On the steps of Smolny, in the chill dark, we first saw the Red Guard—a huddled group of boys in workmen’s clothes, carrying guns with bayonets, talking nervously together.
Far over the still roofs westward came the sound of scattered rifle fire, where the _yunkers_ were trying to open the bridges over the Neva, to prevent the factory workers and soldiers of the Viborg quarter from joining the Soviet forces in the centre of the city; and the Cronstadt sailors were closing them again….
Behind us great Smolny, bright with lights, hummed like a gigantic hive….
Chapter IV The Fall of the Provisional Government
Wednesday, November 7th, I rose very late. The noon cannon boomed from Peter-Paul as I went down the Nevsky. It was a raw, chill day. In front of the State Bank some soldiers with fixed bayonets were standing at the closed gates.
“What side do you belong to?” I asked. “The Government?”
“No more Government,” one answered with a grin, “_Slava Bogu!_ Glory to God!” That was all I could get out of him….
The street-cars were running on the Nevsky, men, women and small boys hanging on every projection. Shops were open, and there seemed even less uneasiness among the street crowds than there had been the day before. A whole crop of new appeals against insurrection had blossomed out on the walls during the night—to the peasants, to the soldiers at the front, to the workmen of Petrograd. One read:
The Municipal Duma informs the citizens that in the extraordinary meeting of November 6th the Duma formed a Committee of Public Safety, composed of members of the Central and Ward Dumas, and representatives of the following revolutionary democratic organizations: The _Tsay-ee-kah,_ the All-Russian Executive Committee of Peasant Deputies, the Army organisations, the _Tsentroflot,_ the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies (!), the Council of Trade Unions, and others.
Members of the Committee of Public Safety will be on duty in the building of the Municipal Duma. Telephones No. 15-40, 223-77, 138-36.
Though I didn’t realize it then, this was the Duma’s declaration of war against the Bolsheviki.
I bought a copy of _Rabotchi Put,_ the only newspaper which seemed on sale, and a little later paid a soldier fifty kopeks for a second-hand copy of _Dien._ The Bolshevik paper, printed on large-sized sheets in the conquered office of the _Russkaya Volia,_ had huge headlines: “ALL POWER—TO THE SOVIETS OF WORKERS, SOLDIERS AND PEASANTS! PEACE! BREAD! LAND!” The leading article was signed “Zinoviev,”—Lenin’s companion in hiding. It began: