the workers in the Bolshevik stronghold, the Vyborg district. On October 18, the workers of Bolshaya and Malaya Okhta and of the Putilov Works received arms.”
On October 20:
“Today is October 20, a day beginning a momentous week which not only St. Petersburg but all Russia associates with new alarms and new anxieties. Let us give credit to the Bolsheviks where credit is due. They are using every possible means to maintain the state of alarm at the necessary high pitch, to render expectations keener and to bring nervous tension to such extremes that guns will begin to shoot of themselves.”
Every day the Ministers were besieged with the question: will the Bolsheviks take action today? Konovalov told newspaper correspondents:
“On October 16, the Provisional Government was not aware of the exact date of the Bolshevik outbreak. On the previous day the Provisional Government had begun to receive information that the Bolsheviks had decided to take action on the 19th and not on the 20th, as everyone had supposed. Apparently the Bolsheviks themselves have not yet arrived at a definite decision on this question.”
Thus Konovalov tried to comfort himself.
Matters were still further complicated for the Provisional Government by the fact that the Bolsheviks were preparing the assault in the guise of defense. This was a peculiar feature of the Bolshevik tactics of those days.
“The revolution,” wrote Comrade Stalin, “as it were, camouflaged its offensive actions behind a screen of defense in order thereby to draw into its orbit the irresolute and wavering elements.” (Stalin, On the October Revolution, p. 64, Russ. ed.)
The constant state of tension in which the Provisional Government was held by the Bolsheviks caused chaos and disorganization in its midst. The Government could not emerge from the crisis in which it was plunged. No sooner had the resignation of Malyantovich, the Minister of Justice, been hushed up, than Verkhovsky, the Minister of War, announced his retirement.
On the morning of October 23 the Revolutionary Military Committee made public its appointment of commissars to all military units of the Garrison. This announcement stated:
“The persons of the commissars, as representatives of the Soviet, are inviolable. All opposition to the commissars is tantamount to opposition to the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.”
This declaration of the Revolutionary Military Committee served to alarm the Government still more. Kerensky began to move forces to Petrograd in a frenzy of haste. Particularly large contingents were sent to Moscow. There is no doubt but that some one of the traitors secretly informed the enemy of Lenin’s proposal to begin the offensive in Moscow. The measures taken by the Government explain in part why the uprising dragged on for several days in Moscow: the counter-revolutionaries had managed to prepare.
The hasty steps taken by Kerensky gave him reason to hope that troops would arrive in short time.
But Kerensky did not know even the approximate date of the Bolshevik uprising. Here it was that the treachery of Trotsky came to the assistance of the Provisional Government. In answer to a question put by a soldier in the Petrograd Soviet as to whether the Bolsheviks were preparing for an uprising, Trotsky replied that any action the Bolsheviks might take would have to be postponed to October 25 [November 7], when the Second Congress of Soviets was to open. Kerensky thereupon decided to take action two days before this date.
He immediately summoned General Manikovsky, newly-appointed chief of the War Office, and General Cheremisov, Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Front, to see him. Both generals reported on the measures that had been taken to combat the Bolsheviks.
On October 23, in the evening, the Staff of the Petrograd Military area was closeted in a confidential session with Kerensky. General Bagratuni, Chief of Staff, reported in detail on the measures taken to deal with the Bolshevik rising.
It was decided at this meeting to launch the attack on October 24. A plan was adopted and transmitted to the regimental commanders. It was late at night when the meeting broke up. The Commander of the Finnish Regiment gave this plan to a typist to be typed in several copies. The latter made an extra copy of the plan and that same night delivered it to the Revolutionary Military Committee.
The Revolutionary Military Committee in its turn had decided to begin the uprising no later than October 24. The copy of Kerensky’s plan merely served to confirm the correctness of this decision, for it had become quite clear that the counterrevolutionaries were trying to forestall the revolution. By order of the Revolutionary Military Committee, each regiment sent out two liaison men, who were to be on duty in the Smolny.
.jpg)
