Pavel Dybenko - Dybenko's Role in The October Revolution

Dybenko's Role in The October Revolution

As the leader of Tsentrobalt, Dybenko played an enormous role in the revolt. It was the ten warships that entered the city with ten thousand Baltic fleet mariners that actually took the power in Petrograd and put down the Provisional Government. The same mariners dispersed by force the elected parliament of Russia, and used machine-gun fire against protesting demonstrators in Petrograd. About a hundred demonstrators were killed, and several hundreds were wounded. Dybenko in his memoirs mentioned this event as "several shots in the air".

(The events surrounding the Constituent Assembly in January 1918 as referred to above are disputed by various sources. Louise Bryant's observations of the political atmosphere are available in her book Six Red Months in Russia pgs 60-61. As for the killing of protestors demonstrating in Petrograd; news outlets at the time in the west reported the unfortunate loss of life occurred in Moscow not Petrograd and the number was much less than is suggested above. As for the "several shots in the air" there is little evidence suggesting otherwise. Pavel Dybenko understood accepting the leadership of the Right Socialist Revolutionists would be to take a step back from the accomplishments of October. This was the party of Kerensky, Chernov, and others who refused to discuss the proposals of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets, failed to recognize the Declaration of Rights of the Working and Exploited People, but most importantly failed to recognize October and Soviet power. The dissolution of the assembly was inevitable. Pavel Dybenko recalled the Assembly was dispersed not on the day of its opening, but on October 25, the sailor Zheleznyakov just executed the order of the October Revolution.)

During the first hours after the taking the Winter Palace, Dybenko personally entered the Ministry of Justice and destroyed there the documents concerning the financing of the Bolshevik party by Germany.

(The above alleged action of Dybenko entering the Ministry of Justice to destroy documents as recalled by Savchenko can be challenged...according to all reports Pavel Dybenko was in Helsingfors organizing the sailors departures for Petrograd. From the book Radio October...On the “Krechet” in Helsingfors, radio operator Makarov hands a telegram to Pavel Dybenko with the report of the “Samson” commissar, Grigoriy Borisov: “To Tsentrobalt. Everything is calm in Petrograd. The power is in the hands of the revolutionary committee. You have to immediately get in touch with the front committee of the Northern Army in order to preserve unity of forces and stability.”)

Dybenko was appointed the People's Commissar (minister) of naval affairs. Lenin, who knew Dybenko well enough as not to rely on him as a Navy commander, assigned to him an assistant, an ex-tzarist admiral who helped manage professional affairs of the Navy.

On February 18, 1918, the German army advanced towards Petrograd. The Lenin-Trotsky government sent Dybenko to defend Petrograd by the force of the Baltic Fleet. The later communist propaganda claimed that revolutionary mariners achieved a great victory there on February 23, 1918. February 23 was declared "The birthday of the Red Army". This day is celebrated in Russia and Ukraine to this day as a national holiday. A special military decoration, "20 years to the Soviet Army" was instituted for this occasion in February 1938. However, this medal was never given to Dybenko himself.

The truth is that Dybenko and his mariners, fled the field. According to the memoirs of Bonch-Bruyevich, the mariners came by a barrel of pure alcohol and feasted on it. Their whereabouts were unknown for at least a month. Lenin wrote in his famous article on 25 February 1918, in Pravda evening edition: A lesson humiliating but necessary : Refused to fight,... refused to defend the Narva line, ...failed to destroy everything as they retreated...

Lenin added: From the point of view of the defence of the fatherland it would be a crime to enter into an armed conflict with an infinitely superior and well-prepared enemy when we obviously have no army. ... implying that Dybenko and his mariners definitely were not an army.

The government issued an order to arrest Dybenko and to deliver him to Moscow, that he might face court martial. His command was taken over by General Parsky. The Germans were in fact stopped by the ex-Tzarist general Nikolayev who organized some retreating Russian soldiers to fight.

The defeat at Narva caused the Bolshevik government to sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Another outcome was the transfer of the Bolshevik capital from Petrograd to Moscow.

On April 1918 he was dismissed from the government, expelled from the communist party and put to trial for cowardice. Unexpectedly, the court martial declared him innocent, since "Being no military expert, he was absolutely neither competent nor trained for the task,... he was not prepared to fight...".

Dybenko strongly opposed the Brest-Litovsk peace, and tried to organize mariners to act against it. He was arrested.

According to the testimony of J.Sadoul, a French socialist who was present then in Moscow and wrote memoirs about this period, it was Dybenko's fellow mariners who saved him. They threatened to open fire on the Kremlin and terrorized Bolshevik government members. The intervention of his wife Alexandra Kollontai, then a People's Commissar of social affairs, also played a role.

In April 1918, Dybenko arrived with Kollontai in Samara, a city governed by local Leftist-SR party (Leftist-SR: Leftist-Socialist-Revolutionaries, see Socialist-Revolutionary Party), along with Anarchists and some other non-Bolshevik groups, all opposing Bolsheviks and the Brest-Litovsk peace. Dybenko soon headed the local opposition, and from that remote town he published letters accusing Lenin of corruption, stealing 90 tons of gold, incompetence, terrorism, and of being a German agent.

The Samara opposition groups planned an armed revolt on May 15, 1918. However, one week prior to that date, Dybenko reappeared in Moscow. There he was pardoned and granted life, on the condition that he would never again meddle in politics. The Samara revolt was crushed by Bolshevik forces.

Dybenko left Moscow. In order to keep him as far as possible from the Baltic Navy, Lenin gave him a low-rank military job (a battalion commander, a lt.col equivalent) at the "No-man's land" between Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine was occupied by the German army as the outcome of the Brest peace, and after the German capitulation and retreat of the German army, the situation there developed a chaos of "war of everybody against everybody".