"Under the Sign of Scorpion" by Juri - Gnostic Liberation Front

another fabrication, for the Winter Palace was never stormed. It was not
necessary. But to take over the seat of power at a carefully calculated
point in time was a symbolic act with astrological connotations for Lenin
and Trotsky.
That was why Trotsky still wanted to gather as many people as possible.
235 workers were brought from the Baltic Dockyard. Only 80 were
fetched from the Putilov Factory, despite 1500 Red Guards having been
officially registered there. A total of 26 000 worked there. All the impor-
tant sites in the city were taken over by a few thousand "revo-
lutionaries"...
The first Red Guards gathered by the Winter Palace only at around 4:30
in the afternoon, according to the exiled Russian historian Sergei Melgu-
nov. The chief of the Red Guards, Vladimir Nevsky (who later became
people's commissary for communications), received orders to wait. At
around six o'clock, the principal of the Artillery Academy in Mikhailovsk
ordered his cadets to leave the Winter Palace. The Cossacks also left.
(Sergei Melgunov, "How the Bolsheviks Seized Power", Paris, 1953, p.
119.) Eventually only two companies of the women's battalion and 40
disabled soldiers remained. This cannot be explained in any other way
than that the Provisional Government did everything in its power to hand
the Winter Palace over to the Bolsheviks as peacefully as possible. The
Provisional Government no longer held any power. It was all just a big
show for the public.
The theatres held their performances, the restaurants stayed open.
Nobody noticed that anything strange was going on. The bridge watchmen
had no idea about the real situation, either. Lenin and Trotsky, wishing to
be on the safe side by securing all the transport routes between the
different areas of the city, had bribed all the bridge watchmen.
Time passed and still nothing happened. Everybody waited. According
to the myth, the Bolsheviks had issued an ultimatum to the Provisional
Government, which refused to answer. But how could they issue an ulti-
matum to a government, which already on the 3rd of November had
voluntarily handed over power to the military revolutionary committee?
Besides, Trotsky had confirmed at 2:35 in the afternoon of the 7th of
November that the Provisional Government no longer existed. At 10
o'clock the Soviet Congress had proclaimed: "Government power lies
with the Military Revolutionary Committee!"
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