Free Russian Roulette: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Plot for Global Revolution by Giles Milton Page A

tell Kerensky?” I asked.
    ‘ “Just that I can’t do it.” ’
    Maugham left the prime minister’s office wondering how he would break the news to Kerensky. He was dreading returning to Russia, especially as his tuberculosis had returned with a vengeance. But scarcely had he began planning his trip than it was suddenly cancelled.
    ‘[There] came the news that the Bolsheviks had seized power and Kerensky had been overthrown.’
    The days of friendly co-operation were at an end. Russia had become the enemy.

CHAPTER FOUR
    KNOW THY ENEMY

     
    Mansfield Cumming’s Russian bureau was still housed in the Petrograd War Ministry at the time of the second revolution of 1917 that swept the Bolsheviks to power.
    The agents who had previously worked under Samuel Hoare continued to send intelligence back to Whitehall Court, although it was becoming increasingly difficult to form a clear picture of what was taking place in those turbulent times.
    News also reached London from regular diplomatic channels. Ambassador George Buchanan was still at his post, but his tenure in Russia was rapidly coming to an end. Conventional diplomacy was soon to become an irrelevance.
    On the evening of 7 November, Buchanan happened to glance out of the embassy window and was surprised by what he saw. ‘Armoured cars took up positions at all points commanding the Winter Palace,’ he noted in his diary.
    Buchanan knew that Kerensky’s ministers were inside the building and he feared for their safety. The 2,000-strong garrison had dwindled over the previous few days and the building’s defence was now entrusted to three squadrons of Cossacks, a handful of volunteers and a company from the Women’s Death Battalion. Their numbers were so small that only a few of the palace’s numerous entrances could be guarded at any one time.
    Ambassador Buchanan had a second unwelcome surprise at 9.45 p.m. when the cruiser, Aurora , fired her famous blank shot. It was a signal for the Bolshevik revolution to begin. Soon afterwards, Buchanan saw live shells fired on the Winter Palace from the Peter and Paul fortress. By midnight, a mob of Bolshevik revolutionaries had surrounded the building and was intent on sacking this tangible symbol of the old regime.
    When they finally broke into the building at around 1 a.m. they met with little resistance. The image of the Winter Palace being stormed by force was a piece of later propaganda.
    ‘Three rifle shots shattered the quiet,’ wrote the American journalist Bessie Beatty who was at the scene. ‘We stood speechless, awaiting a return volley; but the only sound was the crunching of broken glass spread like a carpet over the cobblestones. The windows of the Winter Palace had been broken into bits.’
    As Beatty stood there waiting to see what would happen next, there was a loud cry. ‘It’s all over,’ shouted a Bolshevik sailor. ‘They have surrendered.’
    Kerensky’s ministers inside the palace had taken refuge in the famous Malachite Room. According to an account later written by the British military attaché, Sir Alfred Knox, they experienced a tense few hours as they awaited the arrival of the mob. One of the ministers kept spitting on the ground. Another walked up and down ‘like a caged tiger.’ A third sat on a sofa ‘nervously pulling up his trousers till they were finally above his knees.’ All knew that the endgame was near and that Russia was heading into an uncertain future.
    The ministers were still hiding in the Malachite Room when the revolutionaries burst in and arrested them. They were marched off through hostile crowds to the Peter and Paul fortress. All except Kerensky, who had fled the city. There were rumours that he would soon be returning at the head of an anti-Bolshevik army.
    By 3 a.m., the corridors of the Winter Palace were packed with an unruly crowd of revolutionary activists. The American journalist, John Reed, witnessed scenes of total disorder as the mob embarked on an orgy