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286 THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND THE BEST ENEMY MONEY CAN BUY 287
the February Revolution occurred, neither Lenin nor Trotsky were
even in Russia. Lenin was in Switzerland and didn't arrive until
April. Trotsky was still in New York writing propaganda and
giving speeches.
The second revolution, called the October Revolution, was the
one through which the Bolsheviks came to power. It was, in fact, no
revolution at all. It was a coup d'etat. The Bolsheviks simply took
advantage of the confusion and indecisiveness that existed among
the various groups that comprised the new government and caught
them by surprise with a lightening strike of force. With a combination
of bribes and propaganda, they recruited several regiments of
soldiers and sailors and, in the early morning darkness of October
25, methodically took military possession of all government buildings
and communication centers. No one was prepared for such
audacity, and resistance was almost non-existent. By dawn, without
the Russian people even knowing what had happened—much
less having any voice in that action, their country had been captured
by a minority faction and become the world's first so-called
"people's republic." Within two days, Kerensky had fled for his
life, and all Provisional Government ministers had been arrested.
That is
how the Communists seized Russia and that is how they
held it afterward. Contrary to the Marxian myth, they have never
represented the people. They simply have the guns.
The basic facts of this so-called revolution are described by
Professor Leonard Schapiro in his authoritative work, The Russian
Revolutions of 1917:
All the evidence suggests that when the crisis came the great
majority of units of the Petrograd Garrison did not support the
government but simply remained neutral.... The Cossack units
rejected its call for support, leaving the government with only a few
hundred women soldiers and around two thousand military cadets on
its
side. The Bolsheviks, on the other hand, could count on several
regiments to carry out their orders. Units of the Baltic Fleet also
supported them.. .
In the event, the Bolshevik take-over was almost bloodless: in
contrast with what had happened in February, nothing could have
been less like a city in the throes of revolution than Petrograd on 25
October. Crowds of well-dressed people thronged the streets in the
evening. Theaters and restaurants were open, and at the opera,
Shaliapin sang in Boris Godunov. The principal stations and services
had all been taken over by the morning of 25 October without a shot
being fired....
A battleship and several cruisers, including the Aurora, had
reached Petrograd from Kronstadt and were anchored with their guns
trained on targets in the city.. .
The Provisional Government inside the Winter Palace...received
an ultimatum calling for surrender of its members, under threat of
bombardment of the palace by Aurora and by the guns of the Peter and
Paul Fortress. ...
It was only at 9:40 P.M. that the Aurora was ordered to
fire—and discharged one blank shell. The main effect of this was to
accelerate the thinning out of the cadet defenders of the palace, who
had already begun to dwindle. The women soldiers, who had formed
part of its defense force, also left before the palace was invaded. At
11P.M. some live shells were fired, and the palace was slightly
damaged., .
The story of the dramatic storming of the Winter Palace, popular
with Soviet historians and in the cinema, is a myth. At around 2 A.M. on
26 October, a small detachment of troops, followed by an unruly
crowd and led by two members of the MRC [Military Revolutionary
Committee], entered the palace. The remaining officer cadets were,
apparently, prepared to resist, but were ordered to surrender by the
ministers. In the end, the total casualties were three officer cadets
wounded.
POPULAR SUPPORT WAS NOT NECESSARY
Eugene Lyons had been a correspondent for United Press in
revolutionary Russia. He began his career as highly sympathetic to
the Bolsheviks and their new regime, but six years of actual living
inside the new socialist Utopia shattered his illusions. In his
acclaimed book, Workers' Paradise host, he summarizes the true
meaning of the October Revolution:
Lenin, Trotsky, and their cohorts did not overthrow the
monarchy. They overthrew the first democratic society in Russian
history, set up through a truly popular revolution in March, 1917....
They represented the smallest of the Russian radical movements....
But theirs was a movement that scoffed at numbers and frankly
mistrusted the multitudes. The workers could be educated for their
role after the revolution; they would not be led but driven to their
terrestrial heaven. Lenin always sneered at the obsession of competing
socialist groups with their "mass base." "Give us an organization of
& Leonard Shapiro, The Russian Revolutions ofl917 (New York: Basic Books, 1984),
pp. 135-36.