The government was still in session at the Winter Palace, but it was no
more than its own shadow. As a political power it no longer existed. On
the 25th of October the Winter Palace was gradually surrounded by our
troops from all sides. At one o'clock in the afternoon I declared at the
session of the Petrograd Soviet, in the name of the Military
Revolutionary Committee, that the government of Kerensky had ceased to
exist and that forthwith, and until the All-Russian Convention of the
Soviets might decide otherwise, the power was to pass into the hands of
the Military Revolutionary Committee.

A few days earlier Lenin left Finland and was hiding in the outskirts of
the city, in the workingmen's quarters. On the evening of the 25th, he
came secretly to the Smolny. According to newspaper information, it
seemed to him that the issue would be a temporary compromise between
ourselves and the Kerensky Government. The bourgeois press had so often
clamored about the approach of the revolution, about the demonstration
of armed soldiers on the streets, about pillaging and unavoidable
streams of blood, that now this press failed to notice the revolution
which was really taking place, and accepted the negotiations of the
general staff with us at their face value. Meanwhile, without any chaos,
without street fights, without firing or bloodshed, the government
institutions were occupied one after another by severe and disciplined
detachments of soldiers, sailors and Red Guards, in accordance with the
exact telephone orders given from the small room on the third floor of
the Smolny Institute. In the evening a preliminary session of the Second
All-Russian Convention of Soviets was held. In the name of the Central
Executive Committee, Dan presented a report. He presented an indictment
of the rebellious usurpers and insurgents and attempted to frighten the
Convention with a vision of the inevitable failure of the insurrection,