The first gun shots at the winter palace. Great Aurora Shot

On the night of October 25-26, 1917, old style, a military coup took place in St. Petersburg. It would later be called the Great October Socialist Revolution.

Usually we perceive the October revolution according to the film by Sergei Eisenstein: under machine-gun fire, crowds of stormers run across the square to Winter Palace, here and there the dead and wounded are falling... But in fact, everything was not like that - the success of the uprising lay in whose side the Petrograd garrison and military units stationed in the city were on.

Coup not according to script

« Military history the armed October uprising has not yet been written. We know more about the Decembrist uprising than about the events that took place in 1917. About the Decembrists we can say for sure that this or that regiment went along this route, but not about the October Uprising,” says Kirill Nazarenko, Doctor of Historical Sciences.

Imagine an absolutely dark Palace Square. Rare glimpses of light catch the bloody walls, creating a kind of sketch in crimson tones...

According to Nazarenko, outwardly at that time the center of St. Petersburg looked different, because the Admiralty, the Main Headquarters, and the Headquarters of the Guards Troops - everything was painted the color of ox's blood, dark red without a single white detail. Such a coloristic decision was made under Alexander II, in the 80s of the 19th century, which is why Palace Square for many years resembled appearance butcher shop.

Under the arch of the main headquarters of a group of Red Guards, on the right, from Millionnaya Street, detachments of the Pavlovsk Regiment are approaching, on the left, from the side of the Admiralty, sailors of the Baltic Fleet are accumulating. “When darkness thickened over the square, during the assault the palace did not stand out even with the white capitals of the columns; it was completely drowned in the darkness of the night,” explains the historian.

The palace square was blocked by a woodpile of firewood 2-3 meters high. The garden in front of the palace on the Admiralty side was surrounded by a high fence. In complete darkness, messengers ran between the detachments, because urgent means of communication, and even more so mobile phones Of course it wasn't. The city was in complete chaos.

Contrary to popular belief, at the Aurora’s signal there was no rush to storm the Winter Palace. Sergei Eisenstein, for whom it was important to convey the scale of the events taking place, like a great director, decided to simply depict a crowd scene - in fact, it was impossible to run through the square, because it was blocked by firewood.

“John Reed in his “10 Days That Shook the World” has such a scene when he and a group of rebels run out from under the arch of the General Staff Building, and the darkness was such that they simply stumbled upon a woodpile of firewood that surrounded the Alexander Column. They groped around it and reached the woodpile, which towered near the façade of the Winter Palace,” says Nazarenko.

Revolution as a gift

It is believed that the revolution in October 1917 was carried out exclusively by the Bolsheviks, but this is not so. The coup was led by the Military Revolutionary Committee, which was formed not at all by the Bolshevik Party, but by the Petrograd Council, whose leader was Leon Trotsky.

In addition to the Bolsheviks, the military revolutionary committee included left Socialist Revolutionaries and anarchists. Its leader was the left Socialist Revolutionary Pavel Lazimir. The committee led the entire uprising. By its beginning, all power in the city had in fact passed to the Petrograd Soviet. No one accepted the orders of the provisional government.

“It is not surprising that in such a situation the coup itself on the night of October 23-24 took place relatively quietly and peacefully. Detachments of the Red Guard and sailors of the Baltic Fleet built bridges, disarmed the guards of the Provisional Government, took control of the power plant, train stations, telegraph, telephone and all this - practically without firing a single shot. The provisional government did not understand at all what was happening for quite a long time,” explains the culturologist and writer Andrey Stolyarov.

On November 7 or October 26, old style, the whole world will celebrate the centenary of the Great October Revolution socialist revolution. And on the same day, November 7, 1917, Leiba Davidovich Bronstein, better known as Leon Trotsky, celebrated his birthday; he turned 36 years old.

It is unlikely that the armed uprising won in Petrograd on that day can be considered a coincidence. And Trotsky himself considered himself, and not Lenin, the true leader proletarian revolution. “My birthday coincides with the day October Revolution. Mystics and Pythagoreans can draw any conclusions from this,” Leon Trotsky later wrote.

“The revolution could happen any day starting from September 15th. The Red Guard was ready, seizing post offices and other strategically important points communication was a matter of a few hours. But Trotsky wanted to give himself a gift. He understood that his birthday would always be celebrated this way as long as he existed. Soviet Union- people will go to the parade, march... And he turned out to be right about this - until 1991, we went to parades every year and celebrated his birthday as a public holiday,” the writer believes Alexander Myasnikov.

Who was the real leader of the armed uprising? Trotsky or Lenin? Trotsky, of course, was a brilliant orator, he knew how to stir up a crowd for any cause, but he did not have a party or support among the masses. Lenin was by and large an office worker, but he had a party.

According to Andrei Stolyarov, Leon Trotsky himself understood this fact. In July 1917, one of his comrades, having learned that Trotsky intended to join the Bolshevik Party, exclaimed: “Lev Davidovich, but these are political bandits!” Trotsky responded to this: “I know. But the Bolsheviks are now the only real political force.”

According to many historians, in Russia there were three great memoirists - falsifiers, who wrote their memoirs with one goal: to expose themselves as the best side, contrary to the facts. These are Ivan the Terrible, Catherine II and Leon Trotsky, who described their path to power so vividly that for several centuries later historians cited their works as the only true ones. Leon Trotsky had the opportunity to write his memoirs when he was in exile, and his main task was to discredit Stalin and prove that Stalin in power was a mistake and an accident.

Trotsky's American connections

What was the true role of Leon Trotsky in the October Revolution? American journalist John Reed made a great contribution to the creation of the myth that it was Trotsky who was the leader of the revolution with his book “10 Days That Shook the World.” Today some details are being revealed in his mysterious life.

"We know that this man was from a very rich family, received higher education in the best foreign educational institutions. And suddenly this rich, successful boy Reed is turned into some kind of revolutionary. Yes, his notes about workers’ protests in Boston appeared in the media, then these two publications were published as a separate book and that’s it - he never wrote anything else during his career,” explains writer Alexander Myasnikov.

It is known that Trotsky was in America before the revolution. There he was really accepted high level, he met with Baron Rothschild several times, and, according to some sources, received at least $20 million from the banking house of Jacob Schiff.

With this money, Trotsky returns to Russia to prepare the revolution. The most remarkable thing is that John Reed is leaving with him on the same ship to Russia. And, apparently, not in vain. After the June events in Petrograd, many Bolsheviks were forced to go underground, and some of them were arrested. Among those arrested was Leon Trotsky. But an amazing thing happens.

In August 1917, John Reed and a group of Americans arrived in Petrograd, and suddenly someone released Leon Trotsky on a very large bail. And when Trotsky already makes a revolution - he becomes a people's commissar - he immediately creates a department for combating agitation, which is headed by Reed.

Now sensational evidence has emerged that John Reed was most likely a “double agent” of both the Kremlin and Wall Street. Reed actually worked for America's leading banker, John Morgan, and his anti-capitalist writings supported the valuable myth that capitalists are the implacable enemies of all revolutionaries.

It also became known that evidence was found in the archives of the US Communist Party active participation John Reed in laundering money that Russia sent to America. According to Alexander Myasnikov, his book “10 Days That Shook the World” is a report on how money was spent at Trotsky’s headquarters.

Myths about the Women's Battalion

The October Revolution was characterized by complete confusion and inconsistencies. The fact is that no one had any experience of fighting in the city at that time - it appeared only during the Second World War. Therefore, no one knew what to do. Modern military personnel would place machine guns in the windows of the palace and fortify the basements. But nothing of the kind was done. Sometimes the stormers and defenders of the palace, in complete darkness, shot at the white light like a penny. But mostly there was a verbal skirmish.

According to various estimates, there were about 10 thousand people who stormed the palace, about 2 thousand defenders of the palace. After several ultimatums, part of the troops defending the palace left it. The cadets and Cossacks left. The students of the Mikhailovsky Artillery School also left the palace along with the cannons. Moreover, a very typical example of the fact that no one wanted to shoot, much less kill, is the episode with artillery during the storming of the Winter Palace.

One of the main myths about the October Revolution is the story of the chairman of the provisional government, Alexander Kerensky, dressing up as a woman and fleeing from the Winter Palace. In fact, Kerensky calmly left the Palace by car American Ambassador and he did not change into any female attire.

Among the myths about the heroic defenders of the Winter Palace is the persistent belief of many historians about the heroines - shock workers from the women's death battalion. They write that they were completely raped by the sailors and soldiers who burst in. But the fact is that at the time of the assault there was not a single female defender in the palace, and there were no cases of rape. They all calmly left the palace long before the assault.

“At about 6 p.m. the first firefight broke out around the Winter Palace. And that the defenders, that the besiegers were very afraid to go out on open space in front of the palace. The shootout demoralized the shock workers, and when the next ultimatum was sent, the firefight stopped, they stayed overnight in the barracks of the Pavlovsky regiment on the Field of Mars. Nobody offended them there and they even fed them dinner,” describes Kirill Nazarenko.

Error of the Minister of the Navy

The legendary cruiser "Aurora" is a ship whose shot from the tank gun, as they used to write, "heralded the beginning new era" The Aurora actually fired a shot, but it was only one and a blank one at that. The fact is that then almost no one had a watch; watches were a luxury item: soldiers and sailors, of course, did not have them.

But traces of gun shots remained after the volleys of guns from the Peter and Paul Fortress. The guns were very old, all modern weapons It was at the front, and therefore shooting from the fortress was carried out at the risk of life.

“The cannons fired several times from the direction of the Peter and Paul Fortress. They fired at the Winter Palace with a sheaf of bullets that hit the facade - traces of this were clearly visible in photographs of the 20s. During one of the salvoes, the so-called “glass” - the body of a shrapnel shell - flew into the hall of the third floor of the Winter Palace from the Neva. It was brought to the table of the Provisional Government, but it would have been better not to have done this, because most of the ministers were again shocked and awe, and someone joked that this was an ashtray for the table of their successors,” says the historian.

At this moment, all the eyes of the civilian ministers turned to the Minister of Naval Rear Admiral Dmitry Verderevsky, who, in their opinion, should have known the origin of the projectile.

But Verderevsky, who by his naval specialty was a navigator, not an artilleryman, said: “This is from the Aurora.” This is how the myth was born that during the assault the Aurora fired live shells. This was forgivable for the rear admiral, because he simply determined by eye that the diameter of the shell could be suitable, although an artilleryman would never have confused the size of a land cannon from the Peter and Paul Fortress with the Aurora shell.

Bloodless coup

The inside of the Winter Palace at that time was completely different from the modern one. It was a real labyrinth, with a bunch of partitions and secret staircases. The corridors ended with plywood partitions that had to be walked around. That is why the interim government could not be found for four hours. In addition, part of the palace was given over to a hospital and the attackers returned to their starting point several times. The detachments wandered through the passages and could not get to the room where the government was meeting.

According to historian Kirill Nazarenko, it was arrested only at two in the morning, and the cadets of the Pavlovsk School stood until the last, blocking the path to the White Dining Room and obeying the order to stand with rifles in hand. The weapons were snatched from them because there was no order to shoot. The next night the arrest was bloodless - the ministers were detained and sent to the Peter and Paul Fortress, from where they were subsequently released on receipt, and in the morning they left the palace.

The inhabitants of Petrograd perceived the October revolution surprisingly calmly. Nothing has changed in their lives. Trams ran in the same way, groups of well-dressed people walked along the embankments, shops and cinemas operated. Everyone was already accustomed to the change of governments and believed that this was another temporary government, and that we had to wait for the convening constituent assembly, which will put everything in its place. Moreover, the coup itself took place surprisingly bloodlessly.

In the morning, crowds of ordinary people began to converge on the Winter Palace, because rumors spread throughout the city that the palace had burned down and the Alexander Column had cracked and collapsed. They went to look at the stump of the Alexander Column, but to their surprise everything turned out to be in order.

Full version issue “Storm of the Winter Palace” is available at the link.

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The events that took place in Petrograd on October 24 - 25 (November 6 - 7) 1917 have long become history. The history is so old that many people remember almost nothing about it. The revolutionary events of October 1917 are overgrown with speculation and fables, like the bottom of a ship that has wandered the seas and oceans for a long time - with algae and shells. By the way, about the ship. About a ship called "Aurora". Ask any schoolchild you meet on the street of St. Petersburg what he knows about the cruiser Aurora. Hardly one in five will say anything intelligible. And many adults will not be able to clearly explain what happened in our city 87 years ago.

Let's try to clear the ship of History a little from some myths and stereotypes. And during the years of Soviet power and the post-Soviet period, a lot of them have accumulated.

October 1917, the ideas about it of many contemporaries - this is exactly the case when the main, core moments are often forgotten. There could have been no talk of any October armed uprising if representatives of various revolutionary parties (Bolsheviks, Left Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, anarchists and a number of others) were not firmly convinced that an armed uprising in the Russian capital would be taken up not only by residents countries, but also the working masses of all European, Asian and other powers.

The belief that the world revolution would win, if not in a matter of days, then in a matter of weeks, was so great that the victory over the Provisional Government seemed to be almost half of the entire victory of the world revolution. The winner of the hooligans, pogromists, raiders and other dashing people arrested in Petrograd Soviet power At first she was condescendingly merciful: she put her in jail by the verdict of a revolutionary court for a period “until the victory of the world socialist revolution.” They say that the errant one will serve another week, come to his senses, and then a general revolution will arrive, in which there will simply be no place for bad people. This was revolutionary romanticism.

IN Soviet years There were many myths about how the armed uprising took place in Petrograd. For example, Leningraders told each other that “terrible events” took place during the storming of the Winter Palace. For example, allegedly revolutionary soldiers and sailors killed and raped “princesses” who served in the women’s battalion and threw them out of the windows of the Winter Palace.

This is not true because moral character those who stormed the Winter Palace was unusually high, and for the reason that at the time of the assault, none of the servicemen of the women’s battalion were in the building of the Winter Palace. A few hours before the assault, they left the building unhindered and in an orderly manner and headed to their barracks, located in Lisy Nos. By the way, there were no princesses among them. The overwhelming majority of female soldiers were formerly workers in Petrograd factories and factories.

There was also a completely different, “good” myth. They said that the rebels who found themselves in the Winter Palace, realizing that they were already the masters of the future Soviet country, treated very carefully all the property that was in the residence of the imperial family. I think that on public opinion influenced by the lines of Mayakovsky, who glorified the honest armed men who stormed the Winter Palace. Of course, for obvious reasons, I was not a participant or eyewitness to those events, but two or three times in my life, while visiting my St. Petersburg acquaintances, I saw in the apartments “souvenirs” taken by their grandfathers or great-grandfathers from the most famous St. Petersburg building . And the descendants told with great pleasure how certain elements of the royal interior later became their family heirlooms. What can you do, the revolution also has such sides.

Of course, the main symbol of the revolution was and remains the cruiser Aurora - a ship whose 100th anniversary of its launch last year, unfortunately, went almost unnoticed. And even many historians know almost nothing about his role. The myth that the Aurora sent a certain signal for the storming of the Winter Palace with its shot passes from publication to publication. In reality, everything was different.

The personnel of Aurora were truly revolutionary, although back in August 1917 they actually supported the Provisional Government. A day before the storming of the Winter Palace, Trotsky, speaking at an emergency meeting of the Petrograd Soviet, considered it necessary in his report to say a few words about the future main symbol of the revolution. He stated: “When the government began to mobilize the cadets, at that very time it gave the order to the cruiser Aurora to leave. Why, while calling up the cadets, did the government remove the sailors? The reasons are clear. It's about about those sailors to whom in the Kornilov days Skobelev came with a hat in his hands to ask them to guard the Winter Palace from the Kornilovites. The Aurora sailors then complied with Skobelev’s request, and now the government is trying to remove them. But the comrade sailors also asked the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Council. And the Aurora stands today where it stood last night.”

But, giving such a high assessment of the revolutionary spirit of the Aurors, who two months ago were guarding the Winter Palace, Trotsky, the main organizer of the October Uprising in Petrograd, himself did not know that “Aurora” would have to give the signal to storm the last stronghold of the Provisional Government.

To be honest, no one knew this at all. It was later that the storming of the palace began to symbolize the victory of the uprising, but in those days it was not given much importance

Here is information taken from the document - from the archival version of the reporter's report on the general meeting of the emergency meeting of the Petrograd Soviet, held on October 25, 1917. Please note: the meeting opened at 14:35, that is, several hours before the storming of the Winter Palace. Speaking at it, Trotsky rushed things a little and on behalf of the Military Revolutionary Committee declared: “The Provisional Government no longer exists, individual ministers have been arrested. Others will be arrested in the coming days or hours.”

Comrade Trotsky hurried a little. In fact, the Provisional Government, as we already know, was arrested in the Winter Palace on the night of October 26 at 2:10 am. Accompanied by reinforced security, government members were escorted to the casemates of the Peter and Paul Fortress. On the way to the fortress, they met a group of drunken sailors, who, having learned who the convoy was leading, tried to throw the now former Provisional Government into the Neva, but received a decisive rebuff. By the way, among those arrested there were many very decent people. For example, Minister of Railways Liverovsky. While in Petropavlovka, he suffered so much that he nervous soil I even lost an eye. After his release, he went south and worked as a janitor. Then, however, they remembered about him and invited him to Petrograd - Leningrad. He became the head of one of the departments of the Institute railway transport and for his successes in work he was even awarded the Order of Lenin. These are the unexpected turns fate had in store. But that was later.

And on October 25, 1917, at approximately 1 p.m., the encirclement of the Winter Palace began. Approximately 12 thousand armed soldiers, sailors and Red Guards from the Vyborg, Petrograd and Vasileostrovsky districts of the city took part in the operation. The building of the Winter Palace was defended by two and a half thousand cadets, three hundred Cossacks, a battery of the Mikhailovsky Artillery School and half a company of the 1st Petrograd Women's Battalion. The troops defending the Provisional Government were twice given an ultimatum to surrender. There were shootouts. There was even artillery fire. As a result, six soldiers of the Pavlovsk regiment were killed. Several people were injured. But before midnight, not only the women, whom we have already discussed, but also about two thousand cadets left the palace and were freely released to the barracks.

The assault on Winter Palace was not as well organized as is commonly believed. There were moments when the troops besieging it were in a state of indecision. This is where “Aurora” had its say. No one set the task for the revolutionary sailors to give a signal for the assault. They simply gave a military signal, which was given regularly, so that the time could be checked on all ships.

There is such a military necessity. This is so that in combat conditions, various military units and ships act coherently, are not late or, conversely, are not in a hurry to take certain actions before others. Now this practice exists in armies and navies all over the world. But checking the time in this way was perceived by the participants in the assault as a kind of pre-planned signal, which played an important role.

Historians do not name the exact time of the Aurora’s shot. They usually write that it sounded at about 21:00. I think that it is possible to say with a high degree of accuracy that the shot sounded exactly at 21:00. Why do I say this? Because it is unlikely that the time reconciliation could have been scheduled for some non-round time.

Then, years later, when in the confusion and confusion of the revolutionary events they tried to forget, giving everything that happened an exclusively legendary character, they began to talk about the Aurora’s arrow as a pre-planned revolutionary signal. But you won’t even find a mention of him in any of the protocols of the Military Revolutionary Committee of those days, or in the documents of the Petrograd Soviet: Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. I think that in the documents of the meeting of the St. Petersburg Committee of the RSDLP (b) for October 24 (November 6) nothing was said about this, although that protocol has not been preserved, and references to it can be found in later publications of Petrograd newspapers.

Legends and myths are not the most truthful monuments of history. But it’s even worse when this story is completely forgotten. One way or another, the Aurora fired. And the shot really thundered in the broad sense of the word. I am convinced that without him the history of civilization would have developed according to a different scenario. And I am not sure that the other scenario would be more optimistic. Revolutions happen not because people know how to live, but because they know exactly how they don’t want to live.

The myth of the “Aurora salvo” was born literally the next day after the storming of the Winter Palace, the signal for which was a shot from the legendary cruiser. Such information began to appear in the local press. Subsequently, already in the Stalin years, the version that “Aurora” fired at Zimny with real shells was actively replicated: this was written about in the “Short Course on the History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)”; the play “Volley of the Aurora” was staged at the Moscow Art Theater, based on which a film of the same name was released in the 1960s; in 1937, Mikhail Romm made the film “Lenin in October”, where the audience’s attention is also focused on this episode. The myth of the “volley” did not bypass literature: Alexey Tolstoy in “Walking Through Torment” writes about the roof of the Winter Palace being pierced by a shell.

Examples of use

This was all that remained from the recently noisy and drunken bustle of the capital. The idle crowds left the squares and streets. The Winter Palace was empty, pierced through the roof by a shell from the Aurora. (Alexey Tolstoy. “Walking through Torment.” Book 2)

On October 21, the Bolsheviks sent commissars of the Military Revolutionary Committee to all revolutionary units of the troops. All the days before the uprising, there was an energetic combat training. Combat ships, such as the cruiser Aurora and Zarya Svobody, also received certain assignments.<…>The revolutionary units of the troops, prepared for the uprising by the work of the Bolsheviks, accurately followed combat orders and fought side by side with the Red Guard. Navy kept up with the army. Kronstadt was a fortress of the Bolshevik Party, where the power of the Provisional Government was no longer recognized for a long time. Cruiser "Aurora" with the thunder of his cannons aimed at the Winter Palace, announced on October 25 the beginning of a new era - the era of the Great Socialist Revolution. (Short course on the history of the CPSU(b))

Reality

The first and main exposers of the myth were the sailors themselves from the cruiser Aurora. The day after the events described, an article appeared in the Pravda newspaper in which the sailors tried to prove that there was no shelling of Zimny on their part: if the cruiser had fired “for real,” not only the palace would have been completely destroyed, but also surrounding areas, they argued. The text of the refutation was as follows:

“To all honest citizens of the city of Petrograd from the crew of the cruiser “Aurora”, which expresses its sharp protest over the accusations thrown, especially the accusations that have not been verified, but cast a stain of shame on the crew of the cruiser. We declare that we did not come to destroy the Winter Palace, not to kill civilians, but to protect and, if necessary, die for freedom and revolution from counter-revolutionaries.
The press writes that the Aurora opened fire on the Winter Palace, but do gentlemen reporters know that the cannon fire we opened would have left no stone unturned not only from the Winter Palace, but also from the streets adjacent to it? But is this really the case?

We address you, workers and soldiers of Petrograd! Don't believe provocative rumors. Don’t believe them that we are traitors and rioters, and check the rumors yourself. As for the shots from the cruiser, only one blank shot was fired from a 6-inch gun, signaling a signal to all ships on the Neva and calling them to be vigilant and ready. We ask all editors to reprint.
Chairman of the Ship Committee
A. Belyshev
Comrade Chairman P. Andreev
Secretary /signature/.” (“Pravda”, No. 170, October 27, 1917)

For many years, while official propaganda benefited from the myth about the power of revolutionary weapons, in which a single blank shot grew into a whole salvo of military weapons, no one remembered this note. Already during the Khrushchev “thaw” this text appeared in the magazine “ New world”, in the article by V. Cardin “Legends and Facts” (1966, No. 2, p. 237). However, the newspaper Pravda did not respond in a friendly manner to quoting itself 50 years ago, publishing in March 1967 a message on behalf of the Secretariat of the Writers' Union of the USSR, warning Soviet people from reading articles “imbued with false tendencies towards unfounded revision and belittlement of revolutionary and heroic traditions Soviet people" The article did not leave anyone indifferent senior management countries. In one of his speeches to the Politburo, L.I. Brezhnev was indignant: “After all, some of our writers (and they are published) go so far as to say that there was supposedly no Aurora salvo, that it was supposedly a blank shot, etc., that there were not 28 Panfilov men, that there were fewer of them, This fact was almost invented that Klochko was not there and there was no call from him, that “Moscow is behind us and we have nowhere to retreat...”.

Many years later, already during perestroika, the article, “imbued with a false trend,” was reprinted in the Ogonyok magazine.

The military also refute the myth about the shelling of Zimny from a cruiser: the ship, which really gained military glory by participating in the Russian-Japanese and the First World War, has served since 1916. major renovation, which means that all ammunition from it should have been removed long ago by the time of the October events - in accordance with the current instructions.

Sources and literature

Cardin V. Legends and facts. // New World, 1966. No. 2. P. 237.

Historic shot or volley?

On the Red Fleet embankment, near house No. 44, there is a granite stele with the inscription: “October 25 (November 7), 1917. The cruiser Aurora, standing opposite this place, with the thunder of its guns aimed at the Winter Palace, announced on October 25 the beginning of a new era - the era of the Great Socialist Revolution.
Indeed, in 1917 the cruiser’s crew took part in the October events. According to the order of the Bolshevik Military Revolutionary Committee, the cruiser stood at the Nikolaevsky Bridge (Lieutenant Schmidt Bridge) to shell the Winter Palace, where the Provisional Government was located. A blank charge was fired from the bow gun of the Aurora (in Soviet literature the shot was called a “volley”, “thunder of guns”, etc.), which was considered a signal to begin the assault on the Winter Palace.
As sailor N.A. Khovrin, a member of the Central Committee of the Baltic Fleet, said, the Aurors deliberately loaded the cannon with a blank charge. They could not help but go out to the raid and carry out the order of the Military Revolutionary Committee, because they were afraid of reprisals against the Bolshevik sailors from Kronstadt and Helsingfors. If the coup failed, the Aurors could justify themselves. This version existed for a long time. Subsequently, the story was “combed” by linking the cruiser’s blank shot with a signal sent from the Peter and Paul Fortress and the beginning of the assault on the Winter Palace. During the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution, a copper plaque appeared on the tank gun with the inscription: “6-dm tank gun from which the historic shot was fired on October 25, 1917 at the time of the capture of the Winter Palace. Cruiser "Aurora", 1927."
This stereotype was firmly ingrained in our consciousness: no one doubted that the shot from the Aurora’s forecastle gun heralded the “beginning of a new era,” and the ship was deservedly considered “legendary.”
In the encyclopedia “The Great October Socialist Revolution” (1987) we read: “On the morning of October 25 (November 7), the Aurora radio station broadcast the appeal of the Military Revolutionary Committee written by V. I. Lenin “To the citizens of Russia!” On the same day at 21 hour 40 minutes conventional sign From the Peter and Paul Fortress, the bow gun of the Aurora fired a blank shot and gave the signal for the assault on the Winter Palace, in which the sailors of the cruiser participated.”
A little history. The cruiser inherited its name from a frigate of the Russian fleet, which distinguished itself in August 1854 when repelling an attack by an Anglo-French squadron on the port of Petropavlovsk in Kamchatka. In June 1896, the designers began developing the cruiser project, and on May 23, 1897, its laying took place at the New Admiralty shipyard (now the Admiralty Shipyards). On the eve of the laying of the ship, according to the decree of Nicholas II of March 31, 1897, the cruiser was given the name “Aurora”. On May 11, 1900, the ship was launched, and on September 18, 1903, after sea trials, it was included in the Baltic Fleet.
The project and drawings were developed by the designers of the Baltic Shipyard. The construction of the ship was supervised by engineer K. M. Tokarevsky. The cruiser had a displacement of about 7000 tons, length - 126.8, width - 16.8, draft - 6.6 meters and developed maximum speed 19 knots. The cruising range at an economical speed of 10 knots was 4,000 miles. It was armed with fourteen 152 mm main caliber guns, six 76.2 mm anti-aircraft guns, one surface and two underwater torpedo tubes. The ship could carry 152 galvanic shock mines. Crew - 723 people.
During Russo-Japanese War(1904-1905) the cruiser "Aurora" as part of the 2nd Pacific squadron made the transition to Far East, where he took part in the unsuccessful Battle of Tsushima for the Russian fleet, during which the ship’s commander, Captain 1st Rank E.R. Egoriev, died. The ship made it to the port of Manila, where it was interned. After the end of the war and the signing of peace with Japan, the cruiser returned to Kronstadt in 1906. Many relics remind of the events of the Russo-Japanese War, including a portrait of E. R. Yegoryev, placed in a frame made from burnt deck boards and cruiser armor, pierced by a Japanese shell.

After repairs, the ship became a training ship: midshipmen of the senior companies of the Naval Cadet Corps practiced on it. From May 1907 until the outbreak of the First World War (1914-1918), the cruiser Aurora made six training cruises for a total duration of 47 months, covering more than 65 thousand miles. In 1911, at the invitation of the Italian government, the cruiser visited the port of Messina. In 1916, the cruiser underwent modernization.
In 1918-1923 the ship was stored in the Kronstadt port. In January 1923 she was repaired and became a training ship again. On February 23, 1923, he became part of the division of ships of the training detachment of the Naval Forces Baltic Sea. In 1927, during the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution, the ship was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. Until 1933, the ship sailed continuously, making several long-distance voyages. foreign trips. In 1933 it was put under major repairs. Since 1935, the Aurora became a non-self-propelled training cruiser, on which naval cadets underwent practical training. educational institutions. During the Great Patriotic War(1941-1945) the cruiser was in the port of Oranienbaum (since 1948 - Lomonosov). In August 1945, it was transferred to Nakhimovsky, created in 1944. naval school, and on November 17, 1948, they were placed in eternal parking near the Petrogradskaya embankment on the Neva.
In November 1947, the cruiser took a historical place on the Neva, below the Lieutenant Schmidt Bridge, where it stood in October 1917. At the command of the first commissioner of the cruiser A.V. Belyshev, a blank shot was fired from the bow gun in memory of historical event. In 1967, during the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution, this shot was repeated. In 1968, the cruiser Aurora received the Order of the October Revolution, becoming the only ship of the Soviet Navy, on the flag of which there are two orders. Since 1956, a museum has been operating on the ship, which has become a branch of the Central Naval Museum. In 1960, the cruiser Aurora became one of the monuments protected by the state.
In 1984-1987 at the Leningrad Shipyard named after. A. A. Zhdanov (now the Severnaya Verf Shipyard) carried out restoration and restoration repairs of the cruiser Aurora. On the eve of the 70th anniversary of the October Revolution of 1917, the cruiser again stood at its eternal berth near the Petrogradskaya embankment. The transfer of the Aurora from the factory pier to the parking lot took place on August 16, 1987. On October 2, 1987, the museum ship was opened to visitors. On July 26, 1992, the St. Andrew's flag was raised on the cruiser Aurora.
Looking through periodicals of the first half of the 20th century, you can see that the cruiser Aurora was canonized in 1927 as a symbol of the October Revolution. The former driver of the cruiser, chairman of the ship committee and commissioner of the Aurora, Bolshevik A. V. Belyshev, became almost the main character of the events that took place in Petrograd on October 25, 1917. After 1927, on November 7, not a single solemn meeting or parade on Uritsky Square ( Palace Square) were not carried out without the participation of Belyshev.
Immediately after the coup, rumors spread throughout Petrograd that the Bolsheviks were firing live shells at the Winter Palace - Rastrelli's creation - from the Aurora guns. On October 27, in the Pravda newspaper, Aurora sailors published a letter: “The crew of the cruiser Aurora protests about the accusations thrown, especially unverified accusations, but casting a stain of shame on the cruiser’s crew. We declare that we did not come to destroy the Winter Palace, not to kill civilians, but to defend against counter-revolutionaries and, if necessary, to die for freedom and revolution. The press writes that the Aurora opened fire on the Winter Palace, but do gentlemen reporters know that the cannon fire we opened would have left no stone unturned not only from the Winter Palace, but also from the streets adjacent to it? We address you, workers and soldiers of Petrograd! Do not believe provocative rumors... As for the shots from the cruiser, only one blank shot was fired from a 6-inch gun, indicating a signal for all ships standing on the Neva and calling on them to be vigilant and ready.”
As follows from this document, the purpose of the shot was different. Witnesses of the events do not even mention any “signal to begin the assault on Zimny.” A participant in the uprising in Petrograd, a member of the Bolshevik Party since 1915, N.A. Khovrin wrote: “The Aurora’s blank shot grew into... a salvo! But in fact, everything that has been and is being written about the Aurora and the sailors in machine-gun belts is, from beginning to end, a distortion of the reality of history. After 15-20 years, a blank shot begins to be called a signal for a general assault on the Winter Palace, and we, participants in this assault, learn about this signal 15-20 years later. It is also characteristic that long before the Aurora fired, cannons were firing from the Peter and Paul Fortress - after all, this could also serve as a signal. So, apart from a blank shot, the Aurora has nothing more active, and all attempts to prove that this cruiser played almost a leading role in the uprising are not based on anything and are a complete invention of today's heroes. The absence of a logbook of that time on the cruiser is, of course, associated with a not entirely fair game of heroes, who are credited with the high honor of being in the vanguard of the Great October Revolution. I can safely say that the logbook of that time was deliberately destroyed as evidence that this “legendary” cruiser is not at all what it is believed to be.”

Examples of use

On October 21, the Bolsheviks sent commissars of the Military Revolutionary Committee to all revolutionary units of the troops. All the days before the uprising, vigorous combat training was going on in military units, factories and factories. Combat ships, such as the cruiser Aurora and Zarya Svobody, also received certain assignments.<…>The revolutionary units of the troops, prepared for the uprising by the work of the Bolsheviks, accurately followed combat orders and fought side by side with the Red Guard. The navy did not lag behind the army. Kronstadt was a fortress of the Bolshevik Party, where the power of the Provisional Government was no longer recognized for a long time. Cruiser "Aurora" with the thunder of his cannons aimed at the Winter Palace, announced on October 25 the beginning of a new era - the era of the Great Socialist Revolution. (Short course on the history of the CPSU(b))

Reality

For many years, while official propaganda benefited from the myth about the power of revolutionary weapons, in which a single blank shot grew into a whole salvo of military weapons, no one remembered this note. Already during the Khrushchev “thaw” this text appeared in the magazine “New World”, in the article by V. Cardin “Legends and Facts” (1966, No. 2, p. 237). However, the newspaper Pravda did not respond favorably to quoting itself 50 years ago, publishing in March 1967 a message on behalf of the Secretariat of the Union of Writers of the USSR, warning Soviet people against reading articles “imbued with false tendencies towards unfounded revision and belittlement of revolutionary and heroic traditions of the Soviet people." The article did not leave the country's top leadership indifferent. In one of his speeches to the Politburo, L.I. Brezhnev was indignant: “After all, some of our writers (and they are published) go so far as to say that there was supposedly no Aurora salvo, that it was supposedly a blank shot, etc., that there were not 28 Panfilov men, that there were fewer of them, This fact was almost invented that Klochko was not there and there was no call from him, that “Moscow is behind us and we have nowhere to retreat...”.

Many years later, already during perestroika, the article, “imbued with a false trend,” was reprinted in the Ogonyok magazine.

The military also refute the myth about the shelling of Zimny from a cruiser: the ship, which really gained military glory by participating in the Russian-Japanese and the First World War, had been undergoing major repairs since 1916, which means that all the ammunition from it should have been long gone by the time of the October events removed - in accordance with applicable instructions.

Sources and literature

Cardin V. Legends and facts. // New World, 1966. No. 2. P. 237.