The cause of order and Revolution is in strong hands.
List of regiments where there are Commissars of the Military
Revolutionary Committee....
On the 3rd the leaders of the Bolsheviki had another historic meeting
behind closed doors. Notified by Zalkind, I waited in the corridor
outside the door; and Volodarsky as he came out told me what was
going on.
Lenin spoke: "November 6th will be too early. We must have an
all-Russian basis for the rising; and on the 6th all the delegates to
the Congress will not have arrived.... On the other hand, November 8th
will be too late. By that time the Congress will be organised, and it
is difficult for a large organised body of people to take swift,
decisive action. We must act on the 7th, the day the Congress meets,
so that we may say to it, 'Here is the power! What are you going to
do with it?'"
In a certain upstairs room sat a thin-faced, long-haired individual,
once an officer in the armies of the Tsar, then revolutionist and
exile, a certain Avseenko, called Antonov, mathematician and
chess-player; he was drawing careful plans for the seizure of the
capital.
On its side the Government was preparing. Inconspicuously certain of
the most loyal regiments, from widely-separated divisions, were
ordered to Petrograd. The _yunker_ artillery was drawn into the
Winter Palace. Patrols of Cossacks made their appearance in the
streets, for the first time since the July days.
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