On the night of October 25-26, 1917, according to the old style, a military coup took place in St. Petersburg. It would later be called the Great October Socialist Revolution.
Usually we perceive the October coup based on the film by Sergei Eisenstein: under machine-gun fire, crowds of stormers run across the square to the Winter Palace, here and there the dead and wounded fall ... But in reality it was not like that - the success of the uprising was on whose side turned out to be the Petrograd garrison and military units stationed in the city.
Revolution not according to plan
“The military history of the armed October uprising has not yet been written. We know more about the Decembrist uprising than about the events that took place in 1917. We can say for sure about the Decembrists that this or that regiment went along this route, but not about the October Uprising, ”says Kirill Nazarenko, Doctor of Historical Sciences.
Imagine the absolutely dark Palace Square. Rare glimpses of light snatch out the bloody walls, a kind of etude in crimson tones is created ...
According to Nazarenko, outwardly at that time the center of St. Petersburg looked different, because the Admiralty, the General Staff, and the Headquarters of the Guards - everything was painted in the color of bull's blood, dark red without a single white detail. Such a coloristic decision was made under Alexander II, in the 80s of the 19th century, which is why Palace Square for many years resembled a butcher's shop in appearance.
Under the arch of the main headquarters of a handful of Red Guards, on the right, from Millionnaya Street, detachments of the Pavlovsky Regiment are approaching, on the left, from the side of the Admiralty, the sailors of the Baltic Fleet are accumulating. “When darkness thickened over the square, during the assault, the palace did not stand out even with the white capitals of the columns, it completely sank in the darkness of the night,” the historian explains.
Palace Square was blocked off by a stack of firewood 2-3 meters high. The garden in front of the palace from the side of the Admiralty was surrounded by a high fence. In complete darkness, messengers ran between the detachments, because there were no urgent means of communication, and even more so mobile phones. The city was in total chaos.
Contrary to popular belief, at the signal of the Aurora there was no rush to storm the Winter Palace. Sergei Eisenstein, for whom it was important to convey the scale of the events, as a great director, decided to simply depict a mass scene - in fact, it was impossible to run across the square, because it was blocked with firewood.
“John Reed in his “10 Days That Shook the World” has such a scene when he and a group of rebels run out from under the arch of the General Staff Building, and the darkness was such that they simply stumbled with their hands on a pile of firewood that surrounded the Alexander Column. By touch, they went around it and reached the woodpile, which towered at the facade of the Winter Palace, ”says Nazarenko.
Revolution as a gift
It is believed that the revolution in October 1917 was made exclusively by the Bolsheviks, but this is not so. The coup was led by the Military Revolutionary Committee, which was formed not at all by the Bolshevik Party, but by the Petrograd Soviet, headed by Leon Trotsky.
The composition of the military revolutionary committee, in addition to the Bolsheviks, included the Left Social Revolutionaries and anarchists. The Left SR Pavel Lazimir became its leader. The committee led the entire uprising. By its beginning, all power in the city, in fact, passed to the Petrograd Soviet. Nobody accepted the orders of the interim government.
“There is nothing surprising that in such a situation the coup itself on the night of October 23-24 took place relatively quietly and peacefully. Detachments of the Red Guard and sailors of the Baltic Fleet brought down bridges, disarmed the guards of the Provisional Government, took control of the power plant, railway stations, telegraph, telephone, and all this - practically without a single shot. The interim government did not understand at all what was happening for quite a long time, ”explains the culturologist and writer Andrey Stolyarov.
On November 7 or October 26, according to the old style, the whole world will celebrate the centenary of the Great October Socialist Revolution. And on the same day, November 7, 1917, Leiba Davidovich Bronstein, better known as Leon Trotsky, celebrated his birthday, he turned 36 years old.
It is unlikely that the armed uprising won on that day in Petrograd can be considered a coincidence. Yes, and Trotsky himself considered himself, and not Lenin, the true leader of the proletarian revolution. “My birthday coincides with the day of the October Revolution. Mystics and Pythagoreans can draw any conclusions from this,” Leon Trotsky wrote later.
“The revolution could have happened any day since September 15th. The Red Guard was ready, the capture of post offices and other strategically important points of communication was a matter of several hours. But Trotsky wanted to make a present for himself. He understood that this way his birthday would always be celebrated as long as the Soviet Union existed - people would go to the parade, march ... And he turned out to be right in this - until 1991 we went to parades every year and celebrated his birthday as public holiday, ”the writer believes Alexander Myasnikov.
Who was the real leader of the armed uprising? Trotsky or Lenin? Trotsky, of course, was a brilliant orator, he knew how to lead the crowd to any cause, but he did not have a party, support among the masses. Lenin was by and large a cabinet worker, but he had a party.
According to Andrei Stolyarov, Leon Trotsky himself understood this fact. In July 1917, one of his associates, having learned that Trotsky intended to join the Bolshevik Party, exclaimed: “Lev Davidovich, but these are political bandits!” Trotsky replied: “I know. But the Bolsheviks are now the only real political force.”
According to many historians, there were three great memoirists in Russia - falsifiers who wrote their memoirs with one goal: to present themselves from the best side, contrary to the facts. These are Ivan the Terrible, Catherine II and Leon Trotsky, who described their path to power so vividly that later for several centuries historians cited their works as the only true ones. Leon Trotsky had the opportunity to write his memoirs when he was in exile, and his main task was to discredit Stalin and prove that Stalin was in power - this is a mistake and an accident.
Trotsky's American Connections
What was the true role of Leon Trotsky in the October Revolution? A great contribution to the creation of the myth that it was Trotsky who was the leader of the revolution was made by the American journalist John Reed with his book “10 Days That Shook the World”. Today, some details in his mysterious life are being clarified.
“We know that this man was from a very wealthy family, graduated from the best foreign educational institutions. And suddenly, this rich, successful boy Reed is made into a kind of revolutionary. Yes, his notes about the performances of workers in Boston appear in the media, then these two publications were released as a separate book, and that’s all - he never wrote anything else in his career, ”explains writer Alexander Myasnikov.
It is known that Trotsky was in America before the revolution. There he was received at the highest level, he met several times with Baron Rothschild, and, according to some reports, received at least $ 20 million from the banking house of Jacob Schiff.
With this money, Trotsky returns to Russia to prepare the revolution. The most remarkable thing is that John Reed is also sent to Russia on the same ship. And, apparently, not in vain. After the June events in Petrograd, many Bolsheviks were forced to go underground, and some of them were arrested. Among those arrested is Leon Trotsky. But an amazing thing is happening.
In August 1917, John Reed arrived in Petrograd with a group of Americans, and suddenly someone freed Leon Trotsky on a very large bail. And when Trotsky is already making a revolution - he becomes a people's commissar - he immediately creates a department for combating agitation, which is headed by Reed.
There is now sensational evidence that John Reed was most likely a "double agent" - both for the Kremlin and for Wall Street. Reed actually worked for the great American banker, John Morgan, and his anti-capitalist writings supported the valuable myth that capitalists are the implacable enemies of all revolutionaries.
It also became known that evidence of the active participation of John Reed in money laundering, which Russia sent to America, was found in the archives of the US Communist Party. According to Alexander Myasnikov, his book "10 Days That Shook the World" is a report on how money was spent at Trotsky's headquarters.
Myths about the women's battalion
The October Revolution was marked by complete confusion and inconsistencies. The fact is that no one had experience of hostilities in the city at that time - it appeared only during the Second World War. So no one knew what to do. Modern military men would put machine guns in the windows of the palace, would strengthen the basements. But nothing of the kind was done. Sometimes the attackers and defenders of the palace in complete darkness shot into the white light like a pretty penny. But mostly there was a verbal skirmish.
According to various estimates, there were about 10 thousand people who attacked the palace, about 2 thousand defenders of the palace. After several ultimatums, part of the troops defending the palace left it. Junkers and Cossacks left. The pupils of the Mikhailovsky Artillery School left the palace along with the cannons. Moreover, a very characteristic example of the fact that no one wanted to shoot, let alone kill, is the episode with artillery during the storming of the Winter Palace.
One of the main myths about the October Revolution is the story of Alexander Kerensky, chairman of the provisional government, dressing in a woman's dress and fleeing from the Winter Palace. In fact, Kerensky calmly left the Palace in the American ambassador's car and did not change into any women's outfit.
Among the myths about the heroic defenders of the Winter Palace is the persistent conviction of many historians about the heroines - shock women from the women's death battalion. They write that they were completely raped by the sailors and soldiers who broke in. But the fact is that by the time of the assault there was not a single lady-protector in the palace, just as there were no cases of rape. They all calmly left the palace long before the assault.
“At about 6 p.m., the first skirmish broke out around the Winter Palace. And that the defenders, that the besiegers were very afraid to go out into the open space in front of the palace. The shootout demoralized the strikers, and when another ultimatum was sent, the shootout stopped, they stayed overnight in the barracks of the Pavlovsky regiment on the Field of Mars. Nobody offended them there and even fed them dinner,” Kirill Nazarenko describes.
Naval minister's mistake
The legendary cruiser "Aurora" is a ship whose firing from a tank gun, as they used to write, "heralded the beginning of a new era." "Aurora" really fired a shot, but he was the only one and at the same time single. The fact is that at that time almost no one had watches, watches were a luxury item: soldiers and sailors, of course, did not have them.
But traces of gun shots remained after volleys of guns from the Peter and Paul Fortress. The guns were very old, all modern weapons were at the front, and therefore firing from the fortress was carried out at the risk of life.
“Cannons fired several times from the side of the Peter and Paul Fortress. They shot at the Winter Palace with a sheaf of bullets that hit the facade - traces of this were clearly visible in photographs of the 20s. In one of the volleys, the so-called “glass” flew into the hall of the third floor of the Winter Palace from the direction of the Neva - the body of a shrapnel projectile. It was brought to the table of the Provisional Government, but it would be better not to do this, because most of the ministers again came in shock and awe, and someone joked that this was an ashtray on the table of their successors, ”says the historian.
At that moment, all the eyes of the civilian ministers turned to the Minister of the Navy, Rear Admiral Dmitry Verderevsky, who, in their opinion, should have known the origin of the projectile.
But Verderevsky, who was a navigator and not an artilleryman by his specialty, said: “This is from the Aurora. And so the myth was born that during the assault, the Aurora fired live shells. The rear admiral was forgiven for this, because he simply determined by eye that the projectile could fit in diameter, although the gunner would never confuse the size of a land gun from the Peter and Paul Fortress and the Aurora projectile.
Bloodless coup
The Winter Palace at that time inside was not at all like the modern one. It was a real labyrinth, with a bunch of partitions, secret stairs. The corridors ended with plywood partitions that had to be bypassed. That is why the interim government could not be found for four hours. In addition, part of the palace was given over to the hospital and the attackers returned to their starting point several times. The detachments wandered through the passages and could not get to the room where the government was sitting.
According to the historian Kirill Nazarenko, it was arrested only at two in the morning, and the cadets of the Pavlovsk School stood to the last, blocking the path to the White Canteen and obeying the order to stand with rifles in hand. Their weapons were snatched away, as there was no order to shoot. The next night, the arrest was bloodless - the ministers were detained and sent to the Peter and Paul Fortress, from where they were subsequently released on receipt, and in the morning they left the palace.
Petrograd townsfolk took the October coup surprisingly calmly. Nothing has changed in their lives. Trams ran in the same way, groups of well-dressed people flitted along the embankments, shops and cinemas were open. Everyone was already accustomed to the change of governments and believed that this was another temporary government, and that it was necessary to wait for the convocation of the constituent assembly, which would put everything in its place. Moreover, the coup itself took place surprisingly bloodless.
In the morning, crowds of inhabitants began to converge on the Winter Palace, because rumors spread around the city that the palace had burned down, and the Alexander Column had cracked and collapsed. They went to look at the stump of the Alexander Column, but, to their surprise, everything turned out to be in order.
The full version of the Storming of the Winter Palace issue is available here.
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One of the heroes of October was the sailor of the Baltic Fleet Evdokim Pavlovich Ognev. In the autumn of 1917, he served on the cruiser Aurora, from whose historical volley the Great October Socialist Revolution began ...
Let's find out more about his story...
Commander of the cruiser "Aurora" Evdokim Ognev
Our country is wide and boundless. How many cities, villages, farms in it ... And each has its own story. And this little story is a grain of the history of a great powerful state.
There is a small river in the Voronezh province, which makes many bends on its way. From the fact that it is winding, and its name is Kriusha. In the 30s of the XVIII century, the 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 Old Kriusha, and the younger one - New.
Here, in 1887, Evdokim Pavlovich Ognev, the commandant of the cruiser Aurora, was born, who fired a historic shot that served as a signal for the storming of the Winter Palace in October 1917.
In Kriush itself, the search for materials about a fellow villager was organized by the librarian E.A. Artamonov. The old-timers remembered the Ognev family, their relatives. It turned out that two cousins of Evdokim Ognev live in Staraya Kriush. The eldest of them, Maria Fominichna Ovcharova, said that Evdokim wrote to his sister Pelageya Pavlovna all the time from the fleet and from the Don, where he fought. In 1918, two fighters from Ognev’s detachment stopped at Pelageya Pavlovna, to whom the commandant gave the address of his sister.
Pavel Prokofievich (father of Evdokim Pavlovich), a baker by profession, often moved from place to place with his family in search of a better life. Now it is reliably known that the Ognevs after Staraya Kriushi lived on the Tretiy Log farm (now the Volgograd region), on the Popov farm, in the villages of Mikhailovskaya, Zotovskaya, Velikoknyazheskaya (now Proletarskaya, Rostov region).
Sister Evdokima, Maria Pavlovna, said that as a child, her younger brother disappeared for days on end on the river, loved to arrange desperate “sea” battles with his peers on rafts, troughs, abandoned old boats. During one such “battle” on Manych, Fedotka’s older brother sprained his leg, and Evdokim carried him home for seven kilometers in his arms ...
In their free time from the watch, friends often retired somewhere on the forecastle or in the carpentry workshop and had intimate conversations. Everyone talked about their lives, their native places. Evdokim Ognev’s turn came: “I listen to you, brothers, and I think: how similar our life is with sores. It seems that they peeped at her from a friend ... My dad, Pavel Prokofievich, was "lucky" all his life. The first wife soon died, leaving him a daughter, Pelageya. I took the second from the neighboring village of Novotroitskoye, Fedosya Zakharovna, my mother. Lived in need. Dad baked kalachi, and we sipped kvass. They traveled to farms and villages in the district, to Cossack villages, looking for work. The father did not get along with the owners, he was reputed to be a truth-seeker. Roaming around in strange corners - a family of eight mouths. I grew up, dad thought: “I’ll lie down with bones, and I’ll make the youngest, Evdokim, literate, I’ll bring people out.” Indeed, for four winters I went to the parochial "university". The father did not survive, he waved his hand: "It's not destiny, go, Evdokim, to day laborers." When I turned fifteen, I went for a better share in Velikoknyazheskaya. Uncle Alexei advised.
Ognev has been in military service since 1910. Initially, he was a sailor in the Baltic Fleet, and after graduating from the gunnery school in 1911, he was assigned to the cruiser Aurora.
From the memoirs of A.V. Belyshev, former First Commissar of the Aurora cruiser:
“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 entered the city so far.
The forces of the revolution multiplied and strengthened. Detachments of Red Guards and soldiers went to the center of the city along the reduced bridge from Vasilyevsky Island.
By morning, the entire city and its most important strategic points, except for the Winter Palace, where the provisional government had taken refuge, were in the hands of the insurgent people. In the evening, a tugboat approached the cruiser. Secretary of the Military Revolutionary Committee V.A. arrived on the Aurora. Antonov-Ovseenko. He said that an ultimatum had been presented to the interim government - to surrender. The answer is expected before 9 o'clock. If the ultimatum is rejected, the revolutionary detachments 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. It will be a signal to the Aurora - to fire a blank shot at Zimny, announcing the start of an attack by detachments of Red Guards, sailors and soldiers.
Winter taken. Hood. V.A. Serov. 1954
The Aurors were to take part in the assault on the last stronghold of the old world. About fifty sailors under the command of sailor A.S. Nevolina went ashore and joined the free detachment of Baltic sailors. The decisive moment has come. At about 9 o'clock, the cruiser's crew raised a combat alert. Everyone took their places. The tension was rising. Shooting was heard from the shore, and the Peter and Paul Fortress did not make itself felt. At 35 minutes the tenth signal was still missing. And when the long-awaited fire flared up in the evening darkness, it was already 9:40.
Nasal, please! the team boomed.
Commander Yevdokim Ognev pulled the trigger of the six-inch gun. It was like a thunderclap tore the air above the city. Through the peals of a shot from the Palace Square, a “hurrah” was heard. Ours went on the 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 a participant in the events P. Kirichkov: “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 to the bottom of the britzka and went to the Vesyoliy farm to the ataman. Krysin, a White Guard from Cossack Khomutets, was riding with two fellow villagers next to the cart in which I was lying. The traitor boasted of 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 Cossack Khomutets farm, three guns remained: 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 whistle of White Guard bullets, began to retire into the steppe. While the whites realized that there was no one else in front of them, but they took the horses out of the shelter, the three riders continued to leave without hindrance. They were being pursued. The Cossacks fired at a gallop. One bullet hit Ognev. For some reason, Krysin began to lag behind. When the riders came up to the old Scythian mound, Krysin stopped his horse. He tore off the rifle from his shoulder and shot down the wounded Ognev. The orderly looked around, saw the commander falling, did not have time to understand anything - he was killed by a second shot. Krysin jumped off his horse, went up to Ognev, cautiously turned him over and began to take off his boots ... "
Ognev was buried in a common grave on the Cossack 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. A monument to Evdokim Pavlovich Ognev was erected in a rural park. 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 "volley of Aurora" was born literally the 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 the Aurora fired at Zimny with real shells was actively replicated: this was written about it in the “Short Course on the History of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks”, the play “Aurora Volley” was staged at the Moscow Art Theater, according to which a film of the same name was released in the 1960s; in 1937, Mikhail Romm made 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 either: Alexei Tolstoy in his “Walking Through the Torments” writes about the roof of the Winter Palace pierced by a shell.
It was all that was left of the once noisy and drunken hustle and 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 the torments." Book 2)
On October 21, commissars of the Military Revolutionary Committee were sent by the Bolsheviks to all revolutionary units of the troops. All the days before the uprising in military units, in factories and plants, vigorous combat training was going on. Certain tasks were also received by combat ships - the cruiser "Aurora" and "Dawn of Freedom"<…>The revolutionary units of the troops, prepared for the uprising by the work of the Bolsheviks, faithfully carried out military orders and fought side by side with the Red Guard. The navy did not lag behind the army. Kronstadt was a stronghold of the Bolshevik Party, where the authority of the Provisional Government had long since ceased to be recognized. Cruiser"Aurora" on October 25, with the thunder of his cannons aimed at the Winter Palace, he announced the beginning of a new era - the era of the Great Socialist Revolution. (A short course in 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. 25.09.2014 © Andrey Sheremetev / AndreySheremetev.ru
Reality
The first - and the main debunkers of the myth were the sailors themselves from the cruiser "Aurora". The day after the events described in the Pravda newspaper, an article appeared in which the sailors tried to prove that there had been no shelling of the Winter Palace on their part: if the cruiser had fired “for real”, not only the palace, but also surrounding areas, they argued. The text of the rebuttal was:
“To all honest citizens of the city of Petrograd from the crew of the cruiser Avrora, which expresses its sharp protest against the accusations thrown, especially the accusations that have not been verified, but throw a stain of shame on the cruiser crew. We declare that we have come not 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 the gentlemen reporters know that the cannon fire we opened would not have left stone unturned not only from the Winter Palace, but also from the streets adjacent to it? But does it really exist?
We appeal to you, workers and soldiers of the city of Petrograd! Do not believe provocative rumors. Do not 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 stationed on the Neva, and calling them to vigilance and readiness. Please reprint all editions.
Chairman of the ship's committee
A. Belyshev
Tov. Chairman P. Andreev
Secretary /signature/”. ("Pravda", No. 170, October 27, 1917)
For many years, while official propaganda benefited from the myth of the power of revolutionary weapons, in which a single blank shot grew into a whole volley of military guns, no one remembered this note. Already during the Khrushchev "thaw" this text appeared in the journal "New World", in the article by V. Cardin "Legends and Facts" (1966, No. 2, p. 237). However, the Pravda newspaper responded not at all friendly to the quotation of itself 50 years ago, publishing in March 1967 a message on behalf of the Secretariat of the Writers' Union of the SSR, warning Soviet people against reading articles "imbued with false tendencies to unjustified revision and belittling of revolutionary and heroic traditions of the Soviet people. The article did not leave indifferent the top leadership of the country. In one of his speeches to the Politburo, L.I. Brezhnev was indignant: “After all, some of our writers (and they are published) agree that there was supposedly no Aurora salvo, that it was supposedly a blank shot, etc., that there were no 28 Panfilov’s, that there were fewer of them, this fact was almost invented that there was no Klochko and there was no his call, that "Moscow is behind us and we have nowhere to retreat ...".
Many years later, already in perestroika, the article “permeated with a false trend” was reprinted in the Ogonyok magazine.
The military also refutes the myth about the shelling of Zimny from a cruiser: the ship, which really won military glory by participating in the Russo-Japanese and World War I, was undergoing major repairs since 1916, which means that all the ammunition from it by the time of the October events should have been there for a long time removed - in accordance with the instructions in force.
Another myth - the shot of the Aurora is a signal for reconciling the time of the revolutionary squadron sounded at 21.00 on October 25, 1917. (" ... No one set the task of revolutionary sailors to give a signal for the assault. They simply gave a military signal, which was given regularly, so that time verification was carried out on all ships .... Now this practice exists in armies and navies all over the world. ... I think that it is possible to state with a high degree of accuracy that the shot thundered exactly at 21.00. ...”)
Let's turn to theory and history:
An accurate knowledge of the time on the high seas is necessary for ships to reliably determine the location (especially longitude). A lot of efforts were put by scientists, sailors, watchmakers of the world to achieve the necessary accuracy and develop error-free methods. The British Parliament even offered a generous bonus for the successful solution of this problem. For example, at the equator, a time error of only 1 minute leads to an inaccuracy in determining the location on the Earth's surface by almost 30 km. All this was widely known in 1917 (let's look at the Encyclopedic Dictionary of F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron). The main way to determine the place out of sight of the coast then was astronomical.
Ships compare chronometers (in those years with coastal ones) immediately before going out to sea, under favorable hydrometeorological conditions, using astronomical bodies and phenomena with accurate knowledge of longitude. Yes, and it is advisable to check the time by such a signal only far from the coast in a separate voyage of a squadron of ships when a large error is found in the calculation of the place or a serious error in the readings of the chronometers on one of the ships. I think it is clear that this does not apply to the ships stationed on the Neva.
At the beginning of the 20th century, a “unit time system” already existed in Petrograd - at the suggestion of D.I. Mendeleev, a cable was laid from the “normal”, i.e. reference, clock of the Main Chamber of Measures and Weights to the General Staff, under the arch of which a clock is installed that never runs and does not lag behind with the inscription on the dial: “Correct time”. This inscription can be read even today - go under the arch to the Winter Palace or Nevsky Prospekt.
As you know, the tradition of a midday shot for civilian needs in St. Petersburg was firmly established on February 6, 1865. On this day, at exactly noon, a 60-pound signal gun was fired from the Admiralty building, while the gun fired on a cable signal directly from the Pulkovo Observatory. In 1872, in connection with the construction of the Admiralty courtyard with houses, the Naval Ministry proposed moving the signal gun to the Peter and Paul Fortress. On September 24, 1873, a midday shot was fired for the first time from the bastion of the fortress.
Since 1856, the Nautical Department has been supplying all ships of the Navy with the British astronomical nautical yearbook Nautical Almanac (published since 1766), from which tables of lunar distances were removed in 1907 to determine longitude on the high seas (instructions for their calculation are printed until 1924) .Only in 1930, our country began to publish its own astronomical yearbook.
It is interesting to note that until January 1, 1925, the astronomical day began at noon, and the time system based on the Greenwich meridian in the RSFSR was switched from February 8, 1919. And although the new style of chronology was introduced by the Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of January 26, 1918, double dates were already in the headlines of many newspapers in 1917.
The production of nautical clocks (not chronometers - they are foreign) is being organized in the Workshop of Nautical Instruments of the Main Hydrographic Department. Russian nautical instruments are awarded diplomas at international exhibitions in 1907 (Bordeaux) and 1912 (St. Petersburg).
Considering that the speed of sound was measured by the Milan Academy of Sciences back in the 17th century, it is clear that the accuracy of a signal shot from a cannon, with the departure of the century of sails in the middle of the 19th century, the development of watchmaking could only satisfy the control of time for everyday civilian needs. For example, on January 9, 1917, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, the actions of the German auxiliary cruiser (sailing ship!) Seeadler during the capture of the steamer Gladys Roil were initially perceived as an ancient, grandfather's custom of checking the chronometer with a mortar shot, and answered with a flag. By the end of the 19th century, in the ports of the world, the most common system was the signaling of time with electrically driven signal balloons. The transmission of time signals by telegraph was also widely developed, especially with the advent of Yuz's direct-printing devices (remember the term "yuzogram"?).
In 1912 - 1913, at the initiative of France, 2 international conferences were held on the use of radio for transmitting accurate time signals (ONOGO system). The first chairman of the international commission was Academician O.A. Backlund (1846-1916) - Director of the Pulkovo Observatory. In 1914, the first time signal transmission experiment was also carried out in St. Petersburg (regular broadcasting began on December 1, 1920, although it did not become particularly known to the fleet).
Since 1910, radio stations in Germany, England and France have already been transmitting time signals, since 1912 they have been transmitted according to the venier principle, which made it possible to determine clock errors with an accuracy of 0.01 seconds, since 1913 at least 9 radio stations in the world have transmitted such signals.
The most famous document of 1720 is “The Book of Charter of the Sea. About everything related to good management when the fleet was at sea ”signals were introduced to control ships during joint navigation. Yes, both flags and cannon shots, drumming, ship bells, musket shots were used to serve them. Based on the experience of the naval operations in the Mediterranean Sea in 1797, “Complete signals to be produced in the fleets of His Imperial Majesty” are compiled. In 1814 A.N. Butakov compiled a complete dictionary of semaphore signals. After the actual creation by Vice Admiral G.I. Butakov of the tactics of the actions of steam ships in 1868 published the Book of Evolutionary Signals and the Code of Naval Signals. They were based on flag signals. For night signaling, even before the creation of Morse code, flashlights were used. The corrected Code of Signals of 1890 was rightly criticized by Vice Admiral S.O. Makarov. With the advent of electricity on ships, the signal light of the Ratier type became famous. When darkening the ships, the cuff and wake lights were used to control the formations. Various figures raised on the halyards, shields with signs were also used. Signaling and communications were taken seriously. They spied on deciphering the signals.
From the death of ships in the Tsushima battle, the command of the Russian fleet concluded that in addition to the flag and light signals of the searchlight, it is necessary to have another type of signaling that would not depend on the presence or absence of superstructures and masts. These are flares. The Veri pistol (according to another transcription of Baer) is still in service with the Navy (more than 100 years!). They were imported from abroad at the beginning of the century, they were expensive, and therefore many domestic analogues were created. The system of captain 2nd rank Zhukov (1908) was especially famous, although it was intended mainly for supplying combat and evolutionary signals, for everyday signals, which include time signals, in his opinion, signaling with flags and lanterns was enough. The question is, was the famous red fire from the Peter and Paul Fortress a signal rocket?
As you can see, the need for such an archaic method of checking the chronometers of quite modern, well-equipped warships (well, not resembling the Golden Doe by Francis Drake, although it was a troubled time in the country), is like a cannon shot, and even in the middle of Petrograd at the beginning of the 20th century clearly missing, as it is now. For the needs of time control on the ship itself, flasks were beaten off by a watch.
All the more surprising would be the delivery of such a regular signal by a rather expensive charge of artillery of the main caliber. After the 37-mm Hotchkiss guns were dismantled from the Aurora, 76.2-mm Lender anti-aircraft guns would most likely be used as signal (there is also a term for salutes). From a blank volley of a 152-mm gun from the Peter and Paul Fortress, the glass around the city is still shaking, and in the Hermitage, before the gun turned towards Vasilyevsky Island, an alarm went off - a lot of glass would have flown on the Angliskaya Embankment - obviously not that for a regular signal. An example is November 20, 1992, when the midday shot was fired for the only time in the courtyard of the Naryshkin bastion.
Back to Aurora:
The ship, under the command of Lieutenant N. A. Erickson, on October 22, 1917, after the completion of repairs at the Franco-Russian Plant, was prepared to go to sea to test cars (and not to withdraw from Petrograd for counter-revolutionary purposes, as the Bolsheviks presented it ) and even took on board part of the ammunition - there is a war in the Baltic. There are quite accurate chronometers on board, like on most ships of that time, British-made (very protected in importance and tradition). The navigator has the “Nautical Almanac” with the Guide to the use of the English nautical calendar and, of course, other nautical instruments.
Chief of the watch - warrant officer L. A. Demin (1897-1973), in the future rear admiral, doctor of geographical sciences, who prepared more than 100 nautical charts and sailing directions, 16 years (from 1957 to 1973) headed the Leningrad branch of the All-Union Astronomical and Geodetic society – while young, but will not forget to start such chronometers?!
The situation with the gun sights is a little unclear - there is a version that they were removed and locked somewhere in the cabin. But think about whether someone would then stand on ceremony with a locked cabin. The cruiser commanders do not remember this.
The bright searchlights of the Mangin system are also in good order; a similar signal could have been given by them.
Despite the statements of S.N. Poltorak, tasks for certain actions in preparation for the assault on the Winter Palace "Aurora" were nevertheless set. These are the orders of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies No. 1219 dated 10/24/17 on the transfer of the ship to Combat Readiness and No. 1253 of 10/24/17 on the task of restoring traffic on the Nikolaevsky Bridge. By order No. 1125, Alexander Viktorovich Belyshev was appointed commissar of the ship, even with the time indicated 12 hours 20 minutes. And by a telegram from Tsentrobalt dated 10/24/17, Aurora was subordinated to the Military Revolutionary Committee, this document was registered on 10/27/17 under No. 5446 at the Main Naval Headquarters (it was received by the officer on duty, Ensign Lesgaft). They counted on the pressure of the cruiser's guns, even sent checks. Most of the team is on the side of the VRC.
Having carried out measurements of the unfamiliar Neva fairway "Aurora" at 3 hours 30 minutes. On October 25, 2017, she anchored at the Nikolaevsky Bridge opposite the Rumyantsevs' mansion (44 Angliyskaya Embankment) and complied with the order to ensure traffic on the bridge.
By 19 o'clock, having completed the transition from Gelsinfors (Helsinki) with a call to Kronstadt, the combat-ready destroyers "Zabiyaka" and "Samson", a little earlier the patrol ship "Yastreb" and other ships entered the Neva.
It would be very naive to believe that such a transition was made by ships without reliable knowledge of time (and, as a result, longitude) even in the presence of visual landmarks, and they did not correct it in the port of Kotlin Island, equipped with everything necessary for this, but preferred to “ask again”, according to version of S.N. Poltorak, at the Aurora. The mine warfare that was widely waged in the Baltic, you know, is a dangerous thing and you have to go along a strictly tested fairway, and the forts of Kronstadt are ready.
Radio stations (including medium-wave tone) of the cruiser and other ships are also in perfect order. The radiograms of the listed ships can be found in the Central State Administration of the Navy, the case numbers are even published in the open press.
Between the ships, the Peter and Paul Fortress, in which uniform confusion is going on with guns and artillerymen, which G.I. Blagonravov can hardly cope with (by calling artillery sailors from the training ground), and surrounded by the Winter Palace on a boat (from the Aurora?) V. BUT. Antonov-Ovseenko. (This is also known from the memoirs of L.D. Trotsky).
Consider the second part of the assumption - the Aurora shot sounded exactly at 21.00. The most frequently called are 21.40, 21.45. Eyewitnesses of the events (former members of the Provisional Government, Aurors, deputies) and reporters of Petrograd newspapers of those years, different in political preferences, indicate the time quite accurately and it does not differ too much.
Comparing and analyzing their memoirs, newspaper publications (and this is a topic for a separate and most serious article), archival documents, one can be convinced that the former Aurora commissioner A.V. Belyshev calls 21.40 quite right. Only now it all started with a grenade explosion in the palace, then the troops defending the Winter Palace began firing.
A volley of "Aurora" was required, only he had a completely different
meaning -" only one blank shot from a 6-inch gun was fired, indicating a signal for all ships standing on the Neva, and calling them to vigilance and readiness.” This is from the text of the letter from the crew of the Aurora cruiser - I am attaching it to the article. I am very surprised that it has not been published in full for a long time. What made the team write this letter becomes clear from other publications of those days. And the surname to this day of the unknown secretary of the cruiser sudkom is Miss (he is an Estonian by nationality).
I understand that this is how the Aurora shot is historically correct and should be called.
And the shot was fired (by gunner E.P. Ognev from the team of A.V. Belyshev) according to a note sent to the Aurora by Antonov-Ovseenko or Blagonravov. Fire was also fired from destroyers, even the signal cannon of the Peter and Paul Fortress fired. There were destructions of the Winter Palace and city buildings.
Yes, and 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. Nevertheless, the Aurora cruiser is depicted on the Order of the October Revolution, which he himself was awarded in 1967.
In the summer of 1967, the whole country was preparing to widely celebrate a round date in the history of Russia - the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution. The Hermitage was also preparing for this date. Groups of guides were formed who were supposed to lead distinguished guests from abroad, whose arrival in the city - the cradle of the October Revolution was expected with great excitement.
Unexpectedly, the Hermitage received a letter from M.A. Suslov (1902-1982), at that time a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU, responsible for ideology (later he was called the “grey eminence”), who wielded enormous political power. In this letter, he proposes to collect objective data on the details of the assault on the Winter Palace on October Night, which he will need when meeting in the Kremlin with delegations from the fraternal Communist Parties.
In the Hermitage, of course, an operational headquarters was created, headed by the assistant director, secretary of the party bureau N.N. Leman. A few words should be said about this interesting person. A native of Moscow Germans, he lived a difficult life, where there were ups and downs. As a very young man, under 20 years old, he commanded a large military formation of the Red Army on the front of the fight against Yudenich's troops, and defended Red Peter. Then he studied at a military school in Leningrad, taught social sciences at military academies in a position that corresponds to a modern major general (I am writing this from his words - B.S.). Then, in the “case of M. Tukhachevsky”, he ended up in very remote places, where he spent many years working as a carpenter. During the Khrushchev thaw he was rehabilitated, returned to Leningrad and worked in the Hermitage as an assistant director, secretary of the party bureau, head of a publishing house. For some reason, he treated me well, I often went to his office, and he talked about Petrograd in the early 1920s. I was then young, full of energy, a candidate of historical sciences. N.N. invited me to work on preparing a response to M.A. Suslov.
After careful checks and rechecks, a general outline of the events of that night gradually began to emerge. Let's start with the general disposition.
In those days, the buildings of the old and new Hermitages housed a military hospital, fenced off from the premises of the Winter Palace with blocked passages. The building of the Winter Palace housed the Provisional Government, whose meetings were held in the Malachite Hall. In front of the facade on Palace Square, there were stacks of firewood, which were used to heat the entire complex of buildings. The residence of the Provisional Government was guarded by insignificant armed forces. They consisted of: A) a battery of three-inch field guns, standing between stacks of firewood. B) shock women's battalion M.L. Bochkareva. At least, so Soviet historians claimed. Recently, it turned out that this commonplace statement is not entirely accurate. M. Bochkareva herself did not take part in the defense of the palace, and the strikers, whom V. Mayakovsky called, apparently, from the words of the participants in the events, “woman fools”, were formally not from the battalion of M. Bochkarova, but from part of those who had broken away from him. How many there were, no one could say for sure, probably about a company. That is, no more than 100 people. And, finally, a certain number of junkers, also about a hundred people. In total, two or three hundred people, a third of which - "shocks" - did not differ in high combat effectiveness.
According to the late employee of the State Hermitage, Doctor of Historical Sciences. B.A. Latynina, on the afternoon of October 25, it was relatively calm in the Zimny area. He walked around the square and did not expect that the “turning point in the history of mankind” would take place late in the evening, as we taught in schools and universities.
By evening, military units (sailors from the ships of the Baltic) and armed workers' squads began to gather at the palace. The flow came from three directions. The revolutionary sailors, who had been on light ships from Kronstadt, landed near the monument to Peter I. From there they moved along the English Embankment past the Admiralty to the Winter Palace. The active participation of the sailors is easy to explain. The government of A.F. Kerensky planned, fulfilling the requirements of the Entente, to remove the crews from the warships stationed in the roadstead and, as marines, throw them into battle against the troops of the Kaiser. This prospect clearly did not suit them.
At that time, the garden in front of the Winter Palace was surrounded by a high fence, consisting of a stone fence, on which there was a forged patterned lattice. It could serve as a reliable defense for detachments of sailors passing along the Neva to the main entrance of the Palace.
Columns of armed workers from the Vyborg side lingered for some time in front of the Liteiny Bridge, which was raised, but then, when the bridge was brought down, they moved towards Millionnaya Street to the New Hermitage. There they met an outpost from among the defenders of the Palace, and entered into peace negotiations with him, trying to persuade them to surrender. But the negotiations did not lead to anything, and in the evening this group (crowd) penetrated through the Terebenevsky portico into the halls of the New Hermitage. They did not get into the Winter Palace, since the passages were blocked, and their wounded were lying in the halls.
Finally, the main crowd or the third column, formed from the outskirts of workers, along the left bank of the Neva, having passed Nevsky Prospekt, left under the arch of the General Staff Building and approached the stacks of firewood in front of the gate of the closed main entrance to the Zimny courtyard. By this time, the battery had withdrawn from its firing position, and the Main Gate was unguarded by anyone. One of the besiegers climbed over the gate and opened it. This scene is well known from the movie Lenin in October. Crowds poured into the courtyard through the open gate. It is quite obvious that if the battery had remained in the firing position and had made several volleys of buckshot in the open area, then no one would have reached the gate. Through the inner entrance, near the parade ground, where the guards were deployed, the crowds entered the Kutuzov Gallery.
As the participants in the assault recalled, in their columns (or rather in their crowd) were soldiers of the guards regiments. This news surprised us at first. How could it be that the guards, together with the officers, went to storm the residence of state power? The answer came pretty quickly. The guard swore allegiance to the emperor, and for it the Provisional Government was self-appointed, not legitimate. The guards officers understood that if they were not with the soldiers, they would lose contact with the mass of soldiers, and would not be able to save the guard for future battles for the return of the emperor.
The third wave of those who stormed the palace - sailors from the ships of the Baltic, approached the Main Entrance, but it was closed. They knocked out the door with grenades and leaked through the windows of the first floor into the main entrance.
What did the informants remember about the Aurora shot? This question turned out to be very complex and not completely clear. Most likely, he was, but combat or idle, and in what direction - no one could determine this. The Nikolaevsky Bridge was brought down, and the Aurora stood at the English Embankment, where a memorial sign now stands. From this position, it was impossible to shoot a live projectile at Zimny, since the route would run along the facades of buildings on the left bank of the Neva.
I once read a speech by some author that the cannon fired to keep track of time. I asked the Aurora Museum how likely it is. My question aroused surprise, since in the Navy the countdown - "bottles" was always marked with bells. Shooting from a heavy bow gun is pointless. Note that during the years of the beginning of “perestroika”, a juicy detail surfaced - the Aurora was under steam, in case the coup had failed, as in the summer of 17, its organizers had to sail abroad on it. How reliable this is is unknown. Our informants did not report this plan. Perhaps because then it was not supposed to talk about it.
Looking through the photo archives of the Museum of the Revolution, which were in the State Hermitage after the Second World War, I found documents confirming that two shots were fired at Zimny from guns, but not from the Aurora, but from the forts of the Peter and Paul Fortress. Those photographs showed the windows of the third floor from the side of the Neva. Holes near the window openings were clearly visible on them. The nature of the holes indicated that the shells were sent across the Neva from the forts of Petropavlovka. And again the question is that none of the informants reported about those gun shots.
From the point of view of a front-line soldier (and I am a veteran of the Second World War), the Winter Palace is a powerful fortress, which is not so easy to take by storm if the besieged have the decision to actively defend. It would be enough to put several dozen machine guns in the windows, and all those who fled to attack across open areas would be shot down and thrown back.
It is necessary to take into account the general situation then prevailing in Petrograd. The garrison of the city consisted of 120,000 people. It mainly consisted of recruits - peasants, since the personnel contingents of the Russian army died in the battles of World War I. And the guards regiments perished in the tragic battles near Avgustovo in East Prussia in the autumn of 1914. The soldiers of the capital's garrison knew that the Provisional Government of A.F. Kerensky planned to transfer them to the front to complete the defeat of Germany. But they also well understood that the Kaiser's army was still combat-ready, and very many of them would not live to see the end of the war. And the Bolsheviks, V.I. Ulyanov - Lenin, promised peace.
Meanwhile, the forces of the besieged were dwindling without a fight. The cannons of the artillery battery were the first to leave their positions near the barricades from the piles of firewood, so that the facade of the palace from the square turned out to be unprotected.
Then the "ladies" of the women's shock battalion began to dissolve. It should be noted that the presence of M. Bochkareva among them was constantly noted in Soviet literature. But as already noted, it has now been established that she was not there.
Before the insurgents began to penetrate the palace, about a hundred cadets and persons loyal to the Provisional Government remained in it. For the defense of a huge building, this was clearly not enough. According to the recollections of eyewitnesses, having got into the interior of the palace, the stormers met no resistance. There was no fighting inside the building. This information was confirmed by photographs of the interiors, which were then preserved in the Hermitage funds. One more circumstance should be noted. All informants emphasized that none of them knew the plan of the Palace, and they did not know where they should run, where the Provisional Government was located. A chaotic running around the halls and corridors of the huge building began. In the end, someone reached the small dining room, where the Provisional Government had moved from the Malachite Hall, which had become dangerous due to the shooting from the Neva. Previously, this dining room housed a communications center.
In this hall, the Provisional Government was arrested. This is reminiscent of an inscription placed on a marble plaque above the fireplace, and the clock hand, which stopped at 2:10 am from November 7 to 8 (October 25-26, 1917), recorded the date of the arrest of the Provisional Government.
Visitors often asked and still ask: “Were there acts of vandalism and theft of valuables during the capture of the Winter Palace?” We usually answer this question unambiguously. During the assault (which actually did not take place), no acts of vandalism and robbery were recorded. This is proved by the inventory lists and photographs of the interiors of the hall. This indisputable fact can be explained by two reasons. First, the piety of the royal residence affected. And, secondly, by the fact that during World War I many exhibits of the museum, the Hermitage and the palace premises were evacuated to Moscow. In the movie "Lenin in October" there was such a scene, well known to the older generation - one of the Red Guards sat on the royal throne. This is another mistake - in 1917 the royal throne was in the cellars of the Kremlin.
There were acts of desecration of the portraits of the royal family and emperors, placed on the walls of the palace. They were pierced with bayonets. These gaps persisted for a very long time. Now they are plastered and restored and exhibited in the Petrovsky Gallery of the Winter Palace.
And finally, the last one. M.A. Suslov demanded to find out the number of victims of the assault. This turned out to be an extremely difficult task. But, in the end, we found a report sent to the Smolny about the storming of the Winter Palace. It was noted that only a few people were killed. Based on this information, M.A. Suslov, during receptions in the Kremlin of foreign delegations, had reason to assert that the October coup (revolution) was the most bloodless of all such acts in the history of Europe. And the civil war, which claimed millions of lives, was organized by W. Churchill ..
N.N. Leman said that M.A. Suslov was satisfied with our answer, the text of which I, of course, did not read.
Today, many years later, one might think that not all the details of those distant events have been reconstructed accurately enough. But their general scheme, apparently, corresponds to reality.
This is all that remains in my memory of that work under the guidance of N.N. Leman.
Chief Research Fellow of the State Hermitage
Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor
B.V. Sapunov
For the first time, the Petrograd newspapers wrote about the fact that the cruiser Aurora fired at the Winter Palace from a six-inch gun the very next day after the coup. The crew of the ship, however, through the newspaper "Pravda" gave a refutation, claiming that the shot was one, moreover, a blank. Who is right?
It must be said that some eyewitnesses confirm the version of the shelling. American journalist John Reed wrote about two shells from the Aurora that hit the Winter Palace. The daughter of the British ambassador Muriel Buchanan - about "two or three shells that came from the direction of the Neva." But, perhaps, it is her testimony that testifies to the innocence of Aurora.
It is known for certain that on the night of October 25, 1917, the cruiser stood near the Nikolaevsky (later Shmidtovsky) bridge on the Neva. In order to somehow hook the Winter Palace with a live shell, the Aurora gunners would have to fire at an incredibly sharp angle. In addition, they would be prevented from aiming by the pediment of the Admiralty and the Palace Bridge, divorced on the occasion of unrest in the city.
Where did the fire on the Winter Palace come from? First, from the Peter and Paul Fortress. In front of its western tip, the Bolsheviks managed to deploy several three-inch guns and fire, according to various sources, from 3 to 30 shots. It was their fire that the daughter of the English ambassador mistook for shots from the Aurora. Another cannon of the same caliber was located under the arch of the General Staff.
The dramatic events of the night of October 25-26, 1917 are covered with a huge number of myths, many feature films have been made about them, and books have been written. But even almost a hundred years later, the smoke from the blank shot of the Aurora did not dissipate ...
Winter. "Surrounded on all sides..."
Gloomy morning October 25, 1917. The Winter Palace, actually 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. Around - drunkenly having fun Petrograd crowd. Armed Red Guards saunter along the nearby streets, so far quite harmlessly.
Everything changed in an instant.
From the memoirs of Alexander Zinoviev - Chief Manager of the North-Western Branch of the Red Cross:
“I, as always, went to my Red Cross office in the morning. Where I had to pass, it was still calm and nothing special was noticeable. Workers armed with guns, mixed with sailors, suddenly appeared, a skirmish began - they fired in the direction of Nevsky Prospekt, but the enemy was not visible ... The wounded and the dead began to be brought to the outpatient clinic, which was right there in the building of our Administration ... Shooting this lasted for about two hours, and then everything calmed down, the workers and sailors who fired disappeared somewhere ... But information soon began to appear 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 of Bolsheviks and the entire St. Petersburg garrison joined them ...
The Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies sat quieter than water and lower than the grass. The Ministers of the Provisional Government shut themselves up in the Winter Palace, where most of them lived. The palace was defended only by the junkers, that is, students of military schools that trained officers, and the women's battalion, recently formed by Kerensky. The palace was surrounded on all sides by Bolsheviks, soldiers and sailors...
When in the evening, at about 6 o’clock, I was walking home, in that 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, was very close to the Winter Palace - five minutes walk, no more. In the evening, after dinner, lively shooting began near the Winter Palace, at first only rifle fire, then the crackle of machine guns joined it.
Hospital. "And also patients -" spines "
The 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 escaped from the Winter Palace, according to the post-revolutionary legend, which later became fixed in school textbooks. And later, having learned about this "interpretation", he was very worried:
"Tell them back 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 wore women's clothes at all - even as a child, as a joke ... ", - in an interview 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).
Documents that shed light on the appearance of picturesque details were not subject to publication in Soviet times (Kerensky, as the official version said, changed into a dress of a sister of mercy). The fact is that since 1915 the Winter Palace has ceased to be the citadel of the Russian monarchy - a hospital was opened here. As the Government Gazette reported, "in the Imperial Winter Palace, it is highly permitted to allocate parade rooms overlooking the Neva for the wounded, namely: the Nikolaevsky Hall with the Military Gallery, the Avan Hall, the Field Marshal's and the Armorial Hall - for a total of a thousand wounded." The grand opening of the hospital took place on October 5, the day of the namesake of the heir to the throne - Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich. By the decision of the royal family, the hospital was named after him - to rid the heir of hemophilia.
The eight largest - and most magnificent - ceremonial halls of the 2nd floor have turned into chambers. Luxurious walls were covered with canvas, typesetting floors were covered with linoleum.
"The patients were placed according to their wounds. In the Nicholas Hall, which accommodated 200 beds, there were wounded in the head, throat and chest. And also very serious patients -" spines "... In the Armorial Hall there were patients with wounds in the abdominal cavity, thigh and the hip joint ... In the Alexander Hall there were patients, wounded in the shoulder and back, "recalled sister of mercy Nina Galanina.
On the 1st floor there was an emergency room, a pharmacy, a kitchen, bathrooms, doctors' offices. The hospital was equipped with the latest science and technology - the most advanced equipment, the latest methods of treatment.
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, since 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 for an immediate assault. A certified lawyer, a graduate of St. Petersburg University, he could not help but realize that he was inciting a coup d'état - after all, the Provisional Government de jure could transfer power only to the Constituent Assembly. But the thirst for power was stronger than the "prejudices" 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 hesitates. We must finish him off at all costs!"
Finally, unable to bear it, Lenin heads to Smolny. Lunacharsky recalled: "Ilyich was ready to shoot us." Lenin went up to the podium, taking over the baton on the podium from Trotsky; 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 solution to the crisis. In vain...
A somewhat hysterical euphoria reigned in the Smolny, in the half-dark and defenseless Winter Palace - nervous confusion.
Winter. "Powerlessness and small number of defenders ..."
A member of the Extraordinary Investigative Commission, which investigated the cases of former tsarist ministers (it was established after the February Revolution by order of the Provisional Government), Colonel Sergei Korenev, who was in the palace that night, recalled:
“The impotence and small number of our defenders - the junkers, to whom the authorities cannot even bother to give out the necessary ammunition, this is the obvious lack of guiding will in the whole matter of defense, these sleepy generals and their hopes that if not a curve, then Kerensky will help out. the same accursed Aurora, slyly winking at us with the muzzles of its cannons, which, although they will not shoot, as our commanders assure us of this, but nevertheless look very suspiciously directly at our windows.
This picture is in the afternoon of October 25th. Around the same time, American journalist John Reed entered the palace with his wife and a friend. The guards did not let them through the gates of the Own Garden from the side of the square, according to their "certificates from Smolny", but they freely passed through the gates from the embankment, presenting American passports. We climbed the stairs to the office of the Minister-Chairman, who, of course, was not caught. And they went to wander around the palace-hospital, looking at the pictures. "It was already quite late when we left the palace," John Reid writes in 10 Days That Shook the World.
And at about 11 p.m. (the "generals" mentioned by Korenev were mistaken), the Aurora did fire. From gun number 1, with a blank salvo, the echo of which resounded through the city. And this already caused a real cannonade: the guns of the Peter and Paul Fortress opened fire. And by no means blank shells.
They shot at the hospital.
For the unarmed, defenseless, lying wounded in the halls of the Winter Palace. According to the same workers and peasants, dressed in soldier's greatcoats, in whose name the seizure of power was allegedly carried out.
"Aurora". Letter to the editors of Petrograd
A shadow of suspicion in the shameful shooting at lying down fell on the cruiser, which prompted her crew to send a very emotional letter to all the newspapers of Petrograd on October 27:
"To all honest citizens of the city of Petrograd from the crew of the Aurora cruiser, which expresses its sharp protest against the accusations thrown, especially the accusations that have not been verified, but throw a stain of shame on the cruiser crew. We declare that we have not come to smash 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 had opened fire from cannons, it would not have left stone unturned not only in the Winter Palace, but also in the streets adjacent to it. But is it there. Isn't it a lie, a common method of the bourgeois press to pelt with mud and unfounded facts of incidents to intrigue the working proletariat. We appeal to you, the workers and soldiers of the city of Petrograd. Do not believe provocative rumors. Do not 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 stationed on the Neva, and calling them to vigilance and readiness.
Please reprint all editions.
Chairman of the ship's committee
A. BELYSHEV.
Comrade Chairman P. ANDREEV.
Most of the shells flying from the Peter and Paul Fortress exploded on the Palace Embankment, several windows in Zimny were shattered by shrapnel. Two shells fired from the Peter and Paul Fortress hit the former reception room of Alexander III.
Why did the attackers shoot from howitzers at a virtually unarmed, almost unguarded palace? Indeed, even before the expiration of the ultimatum presented by the Military Revolutionary Committee (VRC) to the Provisional Government, the Cossacks and shock women 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 junker boys. It was most likely a psychic attack...
Well, Petrograd did not seem to notice the fatal events that had taken place that night.
Winter. Junkers released "on parole"
"... On the streets, everything is everyday and ordinary: the crowd familiar to the eye on Nevsky Prospekt, overcrowded tram cars go around as usual, shops sell nowhere, so far no accumulation of troops or armed detachments in general is found ... Only already at the palace itself, an unusual stirring is noticeable: government troops are moving from place to place on Palace Square, they seem to have subsided compared to yesterday
From the outside, the Winter Palace has taken on a more combative appearance: all its exits and passages leading to the Neva are plastered with junkers. They are sitting at the gates and doors of the palace, making noise, laughing, running along the sidewalk in distillation," an eyewitness wrote.
The defenders of the palace did not really know its logistics: as it turned out, having entered Zimny 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 attackers 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 building plan at hand.
Using this, the Bolshevik activists freely entered the palace from the side of the Winter Canal. There were more and more of them, and the defenders still could not detect the "leak".
So, having climbed the narrow small stairs leading to the private chambers of Her Majesty, wandered along the corridors of the palace, the detachment of Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko at the beginning of the third morning of October 26 and 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.
The ministers of the Provisional Government, who had moved here from the Malachite Hall, sat at a small table: the windows 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 denouement - 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 "deposition and arrest of the Provisional Government" was greeted with applause and the singing of the "Internationale". (Twenty years later, in 1937, Antonov-Evseenko was arrested as an "enemy of the people" and shot for "counter-revolutionary activities"; the authorities that arose in lawlessness ruthlessly cracked down on those who gave birth to it).
Hospital. "The elder 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, according to documents, "began to tear off the bandages from the wounded who had facial wounds: these chambers were in the hall closest to the government apartments" - they were looking for "disguised as the wounded" ministers. This is how the 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 came, I ... hurried to the city. First of all, I wanted to get to the hospital of the Winter Palace ... It was not so easy to get there: 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 didn’t let anyone in. After explaining where I was going, I went through the first chain relatively easily. When I passed the second, they detained me. Some sailor shouted angrily to his comrades: that Kerensky is disguised as a sister?" They demanded documents. I showed a certificate ... with the seal of the Winter Palace hospital. It helped - they let me in ... I entered, as I had done hundreds of times before, at the Jordan entrance. There was no usual doorman in place. At the entrance stood a sailor with the inscription "Dawn of Freedom" on his cap, and he allowed me to enter.
The first thing that caught my eye and struck me was the huge amount of weapons. The entire gallery from the vestibule 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 which place which chair should stand - everything is turned upside down, everything is upside down. And everywhere - armed people. The elder sister was under arrest: she was guarded by two sailors... The lying wounded were greatly frightened by the storming of the palace: they asked many times whether they would shoot again. As far as possible, I tried to calm them down... The next day, October 27, the wounded were sent to other infirmaries in Petrograd. On October 28, 1917, the Winter Palace hospital was closed.
Winter. "I was taken to the commandant of the palace..."
Alexander Zinoviev, General Manager of the North-Western Branch of the Red Cross, received a phone call early in the morning of October 26 from the duty officer of the Red Cross Department and said that the Winter Palace had been taken by the Bolsheviks, and the sisters of mercy who were in the palace had been arrested. He immediately went there.
“Scattered everywhere were guns, empty cartridges, in the large entrance hall and on the stairs lay the bodies of dead soldiers and cadets, in some places there were also wounded, who had not yet been carried away to the infirmary.
I walked for a long time through the halls of the Winter Palace, so familiar to me, trying to find the commander of the soldiers who had seized the palace. The malachite hall, where the Empress usually received those presented to her, was covered with torn pieces of paper like snow. These were the remains of the archive 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 the junkers defending the palace to hide. This accusation was absolutely correct. Many cadets, just before the end of the struggle, rushed to the infirmary, asking the sisters of mercy to save them - obviously the sisters helped them hide, and thanks to this, indeed, many of them 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 ... With me, he was very decent and correct. I explained to him what was the matter, said that there were about 100 wounded soldiers in the infirmary, and that nurses were needed to take care of them. He immediately ordered them to be released against my receipt that they would not leave 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 swiftly and incredibly easily that few people doubted that the Bolsheviks would be even more temporary than the Provisional Government...
The past and present of Russia gives rise to many historical anecdotes, one of the most famous is about the power of the Aurora shot, and it is all the more offensive that in his generally balanced and reasoned article “Why did the Aurora shoot?” ("St. Petersburg Vedomosti" of November 6, 2004), trying to clear the ship of history from myths and stereotypes, S.N. Poltorak, alas, created his next version.
In the year of the centenary of the Tsushima battle, tragic for the Russian Navy, in which the Aurora was a participant, she deserves a reliable description of her history. Even Radio Liberty (!) has already stood up for the ship from Prague, so I will try to clarify, avoiding political assessments.
The article sounded - the Aurora shot is a signal for reconciling the time of the revolutionary squadron, which sounded at 21.00 on October 25, 1917. (" ... No one set the task of revolutionary sailors to give a signal for the assault. They simply gave a military signal, which was given regularly, so that time verification was carried out on all ships .... Now this practice exists in armies and navies all over the world. ... I think that it is possible to state with a high degree of accuracy that the shot thundered exactly at 21.00. ...”)
Let's turn to theory and history:
An accurate knowledge of the time on the high seas is necessary for ships to reliably determine the location (especially longitude). A lot of efforts were put by scientists, sailors, watchmakers of the world to achieve the necessary accuracy and develop error-free methods. The British Parliament even offered a generous bonus for the successful solution of this problem. For example, at the equator, a time error of only 1 minute leads to an inaccuracy in determining the location on the Earth's surface by almost 30 km. All this was widely known in 1917 (let's look at the Encyclopedic Dictionary of F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron). The main way to determine the place out of sight of the coast then was astronomical.
Ships compare chronometers (in those years with coastal ones) immediately before going out to sea, under favorable hydrometeorological conditions, using astronomical bodies and phenomena with accurate knowledge of longitude. Yes, and it is advisable to check the time by such a signal only far from the coast in a separate voyage of a squadron of ships when a large error is found in the calculation of the place or a serious error in the readings of the chronometers on one of the ships. I think it is clear that this does not apply to the ships stationed on the Neva.
At the beginning of the 20th century, a “unit time system” already existed in Petrograd - at the suggestion of D.I. Mendeleev, a cable was laid from the “normal”, i.e. reference, clock of the Main Chamber of Measures and Weights to the General Staff, under the arch of which a clock is installed that never runs and does not lag behind with the inscription on the dial: “Correct time”. This inscription can be read even today - go under the arch to the Winter Palace or Nevsky Prospekt.
As you know, the tradition of a midday shot for civilian needs in St. Petersburg was firmly established on February 6, 1865. On this day, at exactly noon, a 60-pound signal gun was fired from the Admiralty building, while the gun fired on a cable signal directly from the Pulkovo Observatory. In 1872, in connection with the construction of the Admiralty courtyard with houses, the Naval Ministry proposed moving the signal gun to the Peter and Paul Fortress. On September 24, 1873, a midday shot was fired for the first time from the bastion of the fortress.
Since 1856, the Nautical Department has been supplying all ships of the Navy with the British astronomical nautical yearbook Nautical Almanac (published since 1766), from which tables of lunar distances were removed in 1907 to determine longitude on the high seas (instructions for their calculation are printed until 1924) .Only in 1930, our country began to publish its own astronomical yearbook.
It is interesting to note that until January 1, 1925, the astronomical day began at noon, and the time system based on the Greenwich meridian in the RSFSR was switched from February 8, 1919. And although the new style of chronology was introduced by the Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of January 26, 1918, double dates were already in the headlines of many newspapers in 1917.
The production of nautical clocks (not chronometers - they are foreign) is being organized in the Workshop of Nautical Instruments of the Main Hydrographic Department. Russian nautical instruments are awarded diplomas at international exhibitions in 1907 (Bordeaux) and 1912 (St. Petersburg).
Considering that the speed of sound was measured by the Milan Academy of Sciences back in the 17th century, it is clear that the accuracy of a signal shot from a cannon, with the departure of the century of sails in the middle of the 19th century, the development of watchmaking could only satisfy the control of time for everyday civilian needs. For example, on January 9, 1917, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, the actions of the German auxiliary cruiser (sailing ship!) Seeadler during the capture of the steamer Gladys Roil were initially perceived as an ancient, grandfather's custom of checking the chronometer with a mortar shot, and answered with a flag. By the end of the 19th century, in the ports of the world, the most common system was the signaling of time with electrically driven signal balloons. The transmission of time signals by telegraph was also widely developed, especially with the advent of Yuz's direct-printing devices (remember the term "yuzogram"?).
In 1912 - 1913, at the initiative of France, 2 international conferences were held on the use of radio for transmitting accurate time signals (ONOGO system). The first chairman of the international commission was Academician O.A. Backlund (1846-1916) - Director of the Pulkovo Observatory. In 1914, the first time signal transmission experiment was also carried out in St. Petersburg (regular broadcasting began on December 1, 1920, although it did not become particularly known to the fleet).
Since 1910, radio stations in Germany, England and France have already been transmitting time signals, since 1912 they have been transmitted according to the venier principle, which made it possible to determine clock errors with an accuracy of 0.01 seconds, since 1913 at least 9 radio stations in the world have transmitted such signals.
The most famous document of 1720 is “The Book of Charter of the Sea. About everything related to good management when the fleet was at sea ”signals were introduced to control ships during joint navigation. Yes, both flags and cannon shots, drumming, ship bells, musket shots were used to serve them. Based on the experience of the naval operations in the Mediterranean Sea in 1797, “Complete signals to be produced in the fleets of His Imperial Majesty” are compiled. In 1814 A.N. Butakov compiled a complete dictionary of semaphore signals. After the actual creation by Vice Admiral G.I. Butakov of the tactics of the actions of steam ships in 1868 published the Book of Evolutionary Signals and the Code of Naval Signals. They were based on flag signals. For night signaling, even before the creation of Morse code, flashlights were used. The corrected Code of Signals of 1890 was rightly criticized by Vice Admiral S.O. Makarov. With the advent of electricity on ships, the signal light of the Ratier type became famous. When darkening the ships, the cuff and wake lights were used to control the formations. Various figures raised on the halyards, shields with signs were also used. Signaling and communications were taken seriously. They spied on deciphering the signals.
From the death of ships in the Tsushima battle, the command of the Russian fleet concluded that in addition to the flag and light signals of the searchlight, it is necessary to have another type of signaling that would not depend on the presence or absence of superstructures and masts. These are flares. The Veri pistol (according to another transcription of Baer) is still in service with the Navy (more than 100 years!). They were imported from abroad at the beginning of the century, they were expensive, and therefore many domestic analogues were created. The system of captain 2nd rank Zhukov (1908) was especially famous, although it was intended mainly for supplying combat and evolutionary signals, for everyday signals, which include time signals, in his opinion, signaling with flags and lanterns was enough. The question is, was the famous red fire from the Peter and Paul Fortress a signal rocket?
As you can see, the need for such an archaic method of checking the chronometers of quite modern, well-equipped warships (well, not resembling the Golden Doe by Francis Drake, although it was a troubled time in the country), is like a cannon shot, and even in the middle of Petrograd at the beginning of the 20th century clearly missing, as it is now. For the needs of time control on the ship itself, flasks were beaten off by a watch.
All the more surprising would be the delivery of such a regular signal by a rather expensive charge of artillery of the main caliber. After the 37-mm Hotchkiss guns were dismantled from the Aurora, 76.2-mm Lender anti-aircraft guns would most likely be used as signal (there is also a term for salutes). From a blank volley of a 152-mm gun from the Peter and Paul Fortress, the glass around the city is still shaking, and in the Hermitage, before the gun turned towards Vasilyevsky Island, an alarm went off - a lot of glass would have flown on the Angliskaya Embankment - obviously not that for a regular signal. An example is November 20, 1992, when the midday shot was fired for the only time in the courtyard of the Naryshkin bastion.
Back to Aurora:
The ship, under the command of Lieutenant N. A. Erickson, on October 22, 1917, after the completion of repairs at the Franco-Russian Plant, was prepared to go to sea to test cars (and not to withdraw from Petrograd for counter-revolutionary purposes, as the Bolsheviks presented it ) and even took on board part of the ammunition - there is a war in the Baltic. There are quite accurate chronometers on board, like on most ships of that time, British-made (very protected in importance and tradition). The navigator has the “Nautical Almanac” with the Guide to the use of the English nautical calendar and, of course, other nautical instruments.
Chief of the watch - warrant officer L. A. Demin (1897-1973), in the future rear admiral, doctor of geographical sciences, who prepared more than 100 nautical charts and sailing directions, 16 years (from 1957 to 1973) headed the Leningrad branch of the All-Union Astronomical and Geodetic society – while young, but will not forget to start such chronometers?!
The situation with the gun sights is a little unclear - there is a version that they were removed and locked somewhere in the cabin. But think about whether someone would then stand on ceremony with a locked cabin. The cruiser commanders do not remember this.
The bright searchlights of the Mangin system are also in good order; a similar signal could have been given by them.
Despite the statements of S.N. Poltorak, tasks for certain actions in preparation for the assault on the Winter Palace "Aurora" were nevertheless set. These are the orders of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies No. 1219 dated 10/24/17 on the transfer of the ship to Combat Readiness and No. 1253 of 10/24/17 on the task of restoring traffic on the Nikolaevsky Bridge. By order No. 1125, Alexander Viktorovich Belyshev was appointed commissar of the ship, even with the time indicated 12 hours 20 minutes. And by a telegram from Tsentrobalt dated 10/24/17, Aurora was subordinated to the Military Revolutionary Committee, this document was registered on 10/27/17 under No. 5446 at the Main Naval Headquarters (it was received by the officer on duty, Ensign Lesgaft). They counted on the pressure of the cruiser's guns, even sent checks. Most of the team is on the side of the VRC.
Having carried out measurements of the unfamiliar Neva fairway "Aurora" at 3 hours 30 minutes. On October 25, 2017, she anchored at the Nikolaevsky Bridge opposite the Rumyantsevs' mansion (44 Angliyskaya Embankment) and complied with the order to ensure traffic on the bridge.
By 19 o'clock, having completed the transition from Gelsinfors (Helsinki) with a call to Kronstadt, the combat-ready destroyers "Zabiyaka" and "Samson", a little earlier the patrol ship "Yastreb" and other ships entered the Neva.
It would be very naive to believe that such a transition was made by ships without reliable knowledge of time (and, as a result, longitude) even in the presence of visual landmarks, and they did not correct it in the port of Kotlin Island, equipped with everything necessary for this, but preferred to “ask again”, according to version of S.N. Poltorak, at the Aurora. The mine warfare that was widely waged in the Baltic, you know, is a dangerous thing and you have to go along a strictly tested fairway, and the forts of Kronstadt are ready.
Radio stations (including medium-wave tone) of the cruiser and other ships are also in perfect order. The radiograms of the listed ships can be found in the Central State Administration of the Navy, the case numbers are even published in the open press.
Between the ships, the Peter and Paul Fortress, in which uniform confusion is going on with guns and artillerymen, which G.I. Blagonravov can hardly cope with (by calling artillery sailors from the training ground), and surrounded by the Winter Palace on a boat (from the Aurora?) V. BUT. Antonov-Ovseenko. (This is also known from the memoirs of L.D. Trotsky).
Consider the second part of the assumption - the Aurora shot sounded exactly at 21.00. The most frequently called are 21.40, 21.45. Eyewitnesses of the events (former members of the Provisional Government, Aurors, deputies) and reporters of Petrograd newspapers of those years, different in political preferences, indicate the time quite accurately and it does not differ too much.
Comparing and analyzing their memoirs, newspaper publications (and this is a topic for a separate and most serious article), archival documents, one can be convinced that the former Aurora commissioner A.V. Belyshev calls 21.40 quite right. Only now it all started with a grenade explosion in the palace, then the troops defending the Winter Palace began firing.
A volley of "Aurora" was required, only he had a completely different
meaning -" only one blank shot from a 6-inch gun was fired, indicating a signal for all ships standing on the Neva, and calling them to vigilance and readiness.” This is from the text of the letter from the crew of the Aurora cruiser - I am attaching it to the article. I am very surprised that it has not been published in full for a long time. What made the team write this letter becomes clear from other publications of those days. And the surname to this day of the unknown secretary of the cruiser sudkom is Miss (he is an Estonian by nationality).
I understand that this is how the Aurora shot is historically correct and should be called.
And the shot was fired (by gunner E.P. Ognev from the team of A.V. Belyshev) according to a note sent to the Aurora by Antonov-Ovseenko or Blagonravov. Fire was also fired from destroyers, even the signal cannon of the Peter and Paul Fortress fired. There were destructions of the Winter Palace and city buildings.
I understand that when investigating this issue, one should not forget that the Aurors, who were direct participants in the events, were under monstrous pressure from the authorities when creating their memories for many years. But the deeper you look at what was happening, the more you understand that they did not lie and did not prevaricate, there was varnishing of events (including in the cinema), but no more. They were lucky - the actual course of events almost coincided with their presentation in the text of the "Short Course in the History of the CPSU (b)". And if you get a grasp of it - “he announced ... the beginning of a new era with the thunder of his cannons aimed at the Winter Palace ...” - there is nothing about the signal for the assault, it really appeared later.
The logbook of the cruiser could reliably answer the question about the time of the shot, only it disappeared .... In 2000, the previously unpublished memoirs of a Bolshevik sailor, a member of Tsentrobalt N.A., suddenly appeared. Khovrina - " The absence of a logbook of that time on the cruiser is certainly connected with the not entirely fair game of heroes, who are credited with the high honor of being at the forefront of the Great October Revolution”.
However, the TsVMM staff reminds of the former head of the museum Sivkov P.Z. , who studied the history of the Aurora and a member of the military council of the Baltic Fleet, later the Head of the Supply Department of the Naval Forces of the Soviet Union, the former machinist of the Aurora P.I. Kurkov. (1889-1938). With their arrests by the NKVD in the 30s, the disappearance of the Aurora logbook is associated. And they didn't mention him much.
Turning to these turbulent events once again you understand that:
1. The events of October 25–26 (November 7–8), 1917, have not been clearly and comprehensively studied (for so many years!), There are few generalized and accessible publications. This leads to another round of myth-making, especially in the light of a favorable political situation.
Yes, the result of qualitative research may be unpleasant and unusual for someone, someone will not want to give up principles, but it will be historical truth,
which our descendants deserve, because:
Firstly, many of the materials of 1917 used in the preparation of this article are no longer subject to issuance from the storage funds due to their dilapidation (some newspapers in the Russian National Library were shown to me from my hands, from a distance).
Secondly, those who caught the direct participants in the events and may know about the details of serious importance are already dying.
Thirdly, their textbooks will contain not historical anecdotes, but verified information and strictly substantiated versions of the development of events, and the next party will not rewrite the history of the country.
2. On the cruiser "Aurora" catastrophically little attention is paid to the famous shot of the tank gun on October 25 (November 7), which attracts everyone's attention
1917 and everything that happened around it. The materials clearly require an expansion of the exposure, including with the use of modern technologies.
3. Probably, apart from a modest museum request from the 60s of the last century, searches in the archives of the NKVD-KGB-FSB for traces of the Aurora logbook have not been carried out.
Shouldn't you lead this work, using your experience of communicating with the archives of the special services,
Mr. S.N. Poltorak? I will take on a voluntary basis to help from the Navy.
And most importantly - the cruiser "Aurora", in spite of everything, remains a wonderful, recognized by the whole world, a monument to the history of Russia.
APPS
4. Bully
5. Faithful
8. Zarnitsa
9. Minesweeper #15
10. Minesweeper #14
2. Full text of the letter from the crew of the cruiser "Aurora" to the editorial office of the newspaper "Pravda" ("Working Way") (No. 170 (101), October 27, 1917):
Letter to the editor
To all honest citizens of the city of Petrograd from the crew of the cruiser "Aurora", which expresses its sharp protest against the accusations thrown, especially the accusations that have not been verified, but throw a stain of shame on the crew of the cruiser. We declare that we have come not 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 had opened fire from cannons, it would not have left stone unturned not only in the Winter Palace, but also in the streets adjacent to it. But is it there. Isn't it a lie, a common device of the bourgeois press to pelt with mud and unfounded facts of events to intrigue the working proletariat. We appeal to you, we are workers and soldiers of the city of Petrograd. Do not believe provocative rumors. Do not believe them that we are traitors and rioters, but check the rumors of reality yourself. As for the shots from the cruiser, only one blank shot from a 6-inch gun was fired, indicating a signal for all ships stationed on the Neva, and calling them to vigilance and readiness.
Please reprint all editions.
Chairman of the Ship Committee A. BELYSHEV. Comrade Chairman P. ANDREEV.
Secretary (signature).
(note - spelling and punctuation of the original. V. Bochkov.)
Late at night, we were informed from the Central Fleet that, in addition to the cruiser Aurora, 4 more destroyers and 1 training ship entered the Neva. From the cruiser "Aurora" they fired blank shells at the Winter Palace; one of the destroyers fired 2 shots at the Winter Palace, however, not hitting the target.
... several shots were fired, with the aim of dispersing the advancing troops of the council. The first shot from the Winter Palace was fired at 9 ½ hours. in the evening ... As for the artillery firing, rumors circulated that this firing was carried out by the cruiser "Aurora" at the Winter Palace.
(note - this is only part of the text. V. Bochkov)
REVOLUTION DIARY
... tie of the cruiser "Aurora"
...9 pm from entering the waters
... cruisers "Aurora" and destroyers
... the shelling of the Winter Palace. Pre-
... but three blank shots were fired.
(note - ... part of the text is not readable due to dilapidation. V. Bochkov)
