The victorious city

[My own translation of the Russian text, published in Krasnaya Gazeta [Red Newspaper], No. 245, 26 October 1924, reprinted in Сочинения. Том 17, Советская Республика и капиталистический мир. Часть II. Гражданская война. Москва-Ленинград, 1926 {Sochineniya Tom 17, Sovietskaya Respublika i kapitalisticheskiy mir. Chast‘ II Grashdanskaya voyna. Moskva-Leningrad 1926, Works, Volume 17, The Soviet Republic and the Capitalist World. Part 2: The Civil War, Moscow-Leningrad 1926} compared to the German translation. Corrections by English or Russian native speakers would be extremely welcome)

(Letter to the editors of Krasnaya Gazeta on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of Yudenich’s defeat).

Dear comrades!

You have requested a few lines for Krasnaya Gazeta on the fifth anniversary of the struggle against Yudenich – for Petrograd. I am happy to respond to your proposal because I agree with you that we must not allow the image of those terrible days to fade from the minds of the younger generations.

At that time, Denikin successfully moved towards Tula and Moscow. In the west, the Polish szlachta was threatening. In the Baltic states, the monarchists were consolidating and gathering to attack Moscow. In the east, the unresolved battle with Kolchak continued. From the north-west, Yudenich was pressing on Petrograd. And the interference of Finland and Estonia in the battle was feared at any hour. These were the most difficult, the most ominous days. It was the most terrible October in our history. An inexorable fate seemed to hang over damp, cold and hungry Petrograd. Because of the seemingly inevitable capitulation of the northern capital, plans were already being drawn up for the retreat of the revolutionary workers in a south-easterly direction. Possible lines of defence between Piter and Moscow were already being discussed, while in the south a line of defence was drawn between Moscow and Orel.

But in the very last hours, when it really seemed as if there was no way out, as if there was no salvation, as if doom was inevitable, new subliminal forces emerged in the proletarian vanguard and in the masses. The frenzied pressure of disaster called forth an impetuous energy of resistance. In the damp, cold, sullen and concentrated metropolis, hungry male and female workers erected wire entanglements with bent fingers, piled the stones of the pavements on the ground, transformed the streets and squares into the last fortifications of the revolution, into a gigantic trap for its enemies. A strong breeze of heroism blew from Petrograd into the army, which had been shaken by failure, encouraging and uniting it.

The city of the October Revolution was saved. Yudenich was driven back from Petrograd just as Denikin was beginning to withdraw from Tula.

Five years passed, during which the waves of terrible events crashed over the granite of the great city more than once. And now, shortly before the new anniversary, the fifth since the time of the battles against Yudenich, the seventh since the time of the conquest of power, a new wave struck the revitalised Leningrad – this time the terrible natural force of water1. The significance of this new disaster is clear, its lesson irresistible.

Proletarians of Leningrad! You were the instigators of the great revolutionary upheaval seven years ago; you must become the instigators of the greatest technical revolution that will conquer and subdue all the hostile forces of nature.

The memory of the black and great days of October 1919 will always inspire and uplift the toiling population of Leningrad in its most difficult hours: The city that did not fall then will emerge victorious from all historical trials.

23 October 1924.

1 The author has in mind the flood in Leningrad on 23 September 1924. The scale of the flood was comparable to the grandiose St Petersburg flood of 1824.


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