In late August 1917, after General Lavr Kornilov’s attempted coup was suppressed, Alexander Kerensky’s Provisional Government suffered a dramatic decline in popularity. Meanwhile, the Bolsheviks, who made little effort to conceal their preparations for an armed uprising, saw their fortunes increase.
Mark Vishniak
A Tribute to the Past
In 1917 Mark Vishniak was a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. A lawyer and journalist, in 1919 he emigrated from Russia and from 1946 to 1958 headed TIME magazine’s Russian desk. He died in 1976 in New York.
In the history of Russia, 1917 was an “insane” year of the sort that has existed in other countries’ and peoples’ histories. But it was also an abnormal year in the personal lives of those who took part in the shaping of its events. Time was topsy-turvy. Night turned into day, but day did not allow enough time for relaxation and sleep. It was said more than once that February was doomed from the start, since those who had “done it” were not eating, sleeping enough, were constantly hurrying here and there, and were always late. Everything was improvised because there was not enough time to give matters the thought they required. Those actively involved in February turned out to be politically impotent because they were physically exhausted. Even with the best of intentions and extreme effort, they simply did not have what it takes. In the case of Kerensky – who carried a superhuman emotional, political, and physical load – the toll taken could be seen in his extreme pallor, jumpiness, and public fainting spells. In others it was manifested in more subtle forms...
Starting first thing in the morning, I set out for the Special Council and its commissions, to visit the editorial office of Affairs of the People, the Council of Peasant Deputies, and a number of other commissions to which I belonged; I returned home after midnight, tired and hungry. Only then did I get my first hot meal of the day and I immediately ate everything that my wife and cousins had managed to find for me. After we hurriedly shared our thoughts about the day that had just come to an end, I went to bed so that I would be ready to start all over again in the morning. And so it was for months – even I had my share of nights where there was no time to sleep at all.
Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago
August had gone by and now September was almost over. The inevitable was approaching.
Winter was near and, in the human world, there was something like a state of suspended animation, which was in the air, and which everyone was talking about.
This was the time to prepare for the cold weather, to store up food and wood. But in those days of the triumph of materialism, matter had become a disembodied idea, and the problems of alimentation and fuel supply took the place of food and firewood.
The people in the cities were as helpless as children in the face of the unknown – that unknown which swept every established habit aside and left nothing but desolation in its wake, although it was itself the offspring of the city and the creation of city-dwellers.
Ivan Bunin, Cursed Days
October 3. Six o’clock in the evening. I was just outside. How nice it is. Fall coat weather. Your hands are pleasantly chilled. What happiness to breathe this sweet, cool wind steadily blowing from the South for many days now, to walk the dry earth, look at the garden, the tree that still bears its brown leaves, reddened either by the rising sun (although the dawn is almost colorless) or by its own hues.
In October, the Bolsheviks shift gears and begin preparations for immediate insurrection. A Military Revolutionary Committee is founded in Petrograd. The provisional government becomes mired in attempts to prepare reforms, convene the Constituent assembly, and effectively resist the Bolsheviks.
Kornilov’s coup marked the beginning of February’s death throes. The last thing Kornilov wanted was to play into the hands of October, but this is essentially what he did. He intended to cast a blow against February, which he had served loyally in the past and which, he felt, had taken a wrong turn and was degenerating. This was a fateful mistake, and Russia has been paying the price for it to this day. The leaders of February also share responsibility for this mistake: having overestimated the threat posed by Kornilov, they underestimated that posed by Lenin.
Diary entry: October 16. Peasant: “No, and the masters also can’t be allowed to get away without paying a price, they also have to be taken into consideration.”
The Provisional Government moved the royal family to Tobolsk, out of the way of the revolutionary throngs of Petrograd. Little did the Romanovs know that less than a year remained before they would be shot.
Tatyana Melnik-Botkina, Recollections of the Royal Family and Its Life Before and After the Revolution
The daughter of Nicholas II’s doctor had intimate knowledge of the life of the royal family. Tatyana Melnik later went into emigration and her memoirs were published in Belgrade in 1921.
Their Majesties spent the day in Tobolsk in the following manner: everyone rose at nine o’clock in the morning and after morning tea they each engaged in their own activities: His Majesty and Olga Nikolayevna read; the younger children did their lessons; Her Majesty continued to teach the children Scripture and read with the Grand Duchess Tatyana Nikolayevna. At 11 o’clock, everyone went for a walk outside the fence. At one o’clock in the afternoon, lunch was served, followed by a walk until four o’clock, when afternoon tea was served. After tea, they again did their lessons and engaged in handiwork, while Alexei Nikolayevich spent two hours at games. At 7:30, supper was served, after which the retinue, which lunched and dined with Their Majesties, remained for the evening. They played cards or dominos, without money of course, and every evening His Majesty read out loud, mostly from the classics. Only Alexei Nikolayevich was absent, since he went to bed immediately after supper.
Other members of the royal family were still free, but many of them would be shot in 1918. A few managed to escape abroad.
From the Memoirs of Grand Duke Gavriil Konstantinovich
Gavriil Konstantinovich was Nikolai II’s second cousin and the son of Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich, who was the grandson of Nicholas I and a poet who wrote under the name KR. Gavriil died in immigration in 1955.
When we returned to the dacha we started to have run-ins with the Snesarevs, who tried to get rid of us by making life miserable. When we objected to the rats that ran all over the house, they told us that the rats were their pets and even had their own names. The Snesarevs found fault with us for everything we did. Of course, they would not have done this if we had not paid all of our rent up front. In the end, we were forced to leave early. We were very reluctant to return to the city, but we could not find any place else to stay in Finland.
On November 6, our regimental holiday, I put on my regimental uniform. I wanted to wear this uniform on that illustrious day. Of course I was not able to show myself in the street, since they would come after anyone with epaulets.
Felix Yusupov
Before Exile
Prince Felix Yusupov was a member of a prominent noble family and husband to Nicholas II’s niece. He is best known for his role in the murder of Rasputin. He died in emigration in 1957.
That fall I decided to return to St. Petersburg and try to hide our jewels and the most valuable items from our collections. When I arrived, I undertook this task with the help of our most loyal servants. I took from the Anichkov Palace a large portrait of Emperor Alexander III that Empress Maria particularly loved and had asked to be brought to her. I ordered that it be removed from the frame and rolled up, as had been done earlier with Rembrandt.
Unfortunately, I arrived too late and was not able to save her jewels, which had been taken to Moscow by order of the Provisional Government. After taking care of business on Moika, I went to Moscow with our loyal Grigory Buzhinsky, taking with me all of our diamonds, in order to hide them in a safe place. I had in mind a tiny room under one of the staircases… Thanks to the devotion and heroism of Grigory Buzhinsky, this hiding place was concealed from Bolshevik expropriation. Our treasures wound up in their hands eight years later, when workers who were repairing the stairs discovered the hiding place.
By October 25, troops loyal to the Bolsheviks essentially controlled Petrograd. The Provisional Government was under siege in the Winter Palace.
From the Memoirs of Lieutenant Sinegub, a military academy adjutant and one of the defenders of the Winter Palace.
I reached for the door handle, but a hand on my shoulder stopped me. “Here’s the situation, Sanya,” the head of the academy pronounced sadly. “Everything’s gone to the devil. There’s a traitor somewhere. The Provisional Government isn’t going to hold. Only a miracle can save it. None of the plans are viable, and the Bolsheviks won’t be dealt with in three days anyway. They will only be stronger. Everything has to be done differently. And at this point, we’re not the ones to do it. You and I have to die. I just feel sorry for the cadets. But we, after all, are noblemen and there’s no other way for us to look at it…
[Sinegub and the Captain] set out beyond the gate to inspect the barricades. The barricades were illuminated. The cadets were standing at their posts, ready to be torn to pieces before they would abandon them. Inspecting the barricades, the captain found that there were not sufficient forces to defend them and those in position were too exhausted. He therefore ordered that they be replaced by First Company.
No sooner had the cadets taken their places at the barricades than the palace came under fire and the street lights went out. The defenders found themselves in the dark.
I leapt out to the barricades. At that very moment, the darkened street lights came back on and I saw the Woman’s Battalion lined up and facing out onto the courtyard with a right flank facing the barricade exit onto Millionnaya street.
It was Sodom and Gomorrah in the portrait gallery. There was a formation of cadets, some of whom were hurrying to join the ranks, while others were scurrying away. The defense commandant was standing there. Palchinsky was shouting indignantly at Lieutenant Lokhvitsky, who in turn was shouting something at Palchinsky. Lieutenant Skorodinsky and two cadets were standing guard by the wooden sentry box. From inside you could hear some kinds of swearing and laughter.
Alexander Vertinsky
That, Which I Have to Say
This song was written in October 1917 and dedicated to the cadets who died during the first days of the Bolshevik takeover. Today it is performed by Boris Grebenshchikov and has taken on a completely different meaning, now perceived as a song about modern boys dying in very different wars.
I don’t know who needed this and what it was for,
Who sent them to their death with unwavering hand,
But delivering them to their Eternal Rest
Was so pointless, so evil, so futile.
Indifferent spectators stood silently wrapped in their furs,
And a woman with a face contorted in pain
Kissed a fallen one on his blue lips,
Then hurled her engagement ring at a priest.
They covered them with pine branches and a bit of dirt,
And went to their homes through the commotion to discuss
The need to put an end to this outrage,
That this way we soon will all go hungry.
And nobody thought to simply get down on their knees
And say to these boys that in a mediocre country
Even bright deeds are merely steps
Into the bottomless abyss toward the unreachable Spring.
Sinegub was sent to the Pavlovsky Regiment in order to assess the mood of the soldiers and officers and to get some assistance.
From Sinegub’s Memoirs
The room I entered was dirty and empty. Some sounds could be heard coming from a door to the left. I approached the door, pushed it open, and stopped in my tracks, stupefied. The first thing that caught my eye and astonished me was a large table with a white tablecloth. It was covered with flowers and bottles, a pile of parcels and an open box of chocolates. On the floor, on the sofas, and on the chairs and cots, officers were sleeping…
During the night of October 25-26, the Military Revolutionary Committee took power and handed it over to the Congress of Soviets, which at that point was being abandoned by representatives of almost every party except the Bolsheviks and the Left Socialist Revolutionaries.
Felix Yusupov, Before Exile
The days and particularly the nights were anxious. I was witness to a particularly brutal scene played out under my windows: a group of sailors were dragging an elderly general, kicking him and beating him in the head with their rifle butts. The unfortunate man was walking with difficulty, moaning dreadfully. With horror I saw his swollen face, blood pouring from the two holes he had in place of eyes.
October 30, Moscow. 26 Povarskaya Street. I awoke at eight – it was quiet. It seemed that everything was over. But a few minutes later, very close by, there was an artillery strike. Then minutes later there was another. And then the snap of a whip – a shot. And so it was the entire day. Sometimes an hour would go by without artillery strikes, and then they would come five, ten almost every minute.
At about 10 pm one evening in late October [Old Style] Yuri Andreyevich went without any particular necessity to call on one of his colleagues. The streets he passed were deserted. He walked quickly. The first thin powdery snow was coming down, scattered by a rising wind.
He had turned down so many side streets that he had almost lost count of them when the snow thickened and the wind turned into a blizzard, the kind of blizzard that whistles in a field covering it with a blanket of snow, but which in town tosses about as if it had lost its way.
There was something in common between the disturbances in the moral and in the physical world, on the ground and in the air. Here and there resounded the last salvoes of islands of resistance. Bubbles of dying fires rose and broke on the horizon. And the snow swirled and eddied and smoked on the wet streets and pavements.
A newsboy running with a thick batch of freshly printed papers under his arm and shouting “Latest news!” overtook him at an intersection.
“Keep the change,” said the doctor. The boy peeled a damp sheet off the batch, thrust it into his hand, and a minute later was engulfed in the snowstorm.
The doctor stopped under a street light to read the headlines. The paper was a late extra printed on one side only; it gave the official announcement from Petersburg that a Soviet of People’s Commissars had been formed and that Soviet power and the dictatorship of the proletariat were established in Russia. There followed the first decrees of the new government and various brief news dispatches received by telegraph and telephone.
The blizzard lashed at the doctor’s eyes and covered the printed page with gray, rustling pellets of snow. But it was not the snowstorm that prevented him from reading. The historic greatness of the moment moved him so deeply that it took him some time to collect himself.
November 4. Yesterday I was not able to write; it was one of the most horrifying days of my entire life. Yes. The day before yesterday at five o’clock a “Peace Treaty” was signed. Yesterday around eleven I found out that the Bolsheviks were disarming the cadets… Young soldiers came bursting into our vestibule with rifles to demand weapons. I understood with my entire being what the entry of victorious cattle and beasts into the city meant. “Dat’s it, no question!” They came three times, behaved insolently. Going out onto the street after holing up in the fortress – an awful feeling of freedom (to walk) and slavery. The faces of the brutes that immediately flooded into Moscow are shockingly beastly and odious. The day is dark, filthy. Moscow is as odious as it has never been before. I walked through the side streets near Arbat. Broken glass, etc. Heading back, along Povarskaya, a car was picking up a white coffin from the hospital across the street from us.
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