Ten Days That Shook the World

This book is a slice of intensified history—history as I saw it.
It does not pretend to be anything but a detailed account of the November
Revolution, when the Bolsheviki, at the head of the workers and
soldiers, seized the state power of Russia and placed it in the hands
of the Soviets.

Naturally most of it deals with “Red Petrograd,” the capital and heart
of the insurrection.
But the reader must realize that what took place
in Petrograd was almost exactly duplicated, with greater or lesser
intensity, at different intervals of time, all over Russia.

In this book, the first of several which I am writing, I must confine
myself to a chronicle of those events which I myself observed and
experienced, and those supported by reliable evidence; preceded by two
chapters briefly outlining the background and causes of the November
Revolution.
I am aware that these two chapters make difficult reading, but they are
essential to an understanding of what follows.

Many questions will suggest themselves to the mind of the reader.
What is Bolshevism?
What kind of a governmental structure did the Bolsheviki
set up?
If the Bolsheviki championed the Constituent Assembly before
the November Revolution, why did they disperse it by force of arms
afterward?
And if the bourgeoisie opposed the Constituent Assembly
until the danger of Bolshevism became apparent, why did they champion
it afterward?

These and many other questions cannot be answered here.
In another volume, “Kornilov to Brest-Litovsk,” I trace the course of the
Revolution up to and including the German peace.
There I explain the origin and functions of the Revolutionary
organisations, the evolution of popular sentiment, the dissolution of the
Constituent Assembly, the structure of the Soviet state, and the course and
outcome of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations….

In considering the rise of the Bolsheviki it is necessary to understand
that Russian economic life and the Russian army were not disorganised
on November 7th, 1917, but many months before, as the logical result of
a process which began as far back as 1915.
The corrupt reactionaries in control of the Tsar’s Court deliberately
undertook to wreck Russia in order to make a separate peace with
Germany.
The lack of arms on the front, which had caused the great retreat of the
summer of 1915, the lack of food in the army and in the great cities, the
break-down of manufactures and transportation in 1916—all these we
know now were part of a gigantic campaign of sabotage.
This was halted just in time by the March Revolution.

For the first few months of the new régime, in spite of the confusion
incident upon a great Revolution, when one hundred and sixty millions
of the world’s most oppressed peoples suddenly achieved liberty, both
the internal situation and the combative power of the army actually
improved.

But the “honeymoon” was short.
The propertied classes wanted merely a political revolution, which would
take the power from the Tsar and give it to them.
They wanted Russia to be a constitutional Republic, like France or the
United States; or a constitutional Monarchy, like England.
On the other hand, the masses of the people wanted real industrial and
agrarian democracy.

William English Walling, in his book, “Russia’s Message,” an account of
the Revolution of 1905, describes very well the state of mind of the
Russian workers, who were later to support Bolshevism almost
unanimously:

They (the working people) saw it was possible that even under a free
Government, if it fell into the hands of other social classes, they
might still continue to starve….

The Russian workman is revolutionary, but he is neither violent, dogmatic,
nor unintelligent.
He is ready for barricades, but he has studied them, and alone of the
workers of the world he has learned about them from actual experience.
He is ready and willing to fight his oppressor, the capitalist class,
to a finish.
But he does not ignore the existence of other classes.
He merely asks that the other classes take one side or the other in the
bitter conflict that draws near….

They (the workers) were all agreed that our (American) political
institutions were preferable to their own, but they were not very
anxious to exchange one despot for another (i.e., the capitalist
class)….

The workingmen of Russia did not have themselves shot down, executed by
hundreds in Moscow, Riga and Odessa, imprisoned by thousands in
every Russian jail, and exiled to the deserts and the arctic regions,
in exchange for the doubtful privileges of the workingmen of
Goldfields and Cripple Creek….

And so developed in Russia, in the midst of a foreign war, the Social
Revolution on top of the Political Revolution, culminating in the
triumph of Bolshevism.

Mr. A. J. Sack, director in this country of the Russian Information
Bureau, which opposes the Soviet Government, has this to say in his
book, “The Birth of the Russian Democracy”:
The Bolsheviks organised their own cabinet, with Nicholas Lenine as Premier
and Leon Trotsky—Minister of Foreign Affairs.
The inevitability of their coming into power became evident almost
immediately after the March Revolution.
The history of the Bolsheviki, after the Revolution, is a history of their
steady growth….

Foreigners, and Americans especially, frequently emphasise the
“ignorance” of the Russian workers.
It is true they lacked the political experience of the peoples of the West,
but they were very well trained in voluntary organisation.
In 1917 there were more than twelve million members of the Russian
consumers’ Cooperative societies; and the Soviets themselves are a
wonderful demonstration of their organising genius.
Moreover, there is probably not a people in the world so well educated
in Socialist theory and its practical application.

William English Walling thus characterises them:

The Russian working people are for the most part able to read and
write.
For many years the country has been in such a disturbed condition that they
have had the advantage of leadership not only of intelligent individuals
in their midst, but of a large part of the equally revolutionary
educated class, who have turned to the working people with their ideas
for the political and social regeneration of Russia….

Many writers explain their hostility to the Soviet Government by
arguing that the last phase of the Russian Revolution was simply a
struggle of the “respectable” elements against the brutal attacks of
Bolshevism.
However, it was the propertied classes, who, when they realised the
growth in power of the popular revolutionary organisations, undertook
to destroy them and to halt the Revolution.
To this end the propertied classes finally resorted to desperate
measures.
In order to wreck the Kerensky Ministry and the Soviets, transportation
was disorganised and internal troubles provoked; to crush the
Factory-Shop Committees, plants were shut down, and fuel and raw
materials diverted; to break the Army Committees at the front, capital
punishment was restored and military defeat connived at.

This was all excellent fuel for the Bolshevik fire.
The Bolsheviki retorted by preaching the class war, and by asserting the
supremacy of the Soviets.

Between these two extremes, with the other factions which
whole-heartedly or half-heartedly supported them, were the so-called
“moderate” Socialists, the Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries,
and several smaller parties.
These groups were also attacked by the propertied classes, but their
power of resistance was crippled by their theories.

Roughly, the Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries believed that
Russia was not economically ripe for a social revolution—that only a
_political_ revolution was possible.
According to their interpretation, the Russian masses were not educated
enough to take over the power; any attempt to do so would inevitably
bring on a reaction, by means of which some ruthless opportunist might
restore the old régime.
And so it followed that when the “moderate” Socialists were forced to
assume the power, they were afraid to use it.

They believed that Russia must pass through the stages of political and
economic development known to Western Europe, and emerge at last, with
the rest of the world, into full-fledged Socialism.
Naturally, therefore, they agreed with the propertied classes that Russia
must first be a parliamentary state—though with some improvements on
the Western democracies.
As a consequence, they insisted upon the collaboration of the propertied
classes in the Government.

From this it was an easy step to supporting them.
The “moderate” Socialists needed the bourgeoisie.
But the bourgeoisie did not need the “moderate” Socialists.
So it resulted in the Socialist Ministers being obliged to give way, little
by little, on their entire program, while the propertied classes grew more
and more insistent.

And at the end, when the Bolsheviki upset the whole hollow compromise,
the Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries found themselves fighting
on the side of the propertied classes….
In almost every country in the world to-day the same phenomenon is
visible.

Instead of being a destructive force, it seems to me that the
Bolsheviki were the only party in Russia with a constructive program
and the power to impose it on the country.
If they had not succeeded to the Government when they did, there is little
doubt in my mind that the armies of Imperial Germany would have been
in Petrograd and Moscow in December, and Russia would again be ridden
by a Tsar….

It is still fashionable, after a whole year of the Soviet Government, to
speak of the Bolshevik insurrection as an “adventure.”
Adventure it was, and one of the most marvellous mankind ever embarked
upon, sweeping into history at the head of the toiling masses, and staking
everything on their vast and simple desires.
Already the machinery had been set up by which the land of the great
estates could be distributed among the peasants.
The Factory-Shop Committees and the Trade Unions were there to put into
operation workers’ control of industry.
In every village, town, city, district and province there were Soviets of
Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, prepared to assume the task
of local administration.

No matter what one thinks of Bolshevism, it is undeniable that the
Russian Revolution is one of the great events of human history, and the
rise of the Bolsheviki a phenomenon of world-wide importance.
Just as historians search the records for the minutest details of the story
of the Paris Commune, so they will want to know what happened in
Petrograd in November, 1917, the spirit which animated the people, and
how the leaders looked, talked and acted.
It is with this in view that I have written this book.

In the struggle my sympathies were not neutral.
But in telling the story of those great days I have tried to see events
with the eye of a conscientious reporter, interested in setting down the
truth.

J. R.

New York, January 1st 1919.