Hostilities were resumed at midnight on October 30 with an artillery bombardment.
Two guns in the Khamovniki District tried, unsuccessfully at first, to bombard the Military Area Headquarters in Prechistenka Street.
Three guns in the Presnya District opened fire on the Alexandrovsky Military School, Povarskaya Street and the Nikitsky Gate.
After the Alexeyevsky Military School surrendered, the guns of the Heavy Artillery Workshops were turned on other sectors. Two howitzers were placed near the Andronyevsky Monastery with the object of bombarding the Kremlin, but at the request of the Rogozhsky District they were dispatched to the Krutitsky Barracks for the purpose of shelling the 6th Officers’ Training School of the Chevaliers of St. George. There was no need for them to open fire, however. On seeing the guns, about a hundred cadets surrendered. This was at 3:30 p.m. on October 31.
The two guns were then mounted on Shvivaya Hill, from where they bombarded the Maly Nikolayevsky Palace and the Spassky Gate of the Kremlin.
The roar of the guns and bursting shells and the arrival of reinforcements from the provinces infused the Red Guards and soldiers with fresh energy.
The Nikitsky Gate was being battered by the artillery in Strastnaya Square. The detachment which had captured the City Militia Headquarters launched an attack along the Tverskoi Boulevard with the object of capturing Gagarin’s house at the other end of the boulevard, i.e., at the Nikitsky Gate. No cover was available. Through the bare trees in the boulevard the cadets were seen running in all directions after every shot.
The Red Guards signalled the artillerymen to cease fire. Silence reigned. Only the rattle of a single cadet machine gun was heard. Suddenly, the Red Guards jumped to their feet and rushed forward. The cadets increased their fire. The ranks of the advancing Red forces thinned, but they continued the charge with loud cheers. It seemed that not a hundred, but thousands of men were engaged in this attack. The cadets failed to withstand the onslaught. The building was captured and some of the cadets were taken prisoner. The rest retreated and fortified themselves in the houses along Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street, whence they kept up a constant fire on the building they had just vacated. It was dangerous to approach the windows. Many of the Red Guards who did so were wounded. There was a shortage of bandages. Near the building about a score of killed and wounded men were lying. Not far away, a group of soldiers were sitting—some smoking, others munching chocolate which had been captured from the cadets—listening to the strains of an accordion. The instrument had been taken from a music shop on the ground floor of this building which had been wrecked by the artillery. Somebody protested against the music, but the men still in the line and continuing to fire shouted:
“No! Keep on playing! It’s jollier to die for the Soviets like that!”
Mounting two machine guns on the top floor, the Reds successfully held Gagarin’s house.
The Rozhdestvenka Street was occupied by Red Guard detachments right up to Teatralny Proyezd. The cyclists who had captured the Maly Theatre opened fire on the City Duma where the “Committee of Public Safety” sat. Bolshaya Dmitrovka Street was also in the hands of the Reds, who had fortified themselves in house No. 2 at the corner of that street and Okhotny Ryad.
Having finished with the cadets, the Lefortovo and Rogozhsky Districts were ordered by the Staff of the Central Military Revolutionary Committee to launch a general offensive. The Lefortovo District sent about 450 men to support the offensive in the centre of the city and at the City Telephone Exchange. The Rogozhsko-Simonovsky District forces began to advance in the direction of Lubyanskaya Square.
Along their respective routes the Red Guard detachments were sniped at by individual Whiteguard snipers and squads of Whiteguards organised by the house committees in the different streets. Suspicious houses had to be searched. This greatly retarded the advance of the detachments. The Military Revolutionary Committee issued an order making it compulsory for the house committees to deliver all arms in the possession of their tenants to the District Soviets of Workers’ Deputies.
By order of the Staff of the Military Revolutionary Committee the artillery mounted near the Moscow Soviet opened fire on the Hotel National. Under cover of this gunfire a detachment of fifty men advanced towards the hotel with the object of capturing it, and another detachment of equal strength, was sent to capture the premises of the Food Department of the Municipal Administration on the corner of Tverskaya Street and Okhotny Ryad.
A delegation from the Bolshevik Committee in Kimri-Savelovo arrived in Moscow to offer assistance. The delegates reported that armoured cars were available in Savelovo, and V. V. Artishevsky, a veteran Bolshevik, was immediately commissioned to go there and fetch them. He returned on November 1 with two armoured cars. A request for two armoured cars was also sent to the Military Revolutionary Committee in Kazan.
In the Dorogomilovo District, on October 31, a detachment of Red Guards again occupied the Borodinsky Bridge. M. I. Shlomin, a Bolshevik worker, was sent to the Moscow Soviet to fetch arms, but on reaching the Smolensk Market the cadets held up the motor truck, dragged Shlomin from it and shot him.[1]
The heaviest fighting took place in the Ostozhenka and Prechistenka Streets. It was difficult to advance here as the streets were swept by the machine-gun fire of the cadets. A drizzling rain was falling, the shallow trenches were flooded and the Red Guards were obliged to lie in the mud and water. Now and again they took turns to warm themselves in a neighbouring tea shop, which served as a first-aid centre and food base. In the trench there was a boy of thirteen named Andreyev, the son of a smith employed at the Michelson Plant, who insisted on remaining in the trench while the men were away at the tea shop. On leaving, the men left their rifles on the parapet of the trench and the boy would fire each rifle in turn to show the cadets that the trench was not deserted. While so engaged he accidentally allowed his rifle to slip from his hand on to the parapet of the trench and in trying to retrieve it he exposed his body. The cadets spotted him and riddled him with machine-gun bullets. For three days the little hero battled with death. When his comrades from the trench came to visit him he asked them anxiously:
“Well? Have you captured the Headquarters? Have you beaten the cadets?”
On hearing the reply: “Yes,” the boy, forgetting his wounds, uttered a loud “Hurrah!” and died with a smile on his lips.
Hemmed in on all sides, the cadets tried to force their way through the Presnya District to the Bryansk and Alexandrovsky Railway Stations, where, they knew, the shock troops were detraining. After stubborn fighting they captured Kudrinskaya Square. Another White detachment captured Sadovo-Kudrinskaya Street and Sennaya Square, thus threatening to outflank the Red forces. The Presnya District Military Revolutionary Committee decided to regroup its detachments and to muster fresh forces for another attack.
The Central Military Revolutionary Committee issued orders to all the district staffs to send all their available men.
From Rayevo Farm came 500 Red Guards and 14 Grenadiers with grenades. Rayevo Farm, situated seventeen kilometres from Moscow, was a large ammunition depot staffed by about 8,000 men. As soon as the news of the fighting in Moscow reached Rayevo the Bolsheviks there formed a Military Revolutionary Committee. The 84th Detachment which guarded the depot had its headquarters in Perlovka, nearby. A group of Bolsheviks went to this detachment, arrested the officers and demanded that they should deliver up their stock of arms, threatening to surround them with the troops of the Rayevo garrison if they failed to comply. The officers were impressed by this threat and gave up 800 Berdan rifles. These were used to arm the soldiers at Rayevo Farm. In all, Rayevo sent a thousand men to Moscow and kept the city supplied with shells.
That same day, October 31, the Military Revolutionary Committee, mustering forces for a decisive attack, ordered the Serpukhovo Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies to send 300 men, the Rzhev Soviet to send “as many as possible” machine guns and soldiers, and the Podolsk Soviet to send 1,000 Red Guards.[2]
All that day General Headquarters made exceptional efforts to find troops with which to relieve the counter-revolutionaries in Moscow. It sent a request to Cherkassy for three battalions of shock troops, but it was informed that these had already left for Kiev to suppress a Bolshevik insurrection there. It then requested that three other battalions, one from each of the armies on the South-Western Front, be sent instead.
General Headquarters turned to every front, to every army and even to every division in the endeavour to procure at least some little assistance for Ryabtsev, but everywhere the same reply was received: Even if it were possible to entrain, it would be impossible to get beyond Orsha or Vyazma. The garrisons at the junction stations near Moscow refused to allow any troops to go to Ryabtsev’s aid. On the other hand, detachments of Red Guards and soldiers proceeding to the aid of the insurgents were given every facility to reach their destination. The threat uttered by the Railwaymen’s Executive remained a dead letter. The rank-and-file railwaymen helped the revolution in defiance of their leaders.
[1] The Common Grave, A Biographical Dictionary of deceased and fallen members of the Moscow organisation of the R.C.P., Vol. 1, Moscow, 1922, p. 188.
[2] “A Contribution to the History of the Moscow Military Revolutionary Committee,” Krasny Arkhiv, 1932, Vol. 5-6 (54-55), p. 133.
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