[Redactor’s Note: The book is composed of text, footnotes, and appendices. Thefootnotes are included at the end of each chapter, while the Appendix No. andSection are referred to in the text in parentheses, the Appendices followingthe book text. There are 17 graphic figures in the text. These are indicated bya reference to the page number in the original book.]
This book is a slice of intensified history—history as I saw it. It doesnot pretend to be anything but a detailed account of the November Revolution,when the Bolsheviki, at the head of the workers and soldiers, seized the statepower of Russia and placed it in the hands of the Soviets.
Naturally most of it deals with “Red Petrograd,” the capital andheart of the insurrection. But the reader must realize that what took place inPetrograd was almost exactly duplicated, with greater or lesser intensity, atdifferent intervals of time, all over Russia.
In this book, the first of several which I am writing, I must confine myself toa chronicle of those events which I myself observed and experienced, and thosesupported by reliable evidence; preceded by two chapters briefly outlining thebackground and causes of the November Revolution. I am aware that these twochapters make difficult reading, but they are essential to an understanding ofwhat follows.
Many questions will suggest themselves to the mind of the reader. What isBolshevism? What kind of a governmental structure did the Bolsheviki set up? Ifthe Bolsheviki championed the Constituent Assembly before the NovemberRevolution, why did they disperse it by force of arms afterward? And if thebourgeoisie opposed the Constituent Assembly until the danger of Bolshevismbecame apparent, why did they champion it afterward?
These and many other questions cannot be answered here. In another volume,“Kornilov to Brest-Litovsk,” I trace the course of the Revolutionup to and including the German peace. There I explain the origin and functionsof the Revolutionary organisations, the evolution of popular sentiment, thedissolution of the Constituent Assembly, the structure of the Soviet state, andthe course and outcome of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations….
In considering the rise of the Bolshevik