Communism -- Soviet Union; Soviet Union -- History -- Revolution, 1917-1921
TO ALL SOVIETS OF WORKERS’ AND SOLDIERS’ DEPUTIES
The 12th of November, in a bloody combat near Tsarskoye Selo, the
revolutionary army defeated the counter-revolutionary troops of
Kerensky and Kornilov. In the name of the Revolutionary Government I
order all regiments to take the offensive against the enemies of the
revolutionary democracy, and to take all measures to arrest Kerensky,
and also to oppose any adventure which might menace the conquests of
the Revolution and the victory of the proletariat.
Long live the Revolutionary Army!
MURAVIOV.
News from the provinces….
At Sevastopol the local Soviet had assumed the power; a huge meeting of
the sailors on the battleships in the harbour had forced their officers
to line up and swear allegiance to the new Government. At Nizhni
Novgorod the Soviet was in control. From Kazan came reports of a battle
in the streets, _yunkers_ and a brigade of artillery against the
Bolshevik garrison….
Desperate fighting had broken out again in Moscow. The _yunkers_ and
White Guards held the Kremlin and the centre of the town, beaten upon
from all sides by the troops of the Military Revolutionary Committee.
The Soviet artillery was stationed in Skobeliev Square, bombarding the
City Duma building, the Prefecture and the Hotel Metropole. The
cobblestones of the Tverskaya and Nikitskaya had been torn up for
trenches and barricades. A hail of machine-gun fire swept the quarters
of the great banks and commercial houses. There were no lights, no
telephones; the bourgeois population lived in the cellars…. The last
bulletin said that the Military Revolutionary Committee had delivered
an ultimatum to the Committee of Public Safety, demanding the immediate
surrender of the Kremlin, or bombardment would follow.
“Bombard the Kremlin?” cried the ordinary citizen. “They dare not!”
From Vologda to Chita in far Siberia, from Pskov to Sevastopol on the
Black Sea, in great cities and little villages, civil war burst into
flame. From thousands of factories, peasant communes, regiments and
armies, ships on the wide sea, greetings poured into
Petrograd—greetings to the Government of the People.
The Cossack Government at Novotcherkask telegraphed to Kerensky, _“The
Government of the Cossack troops invites the Provisional Government and
the members of the Council of the Republic to come, if possible, to
Novotcherkask, where we can organise in common the struggle against the
Bolsheviki.”_
In Finland, also, things were stirring. The Soviet of Helsingfors and
the _Tsentrobalt_ (Central Committee of the Baltic Fleet), jointly
proclaimed a state of siege, and declared that all attempts to
interfere with the Bolshevik forces, and all armed resistance to its
orders, would be severely repressed. At the same time the Finnish
Railway Union called a countrywide general strike, to put into
operation the laws passed by the Socialist Diet of June, 1917,
dissolved by Kerensky….
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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