held the first organizational meeting of the Military-Revolutionary Committee (MRC): it was secretly Bolshevik but had the advantage of operating under the aegis of the Soviet. This, not Stalin’s Centre, would be the uprising’s headquarters: he was not a member.[174]
On the twenty-first, the MRC declared itself the legitimate authority over the Petrograd garrison. Stalin, at the political centre of the Party, drafted the agenda for the second Congress of Soviets, assigning himself to speak on “nationalities,” Lenin on “land war and power,” and Trotsky on “the current situation.”{247} On the twenty-third, the MRC took command of the Peter and Paul Fortress. Everything was ready: even myopic Molotov practised pistol-shooting in his Smolny office. “The existing government of landlords and capitalists,” reported Stalin that day, “must be replaced by a new government of workers and peasants… If all of you act solidly and staunchly, nobody will dare to resist the will of the people.”
At dawn on Tuesday, 24 October, Kerensky raided Stalin’s newspapers at the Trud Press. As Stalin watched, the troops smashed the presses, seized machinery and set guards over the offices. He now had to prise the Bolshevik press machine back into operation: just as modern coups always seize the television station, in 1917 a revolution without newspapers was unthinkable. Stalin called Red units for reinforcements while he managed to circulate the already printed papers. The Volkynia Regiment sent a company. By midday, Stalin had regained control of his presses. Later that day, he said the newspapers were “being set up again.” But he had missed the CC meeting where the tasks were handed out for the coup. Trotsky accused him of “dropping out of the game” because he was not on one of the lists of assignments:
Bubnov: railways
Dzerzhinsky: post and telegraph
Milyutin: food supplies
Podvoisky [changed to Sverdlov]: surveillance of the Provisional Government
Kamenev and Vinter: negotiations with Left SRs [the radical wing of the Socialist-Revolutionaries]
Lomov and Nogin: information to Moscow
This list of second-raters proves nothing: Lenin, in hiding, and Trotsky, who also missed the meeting, were not even mentioned, while the “strike-breaker” Kamenev is included. Historians habitually follow Trotsky’s (totally prejudiced but superbly written) version of events in asserting that Stalin “missed the Revolution,” but this does not stand up to scrutiny. He was not the star of the day, but he missed a military assignment because he had his hands full at the raided newspapers, not because he was politically insignificant. Far from it: even Trotsky admits that “contact with Lenin was mainly through Stalin,” hardly an unimportant role (though he cannot resist adding, “because he was the person of least interest to the police”).
Stalin’s “missing the Revolution” was no more than a few daytime hours of the twenty-fourth, while the coup actually stretched over two days. He was at the newspapers all morning. Then he was summoned by Lenin: Margarita Fofanova reveals that Stalin intended to give a speech that day at the Polytechnical Institute but suddenly “we had to hand him a note from VI.” Lenin was twitching with fury at the Fofanova apartment. If Stalin had rushed to him, he would have found him ranting, “The Government is tottering! It must be
Stalin arrived at the Smolny Institute, where he, along with Trotsky, addressed the Bolshevik delegates, just arrived for the Congress of Soviets, presenting the coup as a reaction to the government suppression of the Bolsheviks, not as an uprising.[175] “At the front they’re coming over to us,” Stalin explained. “The Provisional Government’s wavering. The [cruiser]
“I met Stalin on the eve of the Revolution at midnight in the Smolny,” reports Sagirashvili. Stalin was so excited that, “contrary to his usual solemnity and secrecy, he revealed the die had been cast.” That night, the eve of Glorious October, Stalin popped home to the Alliluyevs. “Yes, everything’s ready,” he told the girls. “We take action tomorrow. We’ve got all the city districts in our hands. We’ll seize power.”{248}
Stalin kept Lenin informed. The Old Man sent almost hourly notes to the MRC to energize them before the Congress opened. It was set for the next day but Lenin insisted it be brought forward. “What are they afraid of?” he wrote in one note. “Just ask if they have a hundred trustworthy soldiers or Red Guards with rifles. That’s all I need!”
It is no wonder that Lenin was frustrated. The October Revolution would become one of the iconic events of the twentieth century, mythologized by Soviet propaganda, romanticized in John Reed’s
Still stuck at Fofanova’s apartment, Lenin could not understand the delay. “Everything now hangs by a thread,” he wrote that night. “The matter must be decided without fail this evening!” He paced the floor. Fofanova begged him not to emerge and risk arrest. Finally at 10:50 p.m., Lenin could stand it no longer.
42. Glorious October 1917: The Bungled Uprising
I have gone where you didn’t want me to go,” Lenin scribbled to Fofanova. “Illich asked for Stalin to be fetched,” recorded Lenin’s bodyguard, Rakhia. “Then he realized this would waste time.” He glued on his curly wig, set a worker’s cap on his head, wrapped a bandage around his face and put on some giant spectacles. Then he and Rakhia set off into the night.
Lenin boarded a tram. He was so tense that he breathlessly cross-examined the bemused ticket-collector before giving her a lecture on revolutionary strategy. It is unclear if she ever discovered the identity of this bewigged, bandaged, bespectacled loon, but there were probably many madmen loose in the city that night. Near the Bolshevik headquarters at the Smolny, a mounted government patrol actually stopped him, but released him as a harmless drunk. He was sober—but far from harmless.
At around midnight, Lenin reached “great Smolny”—“bright with lights,” says Reed, it “hummed like a gigantic hive.” Red Guards, “a huddled group of boys in workmen’s clothes, carrying guns with bayonets, talking nervously together,” warmed their hands round giant bonfires; the motors of armoured cars whirred, motorcycles revved, but no one recognized Lenin. He had no papers, so the Red Guards at the gates refused to allow him access.
“What a mess!” shouted Rakhia. “I’m a delegate [for the Congress] and they won’t let me through.” The crowd supported him and pushed the two of them inside: “Lenin came in last, laughing!” But when he doffed his cap, his glue-stiffened wig came off too.[176]
The Smolny was a campsite. While the Soviet met in the splendid ballroom, newspapers, fag-ends and bedding covered the floors. Soldiers snored in the corridors. The reek of smoke, sweat and urine blended with the aroma of boiled cabbage from the refectory downstairs. Lenin hastened through the corridors, holding on to his wig, trying to hide his identity. But the Menshevik, Dan, spotted him.
“The rotters have recognized me,” muttered Lenin.
In the early hours of Wednesday, 25 October, Stalin, donning his leather jacket and cap, joined Lenin in Room 36 at the Smolny for an emergency CC meeting. Even Zinoviev and Kamenev were invited. Lenin insisted on accelerating the revolt. The Congress delegates were gathering in the very same building.
Lenin began to draft the key decrees on land and peace—still in disguise, “rather a strange sight,” mused Trotsky. The coup was in motion. The Central Committee remained in constant session for two days in a “tiny room round a badly lit table with overcoats thrown on the floor,” remembers a Bolshevik assistant, Sara Ravich. “People were continually knocking at the door, bringing news of the uprising’s latest successes. Among those present were Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Stalin.” Messengers arrived; orders were sent from the MRC in Room 10 and Lenin and the Central Committee in Room 36; both “worked at furious speed, engulfing and spitting out panting couriers, despatching commissars with power of life and death, amidst the buzz of telegraphs.”
