As we went downstairs Riazanov burst in through the front door, very agitated.
“Are you going to dissolve the Duma?” I asked.
“My God, no!” he answered. “It is all a mistake. I told the Mayor this morning that the Duma would be left alone…”
Out on the Nevsky, in the deepening dusk, a long double file of cyclists came riding, guns slung on their shoulders. They halted, and the crowd pressed in and deluged them with questions.
“Who are you? Where do you come from?” asked a fat old man with a cigar in his mouth.
“Twelfth Army. From the front. We came to support the Soviets against the damn’ bourgeoisie!”
“Ah!” were furious cries. “Bolshevik gendarmes! Bolshevik Cossacks!”
A little officer in a leather coat came running down the steps. “The garrison is turning!” he muttered in my ear. “It’s the beginning of the end of the Bolsheviki. Do you want to see the turn of the tide? Come on!” He started at a half-trot up the Mikhailovsky, and we followed.
“What regiment is it?”
“The brunnoviki…” Here was indeed serious trouble. The brunnoviki were the Armoured Car troops, the key to the situation; whoever controlled the brunnoviki controlled the city. “The Commissars of the Committee for Salvation and the Duma have been talking to them. There’s a meeting on to decide…”
“Decide what? Which side they’ll fight on?”
“Oh, no. That’s not the way to do it. They’ll never fight against the Bolsheviki. They will vote to remain neutral—and then the yunkers and Cossacks”
The door of the great Mikhailovsky Riding-School yawned blackly. Two sentinels tried to stop us, but we brushed by
