OCTOBER REVOLUTION
Smolny institute Home of the Soviet executive after the July Days.
Property of the people! PEACE! BREAD! LAND! Tuesday October 24 Trotsky distributes arms to the Red Guards Petrograd rebels against the Provisional Government. It is a “tool of the enemies of the people”. Key communication etc. captured Property of the people! PEACE! BREAD! LAND!
Winter Palace
Wednesday 25 October Red Guard storm the Winter Palace at 2:10. The cruiser Aurora fires blanks at the palace. Kerensky escapes to the Winter Palace. Provisional Government arrested and imprisoned. Opening of the Second All Russian Congress of Soviets. Trotsky dismisses the Mensheviks and SRs from Congress. They are in the “Dustbin of History”. To the citizens of Russia. The Provisional Government has been overthrown. Long live the workers’, soldiers’, and peasants’ revolution!
Thursday 26 October Bolsheviks announce their official government as “Government of people’s commissars.” Posters pinned on walls by the SRs describing it as a “crime against the motherland and revolution.” All assistance given to Kerensky will be punished as a serious crime against the state. Lenin is Unimpressive to be the idol of a mob, loved and revered as perhaps few leaders in history have been. A strange popular leader – a leader purely by virtue of intellect… John Reed This Duma crowd was well-fed, well dressed; I did not see more than three proletarians among them all…. John Reed We hope that revolution will soon break out in all the belligerent countries; that is why we address ourselves especially to the workers of France, England and Germany. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXZVhKvvMVU
Friday 27th October Mensheviks seize power in Georgia. Cossacks claim control of own government. Reports that the Provisional government is meeting with the army at the front. The Cossack Government declares that is considers these acts criminal and absolutely inadmissable. We will defend the city, but we won’t support the Bolsheviki. Kaledin is the enemy of the Revolution, but the Bolsheviki are equally enemies of the Revolution. SR representative talking to John Reed.
Saturday 28 October Day of threats, lots of organisations refuting the Bolshevik authority. Including some peasant Soviets. The SR party had voted to expel all memebers who had remained in the Congress of Soviets. Trotsky had gone to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; six hundred functionaries had hurled their resignations in his face. The Soviet and garrison of Luga, affirmed its loyalty to the Provisional Government. John Reed
Sunday 29 October Opposition develops into major counter-revolutionary action. Cossacks enter the outskirts of Petrograd with Kerensky at the head. He is given a hero’s welcome. Kerensky tells a rifle garrison near Tsarskoye to lay down weapons, once they refuse he orders them to open fire. This decision is seen as analogous with the Tsar’s behaviour. Petrograd soldiers move against Kerensky. This angered the soldiers; for eight months they had been governing themselves by committee, and this smacked of the old regime. A few minutes later Cossack artillery opened fire on the barracks, killing eight men. From that moment there were no more “neutral” soldiers in Tsarskoye. John Reed
Monday 30 October Battle between the Cossacks and Red Guard sees the Cossacks fleeing. N. I. Shestopalov: Workers Defend Petrograd (1919) “No” answered my friend. “There is only one Bolshevik officer in this regiment. He is in Petrograd tonight. The Colonel is a Menshevik. Captain Kherlov there is a Cadet. I myself am a socialist Revolutionary of the Right Wing. I should say that most soldiers of the army are not Bolsheviki, but like me they believe in Democracy; they believe they must follow the soldier-masses….John Reed
Tuesday 31 October Bolshevik victory in Moscow after heavy fighting. Up to 700 casualties. Petrograd, after all, in spite of being for a century the seat of Government, is still an artificial city. Moscow is the real Russia, Russia as it was and will be; in Moscow we would get the true feeling of the Russian people about the Revolution. Life was more intense there….John Reed
Wednesday 1 November Appeal to anti-Bolsheviks to join the government of the people.
Thursday 2 November Only minor anti-Bolshevik sentiment. They have won. "The victory of October - the most important event of the 20th century. Peace! Bread! Land!"