The dramatic events of the night from October 25 to 26, 1917 are shrouded in a huge number of myths, many feature films have been made about them, and books have been written. But almost a hundred years later, the smoke from the Aurora’s blank shot has not cleared...
Winter. "I was surrounded on all sides..."
A gloomy morning on October 25, 1917. The Winter Palace, virtually cut off from the city, is deprived of communication with the outside world; it is defended by three hundred Cossacks of the Pyatigorsk regiment, half a company of a women's battalion and a cadet. All around is a drunkenly merry Petrograd crowd. Armed Red Guards are walking along the nearby streets, so far quite harmlessly.
Everything changed in an instant.
From the memoirs of Alexander Zinoviev, Chief Manager of the Northwestern Branch of the Red Cross:
“As always, in the morning I went to my Red Cross Office. Where I had to pass, everything was still calm and nothing special was noticeable. But at about 11 o’clock in the morning, on Liteinaya opposite the windows of our Office, suddenly, somehow unexpectedly, workers armed with guns appeared, mixed with sailors. A firefight began - they fired in the direction of Nevsky Prospekt, but the enemy was not visible... They began to bring the wounded and dead to the outpatient clinic, located right there in the building of our Administration... Shooting. this lasted for two hours, and then everything calmed down, the shooting workers and sailors disappeared somewhere... But soon information began to be received that the uprising was successful everywhere, the telephone exchange, water supply, railway stations and other important points of the city were already in the hands Bolsheviks and the entire St. Petersburg garrison joined them...
The Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies sat quietly and below the grass. The Ministers of the Provisional Government locked themselves in the Winter Palace, where most of them lived. The palace was defended only by cadets, that is, students of military schools that trained officers, and a women's battalion recently formed by Kerensky. The palace was surrounded on all sides by Bolsheviks, soldiers and sailors...
When in the evening, around 6 o’clock, I was walking home, in the part of the city through which I had to pass, everything was quiet and calm, the streets were empty, there was no traffic, I didn’t even meet pedestrians... The house in which We lived, it was very close to the Winter Palace - about five minutes walk, no more. In the evening, after dinner, lively shooting began near the Winter Palace, at first only rifle fire, then it was joined by the crackling of machine guns."
Hospital. “And also patients with “spines”
Prime Minister of the Provisional Government Alexander Kerensky urgently left for Gatchina, hoping to bring troops loyal to the Provisional Government to the capital. He by no means fled from Zimny, according to the post-revolutionary legend, which was later entrenched in school textbooks. And subsequently, having learned about this “interpretation,” I was very worried:
“Tell them in Moscow - you have serious people: tell them to stop writing this nonsense about me, that I ran away from the Winter Palace in a woman’s dress!.. I left in my car, not hiding from anyone. The soldiers saluted, including those with red bows. I never put on women’s clothes at all - even as a child, as a joke..." - in a conversation with journalist Genrikh Borovik (Publish an interview taken in 1966 in Paris, of course, did not succeed then, and Borovik told this story to Rossiyskaya Gazeta already in 2009).
In Soviet times, documents that shed light on the appearance of pictorial details were also not subject to publication (Kerensky, as the official version stated, changed into a nurse’s dress). The fact is that the Winter Palace ceased to be a citadel of the Russian monarchy since 1915 - a hospital was opened here. As the Government Gazette reported, “in the Imperial Winter Palace, it is the highest permission to set aside the state halls facing the Neva for the wounded, namely: the Nicholas Hall with the Military Gallery, the Avan Hall, the Field Marshal’s Hall and the Armorial Hall - for a total of a thousand wounded.” The grand opening of the hospital took place on October 5, the name day of the heir to the throne - Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich. By decision of the royal family, the hospital was named after him - to rid the heir of hemophilia.
The eight largest - and most magnificent - state halls on the 2nd floor were turned into chambers. The luxurious walls were covered with canvas, the floors were covered with linoleum.
“The patients were accommodated according to their wounds. In the Nicholas Hall, which accommodated 200 beds, lay those wounded in the head, throat and chest. And also very seriously ill patients - “spines” ... In the Armorial Hall there were patients with wounds in the abdominal cavity, thigh and hip joint... In the Alexander Hall there were patients wounded in the shoulder and back,” recalled nurse Nina Galanina.
On the 1st floor there was a reception area, a pharmacy, a kitchen, bathrooms, and doctor's offices. The hospital was equipped with the latest science and technology - the most advanced equipment, the latest treatment methods.
Hundreds of fighters who shed blood for Russia on the fronts of the World War were also taken by surprise by the revolution.
Smolny. "Ilyich was ready to shoot us"
Meanwhile, in Smolny for the second day, from October 24, the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets was seething. Lenin, sitting in Margarita Fofanova’s safe house, “bombarded” his party comrades with notes about the need to immediately begin the assault. A certified lawyer, a graduate of St. Petersburg University, he could not help but realize that he was inciting a coup d'etat - after all, the Provisional Government could de jure transfer power only to the Constituent Assembly. But the thirst for power was stronger than the “prejudice” of the law.
Comrades! I am writing these lines on the evening of the 24th, the situation is extremely critical... We cannot wait!! You can lose everything!! The government is wavering. We must finish him off at all costs!"
Finally, unable to bear it any longer, Lenin heads to Smolny. Lunacharsky recalled: “Ilyich was ready to shoot us.” Lenin climbed to the podium, taking over the baton from Trotsky on the podium; he had already “warmed up” the delegates. The Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries, representatives of other parties and even the moderate wing of the RSDLP (b) tried to insist on a peaceful and, no less important, legal resolution of the crisis. In vain...
A somewhat hysterical euphoria reigned in Smolny, and nervous confusion reigned in the dim and defenseless Zimny.
Winter. "The powerlessness and small number of defenders..."
A member of the Extraordinary Investigative Commission that investigated the affairs of former tsarist ministers (established after the February Revolution by order of the Provisional Government), Colonel Sergei Korenev, who was in the palace that night, recalled:
“The powerlessness and small number of our defenders - the cadets, to whom the authorities cannot even bother to give the necessary combat supplies, this is the obvious absence of a guiding will in the whole matter of defense, these sleepy generals and their hopes that if not a crook, then Kerensky will help out. And then there’s everything the same damned "Aurora", slyly winking at us with the muzzles of its cannons, which, although they will not fire, as our commanders assure us of this, still look very suspiciously right into our windows.
This picture is from the afternoon of October 25th. Around the same time, the American journalist John Reed, his wife and a friend entered the palace. The security did not allow them, with their “certificates from Smolny,” to enter the gates of the Own Garden from the side of the square, but they freely passed through the gates from the embankment, presenting American passports. We went up the stairs to the office of the minister-chairman, who, naturally, was not found. And we went to wander around the palace-hospital, looking at the paintings. “It was already quite late when we left the palace,” writes John Reed in the book “10 Days That Shook the World.”
And at about 23 o’clock (the “commanders” mentioned by Korenev were mistaken) “Aurora” finally fired. From gun No. 1, with a blank salvo, the echo of which echoed throughout the city. And this caused a real cannonade: the cannons of the Peter and Paul Fortress opened fire. And not with blank shells.
They shot at the hospital.
For the unarmed, defenseless, lying wounded in the halls and chambers of the Winter Palace. For the same workers and peasants, dressed in soldier's overcoats, in whose name the seizure of power was supposedly carried out.
"Aurora". Letter to the editors of Petrograd
The shadow of suspicion of the shameful shooting at the prone persons fell on the cruiser, which prompted its crew to send a very emotional letter to all Petrograd newspapers on October 27:
"To all honest citizens of the city of Petrograd from the crew of the cruiser "Aurora", which expresses its sharp protest about the accusations thrown, especially the accusations that have not been verified, but cast a stain of shame on the crew of the cruiser. We declare that we did not come to destroy the Winter Palace, not to kill civilians, but to protect and, if necessary, die for freedom and the Revolution from counter-revolutionaries.
The press writes that the Aurora opened fire on the Winter Palace, but do the reporters know that if we opened fire from the cannons, it would not have left a stone unturned not only in the Winter Palace, but also in the streets adjacent to it. Is this really true? Isn’t this a lie, the usual method of the bourgeois press to throw mud and plot against the working proletariat based on the facts of events? We, the workers and soldiers of the city of Petrograd, are addressing you. Don't believe provocative rumors. Don’t believe them that we are traitors and rioters, but check the rumors yourself. As for the shots from the cruiser, only one blank shot was fired from a 6-inch gun, indicating a signal for all ships standing on the Neva and calling on them to be vigilant and ready.
We ask all editors to reprint.
Chairman of the Ship Committee
A. BELYSHEV.
Comrade Chairman P. ANDREEV."
Most of the shells flying from the Peter and Paul Fortress exploded on Dvortsovaya Embankment, and shrapnel shattered several windows in Zimny. Two shells fired from the Peter and Paul Fortress hit the former reception room of Alexander III.
Why did the attackers fire howitzers at a virtually unarmed, almost unguarded palace? After all, even before the expiration of the ultimatum presented by the Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC) to the Provisional Government, the Cossacks and shock workers of the women’s battalion left the Winter Palace with white banners in their hands. There was no point in firing cannons at several dozen cadet boys. Most likely it was a psychic attack...
Well, Petrograd seemed not to notice the fatal events that took place that night.
Winter. The cadets were released on parole
“... On the streets everything is everyday and ordinary: the crowd on Nevsky is familiar to the eye, crowded tram cars are always running, shops are selling, no concentration of troops or armed detachments in general is detected anywhere... Only already at the palace itself an unusual movement is noticeable: on Palace Square, government troops are moving from place to place, compared to yesterday.
The Winter Palace from the outside has already taken on a more militant appearance: all its exits and passages leading to the Neva are surrounded by cadets. They sit at the gates and doors of the palace, shouting, laughing, running races along the sidewalk,” an eyewitness recorded.
The defenders of the palace did not really know its logistics: as it turned out, having entered the Winter Palace from the Neva embankment, they could not find their way either to the offices of the Provisional Government or to the exits from Palace Square. In this sense, both the defenders of the palace and the stormers were in approximately the same position. The countless corridors of the palace and the passages from it to the Hermitage were not guarded by anyone for the same reason - none of the military simply knew their location and did not have a plan of the building at hand.
Taking advantage of this, Bolshevik activists freely entered the palace from the Winter Canal. There were more and more of them, but the defenders still could not detect the “leak”.
That’s how, having climbed the narrow small staircase leading to Her Majesty’s personal chambers, having wandered along the corridors of the palace, Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko’s detachment at the beginning of the third morning on October 26th ended up in the dim Malachite Hall. Hearing voices in the next room, Antonov-Ovseenko opened the door to the Small Dining Room. The rest of the "emissaries" of the Military Revolutionary Committee followed.
At a small table sat the ministers of the Provisional Government, who had moved here from the Malachite Hall: the windows there overlooked the Neva, and the risk of continued shelling from the Peter and Paul Fortress remained. After a second pause - both sides were shocked by such a simple and quick outcome - Antonov-Ovseenko said from the threshold: “In the name of the Military Revolutionary Committee, I declare you under arrest.”
The ministers were arrested and taken to the Peter and Paul Fortress, the officers and cadets were released "on parole." And Antonov-Ovseenko returned to Smolny, where the news of the “overthrow and arrest of the Provisional Government” was greeted with applause and singing of the “Internationale”. (Twenty years later, in 1937, Antonov-Evseenko would be arrested as an “enemy of the people” and shot for “counter-revolutionary activities”; the power that arose in lawlessness mercilessly dealt with those who gave birth to it).
Hospital. "The older sister was under arrest..."
While the “Internationale” was being sung in Smolny, revolutionary detachments burst into the halls of the Winter Palace, filled with seriously wounded. Brigades of Red Army soldiers and armed workers, as the documents show, “began to tear off the bandages from the wounded who had facial wounds: these chambers were located in the hall closest to the government apartments” - they were looking for ministers “disguised as wounded.” This is how nurse Nina Galanina, who was on duty on October 26 in the infirmary of the Winter Palace, recalled this:
“As soon as the morning of 26/X arrived, I... hurried to the city. First of all, I wanted to get to the hospital of the Winter Palace... Getting there was not so easy: from the Palace Bridge to the Jordan entrance there was a triple chain of Red Guards and sailors with rifles They guarded the palace and did not let anyone in. Having explained where I was going, I passed relatively easily. When I passed the second one, a sailor shouted angrily to my comrades: “What are you looking at, you don’t know.” that Kerensky is dressed as a sister?" They demanded documents. I showed my ID... with the seal of the Winter Palace Hospital. This helped - they let me through... I entered, as had happened hundreds of times before, into the Jordan entrance. The usual doorman was not there. At the entrance there was a sailor with the inscription “Dawn of Freedom” on his cap. He allowed me to enter.
The first thing that caught my eye and amazed me was the huge amount of weapons. The entire gallery from the lobby to the Main Staircase was littered with it and looked like an arsenal. Armed sailors and Red Guards walked around all the premises. In the hospital, where there was always such exemplary order and silence; where it was known in what place which chair should stand - everything was turned upside down, everything was upside down. And everywhere there are armed people. The elder sister was under arrest: two sailors were guarding her... The wounded who were lying down were very frightened by the storming of the palace: they asked many times whether they would shoot again. If possible, I tried to calm them down... The next day, October 27, the wounded began to be sent to other hospitals in Petrograd. On October 28, 1917, the Winter Palace Hospital was closed."
Winter. "I was taken to the commandant of the palace..."
Alexander Zinoviev, Chief Manager of the Northwestern Branch of the Red Cross, received a call early in the morning of October 26 from the Red Cross Office on duty and said that the Winter Palace had been taken by the Bolsheviks, and the nurses who were in the palace had been arrested. He immediately went there.
“Rifles and empty cartridges were scattered everywhere, in the large entrance hall and on the stairs lay the bodies of killed soldiers and cadets, and here and there lay wounded people who had not yet been carried to the hospital.
I walked for a long time through the halls of the Winter Palace that were so familiar to me, trying to find the commander of the soldiers who had captured the palace. The Malachite Hall, where the Empress usually received those who introduced themselves to her, was covered like snow with torn pieces of paper. These were the remains of the archives of the Provisional Government, destroyed before the palace was captured.
In the infirmary I was told that the sisters of mercy were arrested for hiding and helping to hide the cadets defending the palace. This accusation was absolutely true. Many cadets, just before the end of the fight, rushed to the infirmary, asking the sisters of mercy to save them - apparently the sisters helped them hide, and thanks to this, many of them actually managed to escape.
After a long search, I managed to find out who was now the Commandant of the palace and I was taken to him... He was very decent and correct with me. I explained to him what was going on, said that there were about 100 wounded soldiers in the hospital, and that nurses were needed to care for them. He immediately ordered their release on my signature that they would not leave St. Petersburg until their trial. This was the end of the matter, there was never any trial of the sisters, and no one bothered them anymore, at that time the Bolsheviks had more serious concerns."
P.S. Everything happened so quickly and incredibly easily that few doubted: the Bolsheviks would be even more temporary than the Provisional Government...
October Revolution(full official name in the USSR - Great October Socialist Revolution, alternative names: October Revolution, Bolshevik coup, third Russian revolution listen)) - a stage of the Russian revolution that occurred in Russia in October of the year. As a result of the October Revolution, the Provisional Government was overthrown, and the government formed by the Second Congress of Soviets came to power, the majority in which, shortly before the revolution, was received by the Bolshevik party - the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks), in alliance with part of the Mensheviks, national groups, peasants organizations, some anarchists and a number of groups in the Socialist Revolutionary Party.
The main organizers of the uprising were V. I. Lenin, L. D. Trotsky, Ya. M. Sverdlov and others.
The government elected by the Congress of Soviets included representatives of only two parties: the RSDLP (b) and the Left Socialist Revolutionaries; other organizations refused to participate in the revolution. Later, they demanded the inclusion of their representatives in the Council of People's Commissars under the slogan of a “homogeneous socialist government,” but the Bolsheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries already had a majority at the Congress of Soviets, allowing them not to rely on other parties. In addition, relations were spoiled by the support of the “compromise parties” of the persecution of the RSDLP (b) as a party and its individual members by the Provisional Government on charges of treason and armed rebellion in the summer of 1917, the arrest of L. D. Trotsky and L. B. Kamenev and leaders of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, wanted notices for V.I. Lenin and G.E. Zinoviev.
There is a wide range of assessments of the October Revolution: for some, it is a national catastrophe that led to the Civil War and the establishment of a totalitarian system of government in Russia (or, conversely, to the death of Great Russia as an empire); for others - the greatest progressive event in the history of mankind, which made it possible to abandon capitalism and save Russia from feudal remnants; Between these extremes there are a number of intermediate points of view. Many historical myths are also associated with this event.
Name
S. Lukin. It's finished!
The revolution took place on October 25 of the year according to the Julian calendar, which was adopted in Russia at that time. And although already in February of the year the Gregorian calendar (new style) was introduced and the first anniversary of the revolution (like all subsequent ones) was celebrated on November 7, the revolution was still associated with October, which was reflected in its name.
The name “October Revolution” has been found since the first years of Soviet power. Name Great October Socialist Revolution established itself in Soviet official historiography by the end of the 1930s. In the first decade after the revolution, it was often called, in particular, October Revolution, while this name did not carry a negative meaning (at least in the mouths of the Bolsheviks themselves), but, on the contrary, emphasized the grandeur and irreversibility of the “social revolution”; this name is used by N. N. Sukhanov, A. V. Lunacharsky, D. A. Furmanov, N. I. Bukharin, M. A. Sholokhov. In particular, the section of Stalin’s article dedicated to the first anniversary of October () was called About the October Revolution. Subsequently, the word “coup” became associated with conspiracy and illegal change of power (by analogy with palace coups), and the term was removed from official propaganda (although Stalin used it until his last works, written in the early 1950s). But the expression “October revolution” began to be actively used, already with a negative meaning, in literature critical of Soviet power: in emigrant and dissident circles, and, starting with perestroika, in the legal press.
Background
There are several versions of the reasons for the October Revolution:
- version of the spontaneous growth of the “revolutionary situation”
- version of a targeted action by the German government (See Sealed Car)
Version of the “revolutionary situation”
The main prerequisites for the October Revolution were the weakness and indecisiveness of the Provisional Government, its refusal to implement the principles it proclaimed (for example, the Minister of Agriculture V. Chernov, the author of the Socialist Revolutionary program of land reform, pointedly refused to carry it out after he was told by his government colleagues that expropriation landowners' lands damages the banking system, which lent to landowners against the security of land), dual power after the February Revolution. During the year, the leaders of radical forces led by Chernov, Spiridonova, Tsereteli, Lenin, Chkheidze, Martov, Zinoviev, Stalin, Trotsky, Sverdlov, Kamenev and other leaders returned from hard labor, exile and emigration to Russia and launched extensive agitation. All this led to the strengthening of extreme leftist sentiments in society.
The policy of the Provisional Government, especially after the Socialist-Revolutionary-Menshevik All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviets declared the Provisional Government a “government of salvation”, recognizing for it “unlimited powers and unlimited power,” led the country to the brink of disaster. The production of iron and steel fell sharply, and the production of coal and oil decreased significantly. Railway transport came to almost complete disarray. There was a sharp shortage of fuel. Temporary interruptions in the supply of flour occurred in Petrograd. Gross industrial output in 1917 decreased by 30.8% compared to 1916. In the fall, up to 50% of enterprises were closed in the Urals, Donbass and other industrial centers; 50 factories were stopped in Petrograd. Mass unemployment arose. Food prices rose steadily. Real wages of workers fell by 40-50% compared to 1913. Daily war expenses exceeded 66 million rubles.
All practical measures taken by the Provisional Government worked exclusively for the benefit of the financial sector. The provisional government resorted to money emission and new loans. In 8 months, it issued paper money worth 9.5 billion rubles, that is, more than the tsarist government did in 32 months of the war. The main burden of taxes fell on workers. The actual value of the ruble compared to June 1914 was 32.6%. Russia's national debt in October 1917 amounted to almost 50 billion rubles, of which the debt to foreign powers amounted to over 11.2 billion rubles. The country was facing the threat of financial bankruptcy.
The provisional government, which did not have any confirmation of its powers from any expression of the people's will, nevertheless declared in a voluntaristic way that Russia would “continue the war until the victorious end.” Moreover, he failed to get his Entente allies to write off Russia’s war debts, which had reached astronomical amounts. Explanations to the allies that Russia is not able to service this public debt, and the experience of state bankruptcy of a number of countries (Khedive Egypt, etc.) were not taken into account by the allies. Meanwhile, L. D. Trotsky officially declared that revolutionary Russia should not pay the bills of the old regime, and was immediately imprisoned.
The provisional government simply ignored the problem because the grace period for loans lasted until the end of the war. They turned a blind eye to the inevitable post-war default, not knowing what to hope for and wanting to delay the inevitable. Wanting to delay state bankruptcy by continuing an extremely unpopular war, they attempted an offensive on the fronts, but their failure, emphasized by the “treacherous”, according to Kerensky, surrender of Riga, caused extreme bitterness among the people. Land reform was also not carried out for financial reasons - the expropriation of landowners' lands would have caused a massive bankruptcy of financial institutions that lent to landowners against the security of land. The Bolsheviks, historically supported by the majority of the workers of Petrograd and Moscow, won the support of the peasantry and soldiers (“peasants dressed in greatcoats”) through the consistent implementation of the policy of agrarian reform and the immediate end of the war. In August-October 1917 alone, over 2 thousand peasant uprisings took place (690 peasant uprisings were registered in August, 630 in September, 747 in October). The Bolsheviks and their allies actually remained the only force that did not agree to abandon their principles in practice to protect the interests of Russian financial capital.
Revolutionary sailors with the flag "Death to the Bourgeois"
Four days later, on October 29 (November 11), there was an armed revolt of the cadets, who also captured artillery pieces, which was also suppressed using artillery and armored cars.
On the side of the Bolsheviks were the workers of Petrograd, Moscow and other industrial centers, land-poor peasants of the densely populated Black Earth Region and Central Russia. An important factor in the victory of the Bolsheviks was the appearance on their side of a considerable part of the officers of the former tsarist army. In particular, the officers of the General Staff were distributed almost equally between the warring parties, with a slight advantage among the opponents of the Bolsheviks (at the same time, on the side of the Bolsheviks there were a larger number of graduates of the Nikolaev Academy of the General Staff). Some of them were subjected to repression in 1937.
Immigration
At the same time, a number of workers, engineers, inventors, scientists, writers, architects, peasants, and politicians from all over the world who shared Marxist ideas moved to Soviet Russia to participate in the program of building communism. They took some part in the technological breakthrough of backward Russia and the social transformation of the country. According to some estimates, the number of Chinese and Manchus alone who immigrated to Tsarist Russia due to the favorable socio-economic conditions created in Russia by the autocratic regime, and then took part in building the new world, exceeded 500 thousand people. , and for the most part these were workers who created material values and transformed nature with their own hands. Some of them quickly returned to their homeland, most of the rest were subjected to repression in the year
A number of specialists from Western countries also came to Russia. .
During the Civil War, tens of thousands of internationalist fighters (Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, Serbs, etc.) who voluntarily joined its ranks fought in the Red Army.
The Soviet government was forced to use the skills of some immigrants in administrative, military and other positions. Among them are the writer Bruno Yasensky (shot in the city), administrator Belo Kun (shot in the city), economists Varga and Rudzutak (shot in the year), special services employees Dzerzhinsky, Latsis (shot in the city), Kingisepp, Eichmans (shot in the year), military leaders Joakim Vatsetis (shot in the year), Lajos Gavro (shot in the year), Ivan Strod (shot in the year), August Kork (shot in the year), the head of the Soviet justice Smilga (shot in the year), Inessa Armand and many others. Can be named financier and intelligence officer Ganetsky (shot in the city), aircraft designers Bartini (repressed in the city, spent 10 years in prison), Paul Richard (worked in the USSR for 3 years and returned to France), teacher Janouszek (shot in the year), Romanian, Moldavian and Jewish poet Yakov Yakir (who ended up in the USSR against his will with the annexation of Bessarabia, was arrested there, went to Israel), socialist Heinrich Ehrlich (sentenced to death and committed suicide in the Kuibyshev prison), Robert Eiche ( executed in the year), journalist Radek (executed in the year), Polish poet Naftali Kohn (twice repressed, upon release he went to Poland, from there to Israel), and many others.
Holiday
Main article: Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution
Contemporaries about the revolution
Our children and grandchildren will not be able to even imagine the Russia in which we once lived, which we did not appreciate, did not understand - all this power, complexity, wealth, happiness...
- October 26 (November 7) is L.D.’s birthday. Trotsky
Notes
- MINUTES of August 1920, 11-12 days, judicial investigator for particularly important cases at the Omsk District Court N.A. Sokolov in Paris (in France), in accordance with Art. 315-324. Art. mouth corner. court., inspected three issues of the newspaper “Obshchee Delo”, submitted to the investigation by Vladimir Lvovich Burtsev.
- National Corpus of the Russian Language
- National Corpus of the Russian Language
- J.V. Stalin. The logic of things
- J.V. Stalin. Marxism and issues of linguistics
- For example, the expression “October revolution” is often used in the anti-Soviet magazine Posev:
- S. P. Melgunov. Golden German Bolshevik Key
- L. G. Sobolev. Russian Revolution and German gold
- Ganin A.V. On the role of General Staff officers in the Civil War.
- S. V. Kudryavtsev Elimination of “counter-revolutionary organizations” in the region (Author: Candidate of Historical Sciences)
- Erlikhman V.V. “Population losses in the 20th century.” Directory - M.: Publishing house "Russian Panorama", 2004 ISBN 5-93165-107-1
- Cultural Revolution Article on the website rin.ru
- Soviet-Chinese relations. 1917-1957. Collection of documents, Moscow, 1959; Ding Shou He, Yin Xu Yi, Zhang Bo Zhao, The Impact of the October Revolution on China, translation from Chinese, Moscow, 1959; Peng Ming, History of Sino-Soviet Friendship, translated from Chinese. Moscow, 1959; Russian-Chinese relations. 1689-1916, Official documents, Moscow, 1958
- Border sweeps and other forced migrations in 1934-1939.
- "Great Terror": 1937-1938. Brief chronicle Compiled by N. G. Okhotin, A. B. Roginsky
- Among the descendants of immigrants, as well as local residents who originally lived on their historical lands, as of 1977, 379 thousand Poles lived in the USSR; 9 thousand Czechs; 6 thousand Slovaks; 257 thousand Bulgarians; 1.2 million Germans; 76 thousand Romanians; 2 thousand French; 132 thousand Greeks; 2 thousand Albanians; 161 thousand Hungarians, 43 thousand Finns; 5 thousand Khalkha Mongols; 245 thousand Koreans, etc. Most of them are descendants of colonists from tsarist times, who have not forgotten their native language, and residents of the border, ethnically mixed regions of the USSR; some of them (Germans, Koreans, Greeks, Finns) were subsequently subjected to repression and deportation.
- L. Anninsky. In memory of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Historical magazine "Rodina" (RF), No. 9-2008, p. 35
- I.A. Bunin "Cursed days" (diary 1918 - 1918)
Remember, we discussed such a statement that. Now let's talk about the symbol of the Revolution - the shot.
One of the heroes of October was the sailor of the Baltic Fleet Evdokim Pavlovich Ognev. In the fall of 1917, he served on the cruiser Aurora, with the historic salvo of which the Great October Socialist Revolution began...
Let's find out his story in more detail...
Gunner of the cruiser "Aurora" Evdokim Ognev
Our country is wide and vast. How many cities, villages, farmsteads there are in it... And each has its own history. And this little story is a grain of the history of a large powerful state.
There is a small river in the Voronezh province that makes many bends on its way. Because it is winding, and its name is Kriusha. In the 30s of the 18th century, Cossack settlers formed a village on the banks of the river, which became known as Kriusha. Later, when a new one with the same name was formed near the village, the ancient settlement began to be called Staraya Kriusha, and the younger one - Novaya.
Here in 1887, Evdokim Pavlovich Ognev was born, the gunner of the cruiser Aurora, who fired the historic shot that served as the signal for the storming of the Winter Palace in October 1917.
Ognev has been in military service since 1910. Initially, he was a sailor in the Baltic Fleet, and after graduating from gunnery school in 1911, he was assigned to the cruiser Aurora.
From the memoirs of A.V. Belyshev, former first commissioner of the cruiser Aurora:
“On October 25, 1917, the Aurora approached the Vasilyevsky Bridge along the Neva and anchored. At dawn, thousands of Petrograd workers came to the embankment, welcoming the sailors. Never before had such large warships sailed so far into the city.
The forces of revolution multiplied and grew stronger. Detachments of Red Guards and soldiers walked across the bridge from Vasilyevsky Island to the city center.
By morning, the entire city and its most important strategic points, except the Winter Palace, where the provisional government had taken refuge, were in the hands of the insurgent people. In the evening a tug approached the cruiser. Secretary of the Military Revolutionary Committee V.A. arrived on the Aurora. Antonov-Ovseenko. He said that the provisional government was presented with an ultimatum - to surrender. A response is expected before 9 o'clock. If the ultimatum is rejected, the revolutionary troops will take the Winter Palace, where the ministers have taken refuge, by storm. Antonov-Ovseenko warned that in this case fire would appear over the Peter and Paul Fortress. He will be the signal for the Aurora to fire a blank shot at Zimny, signaling the start of an attack by detachments of Red Guards, sailors and soldiers.
Winter taken. Hood. V.A. Serov. 1954
The Aurors were also to take part in the assault on the last stronghold of the old world. About fifty sailors under the command of sailor A.S. The Nevolina went ashore and joined the free detachment of Baltic sailors. The decisive moment has arrived. At about 9 o'clock the cruiser's command was raised by a combat alarm. Everyone took their places. The tension was rising. Shooting could be heard from the shore, but the Peter and Paul Fortress did not make itself felt. At 35 minutes past ten there was still no signal. And when the long-awaited fire broke out in the evening darkness, it was already 9 hours and 40 minutes.
- Nasal, please! - the team thundered.
Gunner Evdokim Ognev pulled the trigger of a six-inch gun. It was as if a thunderclap tore through the air above the city. “Hurrah” was heard from Palace Square through the roar of the shot. Our people launched an assault.”
In 1918, to fight the enemies of the revolution, Evdokim Pavlovich was sent at the head of a detachment to Ukraine, where he soon died in battle.
Memoirs of P. Kirichkov, a participant in the events: “When the whites surrounded the carts, they were met with rare shots by a paramedic and a Red Army driver. All of them, along with the wounded, were hacked to death, and they tied me with reins, threw me into the bottom of the britzka and headed to the Vesely farm to the ataman. Krysin, a White Guard from Cossack Khomutts, with two fellow villagers rode next to the cart in which I was lying. The traitor boasted about killing the commander. I remember his story from beginning to end.
Monument to Evdokim Ognev in the village of Staraya Kriusha, Voronezh region
“...When the last cart left the village of Kazachiy Khomutets, three remained at the guns: Ognev, his orderly and a limping Cossack named Krysin from among those who joined the detachment in Cossack Khomutets. The shells ran out, the orderly led the horses out of the beam, and the three horsemen, under the whistling of White Guard bullets, began to retreat into the steppe. While the whites realized that there was no one else in front of them, and brought the horses out of the shelter, the three horsemen continued to leave unhindered. They were chased. The Cossacks fired while galloping. One bullet hit Ognev. For some reason Krysin began to lag behind. When the riders reached the old Scythian mound, Krysin stopped his horse. He tore the rifle from his shoulder and shot down the wounded Ognev. The orderly looked back, saw the commander falling, did not have time to understand anything - he was killed by the second shot. Krysin jumped off his horse, walked up to Ognev, cautiously turned him over and began to remove the boots from the dead man...”
Ognev was buried in a common grave on the Kazachiy Khomutets farm near Rostov-on-Don. He was also included by the Bolsheviks among the canonized heroes of October.
In his native village, the memory of the hero is still alive. In the rural park there is a monument to Evdokim Pavlovich Ognev. And the school museum contains a huge amount of information about the fellow countryman: parchments with memories of participants in the events, portraits of Ognev and even a cartridge case from the Aurora.
There were several myths about this.
The myth of the “Aurora salvo” was born literally the next day after the storming of the Winter Palace, the signal for which was a shot from the legendary cruiser. Such information began to appear in the local press. Subsequently, already in the Stalin years, the version that “Aurora” fired at Zimny with real shells was actively replicated: this was written about in the “Short Course on the History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)”; the play “Volley of the Aurora” was staged at the Moscow Art Theater, based on which a film of the same name was released in the 1960s; in 1937, Mikhail Romm shot the film “Lenin in October,” where the audience’s attention is also focused on this episode. The myth of the “volley” did not bypass literature: Alexey Tolstoy in “Walking Through Torment” writes about the roof of the Winter Palace being pierced by a shell.
This was all that remained from the recently noisy and drunken bustle of the capital. The idle crowds left the squares and streets. The Winter Palace was empty, pierced through the roof by a shell from the Aurora. (Alexey Tolstoy. “Walking Through Torment.” Book 2)
On October 21, the Bolsheviks sent commissars of the Military Revolutionary Committee to all revolutionary units of the troops. All the days before the uprising, vigorous combat training was going on in military units, factories and factories. Combat ships, such as the cruiser Aurora and Zarya Svobody, also received certain assignments.<…>The revolutionary units of the troops, prepared for the uprising by the work of the Bolsheviks, accurately followed combat orders and fought side by side with the Red Guard. The navy did not lag behind the army. Kronstadt was a fortress of the Bolshevik Party, where the power of the Provisional Government was no longer recognized for a long time. Cruiser"Aurora" with the thunder of his cannons aimed at the Winter Palace, announced on October 25 the beginning of a new era - the era of the Great Socialist Revolution. (Short course on the history of the CPSU (b))
The cruiser "Aurora" and the icebreaker "Krasin" in the dry dock named after P.I. Veleshchinsky Kronstadt Marine Plant. 09/25/2014 Andrey Sheremetev / AndreySheremetev.ru
Reality
The first and main exposers of the myth were the sailors themselves from the cruiser Aurora. The day after the events described, an article appeared in the Pravda newspaper in which the sailors tried to prove that there was no shelling of Zimny on their part: if the cruiser had fired “for real,” not only the palace would have been completely destroyed, but also surrounding areas, they argued. The text of the refutation was as follows:
“To all honest citizens of the city of Petrograd from the crew of the cruiser “Aurora”, which expresses its sharp protest over the accusations thrown, especially the accusations that have not been verified, but cast a stain of shame on the crew of the cruiser. We declare that we did not come to destroy the Winter Palace, not to kill civilians, but to protect and, if necessary, die for freedom and revolution from counter-revolutionaries.
The press writes that the Aurora opened fire on the Winter Palace, but do gentlemen reporters know that the cannon fire we opened would have left no stone unturned not only from the Winter Palace, but also from the streets adjacent to it? But is this really the case?
We address you, workers and soldiers of Petrograd! Don't believe provocative rumors. Don’t believe them that we are traitors and rioters, and check the rumors yourself. As for the shots from the cruiser, only one blank shot was fired from a 6-inch gun, indicating a signal for all ships standing on the Neva, and calling them to be vigilant and ready. We ask all editors to reprint.
Chairman of the Ship Committee
A. Belyshev
Comrade Chairman P. Andreev
For many years, while official propaganda benefited from the myth about the power of revolutionary weapons, in which a single blank shot grew into a whole salvo of military weapons, no one remembered this note. Already during the Khrushchev “thaw” this text appeared in the magazine “New World”, in the article by V. Cardin “Legends and Facts” (1966, no. 2, p. 237). However, the newspaper Pravda did not respond favorably to quoting itself 50 years ago, publishing in March 1967 a message on behalf of the Secretariat of the Writers' Union of the USSR, warning Soviet people against reading articles “imbued with false tendencies towards unfounded revision and belittlement of revolutionary and heroic traditions of the Soviet people." The article did not leave the country's top leadership indifferent. In one of his speeches to the Politburo, L.I. Brezhnev was indignant: “After all, some of our writers (and they are published) go so far as to say that there was supposedly no Aurora salvo, that it was supposedly a blank shot, etc., that there were not 28 Panfilov men, that there were fewer of them, This fact was almost invented that Klochko was not there and there was no call from him, that “Moscow is behind us and we have nowhere to retreat...”.
Many years later, already during perestroika, the article, “imbued with a false trend,” was reprinted in the Ogonyok magazine.
The military also refute the myth about the shelling of Zimny from a cruiser: the ship, which really gained military glory by participating in the Russian-Japanese and the First World War, had been undergoing major repairs since 1916, which means that all the ammunition from it should have been long gone by the time of the October events removed - in accordance with applicable instructions.
Another myth is that the Aurora’s shot was the signal for the storming of the Winter Palace...
This is also a misconception. The shot, according to historians, was fired at 21:40, while the assault began after midnight, which, alas, does not confirm the theory of the Aurora’s signal function in the capture. However, the Cruiser Aurora is depicted on the Order of the October Revolution, which it itself was awarded in 1967.
"Aurora" has long become one of the symbols of the northern capital, and therefore the place, empty for almost two years without it, near the Petrogradskaya embankment made the city somehow unrecognizably uncomfortable. But on the night of July 16, with the assistance of 4 tugs and raised bridges, she returned, joyfully greeted by thousands of townspeople. So it's "Hello Aurora" again?
"Aurora" became a legend because its fate was absolutely exceptional. Laid down in 1896 at the New Admiralty shipyard, the cruiser was launched on May 24, 1900. In the Battle of Tsushima on May 14-15, 1905, she received her baptism of fire. Then she returned to the Baltic, and until the First World War broke out, she was used as a training ship. He showed himself actively in combat. In February 1917, they were once again going to take it out of Petrograd into battle, but it was the sailors of the Aurora who rebelled and raised the red flag of the revolution over the cruiser. And on October 25 (November 7), 1917, the ministers of the Provisional Government were “warned” by a blank shot from the bow gun towards the Winter Palace: “The ultimatum presented to you by the Military Revolutionary Committee, gentlemen, has expired, and it’s time for you to leave.” ("Which ones are here, temporary, get off, your time is over... ", as the poet wrote).
After such a "warning" - a signal of the Great Socialist Revolution, "Aurora" became world famous. In 1924 she was awarded the Order of the Red Banner by the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, in 1927 - the Order of the Red Banner. Until 1940, cadets from naval schools underwent internships on the ship. “Aurora” endured the blockade of the Great Patriotic War together with the Leningraders, taking shelling and bombing attacks from Oranienbaum. After one of the raids, water entered the holes. The ship was half-sunk, and its guns were installed on the Duderhof Heights.
In 1944, the Aurora was raised from the ground, the outer lining from the inside, for lack of anything else, was patched below the waterline with reinforced concrete. In November 1948, the ship in this condition was parked at the Petrogradskaya embankment, which became well known throughout the world. Here it became a symbol of Leningrad and the training base of the Nakhimov School located opposite. And in 1956, a branch of the Central Naval Museum was opened on it; in 1968, the legendary ship was awarded the Order of the October Revolution.
However, time took its toll. Due to corrosion reasons, the underwater part of the Aurora turned into a sieve, and in 1984-1987. at the Leningrad Shipyard named after. Zhdanov, the ship underwent its first major overhaul. Then they chose: either to restore the underwater part at great expense and over a long period of time, or simply replace it quickly, without major expenses. We took the second route, but the bronze stem and sternpost - especially strong bow and stern structural elements - were removed from the old hull and moved to the new one.
Well, on September 21, 2014, the Aurora went for a second major overhaul, now at the Kronstadt Marine Plant, and returned from there on July 16, 2016.
Being a branch of the TsVMM, the Aurora is also ship No. 1 of the Baltic Fleet with the obligatory presence of a combat crew and commander on it. Therefore, repairs cost 800 million rubles. was carried out precisely through the Navy. What is also important for the Museum is that over 1,700 historical parts, assemblies and mechanisms from different periods of its service remained on the Aurora, including more than 1,500 that were still preserved from the time the ship was built.
This “Aurora” is a completely unique, huge Museum, when you visit it you will see the engine and boiler rooms, a radio station, photographs, documents and personal belongings of the crew, and you will also examine the weapons of the early twentieth century.
The exhibition has been updated, focusing on the Aurora’s participation in the Russo-Japanese, World War I and Great Patriotic Wars - with the advent of Russian capitalism, the history of the “cruiser of the revolution” is being “repaired” even more thoroughly. There is a lot about the military-historical past of the ship and nothing about its role in humanity’s breakthrough into a communist tomorrow. And this is natural.
After all, "Aurora" became famous, indeed, with its single blank shot. She fired once in the direction of the Winter Palace, and the entire capitalist world is still shaking with fear, finding traces of the Bolsheviks and the Comintern everywhere, shying away from the ghosts of revolution and socialism.
Surprisingly, the name of the cruiser "Aurora", i.e. The dawn coincided with the direction of the radical change in human life that his shot indicated. And when other, capitalist times came, the authorities quietly, but persistently and consistently began to decommunize the “ship of revolution.” Because in any discussion of the prospects for fundamental changes in the country, they remember the Aurora and its famous shot. The wonderful St. Petersburg poet Molchanov wrote the poem “It’s time to charge the Aurora”:
This is true. The ranks of the bourgeoisie fighting against the government will only grow, and the severity of the struggle will only intensify. As a result of such a struggle, "Aurora" will one day again become a symbol of humanity's movement towards human society - socialism.
May 24, 1900 In the New Admiralty of St. Petersburg, with the personal participation of Tsar Nicholas II, the Aurora was launched, which during the October Revolution became one of the destroyers of the Russian Empire.
This 1st rank cruiser of the Baltic Fleet was laid down in 1897 in St. Petersburg at the New Admiralty shipyard. The Aurora was launched on the personal orders of Emperor Nicholas II, in the presence of two empresses (the dowager and the tsar's wife) and numerous members of the Imperial family. In July 1903, the Aurora entered service. In September 1903, the Aurora, as part of a detachment of cruisers under Rear Admiral A. A. Virenius, was sent to the Far East.
On May 27 and 28, 1905, the cruiser took part in the Battle of Tsushima; in this battle, the crew lost 15 people killed and more than 80 wounded. The captain of the ship, E.R. Egoriev, died - he was killed by a fragment of a shell that hit the conning tower. Unlike most of the other ships, the Aurora escaped destruction; together with two other cruisers, it managed to break through to a neutral port (Manila), where it was interned on May 25 (June 7), 1905.
In 1906, the Aurora returned to the Baltic, where it became a training ship for the naval corps.
From the autumn of 1911 to the summer of 1912, the Aurora sailed to the third distant to participate in the celebrations of the coronation of the King of Thailand, and also visited ports of the Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean Sea, Indian and Pacific Oceans.
"Aurora" took part in the First World War. At the end of 1916, the ship was sent for serious repairs to Petrograd, to the Franco-Russian plant.
The cruiser was one of the first to join the February Revolution and raised the red flag. Most of the crew joined the Bolsheviks in 1917. On the night of October 25, 1917, by order of the Military Revolutionary Committee, the Aurora team captured and demolished the Nikolaevsky Bridge in Petrograd, which connected Vasilievsky Island with the city center.
On October 25 at 21:45, a blank shot from the Aurora's bow gun, fired on the orders of Commissioner Belyshev, gave the signal for the assault on the Winter Palace. On November 28 (December 11), 1917, after repairs, the Aurora returned to the 2nd Cruiser Brigade in Sveaborg. After the decree on the dissolution of the old fleet and the organization of a new RKKF on a voluntary basis, most of the team was demobilized. In 1918, the cruiser was transferred to Kronstadt and mothballed.
Since 1922, the Aurora again became a training ship, but during the Great Patriotic War, the turret guns were dismantled from the cruiser and were used to protect Leningrad from the Nazis. The cruiser itself was fired upon on September 30, 1941 and sank in the port of Oranienbaum. After the war, the Aurora was raised, restored and placed in permanent berth. In 1984, the cruiser was again sent for major restoration, which continued until 1987. During the restoration, the part of the ship below the waterline, due to the impossibility of restoration, was replaced with a new welded one. Now
