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But that garrison proved to be ill-fitted for military operations. It had no artillery and no leaders, its officers being unfriendly toward the Soviet government. The Cossacks took possession of the radio-telegraph station at Tsarskoye-Selo, the most powerful one in the country, and marched on. The garrisons of Peterhof, Krasnoye-Selo and Gatchina displayed neither initiative nor resolution.
They had been assured that almost the entire garrison at Petrograd was impatiently awaiting them as deliverers. The first serious resistance completely disorganized their ranks and sealed the fate of Kerensky's entire undertaking. The retreat of Krassnov's Cossacks enabled us to get control of the radio station at Tsarskoye-Selo.
The cadet insurrection of October 29th was undoubtedly connected with Kerensky's undertaking, only that it broke out too soon, owing to determined action on our part. The Tsarskoye-Selo garrison was ordered to demand of the approaching Cossack regiments recognition of the Soviet government. In case of refusal, the Cossacks were to be disarmed.
If the reader will kindly bear this fact in mind it will help to an understanding of what follows. A second edition of the book, greatly enlarged, appeared at Tsarskoye-Selo, near Moscow, in 1905, the added matter being given the title, "Antichrist a Near Political Possibility."
The decisive encounter developed on this very day, between Krasnoye-Selo and Tsarskoye-Selo. After a fierce artillery duel, the Cossacks, who kept on advancing as long as they met no obstacles, hastily withdrew. They had been fooled all the time by tales of harsh and cruel acts committed by the Bolsheviki, who wished, as it were, to sell Russia to the German Kaiser.
Korniloff's counter-revolutionary uprising was put down by means of speeches and fraternization. By agitation and well-planned seizure of certain institutions without a fight the Kerensky government was overthrown. The same methods were now being employed by the leaders of the Tsarskoye-Selo, Krasnoye-Selo and the Gatchina Soviets with General Krassnov's Cossacks. But this time they did not work.
We were informed from Tsarskoye-Selo that Cossack echelons were not far from there, while an appeal, signed by Kerensky and General Krassnov, was being circulated in Petrograd calling upon the whole garrison to join the government's forces, which were expected any hour to enter the capital.
Some said that General Krassnov headed ten thousand men; others affirmed that he had no more than a thousand; while the unfriendly newspapers and circulars announced, in letters an inch big, that two corps were lined up beyond Tsarskoye-Selo. There was a general want of confidence in the Petrograd garrison.
The Petrograd Telegraph Agency, the railroad telegraph, and the radio-telegraph station of Tsarskoye-Selo brought from every side news of huge forces marching on Petrograd with the object of crushing the rebels there and establishing order. Kerensky was making flying trips to the front, and the bourgeois papers reported that he was leading innumerable forces against the Bolsheviki.
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