Petrograd Telegraph Agency, Condition of the Troops In the Rear. 1917

Extracts from Official Reports

Original Source: A. L. Popov, Oktiabrskii perevorot: fakty i dokumenty (Petrograd, 1918), pp. 85-88.

Helsingfors, September 14. Last night ... four officers of the battleship "Petropavlovsk" were shot by the sailors. The officers refused to give a pledge of loyalty to the Provisional Government ... The provisional military section of the Central Executive Committee received information concerning what happened in Vyborg ... A mob of soldiers removed from the guardhouse three generals and one colonel, who were kept there by the ... army committee of the 42nd Corps for alleged participation in the Kornilov affair, and threw them from a bridge into the water After that a number of other regimental commanders and officers were attacked and thrown into the water. Those who tried to save themselves were killed. In all, about fifteen officers were killed, though the exact number has not been established ...

Elizavetgrad, September 21 ... A bloody encounter took place between a group of cadets and soldiers ... One cadet, one soldier, and three unknown persons were killed; twenty-one wounded ... The cadets were arrested. At the jail the soldiers attempted to lynch the cadets. One cadet committed suicide.

Stavka [at Mogilev]. October 11. The Stavka received official news of the circumstances under which the departure of Generals Denikin, Elsner, Markov, and others took place from Berdichev to Bykhov. A mob of soldiers surrounded the building ... where the generals were kept and demanded that the prisoners go to the station on foot. To avoid complications the soldiers' demand was satisfied, but to safeguard the prisoners the Commander-in-Chief of the Southwestern Front, General Volodchenko, walked all the way to the station beside the prisoners ... At the station the soldiers demanded that the generals be placed in a prisoners' car instead of a second-class railroad car. As no prisoners' car was available, a freight car had to be used instead ...

Active Army, October 5. On October 3 a group of soldiers ... destroyed the courthouse in the city of Dubno after a jury had condemned one of the instigators of a recent disturbance. Violence was done to the members of the jury and the court ...

Irkutsk, October 5. [In view of recent disorders which took place in the city numerous arrests were made among the soldiers of the local garrison.] Yesterday morning ... regiments of sharpshooters led by agitators removed the rifles from the arsenal and refused to obey their commanders. -The army commander, Lieutenant Krakovetskii, ... was placed under arrest ... A detachment which remained loyal to the revolution succeeded ... in rescuing the commander ... The rebels were disarmed and arrested ...

Stavka, October 11. Official reports were received here of the disorders which took place in the Letichevskii Uyezd In the village of Markovtsy a wine distillery was stormed and then set on fire ... In Brailovka the soldiers plundered an estate and broke into a liquor cellar. Drunken soldiers are rioting and shooting at their fellow soldiers who were placed on guard of the liquor cellars. In the town of Bari wine cellars were broken into ... [The same in Karagievtsy.] In Letichevskii, Mogilevskii, and Ushitskii uyezds of Podolsk Guberniia, soldiers are making unwarranted seizures of bread, fodder, horses, and oxen from large estates No consideration is given to the property of manual workers ...

Saratov, October 13. In Balashev the local garrison rebelled and seized the post and telegraph. Soldiers traveling on the Riazan-Uralsk railroad are engaged in violent seizure of flour and other supplies.

Feodosia [Crimea], October 26. In view of the disorderly conduct of the soldiers, Feodosia has been declared in a state of siege ... 20,000 vedros [of liquor] and 300 barrels of wine were destroyed ...

Source: James Bunyan and H.H. Fisher, ed., Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1918; Documents and Materials (Stanford: Stanford University Press; H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1934), pp. 26-27.