Be apart of the revolution
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Join the Revolution
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Petrograd , 1917
The October night braided into dawn. The city held its breath like a thing waiting to be finished. We had bent the hours to our will — the Red Guards, the sailors from Kronstadt and the Baltic, detachments of machine‑gunners hidden under coats, couriers with faces wrapped against the cold. Every man we could spare had been taught one thing: obey the signal, move like a tide, take what they cannot keep.
We left Smolny under a sky the color of iron. Lanterns glowed like distant eyes; boots thudded soft against cobbles still slick from rain. I rode with Sverdlov for part of the way, his jaw like a fist, and watched the city slide by . Shutters bolted, the occasional silhouette vanishing behind curtains.
The plan was simple because simple is harder to foil: isolate the Palace, cut the telephone lines, occupy the bridges and key approaches, and let the weight of surprise do the rest. We did not need to kill the whole city; we only needed to remove the head that wore the crown.
The cruiser Aurora had its place in the theater: a single cannonade, a signal to begin, and a noise that would dissolve hesitation. I felt no romance for the gun — only the arithmetic of timing. At a given minute, the blank shot would echo across the Neva, and every man trained for that sound would become a piece in motion.
We moved like ghosts. Sailors in dark coats slipped along quay walls; workers with patched uniforms and angry hands took positions near the Nevsky; armored cars rolled with lights masked. We cut the lines to the Admiralty, the telephone exchange, the police headquarters. Men with explosives and nail‑studded clubs dismantled any possible alarm. I watched them work, breath fogging, maps half‑folded beneath elbows, orders whispered and repeated until they sat like iron inside the men who had to act without thinking.
Then the Aurora barked — not at first as a gun, but as the sound of inevitability. The report trailed across the water, and it was like a struck bell in all our chests. At that single note, the city's night's calm fractured. Red Guards sprang from hidden places. Machine‑guns were set into positions. The signals we'd trained on — a kerchief dropped, a light flashed against a window — stitched the separate parts into one living thing.
We moved toward the Neva side of the Palace, where sentries were few and complacent. The Winter Palace still looked like what it was: a fortress of gilt and mirrors that had not yet noticed it was empty of power. Inside, the ministers had fled; the Provisional Government dissolved into rumor. The Palace's beauty was useless; its rooms were houses of air and memory.
The first breach was not theatrical. It was men levering a side gate, the lock giving with a thin, tired scrape. We spilled through like a flood into an antechamber of marble and shadow. Officers barked orders; someone behind me left a smear of coal on the floor from a lantern. Outside, a crew of sailors hauled up ropes to the balcony; we poured up the stairways and into halls that had never known the sound of boots.
Resistance was scattered and confused — a few policemen, a handful of cadets more accustomed to parade ground than street fight. They fired when they found the resolve, but their aim was wild in the low light. Men fell, and we moved around the dead without ceremony. I felt the press of bodies, the smell of cordite, the metallic tang of fear. Close to the Throne Room, the gunfire became less like battle and more like a string of frightened, obscene noises.
Trotsky later turned this into something grand and organized — and there was truth in that — but the actual seizure was a choreography of small, decisive things: a closed door forced open, a stairwell seized, a messenger cut off, a courier with an order for retreat intercepted and replaced with our seal. Men with the look of workers — sleeves rolled, faces lined — pushed aside painted pilasters as if they had always meant to be there.
When we reached the main hall, the Winter Palace surrendered not with a climactic duel but with the collapse of its stewardship. The ministers were gone, the assembled defenders either captured or hiding. A handful of generals offered weak resistance and then, almost politely, ceased. It was like watching a play stop mid‑sentence because the actors remembered they had no lines left to speak.
I walked through those rooms aware of how sound changed when power has left a place. The chandeliers hung like indifferent moons. Portraits looked down with the kind of indifference only oil paint can muster. Men cheered in bursts and then fell silent, strangers to the idea that cheering could be a profession.
The "storming" — as the papers would later call it — was in fact an accumulation: the closing of exits, the cutting of communications, the occupation of vantage points from which the city could be controlled. We took the telegraph office and the railway stations. We put machine‑gunners on roofs. We fired blank after blank until the populace could not say whether the day had begun or war was still a rumor. By dawn, the Neva banks were ringed with men who had something more imminent than hope: an order and a purpose.
Lenin arrived later, his eyes bright the way mine had been when choices mattered. He stood before a room that had been built to receive royalty and gave, in a few short words, the triumph a man can only savor in private. The Winter Palace was ours because the state that backed it had fled into the thin air of excuses. You can call it audacity, courage, destiny — all of them are parts of the truth. I call it timing, and the relentless pressure of patient men.
Afterwards, when the crowd pressed in and the banners unfurled, I watched faces that thought today meant something simple. They believed the shout solved everything. I thought of machines — newspapers, trains, the commissars who would bend public voice — and how fragile a shout is against the slow turning gears of power.
We had taken the head; now the work of keeping it began. Outside, the city clattered to the first light. Inside, in the rooms that still smelled faintly of polished wood and old incense, I felt the real calculation begin: where to place men of influence, which presses to silence, which dispatches to flood the wires. Victory is not the roar; victory is the quiet settling of consequence, and I had learned to wait for that moment.
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The Winter Palace was quiet now, almost reverent in the way a battlefield becomes empty after a storm. Guards and Red Guards moved through corridors, checking rooms, binding the few officers who had lingered. Outside, the city still hummed with uncertain life — windows rattled, shutters banged, the occasional shout echoed from the streets.
I stayed close to the command room, watching men who had been heroes ten minutes ago stumble into fear now. Trotsky was everywhere at once, his arms flailing, shouting orders, making the capture feel theatrical. Lenin drifted through the rooms, eyes bright, a mixture of triumph and calculation.
I approached Sverdlov, who was speaking quietly to a courier. "Reports from the bridges?" I asked.
"All secured. The telegraph lines are ours. Police headquarters has surrendered. Some minor skirmishes near the Nevsky, but nothing organized."
I nodded. "Good. Make sure those men understand — we hold the city, not just the Palace. Discipline. Do not give them a reason to regroup."
Sverdlov's eyes flicked to me. "You think the work starts now?"
"Yes," I said simply. "The shouting is done. The real fight begins in offices, in words, in documents. The people can cheer all they want. We control the levers."
Lenin appeared behind me, a flash of triumph in his face. "Koba, you understand the next step. Make sure the machines of state keep running. The newspapers, the trains, the commissars — every post matters."
I inclined my head. "Already in motion. Orders are being distributed. Anyone trying to resist will find the streets lined with men who know their place."
Trotsky came up, still breathing fast from the excitement, his coat dusty. "Lenin, the city belongs to the Soviets now!"
'A very dumb statement if you ask me, as if that wasn't already made clear.'
I let a shadow of a smile cross my face, leaning slightly toward him. "Its clear as ever Trotsky, but now we make them obey without thinking about it. The army, the press, the messages — every one of them must move as we decide. Speed is nothing without structure."
Trotsky blinked, unprepared for the cold answer. "Yes… yes, of course."
Makarov appeared, carrying a stack of documents. "The ministers who were captured… what do we do with them?"
I took the papers, flipping through quickly. Names, posts, affiliations. "Some will be tried, some sent away quietly. The lesson must be visible, but not chaotic."
Lenin's voice softened, almost paternal. "I trust you with this, Koba. I need someone to keep the revolution steady, or all of this could unravel."
I allowed a slight nod. "I understand, Vladimir Ilyich. Everything will be in place."
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The first light of the morning crept into the halls, pale on marble and gold lined walls. Soldiers cleaned weapons.
Red Guards rested in corners. Outside, Petrograd was waking to a city that had changed while it slept.
I walked the corridors silently, watching faces, noting reactions. Some were inspired, some terrified, some too stunned to know what to do next. All were useful. All could be directed.
By midday, I had begun issuing orders, meeting with commissars, redirecting troops, and ensuring the telegraph offices and newspapers carried the correct messages. The Revolution was not a single roar; it was the sum of thousands of small decisions made swiftly, decisively, without hesitation.
Lenin passed me in the hall. His eyes flicked to mine, measuring. I knew then he understood — as I always knew he would — that the man he relied on to "keep the machine running" was already thinking several moves ahead of him.
When the shouting, the banners, the cheers faded, only the machine remained. And I was the hand guiding it.