The growing stability of the Soviet’s power in Petrograd made the middle-class groups transfer all their hopes to military help from outside. The Petrograd Telegraph Agency, the Railway Telegraph, and the Radio-Telegraph Station of Tsarskoye Selo were sending wire after wire reporting that great military forces were moving on Petrograd with the object of suppressing the rebels and establishing order. Kerensky had fled to the front, and the papers of the bourgeois parties were announcing that he was leading large numbers of troops against the Bolsheviks. We were cut off from the rest of the country, as the telegraph stations refused to send our messages. But the soldiers who, by tens and hundreds, were daily coming to see us to bring messages from their regiments, divisions, and corps, all kept on saying to us: “Don’t be afraid of the front; the whole front is entirely on your side; give your orders and we are ready at a moment’s notice to send a division or a corps to assist you.” The army was in the same state as all the rest; the rank and file were on our side, the upper ten against us. Of course, the upper ten had the technical military machinery in their hands. Various sections of our million-headed army found themselves isolated from one another. We, on our part, were isolated from the army and from the country. Nevertheless, the news of the Soviet’s power at Petrograd and of its decrees was, in spite of all obstacles, spreading all over the country, and stirred the provincial Soviets to revolt against the old authority.
The news of Kerensky’s march on Petrograd at the head of troops was soon confirmed and took a more definite shape. We were informed from Tsarskoye Selo of the approach of Cossack echelons who had passed through Luga. A proclamation was distributed in the capital, signed by Kerensky and General Krasnov, inviting the whole garrison to join the government’s troops who in a few hours’ time would occupy Petrograd. The rebellion of the Cadets on 11th November was undoubtedly connected with Kerensky’s enterprise, but it burst out too soon, owing to our energetic action. An order was issued to the garrison of Tsarskoye Selo to call upon the advancing Cossacks’ echelons to submit to the authority of the Soviet, and, in case of refusal, to disarm them. But the garrison of Tsarskoye Selo was ill-adapted for military operations. It had no artillery and no leaders, as the officers were hostile to the Soviet. The Cossacks seized the radio-telegraph station of Tsarskoye Selo, the most powerful of its kind in the country, and continued to advance. The garrisons of Peterhof, Krasnoye Selo, and Gatchina showed no initiative and no resolution.
After an almost bloodless victory at Petrograd, the soldiers were convinced that, in future, things would continue the same course: it would be sufficient to send an able agitator to the Cossacks to explain to them the objects of the workers’ revolution, and the Cossacks would lay down their arms. It was by means of speeches and fraternisation that the Kornilov counter-revolutionary rebellion had been overpowered. It was by means of agitation and the cleverly planned seizure of offices that Kerensky’s government had been deposed without any fighting. The same methods were now being applied by the leaders of the Tsarskoye Selo, Krasnoye Selo, and Gatchina Soviets against the Cossacks of General Krasnov, but this time without success. The Cossacks did not manifest any great enthusiasm or resolve, and continued to advance. Some of the Cossacks’ detached sections reached Gatchina and Krasnoye Selo, a few skirmishes between them and the local garrisons took place, and some of the garrison troops were disarmed. We, at first, had no idea of the size of Kerensky’s forces. Some asserted that General Krasnov was at the head of ten thousand men, others estimated that he could not have more than one thousand, while the papers and manifestos of the hostile parties were announcing in huge letters that two corps were concentrated near Tsarskoye Selo.
A state of uncertainty also reigned in the Petrograd garrison. Scarcely had they won one bloodless victory than they had to come out against an enemy whose strength was unknown, and wage battles the result of which was uncertain. The plan of sending fresh agitators and proclamations to the Cossacks was being constantly discussed at garrison conferences, since it seemed inconceivable to the soldiers that the Cossacks could refuse to adopt the standpoint which the Petrograd garrison had fought to assert. Meanwhile, the advance sections of the Cossacks were approaching Petrograd, and we expected that the decisive struggle would take place in the streets of the capital.
The greatest determination was shown by the soldiers of the Red Guard. They demanded arms, munitions, and leaders. But the whole of the military machine was in a state of complete disorganisation, partly from neglect and partly from malice. The officers had gone, many of them had fled; rifles were in one place, munitions in another. Our artillery was in a still worse condition. Guns, gun-carriages, shells were scattered here and there, and had to be searched for in all sorts of places. The regiments were short of engineering tools and field telephones. The revolutionary staff, which tried hard to restore order from above, stumbled against insurmountable obstacles, chiefly in the shape of the sabotage organised by the military technical personnel.
We then decided to make a direct appeal to the working classes. We explained to them that all the conquests of the Revolution were at stake, and that only their energy, initiative, and self-sacrifice could save them and consolidate the new regime of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government. This appeal was crowned almost instantly with great practical success. Thousands of workmen came out and moved towards the positions occupied by Kerensky’s troops and began to dig trenches. The workmen in the gun factories took in hand the fitting up of guns, the supply of munitions from the military stores, the requisition of horses; they placed the guns in position, organised the commissariat department, obtained engines, motors, and cars, requisitioned the stocks of provisions and fodder, arranged sanitary columns – in a word, they built up and prepared for battle that military machine which we had in vain tried to create from above by the authority of the revolutionary General Staff.
When dozens of guns appeared in position, the spirit of our soldiers changed at once. Under cover of artillery they were ready to resist the attack of the Cossacks. The first line consisted of sailors and Red Guards. A few officers, whose political ideas were not ours, but who were honestly devoted to their regiments, led their soldiers to their positions and superintended their activities against Krasnov’s Cossacks.