The events that took place in Petrograd on October 24 - 25 (November 6 - 7), 1917, have long become history. The history is so old that many people remember almost nothing about it. The revolutionary events of October 1917 are overgrown with speculation and fables, like the bottom of a ship that has wandered the seas and oceans for a long time - with algae and shells. By the way, about the ship. About a ship called "Aurora". Ask any schoolchild you meet on the street of St. Petersburg what he knows about the cruiser Aurora. Hardly one in five will say anything intelligible. And many adults will not be able to clearly explain what happened in our city 87 years ago.
Let's try to clear the ship of History a little from some myths and stereotypes. And during the years of Soviet power and the post-Soviet period, a lot of them have accumulated.
October 1917, the ideas about it of many contemporaries - this is exactly the case when the main, core moments are often forgotten. There could have been no talk of any October armed uprising if representatives of various revolutionary parties (Bolsheviks, Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, anarchists and a number of others) were not firmly convinced that an armed uprising in Russian capital will be taken up not only by the inhabitants of the country, but also by the working masses of all European, Asian and other powers.
The belief that world revolution victory, if not in a matter of days, then in a matter of weeks, was so great that the victory over the Provisional Government seemed almost half of the entire victory of the world revolution. The victorious Soviet government initially leniently spared the hooligans, pogromists, raiders and other dashing people arrested in Petrograd: they put them in jail by the verdict of the revolutionary court for a period “until the victory of the world socialist revolution.” They say that the errant one will serve another week, come to his senses, and then a general revolution will arrive, in which there will simply be no place for bad people. This was revolutionary romanticism.
During the Soviet years, there were many myths about how the armed uprising took place in Petrograd. For example, Leningraders told each other that “terrible events” took place during the storming of the Winter Palace. For example, allegedly revolutionary soldiers and sailors killed and raped “princesses” who served in the women’s battalion and threw them out of the windows of the Winter Palace.
This is not true not because the morale of those who stormed the Winter Palace was unusually high, but because at the time of the assault none of the women’s battalion soldiers were in the Winter Palace building. A few hours before the assault, they left the building unhindered and in an orderly manner and headed to their barracks, located in Lisy Nos. By the way, there were no princesses among them. The overwhelming majority of female soldiers were former workers in Petrograd factories and factories.
There was also a completely different, “good” myth. They said that the rebels who found themselves in the Winter Palace, realizing that they were already the masters of the future Soviet country, treated very carefully all the property that was in the residence of the imperial family. I think that on public opinion influenced by the lines of Mayakovsky, who glorified the honest armed men who stormed the Winter Palace. Of course, for obvious reasons, I was not a participant or eyewitness to those events, but two or three times in my life, while visiting my St. Petersburg acquaintances, I saw in the apartments “souvenirs” taken by their grandfathers or great-grandfathers from the most famous St. Petersburg building . And the descendants told with great pleasure how certain elements of the royal interior later became their family heirlooms. What can you do, the revolution also has such sides.
Of course, the main symbol of the revolution was and remains the cruiser Aurora - a ship whose 100th anniversary of its launch last year, unfortunately, went almost unnoticed. And even many historians know almost nothing about his role. The myth that the Aurora sent a certain signal for the storming of the Winter Palace with its shot passes from publication to publication. In reality, everything was different.
The personnel of Aurora were truly revolutionary, although back in August 1917 they actually supported the Provisional Government. A day before the storming of the Winter Palace, Trotsky, speaking at an emergency meeting of the Petrograd Soviet, considered it necessary in his report to say a few words about the future main symbol of the revolution. He stated: “When the government began to mobilize the cadets, at that very time it gave the order to the cruiser Aurora to leave. Why, while calling up the cadets, did the government remove the sailors? The reasons are clear. We are talking about those sailors to whom, in Kornilov’s days, Skobelev came with a hat in his hands to ask them to protect Winter Palace from the Kornilovites. The Aurora sailors then complied with Skobelev’s request, and now the government is trying to remove them. But the comrade sailors also asked the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Council. And the Aurora stands today where it stood last night.”
But, giving such a high assessment of the revolutionary spirit of the Aurors, who two months ago were guarding the Winter Palace, Trotsky - the main organizer of the October Uprising in Petrograd - himself did not know that “Aurora” would have to give the signal to storm the last stronghold of the Provisional Government.
To be honest, no one knew this at all. It was later that the storming of the palace began to symbolize the victory of the uprising, but in those days it was not given much importance
Here is information taken from the document - from the archived version of the reporter's report on general meeting emergency meeting of the Petrograd Soviet, held on October 25, 1917. Please note: the meeting opened at 14:35, that is, several hours before the storming of the Winter Palace. Speaking at it, Trotsky rushed things a little and on behalf of the Military Revolutionary Committee declared: “The Provisional Government no longer exists, individual ministers have been arrested. Others will be arrested in the coming days or hours.”
Comrade Trotsky hurried a little. In fact, the Provisional Government, as we already know, was arrested in the Winter Palace on the night of October 26 at 2:10 am. Accompanied by reinforced security, government members were escorted to the casemates of the Peter and Paul Fortress. On the way to the fortress, they met a group of drunken sailors, who, having learned who the convoy was leading, tried to throw the now former Provisional Government into the Neva, but received a decisive rebuff. By the way, among those arrested there were many very decent people. For example, Minister of Railways Liverovsky. While in Petropavlovka, he suffered so much that he even lost an eye due to nervousness. After his release, he went south and worked as a janitor. Then, however, they remembered about him and invited him to Petrograd - Leningrad. He became the head of one of the departments of the Institute of Railway Transport and was even awarded the Order of Lenin for his success in work. These are the unexpected turns fate had in store. But that was later.
And on October 25, 1917, at approximately 1 p.m., the encirclement of the Winter Palace began. Approximately 12 thousand armed soldiers, sailors and Red Guards from the Vyborg, Petrograd and Vasileostrovsky districts of the city took part in the operation. The building of the Winter Palace was defended by two and a half thousand cadets, three hundred Cossacks, a battery of the Mikhailovsky Artillery School and half a company of the 1st Petrograd Women's Battalion. The troops defending the Provisional Government were twice given an ultimatum to surrender. There were shootouts. There was even artillery fire. As a result, six soldiers of the Pavlovsk regiment were killed. Several people were injured. But before midnight, not only the women, whom we have already discussed, but also about two thousand cadets left the palace and were freely released to the barracks.
The assault on Winter Palace was not as well organized as is commonly believed. There were moments when the troops besieging it were in a state of indecision. This is where “Aurora” had its say. No one set the task for the revolutionary sailors to give a signal for the assault. They simply gave a military signal, which was given regularly, so that the time could be checked on all ships.
There is such a military necessity. This is so that in combat conditions, various military units and ships act coherently, are not late or, conversely, are not in a hurry to take certain actions before others. Now this practice exists in armies and navies all over the world. But checking the time in this way was perceived by the participants in the assault as a kind of pre-planned signal, which played an important role.
Historians do not name exact time shot from the Aurora. They usually write that it sounded at about 21:00. I think that it is possible to say with a high degree of accuracy that the shot sounded exactly at 21:00. Why do I say this? Because it is unlikely that the time reconciliation could have been scheduled for some non-round time.
Then, years later, when in the confusion and confusion of the revolutionary events they tried to forget, giving everything that happened an exclusively legendary character, they began to talk about the Aurora’s arrow as a pre-planned revolutionary signal. But you won’t even find a mention of him in any of the protocols of the Military Revolutionary Committee of those days, or in the documents of the Petrograd Soviet: Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. I think that in the documents of the meeting of the St. Petersburg Committee of the RSDLP (b) for October 24 (November 6) nothing was said about this, although that protocol has not been preserved, and references to it can be found in later publications of Petrograd newspapers.
Legends and myths are not the most truthful monuments of history. But it’s even worse when this story is completely forgotten. One way or another, the Aurora fired. And the shot really thundered in the broad sense of the word. I am convinced that without him the history of civilization would have developed according to a different scenario. And I am not sure that the other scenario would be more optimistic. Revolutions happen not because people know how to live, but because they know exactly how they don’t want to live.
The myth of the “Aurora salvo” was born literally the next day after the storming of the Winter Palace, the signal for which was a shot from the legendary cruiser. Such information began to appear in the local press. Subsequently, already in the Stalin years, the version that “Aurora” fired at Zimny with real shells was actively replicated: this was written about in the “Short Course on the History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)”; the play “Volley of the Aurora” was staged at the Moscow Art Theater, based on which a film of the same name was released in the 1960s; in 1937, Mikhail Romm shot the film “Lenin in October,” where the audience’s attention is also focused on this episode. The myth of the “volley” did not bypass literature: Alexey Tolstoy in “Walking Through Torment” writes about the roof of the Winter Palace being pierced by a shell.
Examples of using
This was all that remained from the recently noisy and drunken bustle of the capital. The idle crowds left the squares and streets. The Winter Palace was empty, pierced through the roof by a shell from the Aurora. (Alexey Tolstoy. “Walking through Torment.” Book 2)
On October 21, the Bolsheviks sent commissars of the Military Revolutionary Committee to all revolutionary units of the troops. All the days before the uprising, vigorous combat training was going on in military units, factories and factories. Combat ships, such as the cruiser Aurora and Zarya Svobody, also received certain assignments.<…>The revolutionary units of the troops, prepared for the uprising by the work of the Bolsheviks, accurately followed combat orders and fought side by side with the Red Guard. The navy did not lag behind the army. Kronstadt was a fortress of the Bolshevik Party, where the power of the Provisional Government was no longer recognized for a long time. Cruiser "Aurora" with the thunder of his cannons aimed at the Winter Palace, announced on October 25 the beginning of a new era - the era of the Great Socialist Revolution. (Short course on the history of the CPSU (b))
Reality
The first and main exposers of the myth were the sailors themselves from the cruiser Aurora. The day after the events described, an article appeared in the Pravda newspaper in which the sailors tried to prove that there was no shelling of Zimny on their part: if the cruiser had fired “for real,” not only the palace would have been completely destroyed, but also surrounding areas, they argued. The text of the refutation was as follows:
“To all honest citizens of the city of Petrograd from the crew of the cruiser “Aurora”, which expresses its sharp protest about the accusations thrown, especially the accusations that have not been verified, but cast a stain of shame on the crew of the cruiser. We declare that we did not come to destroy the Winter Palace, not to kill civilians, but to protect and, if necessary, die for freedom and revolution from counter-revolutionaries.
The press writes that the Aurora opened fire on the Winter Palace, but do gentlemen reporters know that the cannon fire we opened would have left no stone unturned not only from the Winter Palace, but also from the streets adjacent to it? But is this really the case?
We address you, workers and soldiers of Petrograd! Don't believe provocative rumors. Don’t believe them that we are traitors and rioters, and check the rumors yourself. As for the shots from the cruiser, only one blank shot was fired from a 6-inch gun, indicating a signal for all ships standing on the Neva, and calling them to be vigilant and ready. We ask all editors to reprint.
Chairman of the Ship Committee
A. Belyshev
Comrade Chairman P. Andreev
Secretary /signature/.” (“Pravda”, No. 170, October 27, 1917)
For many years, while official propaganda benefited from the myth about the power of revolutionary weapons, in which a single blank shot grew into a whole salvo of military weapons, no one remembered this note. Already during the Khrushchev “thaw” this text appeared in the magazine “ New world”, in the article by V. Cardin “Legends and Facts” (1966, No. 2, p. 237). However, the newspaper Pravda did not respond in a friendly manner to quoting itself 50 years ago, publishing in March 1967 a message on behalf of the Secretariat of the Writers' Union of the USSR, warning Soviet people from reading articles “imbued with false tendencies towards unfounded revision and belittlement of the revolutionary and heroic traditions of the Soviet people.” The article did not leave the country's top leadership indifferent. In one of his speeches to the Politburo, L.I. Brezhnev was indignant: “After all, some of our writers (and they are published) go so far as to say that there was supposedly no Aurora salvo, that it was supposedly a blank shot, etc., that there were not 28 Panfilov men, that there were fewer of them, This fact was almost invented that Klochko was not there and there was no call from him, that “Moscow is behind us and we have nowhere to retreat...”.
Many years later, during perestroika, the article, “imbued with a false tendency,” was reprinted in the Ogonyok magazine.
The military also refute the myth about the shelling of Zimny from a cruiser: the ship, which really gained military glory by participating in the Russian-Japanese and the First World War, has served since 1916. major renovation, which means that all ammunition from it should have been removed long ago by the time of the October events - in accordance with the current instructions.
Sources and literature
Cardin V. Legends and facts. // New World, 1966. No. 2. P. 237.
In the summer of 1967, the whole country was preparing to widely celebrate a milestone in the history of Russia - the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution. The Hermitage was also preparing for this date. Groups of guides were formed to guide distinguished guests from abroad, whose arrival in the city-cradle of the October Revolution was awaited with great excitement.
Unexpectedly, the Hermitage received a letter from M.A. Suslov (1902-1982), at that time a member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, responsible for ideology (later he was called the “gray cardinal”), who had enormous political power. In this letter, he proposes to collect objective data about the details of the storming of the Winter Palace on October Night, which he will need during meetings in the Kremlin with delegations of fraternal communist parties.
Naturally, an operational headquarters was created in the Hermitage, headed by assistant director and party bureau secretary N.N. Leman. About it interesting person a few words should be said. Coming from Moscow Germans, he lived a difficult life with ups and downs. While still a very young man, under 20 years old, he commanded a large military formation of the Red Army on the front of the fight against Yudenich’s troops, defending Red Peter. Then he studied at a military school in Leningrad, taught social sciences at military academies in a position that corresponds to a modern major general (I write this from his words - B.S.). Then, in the “M. Tukhachevsky case,” he found himself in very remote places, where he stayed long years working as a carpenter. IN Khrushchev's thaw was rehabilitated, returned to Leningrad and worked at the Hermitage as an assistant director, secretary of the party bureau, and head of the publishing house. For some reason he treated me well, I often came into his office, and he talked about Petrograd in the early 20s. I was then young, full of energy, a candidate of historical sciences. N.N. attracted me to work on preparing a response to M.A. Suslov.
After careful checks and double checks, a general scheme events of that night. Let's start with the general disposition.
In those days, in the buildings of the old and new Hermitages there was a military hospital, fenced off from the premises of the Winter Palace by blocked passages. The Winter Palace housed the Provisional Government, whose meetings were held in the Malachite Hall. In front of the façade on Palace Square there were stacks of firewood, which were used to heat the entire complex of buildings. The residence of the Provisional Government was guarded by a small armed force. They consisted of: A) a battery of three-inch field guns, standing between stacks of firewood. B) Shock women's battalion M.L. Bochkareva. At least that's what Soviet historians claimed. IN Lately It turned out that this common statement is not entirely accurate. M. Bochkareva herself did not take part in the defense of the palace, and the shock workers, whom V. Mayakovsky called, apparently, from the words of the participants in the events, “fool women,” were formally not from M. Bochkarova’s battalion, but from part of those who broke away from it. No one could say exactly how many there were, probably about a company. That is, no more than 100 people. And, finally, a certain number of cadets, also about a hundred people. In total, two or three hundred people, a third of whom were “shock soldiers”, were not distinguished by high combat effectiveness.
According to the late employee of the State Hermitage, Doctor of Historical Sciences. B.A. Latynina, on the afternoon of October 25 in the Zimny district it was relatively calm. He walked around the square and did not expect that late in the evening there would be a “turning point in the history of mankind,” as we taught in schools and universities.
By evening, military units (sailors from Baltic ships) and armed workers' squads began to converge on the palace. The supply came from three sides. The revolutionary sailors, who arrived on light ships from Kronstadt, landed near the monument to Peter I. From there they moved along the Embankment of England past the Admiralty to the Winter Palace. The active participation of the sailors is easy to explain. The government of A.F. Kerensky planned, fulfilling the demands of the Entente, to remove the crews from the warships stationed in the roadstead, and, as marines, throw them into battle against the Kaiser’s troops. This prospect clearly did not suit them.
At that time, the garden in front of the Winter Palace was fenced high fence, consisting of a stone fence on which there was a forged patterned lattice. She could serve reliable protection for detachments of sailors passing along the Neva to the main entrance of the Palace.
Columns of armed workers from the Vyborg side lingered for some time in front of the Liteiny Bridge, which was raised, but then, when the bridge was closed, they moved towards Millionnaya Street to the New Hermitage. There they met an outpost from among those defending the Palace, and entered into peace negotiations with him, trying to persuade him to surrender. But the negotiations did not lead to anything, and by the evening this group (crowd) entered the halls of the New Hermitage through the Terebenevsky portico. They did not get into the Winter Palace, since the passages were blocked, and their wounded lay in the halls.
Finally, the main crowd or the third column, formed from the working outskirts, along the left bank of the Neva, passing Nevsky Prospekt, emerged from under the arch of the General Staff Building and approached the stacks of firewood in front of the grille of the closed main entrance to the Winter Palace courtyard. By this time, the battery had withdrawn from the firing position, and the Main Gate was not guarded by anyone. One of the besiegers climbed over the gate and opened it. This scene is well known from the movie “Lenin in October”. Crowds poured into the courtyard through the open gates. It is quite obvious that if the battery had remained in the firing position and fired several volleys of grapeshot into the open area, then no one would have reached the gate. Through the internal entrance, near the parade ground, where the guard was deployed, the crowds entered the Kutuzov Gallery.
As the participants in the assault recalled, in their columns (or rather in their crowd) there were soldiers of the Guards regiments. This news surprised us very much at first. How could it be that the guardsmen, together with the officers, stormed the residence? state power? The answer was found quite quickly. The Guard swore allegiance to the emperor, and for it the Provisional Government was self-proclaimed and not legitimate. The guards officers understood that if they were not with the soldiers, they would lose contact with the mass of soldiers, and would not be able to preserve the guard for future battles for the return of the emperor.
The third wave of those who stormed the palace—sailors from the Baltic ships—approached the Main Entrance, but it was closed. They knocked down the door with grenades and entered the main entrance through the windows of the first floor.
What did informants remember about the Aurora shot? This question turned out to be very complex and not completely clear. Most likely, it was, but combat or idle, and in what direction - no one could determine this. The Nikolaevsky Bridge was closed, and the Aurora stood at the English Embankment, where a memorial sign now stands. From this position it was impossible to fire a live shell at Zimny, since the route would run along the facades of buildings on the left bank of the Neva.
I once read a speech by some author that a cannon fired to count time. I asked the Aurora Museum how likely this was. My question aroused surprise, since in the navy the countdown of time - “flasks” was always marked by striking a bell. Shooting from a heavy bow gun is pointless. Let us note that during the years of the beginning of “perestroika” a piquant detail emerged - the Aurora was parked in steam, in case the coup failed, as in the summer of 17, its organizers had to sail abroad on it. How reliable this is is unknown. Our informants did not report this plan. Perhaps because it was not allowed to talk about it then.
While sorting through the photo archives of the Museum of the Revolution, which were in the State Hermitage after the Second World War, I found documents confirming that two shots were fired at the Winter Palace, but not from the Aurora, but from the forts of the Peter and Paul Fortress. Those photographs showed the windows of the third floor from the Neva side. They clearly showed holes near window openings. The nature of the holes indicated that the shells were sent across the Neva from the forts of Petropavlovka. And again the question is - none of the informants reported about those gun shots.
From the point of view of a front-line soldier (and I am a WWII veteran), the Winter Palace is a powerful fortress, which is not so easy to take by storm if the besieged have a decision to actively defend themselves. It would have been enough to place several dozen machine guns in the windows, and all those running to attack across open areas would have been shot and driven back.
It is necessary to take into account the general situation that prevailed in Petrograd at that time. The city's garrison consisted of 120,000 people. It consisted mainly of recruits - peasants, since the personnel contingents Russian army died in the battles of World War 1. And the guards regiments were killed in tragic battles near Augustovo in East Prussia in the fall of 1914. The soldiers of the capital's garrison knew that the Provisional Government of A.F. Kerensky planned to transfer them to the front to complete the defeat of Germany. But they also understood well that the Kaiser’s army was still combat-ready, and many of them would not live to see the end of the war. And the Bolsheviks, V.I. Ulyanov - Lenin, promised peace.
Meanwhile, the forces of the besieged were melting away without a fight. The artillery battery's guns were the first to leave their positions near the firewood barricades, so that the façade of the palace from the square was unprotected.
Then the “ladies” of the female shock battalion. Let us note that in Soviet literature the presence of M. Bochkareva among them was constantly noted. But as already noted, it has now been established that she was not there.
Before the rebels began to penetrate the palace, about a hundred cadets and persons loyal to the Provisional Government remained in it. This was clearly not enough to defend a huge building. According to eyewitnesses, once in interior spaces palace, those who stormed did not meet resistance. There was no fighting inside the building. This information was confirmed by photographs of the interiors, then preserved in the Hermitage collections. One more circumstance should be noted. All informants emphasized that none of them knew the layout of the Palace, and they did not know where to run, where the Provisional Government was located. Chaotic running around the halls and corridors of the huge building began. In the end, someone reached the small dining room, where the Provisional Government moved from the Malachite Hall, which had become dangerous due to shooting from the Neva. Previously, a communications center was located in this dining room.
In this hall the Provisional Government was arrested. This is recalled by the inscription placed on the marble plaque above the fireplace, and the clock hand, which stopped at 2 hours 10 minutes on the night from November 7 to 8 (October 25 - 26, 1917), recorded the date of the arrest of the Provisional Government.
Visitors often asked and still ask: “Were there any acts of vandalism and theft of valuables during the seizure of the Winter Palace?” We usually answer this question unequivocally. During the assault (which in fact did not take place), no acts of vandalism or robbery were recorded. This is proven by inventory records and photographs of the hall interiors. This indisputable fact can be explained by two reasons. Firstly, the reverence of the royal residence affected. And, secondly, by the fact that during World War I, many exhibits of the museum, the Hermitage and palace premises were evacuated to Moscow. In the movie “Lenin in October” there was such a shot, well known to people of the older generation - one of the Red Guards sat on the royal throne. This is another mistake - in 1917, the royal throne was in the basements of the Kremlin.
There were acts of desecration of portraits of the royal family and emperors placed on the walls of the palace. They were pierced with bayonets. These gaps persisted for a very long time. Now they have been plastered over and restored and are exhibited in the Petrovskaya Gallery of the Winter Palace.
And finally, the last thing. M.A. Suslov demanded to find out the number of victims of the assault. It turned out to be extremely challenging task. But, in the end, we found a report sent to Smolny about the storming of the Winter Palace. It was noted there that there were only a few people killed. Based on this information, M.A. Suslov, during receptions of foreign delegations in the Kremlin, had reason to assert that the October coup (revolution) was the most bloodless of all such acts in the history of Europe. A Civil War, which claimed millions of lives, was organized by W. Churchill..
N.N. Leman said that M.A. Suslov was pleased with our answer, the text of which I, of course, did not read.
Today, many years later, one might think that not all the details of those distant events have been reconstructed accurately enough. But their general scheme apparently corresponds to reality.
This is all that remains in my memory of that work under the leadership of N.N. Leman.
Main Researcher State Hermitage
Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor
B.V.Sapunov
For the first time, Petrograd newspapers wrote that the cruiser Aurora fired at the Winter Palace from a six-inch gun the very next day after the coup. The ship's crew, however, gave a refutation through the Pravda newspaper, claiming that there was only one shot, and a blank one at that. Who is right?
It MUST be said that the version of the shelling is confirmed by some eyewitnesses. American journalist John Reed wrote about two shells from the Aurora that hit the Winter Palace. The daughter of the English ambassador, Muriel Buchanan, talks about “two or three shells arriving from the direction of the Neva.” But perhaps it is her testimony that indicates Aurora’s innocence.
It is known for certain that on the night of October 25, 1917, the cruiser stood near the Nikolaevsky (later Shmidtovsky) bridge on the Neva. In order to somehow hit the Winter Palace with a live shell, the Aurora’s gunners would have to fire at an incredibly acute angle. In addition, the pediment of the Admiralty and the Palace Bridge, erected due to the unrest in the city, would have prevented them from aiming.
Where did the fire on the Winter Palace come from? Firstly, from the Peter and Paul Fortress. In front of its western end, the Bolsheviks managed to deploy several three-inch guns and fire, according to various sources, from 3 to 30 shots. It was their fire that the daughter of the English ambassador mistook for shots from the Aurora. Another cannon of the same caliber was located under the arch of the General Staff.
Firsov A.
For many years now, every year on November 7th and 8th, citizens of our country celebrate the anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution. According to party historians, everything happened as follows. At a signal from the cruiser Aurora, armed workers and peasants under the leadership of the Communist Party rushed to storm the Winter Palace, overcame the resistance of the women's battalion guarding the Winter Palace, broke into the palace and arrested the Provisional Government.
The chairman of the provisional government, Kerensky, left the Winter Palace in the morning.
The main hero of the revolution is considered to be Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who that evening went to the Smolny Palace, from there he led the storming of the Winter Palace, and after the completion of the storm he declared the Provisional Government deposed.
There are several facts that are constantly obscured by historians, but which make sense to pay attention to.
Firstly, On the morning of November 25 at about 11 o'clock in the morning, the Chairman of the Provisional Government, Alexander Kerensky, left the Winter Palace, leaving the Provisional Government without any instructions.
Secondly, on the afternoon of November 25, the general staff and the provisional government (located on both sides of the palace square) were presented with ultimatums to surrender. And a white flag soon appeared on the general headquarters.
Third, at 19 o'clock, and another hour later, the commissioner of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee Grigory Chudnovsky with a group of parliamentarians comes to the Winter Palace and presents the Provisional Government with a repeated ultimatum demanding surrender.
The provisional government understands that the situation is acute, so Chudnovsky is released, but they do not give a positive answer.
Fourth, the shot from the Cruiser Aurora at 21 o'clock was not fired into the air. This was not a signal for an assault, but a demonstration of force. Shots were also fired several times from the walls of the Peter and Paul Fortress.
Fifthly, Aurora’s shot was fired not from the main gun and with a blank cartridge, but aimed. The projectile wad that flew out along with the powder gases hit the Winter Palace. In doing so, he broke through two walls of the building, causing the building to shake. In the first years after the revolution, visitors were shown the holes in the wall caused by Aurora's shot.
At sixth, after Aurora's warning shot, the cruiser's six-inch guns were loaded with live shells.
Aurora's next one or more shots would level the Winter Palace. But Aurora didn’t shoot anymore. Neither idle nor in combat. Judging by the fact that no further shots were required from Aurora, it can be assumed that a white flag was hung above the Winter Palace or on one of its windows, as well as above the general headquarters. Whether this is so is not known.
Obviously, in this situation, defending the palace, firing even one shot, or in any way preventing outsiders from entering the Winter Palace would be tantamount to suicide.
V.A. himself Antonov-Ovseyenko, sent to the Winter Palace to arrest the provisional government, no matter how he embellished the dangers of the event, described the events immediately after Aurora’s shot in his book “In the Seventeenth Year”:
“A gun shot sounded dully. More and more. Peter and Paul Fortress spoke. Better... The air was powerfully torn... - "Aurora"! - Shouldn't we suggest they surrender again? - asks Chudnovsky, who brought some of the Pavlovians, brave and talkative as always. I agree. Goes with someone. The artillery shelling had an effect. The fire of the barricades went out. Shut up - apparently abandoned? - armored cars... Some kind of crash, clanging of weapons, hysterical screams. “We surrender, comrades!”
On the night of October 25-26, 1917, old style, a military coup took place in St. Petersburg. It would later be called the Great October Socialist Revolution.
Usually we perceive the October revolution according to the film by Sergei Eisenstein: under machine-gun fire, crowds of stormers run across the square to the Winter Palace, here and there the dead and wounded fall... But in reality, everything was not like that - the success of the uprising lay in whose side turned out to be the Petrograd garrison and military units stationed in the city.
Coup not according to script
« Military history the armed October uprising has not yet been written. We know more about the Decembrist uprising than about the events that took place in 1917. About the Decembrists, we can say for sure that this or that regiment set off along this route, but not about the October Uprising,” says Kirill Nazarenko, Doctor of Historical Sciences.
Imagine an absolutely dark Palace Square. Rare glimpses of light catch the bloody walls, creating a kind of sketch in purple tones…
According to Nazarenko, outwardly at that time the center of St. Petersburg looked different, because the Admiralty, the Main Headquarters, and the Headquarters of the Guards Troops - everything was painted the color of ox's blood, dark red without a single white detail. Such a coloristic decision was made under Alexander II, in the 80s of the 19th century, which is why Palace Square for many years resembled appearance butcher shop.
Under the arch of the main headquarters of a group of Red Guards, on the right, from Millionnaya Street, detachments of the Pavlovsk Regiment are approaching, on the left, from the side of the Admiralty, sailors of the Baltic Fleet are accumulating. “When darkness thickened over the square, during the assault the palace did not stand out even with the white capitals of the columns; it was completely drowned in night darkness", explains the historian.
The palace square was blocked by a woodpile of firewood 2-3 meters high. The garden in front of the palace on the Admiralty side was surrounded by a high fence. In complete darkness, messengers ran between the detachments, because urgent means of communication, and even more so mobile phones Of course it wasn't. The city was in complete chaos.
Contrary to popular belief, at the Aurora’s signal there was no rush to storm the Winter Palace. Sergei Eisenstein, for whom it was important to convey the scale of the events taking place, like a great director, decided to simply depict a crowd scene - in fact, it was impossible to run through the square, because it was blocked by firewood.
“John Reed in his “10 Days That Shook the World” has such a scene when he and a group of rebels run out from under the arch of the General Staff Building, and the darkness was such that they simply stumbled upon the woodpile of firewood that surrounded the Alexander Column. They groped around it and reached the woodpile, which towered near the façade of the Winter Palace,” says Nazarenko.
Revolution as a gift
It is believed that the revolution in October 1917 was carried out exclusively by the Bolsheviks, but this is not so. The coup was led by the Military Revolutionary Committee, which was formed not at all by the Bolshevik Party, but by the Petrograd Council, whose leader was Leon Trotsky.
In addition to the Bolsheviks, the military revolutionary committee included left Socialist Revolutionaries and anarchists. Its leader was the left Socialist Revolutionary Pavel Lazimir. The committee led the entire uprising. By its beginning, all power in the city had in fact passed to the Petrograd Soviet. No one accepted the orders of the provisional government.
“It is not surprising that in such a situation the coup itself on the night of October 23-24 took place relatively quietly and peacefully. Detachments of the Red Guard and sailors of the Baltic Fleet built bridges, disarmed the guards of the Provisional Government, took control of the power plant, train stations, telegraph, telephone and all this - practically without firing a single shot. The provisional government did not understand at all what was happening for quite a long time,” explains the culturologist and writer Andrey Stolyarov.
On November 7 or October 26, old style, the whole world will celebrate the centenary of the Great October Socialist Revolution. And on the same day, November 7, 1917, Leiba Davidovich Bronstein, better known as Leon Trotsky, celebrated his birthday; he turned 36 years old.
It is unlikely that the armed uprising won in Petrograd on that day can be considered a coincidence. And Trotsky himself considered himself, and not Lenin, the true leader of the proletarian revolution. “My birthday coincides with the day of the October Revolution. Mystics and Pythagoreans can draw any conclusions from this,” Leon Trotsky later wrote.
“The revolution could happen any day starting from September 15th. The Red Guard was ready; the capture of post offices and other strategically important communication points was a matter of several hours. But Trotsky wanted to give himself a gift. He understood that his birthday would always be celebrated this way as long as he existed. Soviet Union- people will go to the parade, march... And he turned out to be right about this - until 1991, we went to parades every year and celebrated his birthday as a public holiday,” the writer believes Alexander Myasnikov.
Who was the real leader of the armed uprising? Trotsky or Lenin? Trotsky, of course, was a brilliant orator, he knew how to stir up a crowd for any cause, but he did not have a party or support among the masses. Lenin was, by and large, a cabinet worker, but he had a party.
According to Andrei Stolyarov, Leon Trotsky himself understood this fact. In July 1917, one of his comrades, having learned that Trotsky intended to join the Bolshevik Party, exclaimed: “Lev Davidovich, but these are political bandits!” Trotsky responded to this: “I know. But the Bolsheviks are now the only real political force.”
According to many historians, in Russia there were three great memoirists - falsifiers, who wrote their memoirs with one goal: to expose themselves as the best side, contrary to the facts. These are Ivan the Terrible, Catherine II and Leon Trotsky, who described their path to power so vividly that for several centuries later historians cited their works as the only true ones. Leon Trotsky had the opportunity to write his memoirs when he was in exile, and his main task was to discredit Stalin and prove that Stalin in power was a mistake and an accident.
Trotsky's American connections
What was the true role of Leon Trotsky in the October Revolution? American journalist John Reed made a great contribution to the creation of the myth that it was Trotsky who was the leader of the revolution with his book “10 Days That Shook the World.” Today some details are being revealed in his mysterious life.
“We know that this man was from a very rich family, received higher education in the best foreign educational institutions. And suddenly this rich, successful boy Reed is turned into some kind of revolutionary. Yes, his notes about workers’ protests in Boston appeared in the media, then these two publications were published as a separate book and that’s it - he never wrote anything else during his career,” explains writer Alexander Myasnikov.
It is known that Trotsky was in America before the revolution. There he was really received high level, he met with Baron Rothschild several times, and, according to some sources, received at least $20 million from the banking house of Jacob Schiff.
With this money, Trotsky returns to Russia to prepare the revolution. The most remarkable thing is that John Reed is leaving with him on the same ship to Russia. And, apparently, not in vain. After the June events in Petrograd, many Bolsheviks were forced to go underground, and some of them were arrested. Among those arrested was Leon Trotsky. But an amazing thing happens.
In August 1917, John Reed and a group of Americans arrived in Petrograd, and suddenly someone released Leon Trotsky on a very large bail. And when Trotsky is already making a revolution, it becomes people's commissar- He immediately creates a department to combat propaganda, which is headed by Reed.
Now sensational evidence has emerged that John Reed was most likely a “double agent” of both the Kremlin and Wall Street. Reed actually worked for America's leading banker, John Morgan, and his anti-capitalist writings supported the valuable myth that capitalists are the implacable enemies of all revolutionaries.
It also became known that evidence of John Reed’s active participation in money laundering that Russia sent to America was found in the archives of the US Communist Party. According to Alexander Myasnikov, his book “10 Days That Shook the World” is a report on how money was spent at Trotsky’s headquarters.
Myths about the Women's Battalion
The October Revolution was characterized by complete confusion and inconsistencies. The fact is that no one had any experience of fighting in the city at that time - it appeared only during the Second World War. Therefore, no one knew what to do. Modern military would put machine guns in the windows of the palace, strengthen basements. But nothing of the kind was done. Sometimes the stormers and defenders of the palace, in complete darkness, shot at the white light like a penny. But mostly there was a verbal skirmish.
According to various estimates, there were about 10 thousand people who stormed the palace, about 2 thousand defenders of the palace. After several ultimatums, part of the troops defending the palace left it. The cadets and Cossacks left. The students of the Mikhailovsky Artillery School also left the palace along with the cannons. Moreover, a very typical example of the fact that no one wanted to shoot, much less kill, is the episode with artillery during the storming of the Winter Palace.
One of the main myths about the October Revolution is the story of dressing up in women's dress and the escape from the Winter Palace of the chairman of the provisional government, Alexander Kerensky. In fact, Kerensky calmly left the Palace in the car of the American ambassador and he did not change into any female attire.
Among the myths about heroic defenders Winter Palace, also applies to the persistent belief of many historians about the heroines - shock workers from the women's death battalion. They write that they were completely raped by the sailors and soldiers who burst in. But the fact is that at the time of the assault there was not a single female defender in the palace, and there were no cases of rape. They all calmly left the palace long before the assault.
“At about 6 p.m. the first firefight broke out around the Winter Palace. And both the defenders and the besiegers were very afraid to go out into the open space in front of the palace. The shootout demoralized the shock workers, and when the next ultimatum was sent, the firefight stopped, they stayed overnight in the barracks of the Pavlovsky regiment on the Field of Mars. Nobody offended them there and they even fed them dinner,” describes Kirill Nazarenko.
Error of the Minister of the Navy
The legendary cruiser "Aurora" is a ship whose shot from the forecastle gun, as they used to write, "heralded the beginning of a new era." The Aurora actually fired a shot, but it was only one and a blank one at that. The fact is that then almost no one had a watch; watches were a luxury item: soldiers and sailors, of course, did not have them.
But traces of gun shots remained after the volleys of guns from the Peter and Paul Fortress. The guns were very old, all modern weapons were at the front, and therefore shooting from the fortress was carried out at the risk of life.
“The cannons fired several times from the direction of the Peter and Paul Fortress. They fired at the Winter Palace with a sheaf of bullets that hit the facade - traces of this were clearly visible in photographs of the 20s. During one of the salvoes, the so-called “glass” - the body of a shrapnel shell - flew into the hall of the third floor of the Winter Palace from the Neva. It was brought to the table of the Provisional Government, but it would have been better not to have done this, because most of the ministers were again shocked and awe, and someone joked that this was an ashtray for the table of their successors,” says the historian.
At this moment, all the eyes of the civilian ministers turned to the Minister of Naval Rear Admiral Dmitry Verderevsky, who, in their opinion, should have known the origin of the projectile.
But Verderevsky, who by his naval specialty was a navigator, not an artilleryman, said: “This is from the Aurora.” This is how the myth was born that during the assault the Aurora fired live shells. This was forgivable for the rear admiral, because he simply determined by eye that the diameter of the shell could be suitable, although an artilleryman would never have confused the size of a land cannon from the Peter and Paul Fortress with the Aurora shell.
Bloodless coup
The inside of the Winter Palace at that time was completely different from the modern one. It was a real labyrinth, with a bunch of partitions and secret staircases. The corridors ended with plywood partitions that had to be walked around. That is why the interim government could not be found for four hours. In addition, part of the palace was given over to a hospital and the attackers returned to their starting point several times. The detachments wandered through the passages and could not get to the room where the government was meeting.
According to historian Kirill Nazarenko, it was arrested only at two in the morning, and the cadets of the Pavlovsk School stood until the last, blocking the path to the White Dining Room and obeying the order to stand with rifles in hand. The weapons were snatched from them because there was no order to shoot. The next night the arrest was bloodless - the ministers were detained and sent to Peter and Paul Fortress, from where they were subsequently released on receipt, and in the morning they left the palace.
The inhabitants of Petrograd perceived the October revolution surprisingly calmly. Nothing has changed in their lives. Trams ran in the same way, groups of well-dressed people walked along the embankments, shops and cinemas operated. Everyone was already accustomed to the change of governments and believed that this was yet another temporary government, and that we must wait for the convening of a constituent assembly, which would put everything in its place. Moreover, the coup itself took place surprisingly bloodlessly.
In the morning, crowds of ordinary people began to converge on the Winter Palace, because rumors spread throughout the city that the palace had burned down and the Alexander Column had cracked and collapsed. They went to look at the stump of the Alexander Column, but to their surprise everything turned out to be in order.
Full version issue “Storm of the Winter Palace” is available at the link.
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