‘Looking at them,’ said the British ambassador’s daughter of the insurgent Kronstadt soldiers on the streets, ‘one wondered what the fate of Petrograd would be if these ruffians with their unshaven faces, their slouching walk, their utter brutality were to have the town at their mercy.’ What indeed? Did they, in fact, not so have the town? But this was something more than a demonstration, something less than an insurrection.
The MO agitated among the garrison at the Peter and Paul Fortress, where amid shouting and wrangling they drew 8,000 men to their side. Radicals with weapons in their hands spread out through the city, took control of anti-Bolshevik newspapers and set up guards at stations. The noise of bullets kept up, as right and left skirmished bloodily.
Mid-afternoon. Some 60,000 people processed by a church on the corner of Sadovaya and Apraksina streets. From above came pounding shots, sending the marchers scattering in panic. Five were left dead on the ground.
At 3 p.m., the huge sailors’ demonstration clogged the channel between the smart facades of Nevsky and Liteiny Prospects, where shop windows displayed proud support for the army’s offensive and for the government. The curious monied watched the marchers from above. From somewhere came another shot. A black-flag-carrying anarchist fell dying. The crowd stampeded again, ducking and zigzagging to safety, amid counterfire and chaos. Sailors broke into overlooking houses in rough search parties, hunting for arms and sometimes finding them. Blood had been spilt and blood was up, and the men spilt blood in revenge, lynching some of those they overcame.
Fired up, firing, fired upon, the marchers converged on the Tauride Palace. Again and again they shouted their demand: all power to the soviets. The skies released torrential rain, whipping up the end-of-days atmosphere among the many who stayed. As darkness started to fall, someone fired a sodden weapon at the palace, spreading panic. The Kronstadters were demanding to see Perverzev, the minister of justice, to hear from him why the anarchist Zhelezniakov, who had been taken into custody at Durnovo, had not been released.
At the very moment that the crowd began to break down doors to look for him, in fact, Perverzev was in his offices, greeting journalists and representatives from Petrograd military units. He had, he said, something to show them. Evidence that the government had been amassing for some time. Evidence that purported to prove that Lenin was a German spy.
Besieged in the Tauride Palace, the Soviet leaders were panicking. After quickly conferring, they sent out the SR leader Chernov as their emissary, to placate those howling and chanting for Perverzev. An amiable, erudite man, once held in general respect, they thought he could calm the demonstrators with a typical quotation-peppered speech.
But when he appeared, someone yelled, ‘Here is one of those who shoots at the people!’ Sailors began to grab for him. Startled and alarmed, Chernov clambered atop a barrel and began gamely to orate.
He must have thought it a crowd-pleasing touch to mention the four Kadets who had quit the government, and to declare, ‘Good riddance!’
‘Then why’, came an answering shout from the crowd, ‘didn’t you say so before?’
The mood grew ugly. Chernov shrank precariously back as suspicious men and women surrounding him jostled closer to where he balanced. A big worker pushed his way through and came up close and shook his fist in Chernov’s face.
‘Take power, you son of a bitch,’ he bellowed, in one of most famous phrases of 1917, ‘when it’s given to you!’
Inside the palace, Chernov’s comrades were realising what danger he was in. In desperation, they sent out several respected leftists – Martov, Kamenev, Steklov, Woytinsky – to rescue him. But, shoving through the crush, Raskolnikov beside him, it was Trotsky who reached him first.
A trumpet blasted out and the crowd fell quiet. Trotsky made his way to the car into which someone had shoved Chernov. He harangued the febrile crowd as he came, demanding they listen to him. Trotsky climbed onto the bonnet.
‘Comrade Kronstadters!’ he shouted. ‘Pride and glory of the revolution! You’ve come to declare your will and show the Soviet that the working class no longer wants to see the bourgeoisie in power. But why hurt your own cause by petty acts of violence against casual individuals? Individuals are not worthy of your attention.’
He faced down the furious heckles. He reached out his hand to an especially voluble sailor. ‘Give me your hand, comrade,’ he shouted. ‘Your hand, brother!’
The man would not oblige, but his confusion was palpable.
‘Those here in favour of violence,’ Trotsky shouted at last, ‘raise your hands.’
No hand was raised.
‘Citizen Chernov,’ Trotsky said, opening the car door, ‘you are free to go.’
Bruised, terrorised, humiliated, Chernov scurried back inside the palace. That he very probably owed Trotsky his life did not stop him sitting down that night to write a slew of blistering attacks on the Bolsheviks.
About 6 p.m., a joint meeting of the Soviet Executive Committees convened. The moderates turned to the army for help. They sent a plea to the reactionary General Polovtsev for some of the loyal troops stationed in the suburbs – because the political debates had not swayed all soldiers in the area – to come and defend them. ‘Now’, Polovtsev would recall the irony, ‘I was free to assume the role of saviour of the Soviet.’
Outside, tens of thousands of people still hollered, now for Tsereteli himself. Zinoviev, a popular Bolshevik, came out to calm them with banter and bonhomie, and begged them to disperse. But he could not dissuade them all from their aims, and a resolute group of protestors burst suddenly into the Catherine Hall where the terrified Soviet committees were meeting.
In response to this invasion, some of the Soviet members, in Sukhanov’s exquisite formulation, ‘did not reveal a sufficient courage and self-restraint’. They cowered from those furiously insisting that they take power.
With striking aplomb, disconcerting the man into silence, Chkheidze handed one heckler an official appeal to go home.
‘Please read it carefully,’ he said, ‘and don’t interrupt our business.’
As well as the army, the Soviet appealed to the fleet. A little after 7 p.m., Dudorov, assistant to the naval minister, called for four destroyers to intimidate the Kronstadters. In a shocking escalation, he ordered that ‘any ships attempting to depart from Kronstadt without specific orders are to be sunk by the submarine fleet’.
But the call was intercepted by the hard-left Baltic Fleet Central Committee, Tsentrobalt. It forced the commander, Verevsky, to respond: ‘Cannot carry out your orders.’
On the Mars Field, Cossacks charged Kronstadt sailors.