OCTOBER DAYS

PART- 1

NADEZHDA KRUPSKAYA(1869-1939)-an active participant in the revolutionary movement in Russia and a member of the Communist Party from 1898. In 1894 met Lenin, with whom she linked her destiny for life. N. Krupskaya was one of the leading figures of the October Re-volution, a member of the Vyborg District Committee of the RSDLP during the armed uprising in Petrograd. After the establishment of Soviet power, was a prominent state and public figure, one of the founders of the Soviet system of public education and an honorary member of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Krupskaya was the author of many works on Lenin and the Party, and also on problems of public education and of the com-munist upbringing.

The Smolny Institute was brightly lit and the whole place was seething. Red Guards, factory representatives, and soldiers came from all parts for instructions. Typewriters rattled, telephones rang, our girls were bent over piles of telegrams and the Revolutionary Military Committee was in constant session on the second floor. On the square in front of the institute armoured cars had their engines running, a three-inch gun stood there and stacks of firewood had been made ready in case it should become necessary to build barricades. At the entrance there were cannon and machine-guns and sentries stood guard at the doors.At 10 o'clock on the morning of November 7 (October 25) a message from the Revolutionary Military Committee of the Petrograd Soviet addressed "To the Citizens of Russia!" was sent to the press; the message said:"The Provisional Government has been deposed. State power has passed into the hands of the organ of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies-the Revolutionary Military Committee, which heads the Petrograd proletariat and the garrison.
"The cause for which the people have fought, namely, theimmediate offer of a democratic peace, the abolition of landed proprietorship, workers' control over production, and the establishment of Soviet power-this cause has been secured."Long live the revolution of workers, soldiers and peasants!" Although it was obvious that the revolution was victorious, all the morning of the 25th the Revolutionary Military Committee continued working feverishly, occupying one government build-ing after another, organising their defence, etc.At 2.30 p.m. the meeting of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies opened. With thunderous applause the Soviet greeted the news that the Provisional Government no longer existed, that some ministers had been, and the others would be, arrested, that the pre-Parliament had been dissolved and that the railway stations, post office, telegraph office and the State Bank had been occupied. The storming of the Winter Palace was continuing. The palace had not yet been captured but its fate was already sealed, and the soldiers were displaying unusual heroism; the revolution had been bloodless.Lenin's appearance at the meeting of the Soviet was greeted with an ovation. When he spoke, he did not use any high-flown words about the victory that had been gained. That was typical of Ilyich. He spoke of other things, of the tasks confronting Soviet power that had to be tackled immediately.He said that a new page in the history of Russia had been opened. The Soviet Government would carry on its work without the participation of the bourgeoisie. A decree would be issued on the abolition of the private ownership of land. Real workers' control of production would be established. The struggle for socialism would develop apace. The old state machinery would be smashed, a new power, the power of Soviet organisations, would be established. We had the strength of the mass organisation which could conquer all. The immediate task was to conclude peace. For this purpose capital must be defeated. The world proletariat, already showing signs of revolutionary ferment, would help us conclude peace....On November 8 (October 26) the congress session opened at 9 p.m. I was present at that session and remember how Ilyich made his speech on the reasons for the Decree on Land, how calmly he spoke. The audience listened with rapt attention. While he was reading the Decree on Land I noticed the expression on the face of one of the delegates sitting near me. He was a man of the peasant type, well on in years. His face seemed to become transparent, as though it were made of wax, so great was his excitement, and his eyes shone.The death penalty, introduced at the front by Kerensky, was abolished, the decrees on peace, land and workers' control were adopted and the Bolshevik list for the Council of People's Commissars was approved: Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin) - Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars; A. I. Rykov- People's Commissar for Internal Affairs; V. P. Milyutin- Agriculture; A. G. Shiyapnikov - Labour; Army and Navy Affairs - a committee consisting of V. A. Ovseyenko (Antonov), N. V. Krylenko and P. Y. Dybenko; V. P. Nogin - Commerce and Industry; A. V. Lunacharsky - Education; I. I. Skvortsov (Stepanov) - Finance; L. D. Bronstein (Trotsky) - Foreign Affairs; G. I. Oppokov (Lomov) - Justice; I. A. Teodorovich - Food Supplies; N. P. Avilov (Glebov) - Posts and Telegraphs; J. V. Jugashvili (Stalin) - Chairman for Affairs of the Nationalities. The post of Commissar for the Railways was left vacant.Comrade Eino Rahja recalls that he was sitting in a corner and listening when the list of the first People's Commissars was being discussed by the Bolshevik group of delegates. When someone of those proposed as People's Commissars began to refuse, saying that he had no experience at that sort of work, Vladimir Ilyich burst out laughing: "And do you think for a moment any of us have that sort of experience?" Nobody had any experience, of course. But Vladimir Ilyich saw in his mind's eye a People's Commissar, a new type of minister, the organiser and leader of one or another branch of state activity, who was closely connected with the masses.All the time Vladimir Ilyich gave a great amount of thought to new forms of administration. He was thinking of how to organise state machinery which would be free of red tape, which would be able to rely on the masses and organise them to help it in its work, and which would in the course of its work produce a new type of civil servant. In the decision of the Second Congress of Soviets on the formation of Workers' and Peasants' Government this is expressed in the following words: "The management of individual branches of state activity is entrusted to commissions whose members shall ensure the fulfilment of the programme announced by the Congress, and shall work in close contact with mass organisations of men and women workers, sailors, soldiers, peasants and office employees. Governmental authority is vested in a collegium of the chairmen of those commissions, i.e., the Council of People's Commissars."3I remember the talks I had with Ilyich on this subject in those weeks when he lived at Fofanova's. At that time I was working very enthusiastically in the Vyborg District and was eagerly studying the revolutionary creative urge of the masses, the way in which life was being radically reorganised. When I met Ilyich I would tell him of life in the district. I remember I once told him about a very original session of a People's Court at which I had been present. Such court sessions had been held during the revolution of 1905, for example, in Sormovo. Comrade Chugurin, a worker whom I knew from the days of the Party School at Longjumeau, near Paris, and with whom I was working in the Vyborg District municipality, came from Sormovo. He suggested that we begin to organise these courts in the Vyborg District. The first session was held in the House of the People. The room was packed with people, some stood on benches and others on the window-sills. I do not now remember all the details; they were not criminal cases but mostly domestic problems. Two suspicious characters who had attempted to arrest Chugurin were on trial. A tall, swarthy care-taker was "tried" for beating his adolescent son, making him work and refusing to allow him to study. Many of the working men and women present spoke up sharply against the "accused", who at first began wiping the perspiration from his brow, then the tears rolled down his cheeks as he promised not to ill-treat his son again. It was not a court of justice but one of public control over the behaviour of citizens, it was proletarian ethics in the making. Vladimir Ilyich was very interested in this "trial" and asked for all the details.Most of my talks with him, however, were about new forms of cultural work. I was in charge of the Department of Public Education. In summer the children's schools were closed and I was engaged mostly in political educational activities. The five years' experience I had gained at the Sunday evening school in the Nevskaya Zastava District in the 90's was of great help to me. Times had changed, of course, and it was now possible to carry on the work on broader lines.Every week we held a conference with representatives of something like forty factories and discussed together what had to be done and how various activities were to be conducted. And, of course, everything we decided upon was immediately carried out. We decided, for example, to put an end to illiteracy, and each of the factory representatives made lists of all illiterates at his own factory, found premises for schools, brought pressure to bear on the factory management and raised funds. A superintendent from amongst the workers was appointed to each school for illiterates, and he saw to it that everything necessary was provided - blackboards, chalk, ABC books; others were appointed to ensure that instruction was given correctly and to hear what the workers had to say about the schools. We gave instructions to the superintendents and heard their reports. We held meetings of representatives of the soldiers' wives, discussed with them the state of affairs in the children's homes, organised their control of the homes, instructed them and explained the situation. We used to call meetings of the librarians of the district and, together with them and the workers, discussed what form of work should be conducted in the libraries. The workers showed great initiative and quite a large body of helpers was grouped around the Department of Public Education. Ilyich said then that the work of our state apparatus and our future ministers should be organised in the same way: there should be commissions of working men and women who knew the living and working conditions of the people, and what was troubling them most at any given moment. Vladimir Ilyich thought I had the knack of drawing people into the work of state administration and often spoke to me on the subject; he often scolded what he called "accursed" bureaucracy. When it became necessary later on to give greater responsibility to the People's Commissars and department heads who frequently delegated responsibility to committees and commissions, the question of one-man manage-ment arose. Ilyich made me a member of the Commission of the Council of People's Commissars appointed to examine this ques-tion and told me to make sure that the initiative and activity of the commissions were in no way suppressed by one-man management, that the ties with the masses were not weakened;