In 1917, the assault on the Winter Palace led by Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko was launched at 9:45 p.m. signalled by a blank shot from the cruiser Aurora. The republican mutiny spreads like wildfire to the German, British and French bases at Heligoland Bight, Scapa Flow and Mers El-Kebir. Years later, Trotsky confesses that Socialism in One Country would never have succeeded. Bolshevik High Command was committed to World Communism, and as Karl Marx had foreseen, Capitalism would destroy itself from within.