Fall of Giants

The Committee for Struggle, soon renamed the Military Revolutionary Committee, was dominated by the charismatic figure of Trotsky. He was not handsome, with his big nose, high forehead, and bulging eyes staring through rimless glasses, but he was charming and persuasive. Where Lenin shouted and bullied, Trotsky reasoned and beguiled. Grigori suspected that Trotsky was as tough as Lenin but better at hiding it.

On Monday, November 5, two days before the All-Russia Congress was due to start, Grigori went to a mass meeting, called by the Military Revolutionary Committee, of all the troops in the Peter and Paul Fortress. The meeting started at noon and went on all afternoon, hundreds of soldiers debating politics in the square in front of the fort while their officers fumed impotently. Then Trotsky arrived, to thunderous applause, and after listening to him they voted to obey the committee rather than the government, Trotsky, not Kerensky.

Walking away from the square, Grigori reflected that the government could not possibly tolerate a key army unit declaring its loyalty to someone else. The cannon of the fortress were directly across the river from the Winter Palace, where the provisional government was headquartered. Surely, he thought, Kerensky would now admit defeat and resign.

Next day Trotsky announced precautions against a counterrevolutionary coup by the army. He ordered Red Guards and troops loyal to the soviet to take over the bridges, railway stations, and police stations, plus the post office, the telegraph office, the telephone exchange, and the state bank.

Grigori was at Trotsky’s side, turning the great man’s stream of commands into detailed instructions for specific military units and dispatching the orders around the city by messengers on horseback, on bicycles, and in cars. He thought Trotsky’s “precautions” seemed very similar to a takeover.

To his amazement and delight, there was little resistance.

A spy at the Marinsky Palace reported that Prime Minister Kerensky had asked the preparliament-the body that had so miserably failed in its task of setting up the Constituent Assembly-for a vote of confidence. The preparliament refused. No one took much notice. Kerensky was history, just another inadequate man who had tried and failed to rule Russia. He returned to the Winter Palace, where his impotent government continued to pretend to rule.

Lenin was hiding at the apartment of a comrade, Margarita Fofanova. The Central Committee had ordered him not to move about the city, fearing he would be arrested. Grigori was one of the few people who knew his location. At eight o’clock in the evening Margarita arrived at the Smolny with a note from Lenin ordering the Bolsheviks to launch an armed insurrection immediately. Trotsky said tetchily: “What does he imagine we’re doing?”

But Grigori thought Lenin was right. In spite of everything, the Bolsheviks had not quite seized power. Once the Congress of Soviets assembled it would have all authority-and then, even if the Bolsheviks were in a majority, the result would be yet another coalition government based on compromise.

The congress was scheduled to begin tomorrow afternoon at two o’clock. Only Lenin seemed to understand the urgency of the situation, Grigori thought with a sense of desperation. He was needed here, at the heart of things.

Grigori decided to go and get him.

It was a freezing night, with a north wind that seemed to blow straight through the leather coat Grigori wore over his sergeant’s uniform. The center of the city was shockingly normal: well-dressed middle-class people were coming out of theaters and walking to brightly lit restaurants, while beggars pestered them for change and prostitutes smiled on street corners. Grigori nodded to a comrade who was selling a pamphlet by Lenin called Will the Bolsheviks Be Able to Hold the Power? Grigori did not buy one. He already knew the answer to that question.

Margarita’s flat was on the northern edge of the Vyborg district. Grigori could not drive there for fear of calling attention to Lenin’s hideout. He walked to the Finland Station, then caught a streetcar. The journey was long, and he spent most of it wondering if Lenin would refuse to come.

However, to his great relief Lenin did not need much persuading. “Without you, I don’t believe the other comrades will take the final decisive step,” Grigori said, and that was all it took to convince Lenin to come.

He left a note on the kitchen table, so that Margarita would not imagine he had been arrested. It said: “I have gone where you wanted me not to go. Good-bye, Ilich.” Party members called him Ilich, his middle name.

Grigori checked his pistol while Lenin put on his wig, a worker’s cap, and a shabby overcoat. Then they set out.

Grigori kept a sharp lookout, fearful that they would run into a detachment of police or an army patrol and Lenin would be recognized. He made up his mind that, rather than let Lenin be arrested, he would shoot without hesitation.