Petrograd Soviet

“ The Petrograd Soviet.... has declared the Provisional Government overthrown, and has demanded that the Governmental power be turned over to it, under threat of bombarding the Winter Palace with the cannon of Peter-Paul Fortress, and of the cruiser Avrora, anchored in the Neva.
“The Government can surrender its authority only to the Consituent Assembly; for that reason it has decided not to submit, and to demand aid from the population and the Army. A telegram has been sent to the Stavka ;and an answer received says that a strong detachment of troops is being sent.... ”

“ I felt lost in the labyrinth of Soviet Russia, stumbling constantly over the many obstacles, vainly groping for the revolutionary light. I needed his friendly, guiding hand, I wrote him. Meanwhile I turned to Zinoviev. "Forests within easy reach of Petrograd," I said; "why must the city freeze?" "Any amount of fuel," Zinoviev replied; "but of what avail? Our enemies have destroyed our means of transportation; the blockade has killed off our horses as well as our men. How are we to get at the woodland?" "What about the population of Petrograd?" ”

“ The city was policed by women in daytime, by men at night. It was rather startling to encounter a woman policeman with a rifle on her shoulder, but the people took it for granted, and I was told that the women were quite as efficient as the men. In spite of poor lighting, Petrograd is as safe as Moscow at night—or as safe as New York or Chicago, for that matter. Prostitution has lost its clientele. Thousands of women from the streets have found decent employment in various institutions of the Soviet Government, and are able to lead independent, normal lives. ”

“ The following morning we learned that in obedience to the Moscow decree the Petrograd session had decided to mobilize a number of important Bolshevik workers for the factories and shops. Three hundred Party members, some of them high government officials and others holding responsible positions in the Petro-Soviet, were immediately ordered to work, to prove to the proletariat that Russia was indeed a Workers' Government. ”

“ The astonishing thing to me was that almost everybody in Petrograd knew the chemist and was familiar with his mode of life. But I was informed that he was needed by the Soviet Government and that he was therefore permitted to live as he pleased. Once I expressed my surprise to him that the Bolsheviki had not confiscated his wealth. He assured me that he was not the only one of the bourgeoisie who had retained his former condition. "The bourgeoisie is by no means dead," he said ”

“ In Petrograd, the official agents of the Entente, especially the French Military Mission, hand in hand with the S.R.s and the Mensheviks, openly organized the opposition, mobilizing, arming, inciting against us the cadets, and the bourgeois youth generally, from the second day of the Soviet revolution. The rising of the junkers on November 10 brought about a hundred times more victims than the revolution of November 7. ”

“ Discontent was rife among Krassnov's Cossacks. They began sending their scouts into Petrograd and even official delegates to Smolny. There they had the opportunity to convince themselves that perfect order reigned in the capital, thanks to the Petrograd garrison, which unanimously supported the Soviet government. The Cossacks' disorganization became the more acute as the absurdity of the plan to take Petrograd with some thousand horsemen dawned upon them—for the supports promised them from the front never arrived. ”

“ New people appeared, with a new speech, so fascinating and promising, liberating the soldiers from obedience and inspiring hope that they would be saved from deadly danger immediately. When one Regimental Commander naïvely inquired whether these people might not be tried by Field Court-Martial and shot, his telegram, after passing through all official stages, called forth the reply from Petrograd that these people were inviolable, and had been sent by the Soviet to the troops for the very purpose of explaining to them the true meaning of current events. ”

“ Moreover, we not only placed the Provisional Government in an unfavorable political position; we also lulled their already sufficiently lazy and unwieldy minds. These people seriously believed that we were only concerned with soviet parliamentarism, and with a new congress which would adopt a new resolution on power—in the style of the resolutions adopted by the Petrograd and Moscow soviets—and that the government would then ignore it, using the Pre-Parliament and the coming Constituent Assembly as a pretext, and thus put us in a ridiculous position. ”

“ He is certainly not the “wild-eyed agitator” he has been pictured in the American press. He has given valuable service to the revolution, though he has lost twenty-five pounds in doing so.
“BILL” SHATOFF “Bill” Shatoff, described by American papers as “the well-known anarchist,” is one of the officials of the Soviet Army. When I was in Petrograd he was the commander of the Petrograd front. He is a big jolly Russian Jew, and certainly does not look any the worse for his participation in Soviet warfare, nor for the stinted rations he has shared with his men. ”

“ We left Petrograd at eleven o’clock at night, and arrived at Pskov the next morning at eight, where we had to remain until five in the evening before we could get a train for Rejistza, which we reached at six the following day. Here the division commandant stamped our papers and sent us on to Velikie Luki to the headquarters of the army command. ”

“ I dined that evening at the French Embassy and, as I drove through the streets, Petrograd seemed to be a changed city: troops bivouacking everywhere, rifles piled together, the soldiers and horses keeping warm beside huge beacon fires, the flames from which cast a lurid light over all the vast stretch of frozen snow. ”

“ The Kremlin is in the hands of the yunkers, and the workers have only a few arms. The result depends upon Petrograd.
"At the front, the decrees on Peace and Land are provoking great enthusiasm. Kerensky is flooding the trenches with tales of Petrograd burning and bloody, of women and children massacred by the Bolsheviki. ”

“ The Petrograd garrison numbered about sixty thousand men, who had taken a prominent part in the Revolution. It was they who had turned the tide in the great days of March, created the Soviets of Soldiers’ Deputies, and hurled back Kornilov from the gates of Petrograd.
Now a large part of them were Bolsheviki. When the Provisional Government talked of evacuating the city, it was the Petrograd garrison which answered, “If you are not capable of defending the capital, conclude peace; if you cannot conclude peace, go away and make room for a People’s Government which can do both...” ”

“ Political Russia is of more vital interest than physical Russia; but at the moment when the fate of that nation seems to center in one city, it is not amiss to remember that Petrograd is one of the least representative cities of the new republic and that behind all its changes and its transitory emotions there lies the great mass of the Russian people, sturdy, industrious, and immovable. ”

“ Petrograd was therefore completely cut off, not only from the Western world but even from the rest of Russia. An old revolutionist once said to me: " We not only don't know what is going on in the world or in Moscow; we are not even aware of what is happening in the next street." However, the human mind will not be bottled up all the time. It must have and generally finds an outlet. Rumours of attempted raids on Petrograd, stories that Zinoviev had been ducked in "Sovietsky soup" by some factory workers and that Moscow was captured by the Whites were afloat. ”

“ Nothing ever succeeds in our poor Russia. If I could only get out to Sweden, Germany, anywhere, far away from it all." Poor little woman, she was not the only one who wanted to forsake the country. It was their love for Russia and their bitter disappointment which made most people anxious to run away.
Several other Communists I knew in Petrograd were even more embittered. Whenever they called on me they would repeat their determination to get out of the Party. ”

“ They long for rest and quiet. They want to marry and have children and be able to feed and house them properly. The peasants want to till their farms undisturbed, and in the quiet evenings to sing their quaint and mournful songs to one another or in happy chorus in the village club. The town workers want to do their day's work in the factory or the shop and to spend glad, talkative hours in the cafes as in those days before the misery of war came upon them.
Petrograd has all the appearance of a dying city. Before the war it was reputed to have a population of two and a half millions ”

“ While Wilhelm’s troops are threatening Petrograd, the Government of Kerensky and Kornilov is preparing to run away from Petrograd and turn Moscow into a base of counter-revolution!
“We warn the Moscow workers and soldiers to be on their guard. Leaving this Council, we appeal to the manhood and wisdom of the workers, peasants and soldiers of all Russia. Petrograd is in danger! The Revolution is in danger! The Government has increased the danger—the ruling classes intensify it. Only the people themselves can save themselves and the country. ”

“ Life in Petrograd is horrible—all the criminals, all the workmen, and demoralized soldiers rob the few cars that still bring some kind of products. In the very heart of the city, in daytime, you have your clothes taken off your back literally. ”

“ Nevertheless, this manifesto had a powerful influence in the Allied countries, and the justice of the principles in question have been, broadly speaking, generally recognized.
The Germans made the most of the proclamation and suggested a separate peace through countless agencies, in which Russia should not lose any territory inhabited by Russians and need not pay any indemnities. At this bait the Leninites and dupes of the numerous agitators in German pay, which undoubtedly began infesting Petrograd, bit readily. ”

“ The most noticeable thing in Petrograd to anyone returning after six months' absence is the complete disappearance of armed men. The town seems to have returned to a perfectly peaceable condition in the sense that the need for revolutionary patrols has gone. Soldiers walking about no longer carry their rifles, and the picturesque figures of the revolution who wore belts of machine-gun cartridges slung about their persons have gone. ”

“ So, comrades, you see that if we give in to the Whites all your land will go back to the landowners, all the factories to the money-makers, and you will be crushed again under the yoke of the murderous bankers, priests, generals, landlords, police, and other hirelings of bourgeois tyranny. They will whip you into slavery, and they will ride to wealth on the bleeding backs of you, your wives, and your children. Only we Communists can save you from the bloody rage of the White demons. Let us defend Red Petrograd to the last drop of our blood! ”

“ From the very early morning the inhabitants of Petrograd flocked out into the streets: hundreds of thousands took part in the triumphal procession; literally thousands and tens of thousands of banners and flags were carried. ”

“ But Petrograd and the Revolution ... all that ... are put before us only so far as they enter into the lives of a few people--a family of Russians and three casual Englishmen. Which is as it should be. Petrograds change, revolutions come and go; but the secret city of the human heart is not transformed. Human motives remain. Human passions ebb and flow. Human hopes perish--and are reborn. ”

“ Red Cross Zemstvo work meant the nationalisation of Russian public life, which had so long been under the strong control of reactionary German influences. The liberation from these influences was sealed by the re-naming of the capital. The German name, St. Petersburg, was exchanged for the Russian Petrograd. This was no fad. It was the fitting end to a long struggle of the Russian people as a whole, under a national sovereign, to develop itself independently of any mailed fist, to manage its own affairs as Russian instincts should direct. ”

“ But from my Communist visitors I learned that the published report was false from beginning to end. It was no White conspiracy but a fight between two groups of Bolsheviki: the moderate Finnish Communists in control of the propaganda carried on from Petrograd, and the Left Wing working in Finland. The Moderates were Zinoviev adherents and had been put in charge of the work by him. The Lefts had repeatedly complained to the Third International about the conservatism and compromises of their comrades in Petrograd and the harm they were doing to the movement in Finland. ”

“ Petrograd is not the only city where the Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates has assumed control of the destinies of the Russian people. Every town has its council, and there is no question, civil or military, which they do not feel capable of settling. ”

“ Petrograd simply died. The city does not reflect a thing. All seem to be satisfied with mere existence, and to have lost interest in the rest of the world. They look animated when it comes time to converse of food and clothes.... Funny, strange, weird city! They don't clean the streets any more.... and everybody finds it natural. There is nothing in the stores--and we feel perfectly at ease. The country is being maliciously run down--and all repeat that fiction of building up.
Perhaps the only place that has not changed since its foundation is the Club. ”