Russia 1917: Countdown to Revolution Page #5

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'thinks, well, it might be time

to go and summon troops.

'He can't get any on the telephone.'

Of course, the Bolsheviks are

already in control of virtually

'every means of communication

in the capital.'

Though the provisional government

still occupies the Winter Palace,

that afternoon, Trotsky announces

that the government has fallen.

In the name of the military

revolutionary committee,

I declare that the provisional

government is no more!

CHEERING:

Well, talk about fake news.

It hasn't happened at all.

It had meant to happen

by that point.

The authority of

the provisional government,

presided over by Kerensky,

was a corpse

that only awaited the broom

of history to sweep it away.

Well, this was the first

Bolshevik lie

of...of many of the next,

erm, the next 70 years.

The Winter Palace is not yet taken

but its fate will be settled in

the course of the next few minutes!

CHEERING:

But the minutes drag into hours.

Why haven't they seized power?

'He was promised,

he was told by his military'

that it would take

just three or four hours.

For heaven's sake,

why aren't shells being fired

into the Winter Palace?

Why haven't they stormed it?

'They couldn't find the artillery,

the guns didn't work,'

they were blocked, could

anyone find anyone to work them?

They needed a lantern

to give the signal

but no-one could find a lantern.

'There's a sort of hilarious crisis

where the Mayor of Petrograd

'actually marches

in front of the troops

'and stops the whole seizure

of the Winter Palace.

'An entire group of men in frock

coats start waving their umbrellas

'and saying, "You're not going to

seize power now."'

They have to be moved out of the way

and still nothing has happened.

By this point, Lenin is apoplectic.

What the hell's going on?

These people should be shot

for their incompetence!

As long as ministers

are in the Palace,

the provisional government

still stands.

I think the seizure of

the Winter Palace is the key,

'because until then

there's a Cabinet

'sitting around a Cabinet table,

still running Russia.'

And Lenin himself recognises this.

This is why Lenin doesn't go to

the Congress or do anything else.

Trotsky deals with

the other socialist parties

at the Congress of Soviets.

Having travelled

from all over Russia,

they are shocked to find Petrograd

already seized by the Bolsheviks.

But their protests are shouted down

by Trotsky's men.

Trotsky has another strategy ready.

'Trotsky's order of the day was that

if the people in the Winter Palace'

didn't surrender,

'the battleship Aurora

should fire blanks at them.

'He said that very noise

of the battleship,

'which they could all see

with its guns pointing,'

would be enough to send them out

scurrying like rabbits.

At 10:
40pm, the warning shot

is fired from the Aurora.

And is heard as far away

as the Congress.

The other socialist parties

are outraged by the aggression...

..and walk out.

Without realising it, they have just

handed power to the Bolsheviks.

'It was a godsend that his chief

opponent just walked out,

'leaving the field of battle.'

So many socialist delegates leave

that the Bolsheviks are now

in the majority

and can do as they please.

'I think we have to agree

with the great memoirist,'

Nikolai Sukhanov, who was at

the Soviet Congress himself,

when he said, it was just

a huge gift to Lenin.

As the delegates leave,

Trotsky mocks his one-time allies

in one of the most quoted speeches

of the 20th century.

The rising of the masses

of the people

requires no justification.

What has happened is an uprising,

not a conspiracy.

Trotsky's the real star

of the Petrograd Soviet.

He's a brilliant orator.

The masses of the people

moved under our banner

and our uprising

has won victory.

But he's also

a brilliant theoretician

who understands how rhetoric

and politics are intertwined

and how he can play on an audience

to mobilise them.

Trotsky is able to make

the Bolshevik view

sound like everyone's view.

And now...

..we are told...

to renounce our victory.

Make concessions.

Compromise.

With whom?

With that wretched group

who've just left us?

No-one in Russia

is with them any more.

No.

No compromise is possible.

The Bolshevik position

becomes the Soviet position.

To those who have left

and those who make these proposals,

we say,

you are pathetic individuals!

You are bankrupt!

Your role is played out.

Go off to where you belong

from now on.

To the dustbin of history!

CHEERING:

'His kind of dripping contempt lets

them know that power is moving now,'

minute by minute,

erm, to the Bolsheviks,

and to the creation

of an entirely new world.

At virtually the same moment,

Lenin's wish is becoming reality.

The Winter Palace

is about to be taken.

Though its capture may not

have been quite as spectacular

as Sergei Eisenstein's film,

October, portrayed it.

First of all, it wasn't even locked.

Secondly, it was guarded by a group

of adolescent boys

who were about 15 years old -

cadets,

and by a group of female soldiers

who were getting more

and more terrified.

So when they finally did, on that

evening, enter the Winter Palace...

..when the doors were open,

no-one stopped them.

There was no fighting,

there was no storming.

The heroic scale of that film

is creating a myth of October,

far from the reality.

'The storming of the Winter Palace

creates this foundation myth

'of it being a mass uprising.

'That the thousands who stormed

the Winter Palace,'

instead of the few dozen

who actually did so,

were representatives

of the whole people.

'Revolutions are, by nature,

illegitimate.'

So you need to create

foundation myths.

The moment that power passes to

the Bolsheviks is an epic example.

They walked into

the Cabinet meeting.

'And the Cabinet looked up and said,

"What do you want us to do?"

'And the Bolsheviks said,

"You're under arrest."'

That is the moment

the October Revolution happens.

CHEERING:

An heroic new world is born.

At least in Eisenstein's

version of events.

In reality, Lenin is in room 36

when he gets the news,

far from the action.

It is finally done.

Russia is his.

But did Lenin just grab power

in a coup

or did he have popular support?

'I think it was a coup d'etat.'

There were people who wanted

bread and land

and all power to the Soviets,

but did they want a Bolshevik

government led by Vladimir Lenin?

I don't think so.

Was there an element

of conspiracy in it?

Well, of course, because you

can't plan an insurrection

by publishing the details

the day before.

But everything till then,

till the day before,

had been discussed in Lenin's

speeches, in his writings,

and those of Trotsky,

what he was saying,

they were saying, yes,

we are making a revolution.

How the hell is that a coup d'etat?

For sure, the coup d'etat of

October, which is what it was,

based itself on the underpinnings

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