Russia 1917: Countdown to Revolution
The Dustbin of History
44:49 - 48:33
Leon Trotsky criticizes his opponents in one of the most quoted speeches as the Bolsheviks consolidate power over the Petrograd Soviet and the Russian Revolution in general while modern experts weigh in.
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Video Transcript
44:49
Trotsky deals with the other socialist parties at the Congress of Soviets
44:54
having traveled from all over Russia
44:56
they are shocked to find petrograd already seized by the Bolsheviks
45:01
but their protests are shouted down by trotsky's men
45:06
Trotsky has another strategy
45:08
ready
45:09
drops Keys order of the day
45:11
was that if the people in The Winter Palace didn't surrender
45:16
the battleship Aurora
45:18
should fire
45:20
blanks at them
45:23
he said that very noise of the battleship which they could all see with its guns pointing would be enough to send them out scurrying like rabbits
45:35
at 10:40 p.m.
45:38
the warning shot is fired from the Aurora
45:43
and is heard as far away as the Congress
45:47
the other socialist parties are outraged by the aggression
45:52
and walk out
45:55
without realizing it
45:56
they have just handed power
45:58
to the Bolsheviks
46:01
it was a culture
46:02
that his chief opponent just walk out
46:05
leaving the field of back
46:08
so many socialists delegates leave that the Bolsheviks are now in the majority
46:13
and can do
46:14
as they please
46:19
I think we have to agree with the great memoirist nikolai's sukarno of who was
46:23
at the Soviet Congress himself when he said
46:25
it was just a huge gift to learn
46:29
as the delegates leave
46:31
Trotsky mocks his one-time allies in one of the most quoted speeches of the 20th century
46:37
the rising
46:39
of the masses of the people
46:42
requires no justification
46:46
what has happened
46:47
is an uprising
46:49
not a conspiracy
46:51
trotsky's the real star
46:53
of the petrograd Soviet he's a brilliant
46:55
orator
46:56
the masses of the people
46:58
moved under our banner
47:02
and our Uprising
47:04
has won Victory
47:06
but he's also brilliant theoretician
47:08
who understands
47:10
how rhetoric and politics are intertwined and how he can play on an audience to mobilize them
47:18
Trotsky is able to make the Bolshevik view
47:21
sound like everyone's View
47:24
and now
47:26
we
47:27
are told
47:29
to renounce
47:30
our Victory
47:33
make concessions
47:35
God promote
47:37
with whom
47:39
when at wretched group of just left us
47:42
no one in Russia is with them anymore
47:45
no
47:47
no compromise is possible
47:51
the Bolshevik position
47:53
becomes the Soviet position
47:56
to those
47:57
who have left
47:58
and those who make these proposals
48:00
we say
48:02
you are pathetic individuals
48:05
you are bankrupts
48:07
your role is played out
48:10
go up to where you belong from now on
48:14
to the Dustbin of History
48:21
his kind of Dripping contempt
48:23
lets them know that power is moving now
48:26
minute by minute
48:28
to the Bolsheviks and to it to the creation of an entirely new world
