Joe

#OTD The capture of the Winter Palace, where the government sat, completes the takeover of Petrograd. The MRC announces the revolution’s success. The Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets opens with 650–670 voting delegates (about 900 present): •Around 300 Bolsheviks plus fellow travellers. •Up to 190 SRs, split into two factions, with the Left SRs stronger. •Around 70 Mensheviks. •30 Internationalists. At the First Congress in June, SRs and Mensheviks held 600 of 830 delegates. The change reflects younger, more working-class delegates replacing the middle-class intellectuals and officers who dominated in June. Over 500 back the seizure of power. The Congress elects a 14-seat Bolshevik presidium alongside seven SRs, three Mensheviks and one from Gorky’s group. The Right SRs and Mensheviks then walk out. Trotsky tells them: “You are pitiful isolated individuals; you are bankrupts; your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on — into the dustbin of history!” A new CEC is elected. The groups that walked out may send delegates on a proportional basis.

#OTD Trotsky and the MRC coordinate the taking of Petrograd’s main bridges, roads and buildings by Red Guards and workers. The former minister-president, Alexander Kerensky, scuttles out of Petrograd with an official US car escort displaying the Stars and Stripes.

#OTD The Peter and Paul Fortress backs the Bolshevik position after Trotsky addresses the garrison, as does the Kronverksky arsenal (100,000 rifles). Provisional Government troops attempt to shut down Bolshevik printing presses (Rabochii Put [Workers’ Path] and Soldat papers), and attack the HQs of the Bolshevik CC and MRC, both based at the Smolny Institute. The MRC starts appointing commissars to military units as representatives of soviet power. The Petrograd Soviet issues Revolutionary Decree No.1, taking control of employment.

#OTD Hundreds of thousands of people answer the MRC’s call to attend mass meetings and peaceful protests in Petrograd. It is a huge show of strength for soviet power. Bolshevik papers list 56 mass organisations supporting the demand.