Kerensky greatly underestimated the threat posed by the Bolsheviks: he not only did not fear a Bolshevik coup, he actually hoped for one, confident that it would enable him to crush and be rid of them once and for all. In mid-October, military commanders kept reporting to him that the Bolsheviks were making unmistakable preparations for an armed uprising. At the same time they assured him that in view of the Petrograd garrison’s “overwhelming” opposition to a coup, such an uprising would be promptly liquidated.179 On the basis of these assessments, which misinterpreted opposition to Bolshevik plans to mean support for his government, Kerensky offered reassurances to colleagues and foreign ambassadors. Nabokov recalls him prepared to “offer prayers to produce this uprising” because he had ample forces to crush it.180 To George Buchanan, Kerensky said more than once: “I only wish that [the Bolsheviks] would come out, and I will then put them down.”181
But Kerensky’s self-assurance in the face of a clear and present danger was inspired not only by overconfidence: now, as during the rest of 1917, fear of the “counterrevolution” provides a key to his behavior and that of the entire non-Bolshevik left. Once Kerensky had charged Kornilov and other generals with treason and asked the Soviet for help against them, in the eyes of professional officers he was no longer distinguishable from the Bolsheviks. After August 27, therefore, any military action against the Bolsheviks was certain to result in Kerensky’s downfall. Aware of this, Kerensky hesitated far too long in rallying the military. General A. I. Verkhovskii, the Minister of War, told the British Ambassador after the event that “Kerensky had not wanted the Cossacks to suppress the [October] rising by themselves, as that would have meant the end of the revolution.”182 On the basis of shared fears, a fatal bond was thus forged between two mortal enemies, “February” and “October.” The only hope that Kerensky and his associates still entertained was that at the last moment the Bolsheviks would lose their nerve and back out, as they had done in July. P. I. Palchinskii, who directed the defense of the Winter Palace on October 24–26, jotted down during the siege of the palace or immediately after its fall his impression of the government’s attitude: “Helplessness of Polkovnikov and the lack of any plans. Hope that the senseless step will not be taken. Ignorance of what to do if, nevertheless, it is.”183
No serious military preparations were made to stave off a blow which everyone knew was coming. Kerensky later claimed that on October 24 he had requested reinforcements from front-line commanders, but historical researches have shown that he had issued no such orders until nighttime (October 24–25), by which time it was too late, for by then the coup was already being completed.184 General Alekseev estimated that there were in Petrograd 15,000 officers, one-third of them ready to fight the Bolsheviks: his offer to organize them was ignored, and as a result, as the city was being taken over they either sat on their hands or reveled in drunken orgies.185 Most astonishing of all, the nerve center of the government’s defense, the Military Staff, located in the Engineers’ (Mikhailovskii) Palace, was left unguarded: any passerby was free to enter it without being asked for identification.186
The final phase of the Bolshevik coup got underway in the morning of Tuesday, October 24, after the Military Staff had carried out the halfhearted measures ordered by the government the preceding night.
In the early hours of October 24, iunkers took over guard duty at key points. Two or three detachments were sent to protect the Winter Palace, where they were joined by the so-called Women’s Death Battalion consisting of 140 volunteers, some Cossacks, a bicycle unit, forty war invalids commanded by an officer with artificial legs, and several artillery pieces. Surprisingly, no machine guns were deployed. Iunkers shut down the printing plants of Rabochiipuf (ex-Pravda) and Soldat The telephone lines to Smolnyi were disconnected. Orders went out to raise the bridges over the Neva to prevent pro-Bolshevik workers and soldiers from penetrating the city’s center. The staff forbade the garrison to take any instructions from the Milrevkom. It also ordered, without effect, the arrest of the Milrevkom’s commissars.187
These preparations produced an atmosphere of crisis. That day most offices closed by 2:30 p.m. and the streets emptied as people rushed home.
This was the “counterrevolutionary” signal the Bolsheviks had been waiting for. They first moved to reopen their two newspapers: this they accomplished by 11 a.m. Next, the Milrevkom sent armed detachments to take over the Central Telegraph Office and the Russian Telegraphic Agency. The telephone lines from Smolnyi were reconnected. Thus, the earliest objectives of the coup were centers of information and lines of communication.
The only violence that day occurred in the afternoon as units of the Milrevkom forced the lowering of the bridges across the Neva.
While the uprising was already in its final and decisive phase, in the evening of October 24 the Milrevkom issued a statement that, rumors notwithstanding, it was not staging an uprising but solely acting to defend the “interests of the Petrograd garrison and democracy” from the counterrevolution.188
Possibly under the influence of this disinformation, Lenin, who must have been completely out of touch, wrote a despairing note to his colleagues urging them to do what they were in fact doing:
I am writing these lines in the evening of the 24th [of October], the situation is most extremely critical. It is clearer than clear that now, truly, to delay the uprising is death.
With all my strength I want to convince my comrades that now everything hangs on a hair, that we are confronting questions that are not resolved by consultations, not by congresses (even by congresses of soviets), but exclusively by the people, by the masses, by the struggle of the armed masses.
The bourgeois pressure of the Kornilovites, the dismissal of Verkhovskii indicate that one cannot wait. It is necessary, no matter what, this evening, this night, to arrest the government, to disarm the iunkers (vanquishing them if they resist), etc.…
Who should take power?
This is not important right now: let the Military-Revolutionary Committee take it or “some other institution” …
Power seizure is the task of the uprising: its political goal will become clear after power has been taken.
It would be perdition or a formality to await the uncertain voting of October 25. The people have the right and duty to solve such questions not by voting but by force …*
Later that night Lenin made his way to Smolnyi: he was heavily disguised, his bandaged face said to have made him look like a patient in a dentist’s office. En route, he was almost arrested by a government patrol but he saved himself by pretending to be drunk. In Smolnyi he stayed out of sight, in one of the back rooms, accessible only to closest associates. Trotsky recalls that Lenin grew apprehensive when he heard about the ongoing negotiations with the Military Staff, but as soon as he was assured that these talks were a feint, he beamed with pleasure: