American journalist John Reed sailed to Russia in September 1917 to report on events there for The Masses, a socialist magazine. Allowed to join the Bolsheviks as they swarmed into the Winter Palace after ministers of the Provisional Government surrendered, he recalled the scene in his book Ten Days That Shook the World:
Like a black river, filling all the street, without song or cheer we poured through the Red Arch, where the man just ahead of me said in a low voice, “Look out, comrades! Don’t trust them! They will fire, surely!” In the open, we began to run, stooping low and bunching together, and jammed up suddenly behind the pedestal of the Alexander Column…
After a few minutes huddled there, some hundreds of men, the army seemed reassured and without any orders suddenly began again to flow forward. By this time, in the light that streamed out of all the Winter Palace windows, I could see that the first two or three hundred men were Red Guards [armed workers], with only a few scattered soldiers. Over the barricade of firewood we clambered, and leaping down inside gave a triumphant shout as we stumbled on a heap of rifles thrown down by the yunkers [military students opposed to Bolsheviks] who had stood there. On both sides of the main gateway the doors stood wide open…
Carried along by the eager wave of men we were swept into the right hand entrance… from which issued a maze of corridors and staircases. A number of huge packing cases stood about, and upon these the Red Guards and soldiers fell furiously, battering them open with the butts of their rifles, and pulling out carpets, curtains, linens, porcelain plates, glassware.
One man went strutting around with a bronze clock perched on his shoulder; another found a plume of ostrich feathers, which he stuck in his hat. The looting was just beginning when somebody cried, “Comrades! Don’t touch anything! This is the property of the People!”
Immediately twenty voices were crying, “Stop! Put everything back! Don’t take anything! Property of the People!” Many hands dragged the spoilers down. Damask and tapestry were snatched form the arms of those who had them; two men took away the bronze clock. Roughly and hastily the things were crammed back into their cases…
Through corridors and up staircases the cry could be heard growing fainter and fainter in the distance, “Revolutionary discipline! Property of the People!”
Source:
Fleming, Candace. "Into Siberia." The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion & the Fall of Imperial Russia. 202, 203. Print.
Further Reading:
Зи́мний дворе́ц (Winter Palace)
Временное правительство России (Russian Provisional Government)
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