The Workshop Of The Revolution. I. N. Steinberg 1953
After many delays, the long-awaited Constituent Assembly met in the Tauride Palace in Petrograd on January 5, 1918. Back in 1917, before the October Revolution, people had looked on the Assembly as their hope of salvation; they had expected it to solve every problem. Now, in 1918, it no longer was the only hope, the only seat of revolutionary strength and action. Dominated by the right-wing socialist parties of the fallen Kerensky regime, it saw itself confronted by a zealous Soviet Government, fresh from the October upheaval and backed by a spirited mass movement.
In these circumstances two lines of action were open to the Constituent Assembly: it could seek a compromise with the Soviet Government and thus, in dynamic co-operation, unite the right and left wings of the Russian people; or it could begin a struggle against the Soviets, claiming for itself the sole representation of the people. The leaders of the Constituent Assembly chose to do neither. They attempted instead to ignore the Government of the Soviets, pretending that it did not exist. Such action was obviously suicidal. The Government formalized the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly on January 6 and the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets ratified the decree of dissolution and itself absorbed the left-wing deputies of the defunct institution.
So much for politics on the higher level. But among the rank and file the conflict between right and left in the revolutionary movement had aroused violent emotions. On January 5, 1918, the day of the Assembly’s first meeting, blood flowed in Moscow and Petrograd. Workers of the Oboukhov factory in Petrograd, as well as old-timers in the opposition parties, went out into the streets to defend their ideals. A clash between the followers of Kerensky and the adherents of the October Revolution had been unavoidable. But it was not sustained; neither did it continue the day after the Assembly’s first and only session.
The countryside was still covered with the snows of a bitterly cold winter. Hunger and poverty were mocking the hopes of the revolution. Yet in Petrograd great wealth still lay hoarded up, and the men of the capitalist and the military castes were still about. Soldiers of the Red Guard, in torn tunics and tattered boots, but with rifles in their hands, marched out against them. It would have been a miracle if, in this atmosphere of exultation, fury and hunger, unscrupulous men had not used the situation for their own ends, to indulge their own lust for power.
Exhausted and overwrought, I was resting at home in the early morning of January 7, 1918. The telephone rang. Lenin was on the line. In a hoarse voice he told me that during the night some unidentified sailors had murdered the former Kadet Ministers Andrei Shingarev and Fyodr Kokoshkin. Something snapped in me when I heard the news, for during the last few days I had had a great deal to do with these two men.
Like most ministers of the Kerensky Cabinet, they had been imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. No specific crimes had been charged against them. They had been influential Liberals who were naturally opposed to the October Revolution, but they had not been top-level men in the Liberal camp and were kept in prison only because they were leaders of their party. Kokoshkin had been a famous professor of constitutional law in Moscow; Shingarev, a physician and an expert on peasant problems.
Both men had been ailing, and Dr. Manuhin, of the Political Red Cross, had recently requested that I authorize their transfer to the Maria Hospital. I could not accede to this request on my own, because such highly placed prisoners fell under the jurisdiction of the full Council of People’s Commissars. The reason for this was the permanent tension between the Cheka and my Commissariat of Justice. The Cheka, which considered itself a ministry, refused to take orders from the Commissar of Justice, and Dzershinsky, virtual dictator of the Cheka and close friend of Lenin, guarded his powers jealously. He vigorously opposed the liberation of any prisoners, while I usually held the opposite view. For this reason it had been ruled necessary for the fate of all important prisoners to be decided in full session of the Government.
It was no easy matter to obtain the discharge of a “counterrevolutionary” or the mitigation of his sentence. I had to wait for a suitable moment to assure a favorable vote (there were eleven Bolsheviks to only seven Left Social-Revolutionaries in the Government). On January 2, 1918, however, I had succeeded in the cases of Shingarev and Kokoshkin. The Government authorized the Commissar of Justice to transfer them, under police escort, to the hospital if a medical commission confirmed their illness. The commission did confirm it; and yet a graver difficulty suddenly presented itself-the mood of the prison garrison. For it was a week of aroused passions and irritable tempers. Three days hence the Constituent Assembly was to meet. And meanwhile the garrison troops at the Peter and Paul Fortress looked upon themselves as guardians-in-chief of the revolution, and they redoubled their vigilance over the prisoners in their charge. These were the soldiers who had, on October 25, 1917, helped take the Winter Palace, last stronghold of the Kerensky Government. Within the walls of the Peter and Paul Fortress they now guarded the most “dangerous” enemies of the Soviets. And they were determined not to lose sight of them for a moment. On the eve of the fifth of January, with the tension mounting hourly-how was I to induce them to release Shingarev and Kokoshkin?
I had explained all this to Shingarev’s sister, who had pleaded for both men and suggested that we postpone the transfer until after the fifth of January, when passions would have cooled somewhat. And she had agreed. Yet in the early hours of the sixth (we had all left the Constituent Assembly in great agitation at four in the morning), she telephoned, begging me again to set her brother free. In the Commissariat where I met her, I wrote one order for the immediate transfer of both prisoners to the hospital, and another to the District Commissar of the Militia to provide an escort. I did nothing further in the matter on that day.
And now this terrible blow. . . .
I hurried to the Smolny, tormented by a new anxiety: How, I asked myself, was I to protect the lives of other former ministers? Lenin and his associates were unaware that I had transferred to a different hospital four former liberal members of the fallen government-Konovalov, Smirnov, Tretyakov and Kartashov.
(This was one of the methods I often used to prepare the ground quietly for a full release.)
My thoughts reverted to the murder of Shingarev and Kokosh- kin. Who were the guilty sailors, and how had they overpowered the guard? We would naturally do our utmost to track down the murderers, but first it was essential to assure the safety of the living. Once the mob had tasted its power, where would it stop? (And in fact, it transpired later that the same sailors who killed Shingarev and Kokoshkin had attempted to find the other ailing Liberals, but had not known where to look for them.) And I decided then to exploit the confusion among the Bolsheviks, to waive the formal aspects of the coalition Soviet Government and to set all these men free of my own accord.
Lenin looked dejected, even though several hours had passed since the event. He rarely let any feelings show before outsiders. I do not know how he behaved in his holy of holies, the Central Committee of his party. But in his relations with strangers, as well as in the Council of People’s Commissars, he was usually simple, unaffected, an embodiment of poise and confidence. This time, however, he confessed with his whole bearing that the shocking event had affected him.
I remember his first gesture as I entered the room. Without a word he pushed a typewritten sheet toward me. It was a directive to all Government offices to institute a strict investigation of the crime and to arrest the guilty sailors. The surprising fact about this document was not its contents, but the composition of the signatures: the signature of the chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars had been entered-and a space was left for the Commissar of Justice. Usually Lenin considered his own signature sufficient for every Government act; he particularly avoided the signature of the Commissar of Justice because justice to him savored of “bourgeois parliamentarianism.” But in this case, thinking the brutal murder would supply the bourgeois and the right-wing socialist elements with grist for their mills, he wanted the participation of the softer, more lenient part of the Government.
Twice he pushed the paper toward me for signature, but I wanted first to discuss ways and means of tracking down the murderers. Neither Lenin nor his trusted secretary and friend, Bontsch-Bruyevitch, doubted at that moment that the mur- dererers must indeed be found and severely punished. Lenin also agreed that we must summon Dybenko, Commander of the Fleet, to help us apprehend the culprits. Dybenko was summoned. And in the meantime we sent out an urgent telephone message to all Government institutions in town and district to set their machinery in motion. Every two hours reports were to be made to the Smolny Institute.
But Bontsch had an even better idea which showed how closely allied we were with the working people of Petrograd at that time. The same telephone message was sent out to the district committees of the two ruling parties-the Bolsheviks and the Left Social-Revolutionaries-asking them immediately to appoint groups of comrades in every district who would themselves seek out the murderers among the people of Petrograd. An hour later, before any judicial enquiry could begin, scores of men were out in the streets, searching for the culprits.
When Dybenko, the broad-shouldered, weathered leader of the Baltic Fleet, arrived we told him our story in full. He showed no surprise and said calmly, “Very well, I shall write an appeal to the sailors not to do such things again and to bring the culprits to justice.” His voice was even, but a little flame played in his eyes as he added, “Of course, they will take this merely as an act of political terror.” It was the first time that I heard a Bolshevik that day describe the plain murder as an act of “political terror,” thus giving it a kind of sanction.
Four of us-Dybenko, Bontsch, a representative of the sailors, and myself-then went to the hospital to begin our investigation. We learned that no authorized persons had entered the room since the prisoners had been transferred there the previous evening. It had been carefully guarded. But three uniformed men, armed with the necessary papers, had come to change the guard. These men, therefore, were the murderers.
At that moment the door opened and Shingarev’s sister, dressed in deep mourning, entered the room. We rose in silence. She looked at us for a moment and, before retiring to a comer, said, with a bitter smile, “Now we really set them free.” I could not see the faces of the others, but I am certain that they felt the same deep shame I was experiencing.
We continued our investigation. The leader of the group, we were told, had worn a strange Circassian cap made of patched leather. He was one of the men who had guarded the ministers on the way from the Peter and Paul Fortress to the hospital earlier in the day.
We left the hospital to return to the Smolny, running a gauntlet of angry, agitated men who crowded the courtyard. “Murderers! Assassins! Dictators!” they shouted as we walked silently to the exit.
In the early evening of the same day, I entered Room 40 on the fourth floor of the Smolny. This was the room where, a few days earlier, Mikhail Alexandrovitch, brother of the Czar, had been subjected to severe cross examination. Now it was filled with men in military uniforms, both investigators and accused. The comrades of the district, who were lining the walls, had brought in the entire convoy which had transported the ministers from the fortress to the hospital, all the Red Guards who were on duty with the prisoners that night as well as the two Militia Commissars who had assembled the convoy. The man in the leather cap, by name of Bassov, was among them.
At seven o'clock in the evening this convoy had delivered the two ministers to the hospital. On returning, they had been abused by Commissar Kulikov with these words, “You're wasters, not soldiers. Why didn’t you get rid of them?” On Kulikov’s orders, the Red Guard was then replaced by a guard of two sailors, and Bassov was detailed to lead them back to the two ministers. Shingarev, Bassov confessed, had been strangled, and then shot. Kokoshkin, who was found sitting up in bed, had been shot at once. The cap of one of the sailors who had taken part in the “operation” bore the insignia Chyka (“Gull”) -the name of his ship. But neither this sailor, whose name was Kreis, nor Matveyev, the third participant in the murder, had as yet been apprehended. Everyone in Room 40 at the Smolny that night felt shamed and dejected. No one spoke of the murder as a “political act.” We all visualized the two sick old men, who had trusted their guards only to be murdered in cold blood. I wanted to see this mood of anger and compassion transferred to the revolutionary tribunal where the assassins would be tried. It was therefore decided immediately to indict Kreis, Matveyev, the two Militia Commissars and the Red Guards on duty on that fateful night, and to include in the tribunal representatives of the sailors as well as the workers.
And here the last act of the drama began, perhaps not the least ‘tragic act. Those who had given the first impulse to the proper prosecution of the crime now changed their minds. Lenin and his close associates ceased to attribute any importance to the matter, particularly since the two main culprits were still at large. These latter did not surrender, nor did the sailors turn them over to the tribunal. The crew of the Chyka was obviously sheltering them.
I raised the question in the Council of People’s Commissars. With his customary coolness, Lenin simply handed us a few papers which began to circulate the room. They were wires from sailors on warships anchored in Reval and in Finnish waters. In forthright terms they informed Lenin that they would not permit the case to be pursued, that they regarded the murder of the liberal ministers as an act of political terror which the Soviet Government would not dare oppose. And Lenin, with no effort to suppress a cynical smile, asked, “Well? Would you have us go against them?”
“Certainly,” I replied. “If we don’t do it now, it will be the more difficult later to appease any thirst for blood. This was a heinous crime, not political terror. The Russian people will not understand why we do nothing about it.”
The Bolsheviks sat silent, as was their custom in delicate situations, and let Lenin do the talking. He said:
“The people are not interested in such things. Ask any worker or peasant . . . he’s never even heard of Shingarev. . . .”
Lenin had already forgotten the impression the murder had made on him that first morning, when he had at least recognized the explosive nature of the deed. Moreover, the men with whom he was associated regarded the matter as coolly as Dybenko had done from the first. Was it worth incurring the displeasure of some of the sailors? Lenin decided that it was not.
But the Left Social-Revolutionary Commissars kept on fighting. “We dare not pardon the sailors for such crimes. Just because they threaten us.”
Lenin wanted to end the discussion. “This is really not our business at all,” he said. “It is a judicial question. Let the People’s Commissar of Justice apprehend the two sailors. Let him go to the Marine barracks, where the crew of the Chyka is stationed and persuade them to surrender the guilty men. . .
“Fine,” I replied. “I will do just that. But I must do more. I must show the sailors that, as long as we are representatives of the people, they cannot play games with us. I want you to give me full powers to surround the barracks with Red Guards and machine guns so that they may take the culprits by force.”
I did not get the powers.
The case dragged on. There was nothing the Commissariat of Justice could do about the two sailors. Even the attorney for the liberals who was working with our Commissariat on the case did not press it. Why not? Because the German offensive on Soviet Russia opened on February 18, 1918. The Left Social- Revolutionaries opposed the signing of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty with imperialist Germany and shortly thereafter resigned from the Government.
A Bolshevik, Stutchka by name, became the new Commissar of Justice, and our party soon heard that Bassov and the others in the case had been released. The affair was forgotten.
How cynical and cruel can history be! The sailors wanted to do away with two enemies of the revolution, and whom did they strike down? Shingarev and Kokoshkin, the least conspicuous among the hostile figures. More than that, in the Peter and Paul Fortress, Shingarev had kept a diary. After his death, his friends published it. It contained the following paragraph:
“I am an opponent of the Bolsheviks. I consider them enemies of my country. I know that they will bring the greatest suffering upon the people . . . But if I were asked whether I regretted the revolution, I would say no. And whatever my personal fate-if I were asked whether I'd live through the revolution again, I would say: yes.”