Abstract: Based on unpublished archival materials, memoirs and relevant literature, the paper analyses the attitude of officers of the Russian General Staff towards the fall of the Provisional Government of A. F. Kerensky and the rise of the Bolsheviks, which ended with a coup d’état on October 25 (November 7), 1917. New archival data was found in the unpublished memoirs of Lieutenant General Vladimir Vladimirovich Marushevsky (1874–1952), the last Chief of the General Directorate of the General Staff of Russian Army at the time of the October Revolution, who ended his life in exile in Yugoslavia.

Keywords: October Revolution of 1917, General Staff of Russia, A.F. Kerensky, coup d’état organization, assassination

Summary

The historiography of the October Revolution is boundless. The Serbian and Yugoslav views, as well as the emergence of the Yugoslav left in the vortex of the Russian revolution in 1917, have already been the subjects of numerous studies. However, either in Serbian and Russian or in the world historiography, attention to the role of the Russian military elite – officers of the General Staff – in the events that preceded the successful completion of the October Revolution, is rather limited.

A number of prominent Russian emigrants involved with the FebruaryRevolution had arrived in the Kingdom of SCS, some of whom were buried here: M. V. Rodzianko, M. V. Alekseyev, V. V. Shulgin, V. I. Lebedev. All these figures are more or less known to historiography, as well as their life in the Kingdom of SCS. Their memoirs, in cases where such material exists, represent a goldmine for research of the Russian Revolution. However, in the Kingdom of SCS, Kingdom of Yugoslavia and Federative People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, lived one of the prominent participants of the 1917 revolution, almost completely unknown to the domestic public. It was Lieutenant General V. V. Marushevsky (1874–1951), the last Chief of the General Staff of Russia in September–November 1917. His unpublished memoirs are kept in Zagreb.

According to this new source, part of the military elite of Russia actively helped the Bolsheviks on the eve of the October Revolution in 1917 (like the last minister of war A. I. Verhovsky, prominent member Quartermaster General N. M. Potapov, and others). The policy of the French and British missions before and after the fall of A. F. Kerensky was also proactive and intensive. The British Ambassador to Russia G. W. Buchanan, using the British Military Attaché in Russia Major General A. Knox as an intermediary, offered the head of the Russian General Staff a dizzying sum of 13 million gold roubles for the liquidation of L. D. Trotsky. There was also another spy affair going on – V. V. Marushevsky claimed that the leaders of the Bolsheviks were in constant and open telegraphic communication with Berlin. Allegedly, the Russian counter-intelligence service delivered copies of those telegrams, though the Chief of the General Staff could not do anything about that political issue.

Since April 1917, the empire itself began to disintegrate. Those processes were supported by the Provisional Government. Ethnic Russian territories were not under German occupation at that time. There were no reasons to continue with the war efforts “in the name of the Russian Empire“ or “in the name of the unity of the Russian people“. At such time, it was no wonder that a significant number of Russian General Staff officers – who had far-sighted logic, analytical power and were free from obligations to foreign embassies – no longer had a reason to defend A. F. Kerensky and the “sacred obligation to the allies“.