The Bolsheviki agitation assumed large proportions. Copies of the Pravda, spread lavishly here and there, were poisoned with calumny, campaigns against the other parties, boasting gross flatteries addressed to the soldiers and appeals to trouble. Bolsheviki meetings permeated with the same spirit were organized at Petrograd, Moscow, and other cities. Bolshevist agitators set out for the front at the same time with copies of the Pravda and other papers, and the Bolsheviki enjoyed, during this time—as Lenine himself admits—complete liberty. Their chiefs, compromised in the insurrection of June 3d, had been given their freedom.

Their principal watchword was "Down with the war!" "Kerensky and the other conciliators," they cried, "want war and do not want peace. Kerensky will give you neither peace, nor land, nor bread, nor Constituent Assembly. Down with the traitor and the counter-revolutionists! They want to smother the Revolution. We demand peace. We will give you peace, land to the peasants, factories and work to the workmen!" Under this simple form the agitation was followed up among the masses and found a propitious ground, first among the soldiers who were tired of war and athirst for peace. In the Soviet of the Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates of Petrograd the Bolshevist party soon found itself strengthened and fortified. Its influence was also considerable among the sailors of the Baltic fleet. Cronstadt was entirely in their hands. New elections of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates soon became necessary; they gave a big majority to the Bolsheviki. The old bureau, Tchcheidze at its head, had to leave; the Bolsheviki triumphed clamorously.

To fight against the Bolsheviki the Executive Committee of the National Soviet of Peasants' Delegates decided at the beginning of December to call a Second General Peasants' Congress. This was to decide if the peasants would defend the Constituent Assembly or if they would follow the Bolsheviki. This Congress had, in effect, a decisive importance. It showed what was the portion of the peasant class that upheld the Bolsheviki. It was principally the peasants in soldiers' dress, the "declasse soldiers," men taken from the country life by the war, from their natural surroundings, and desiring but one thing, the end of the war. The peasants who had come from the country had, on the contrary, received the mandate to uphold the Constituent Assembly. They firmly maintained their point of view and resisted all the attempts of the Bolsheviki and the "Socialist-Revolutionists of the Left" (who followed them blindly) to make their influence prevail. The speech of Lenine was received with hostility; as for Trotzky, who, some time before, had publicly threatened with the guillotine all the "enemies of the Revolution," they prevented him from speaking, crying out: "Down with the tyrant! Guillotineur! Assassin!" To give his speech Trotzky, accompanied by his faithful "capotes," was obliged to repair to another hall.

The Second Peasants' Congress was thus distinctly split into two parties. The Bolsheviki tried by every means to elude a straight answer to the question, "Does the Congress wish to uphold the Constituent Assembly?" They prolonged the discussion, driving the peasants to extremities by every kind of paltry discussion on foolish questions, hoping to tire them out and thus cause a certain number of them to return home. The tiresome discussions carried on for ten days, with the effect that a part of the peasants, seeing nothing come from it, returned home. But the peasants had, in spite of all, the upper hand; by a roll-call vote 359 against 314 pronounced themselves for the defense without reserve of the Constituent Assembly.

Any work in common for the future was impossible. The fraction of the peasants that pronounced itself for the Constituent Assembly continued to sit apart, named its Executive Committee, and decided to continue the fight resolutely. The Bolsheviki, on their part, took their partizans to the Smolny, declared to be usurpers of the Soviet of Peasants' Delegates who pronounced themselves for the defense of the Constituante, and, with the aid of soldiers, ejected the former Executive Committee from their premises and took possession of their goods, the library, etc.

The new Executive Committee, which did not have at its disposition Red Guards, was obliged to look for another place, to collect the money necessary for this purpose, etc. Its members were able, with much difficulty, to place everything upon its feet and to assure the publication of an organ (the Izvestya of the National Soviet of Peasants' Delegates determined to defend the Constituent Assembly), to send delegates into different regions, and to establish relations with the provinces, etc.

Together with the peasants, workmen and Socialist parties and numerous democratic organizations prepared themselves for the defense of the Constituent Assembly: The Union of Postal Employees, a part of the Union of Railway Workers, the Bank Employees, the City Employees, the food distributors' organizations, the teachers' associations, the zemstvos, the co-operatives. These organizations believed that the coup d'etat of October 25th was neither legal nor just; they demanded a convocation with brief delay of the Constituent Assembly and the restoration of the liberties that were trampled under foot by the Bolsheviki.

These treated them as saboteurs, "enemies of the people," deprived them of their salaries, and expelled them from their lodgings. They ordered those who opposed them to be deprived of their food-cards. They published lists of strikers, thus running the risk of having them lynched by the crowds. At Saratov, for example, the strike of postal workers and telegraphers lasted a month and a half. The institutions whose strike would have entailed for the population not only disorganization, but an arrest of all life (such as the railroads, the organizations of food distributers), abstained from striking, only asking the Bolsheviki not to meddle with their work. Sometimes, however, the gross interference of the Bolsheviki in work of which they understood nothing obliged those opposed to them, in spite of everything, to strike. It is to be noted also that the professors of secondary schools were obliged to join the strike movements (the superior schools had already ceased to function at this time) as well as the theatrical artistes: a talented artist, Silotti, was arrested; he declared that even in the time of Czarism nobody was ever uneasy on account of his political opinions.

IV

The Bolsheviki and the Constituent Assembly

At the time of the accomplishment of their coup d'etat, the Bolsheviki cried aloud that the ministry of Kerensky put off a long time the convocation of the Constituante (which was a patent lie), that they would never call the Assembly, and that they alone, the Bolsheviki, would do it. But according as the results of the elections became known their opinions changed.

In the beginning they boasted of their electoral victories at Petrograd and Moscow. Then they kept silent, as if the elections had no existence whatever. But the Pravda and the Izvestya of the Soviet of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates continued to treat as caluminators those who exposed the danger that was threatening the Constituent Assembly at the hands of the Bolsheviki. They did not yet dare to assert themselves openly. They had to gain time to strengthen their power. They hastily followed up peace pourparlers, to place Russia and the Constituent Assembly, if this met, before an accomplished fact.

They hastened to attract the peasants to themselves. That was the reason which motived the "decree" of Lenine on the socialization of the soil, which decree appeared immediately after the coup d'etat. This decree was simply a reproduction of a Revolutionary Socialists' resolution adopted at a Peasants' Congress. What could the socialization of the soil be to Lenine and all the Bolsheviki in general? They had been, but a short time before, profoundly indifferent with regard to this Socialist-Revolutionist "Utopia." It had been for them an object of raillery. But they knew that without this "Utopia" they would have no peasants. And they threw them this mouthful, this "decree," which astonished the peasants. "Is it a law? Is it not a law? Nobody knows," they said.

It is the same desire to have, cost what it may, the sympathy of the peasants that explains the union of the Bolsheviki with those who are called the "Socialist-Revolutionists of the Left" (for the name Socialist-Revolutionist spoke to the heart of the peasant), who played the stupid and shameful role of followers of the Bolsheviki, with a blind weapon between their hands.

A part of the "peasants in uniform" followed the Bolsheviki to Smolny. The Germans honored the Bolsheviki by continuing with them the pourparlers for peace. The Bolshevist government had at its disposal the Red Guards, well paid, created suddenly in the presence of the crumbling of the army for fear of remaining without the help of bayonets. These Red Guards, who later fled in shameful fashion before the German patrols, advanced into the interior of the country and gained victories over the unarmed populace. The Bolsheviki felt the ground firm under their feet and threw off the mask. A campaign against the Constituent Assembly commenced. At first in Pravda and in Izvestya were only questions. What will this Constituent Assembly be? Of whom will it be composed? It is possible that it will have a majority of servants of the bourgeoisie—Cadets Socialist-Revolutionists. Can we confide to such a Constituent Assembly the destinies of the Russian Revolution? Will it recognize the power of the Soviets? Then came certain hypocritical "ifs." "If," yes, "if" the personnel of the Constituent Assembly is favorable to us; "if" it will recognize the power of the Soviets, it can count on their support. If not—it condemns itself to death.

The Socialist-Revolutionists of the Left in their organ, The Flag of Labor, repeated in the wake of the Bolsheviki, "We will uphold the Constituent Assembly in the measure we—"

Afterward we see no longer questions or prudent "ifs," but distinct answers. "The majority of the Constituent Assembly is formed," said the Bolsheviki, "of Socialist-Revolutionists and Cadets—that is to say, enemies of the people. This composition assures it of a counter-revolutionary spirit. Its destiny is therefore clear. Historic examples come to its aid. The victorious people has no need of a Constituent Assembly. It is above the Constituante. It has gone beyond it." The Russian people, half illiterate, were made to believe that in a few weeks they had outgrown the end for which millions of Russians had fought for almost a century; that they no longer had need of the most perfect form of popular representation, such as did not exist even in the most cultivated countries of western Europe. To the Constituent Assembly, legislative organ due to equal, direct, and secret universal suffrage, they opposed the Soviets, with their recruiting done by hazard and their elections to two or three degrees,[92] the Soviets which were the revolutionary organs and not the legislative organs, and whose role besides none of those who fought for the Constituent Assembly sought to diminish.

V

The Fight Concentrates Around the Constituent Assembly

This was a maneuver whose object appeared clearly. The defenders of the Constituent Assembly had evidence of what was being prepared. The peasants who waited with impatience the opening of the Constituent Assembly sent delegates to Petrograd to find out the cause of the delay of the convocation. These delegates betook themselves to the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Peasants' Delegates (11 Kirillovskaia Street), and to the Socialist-Revolutionist fraction of the members of the Constituante (2 Bolotnai Street). This last fraction worked actively at its proper organization. A bureau of organization was elected, commissions charged to elaborate projects of law for the Constituante. The fraction issued bulletins explaining to the population the program which the Socialist-Revolutionists were going to defend at the Constituante. Active relations were undertaken with the provinces. At the same time the members of the fraction, among whom were many peasants and workmen, followed up an active agitation in the workshops and factories of Petrograd, and among the soldiers of the Preobrajenski Regiment and some others. The members of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Peasants' Delegates worked in concert with them. It was precisely the opinion of the peasants and of the workmen which had most importance in the fight against the Bolsheviki. They, the true representatives of the people, were listened to everywhere; people were obliged to reckon with them.

It was under these conditions that the Democratic Conference met. Called by the Provisional Government, it comprised representatives of the Soviets, of parties, of organizations of the army, peasant organizations, co-operatives, zemstvos, agricultural committees, etc. Its object was to solve the question of power until the meeting of the Constituent Assembly.

At this conference the Bolsheviki formed only a small minority; but they acted as masters of the situation, calling, in a provocative manner, all those who were not in accord with them, "Kornilovist, counter-revolutionaries, traitors!" Because of this attitude the conference, which ought to have had the character of an assembly deciding affairs of state, took on the character of a boisterous meeting, which lasted several days of unending twaddle. What the Bolsheviki wanted was a verbal victory—to have shouted more loudly than their opponents. The same speeches were repeated every day. Some upheld a power exclusively Socialist, others—the majority composed of delegates from different corners of the country—sanctioned an agreement with all the democratic elements.

The provincial delegates, having come with a view to serious work, returned to their homes, carrying with them a painful impression of lost opportunities, of useless debates.

There remained but a few weeks before the convocation of the Constituent Assembly. Those who voted against a government exclusively Socialist did not think that, under the troublesome conditions of the time, they could expose the country to the risk of a dispersion of strength; they feared the possible isolation of the government in face of certain elements whose help could not be relied on. But they did not take into account a fact which had resulted from the Kornilovist insurrection: the natural distrust of the working masses in presence of all the non-Socialists, of those who—not being in immediate contact with them—placed themselves, were it ever so little, more on the right.

The Democratic conference resulted in the formation of a Pre-Parliament. There the relations, between the forces in presence of each other, were about the same. Besides the Bolsheviki soon abandoned the Pre-Parliament, for they were already preparing their insurrection which curtailed the dissolution of that institution.

"We are on the eve of a Bolshevik insurrection"—such was, at this time, the opinion of all those who took part in political life. "We are rushing to it with dizzy rapidity. The catastrophe is inevitable." But what is very characteristic is this, that, while preparing their insurrection, the Bolsheviki, in their press, did not hesitate to treat as liars and calumniators all those who spoke of the danger of this insurrection, and that on the eve of a conquest of power (with arms ready) premeditated and well prepared in advance.

* * * * *

During the whole period that preceded the Bolshevik insurrection a great creative work was being carried on in the country in spite of the undesirable phenomena of which we have spoken above.

1. With great difficulty there were established organs of a local, autonomous administration, volost and district zemstvos, which were to furnish a basis of organization to the government zemstvos. The zemstvo of former times was made up of only class representatives; the elections to the new zemstvos were effected by universal suffrage, equal, direct, and secret. These elections were a kind of schooling for the population, showing it the practical significance of universal suffrage, and preparing it for the elections to the Constituent Assembly. At the same time they laid the foundation of a local autonomous administration.

2. Preparations for the election to the Constituent Assembly were made; an agitation, an intense propaganda followed; preparations of a technical order were made. This was a difficult task because of the great number of electors, the dispersion of the population, the great number of illiterate, etc. Everywhere special courts had been established, in view of the elections, to train agitators and instructors, who afterward were sent in great numbers into the country.

3. At the same time the ground was hurriedly prepared for the law concerning the socialization of the soil. The abandonment of his post by Tchernov, Minister of Agriculture, did not stop this work. The principal agricultural committee and the Minister of Agriculture, directed by Rakitnikov and Vikhiliaev, hastened to finish this work before the convocation of the Constituent Assembly. The Revolutionary Socialist party decided to keep for itself the post of Minister of Agriculture; for the position they named S. Maslov, who had to exact from the government an immediate vote on the law concerning the socialization of the soil. The study of this law in the Council of Ministers was finished. Nothing more remained to be done but to adopt and promulgate it. Because of the excitement of the people in the country, it was decided to do this at once, without waiting for the Constituent Assembly. Finally, to better realize the conditions of the time, it must be added that the whole country awaited anxiously the elections to the Constituent Assembly. All believed that this was going to settle the life of Russia.

VI

The Bolshevist Insurrection

It was under these conditions that the Bolshevist coup d'etat happened. In the capitals as well as in the provinces, it was accomplished by armed force; at Petrograd, with the help of the sailors of the Baltic fleet, of the soldiers of the Preobrajenski, Semenovski, and other regiments, in other towns with the aid of the local garrisons. Here, for example, is how the Bolshevist coup d'etat took place at Saratov. I was a witness to these facts myself. Saratov is a big university and intellectual center, possessing a great number of schools, libraries, and divers associations designed to elevate the intellectual standard of the population. The zemstvo of Saratov was one of the best in Russia. The peasant population of this province, among whom the Revolutionary Socialist propaganda was carried on for several years by the Revolutionary Socialist Party, is wide awake and well organized. The municipality and the agricultural committees were composed of Socialists. The population was actively preparing for the elections to the Constituent Assembly; the people discussed the list of candidates, studied the candidates' biographies, as well as the programs of the different parties.

On the night of October 28th, by reason of an order that had come from Petrograd, the Bolshevik coup d'etat broke out at Saratov. The following forces were its instruments: the garrison which was a stranger to the masses of the population, a weak party of workers, and, in the capacity of leaders, some Intellectuals who, up to that time, had played no role in the public life of the town.

It was indeed a military coup d'etat. The city hall, where sat the Socialists, who were elected by equal, direct, and secret universal suffrage, was surrounded by the soldiers; machine-guns were placed in front and the bombardment began. This lasted a whole night; some were wounded, some killed. The municipal judges were arrested. Soon after a Manifesto solemnly announced to the population that the "enemies of the people," the "counter-revolutionaries," were overthrown; that the power at Saratov was going to pass into the hands of the Soviet (Bolshevist) of the Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates.

The population was perplexed; the people thought that they had sent to the Town Hall Socialists, men of their choice. Now these men were declared "enemies of the people," were shot down or arrested by other Socialists. What did all this mean? And the inhabitant of Saratov felt a fear stealing into his soul at the sight of this violence; he began to doubt the value of the Socialist idea in general. The faith of former times gave place to doubt, disappointment, and discouragement. The coup d'etat was followed by divers other manifestations of Bolshevist activity—arrests, searches, confiscation of newspapers, ban on meetings. Bands of soldiers looted the country houses in the suburbs of the city; a school for the children of the people and the buildings of the children's holiday settlement were also pillaged. Bands of soldiers were forthwith sent into the country to cause trouble there.

The sensible part of the population of Saratov severely condemned these acts in a series of Manifestos signed by the Printers' Union, the mill workers, the City Employees' Union, Postal and Telegraph Employees, students' organizations, and many other democratic associations and organizations.

The peasants received the coup d'etat with distinct hostility. Meetings and reunions were soon organized in the villages. Resolutions were voted censuring the coup d'etat of violence, deciding to organize to resist the Bolsheviki, and demanding the removal of the Bolshevist soldier members from the rural communes. The bands of soldiers, who were sent into the country, used not only persuasion, but also violence, trying to force the peasants to give their votes for the Bolshevik candidates at the time of the elections to the Constituent Assembly; they tore up the bulletins of the Socialist-Revolutionists, overturned the ballot-boxes, etc.

But the Bolshevik soldiers were not able to disturb the confidence of the peasants in the Constituent Assembly, and in the Revolutionary Socialist party, whose program they had long since adopted, and whose leaders and ways of acting they knew, the inhabitants of the country proved themselves in all that concerned the elections wide awake to the highest degree. There were hardly any abstentions, 90 per cent. of the population took part in the voting. The day of the voting was kept as a solemn feast; the priest said mass; the peasants dressed in their Sunday clothes; they believed that the Constituent Assembly would give them order, laws, the land. In the government of Saratov, out of fourteen deputies elected, there were twelve Socialist-Revolutionists; there were others (such as the government of Pensa, for example) that elected only Socialist-Revolutionists. The Bolsheviki had the majority only in Petrograd and Moscow and in certain units of the army. The elections to the Constituent Assembly were a decisive victory for the Revolutionary Socialist party.

Such was the response of Russia to the Bolshevik coup d'etat. To violence and conquest of power by force of arms, the population answered by the elections to the Constituent Assembly; the people sent to this assembly, not the Bolsheviki, but, by an overwhelming majority, Socialist-Revolutionists.

VII

The Fight Against the Bolsheviki

But the final result of the elections was not established forthwith. In many places the elections had to be postponed. The Bolshevik coup d'etat had disorganized life, had upset postal and telegraphic communications, and had even destroyed, in certain localities, the electoral mechanism itself by the arrest of the active workers. The elections which began in the middle of November were not concluded till toward the month of January.

In the mean time, in the country a fierce battle was raging against the Bolsheviki. It was not, on the part of their adversaries, a fight for power. If the Socialist-Revolutionists had wished they could have seized the power; to do that they had only to follow the example of those who were called "the Revolutionary Socialists of the Left." Not only did they not follow their example, but they also excluded them from their midst. A short time after the Bolshevik insurrection, when the part taken in this insurrection by certain Revolutionary Socialists of the Left was found out, the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Socialist party voted to exclude them from the party for having violated the party discipline and having adopted tactics contrary to its principles. This exclusion was confirmed afterward by the Fourth Congress of the party, which took place in December, 1917.

Soon after the coup d'etat of October the question was among all parties and all organizations: "What is to be done? How will the situation be remedied?" The remedy included three points. First, creation of a power composed of the representatives of all Socialist organizations, with the "Populist-Socialists" on the extreme right, and with the express condition that the principal actors in the Bolshevik coup d'etat would not have part in the Ministry. Second, immediate establishment of the democratic liberties, which were trampled under foot by the Bolsheviki, without which any form of Socialism is inconceivable. Third, convocation without delay of the Constituent Assembly.

Such were the conditions proposed to the Bolsheviki in the name of several Socialist parties (the Revolutionary Socialist party, the Mensheviki, the Populist-Socialists, etc.), and of several democratic organizations (Railroad Workers' Union, Postal and Telegraphic Employees' Union, etc.). The Bolsheviki, at this time, were not sure of being able to hold their position; certain Commissaries of the People, soon after they were installed in power, handed in their resignation, being terrified by the torrents of blood that were shed at Moscow and by the cruelties which accompanied the coup d'etat. The Bolsheviki pretended to accept the pourparlers, but kept them dragging along so as to gain time. In the mean time they tried to strengthen themselves in the provinces, where they gained victories such as that of Saratov; they actively rushed the pourparlers for peace; they had to do it at all cost, even if, in doing it, they had to accept the assistance of the traitor and spy, by name Schneur, for they had promised peace to the soldiers.

For this it sufficed them to have gained some victories in the provinces, and that the Germans accepted the proposition of pourparlers of peace ("the German generals came to meet us in gala attire, wearing their ribbons and decorations," with triumph announced in their appeal to the Russian people the representatives of this "Socialist" government Schneur & Co.), for this the Bolsheviki henceforth refused every compromise and all conference with the other parties. For the other parties—those who did not recognize the Bolshevik coup d'etat and did not approve of the violence that was perpetrated—there was only one alternative, the fight.

It was the Revolutionary Socialist party and the National Soviet of Peasants' Delegates that had to bear the brunt of this fight, which was carried on under extremely difficult conditions. All the non-Bolshevik newspapers were confiscated or prosecuted and deprived of every means of reaching the provinces; their editors' offices and printing establishments were looted. After the creation of the "Revolutionary Tribunal," the authors of articles that were not pleasing to the Bolsheviki, as well as the directors of the newspapers, were brought to judgment and condemned to make amends or go to prison, etc.

The premises of numerous organizations were being constantly pillaged; the Red Guard came there to search, destroying different documents; frequently objects which were found on the premises disappeared. Thus were looted the premises of the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Socialist party (27 Galernaia Street), and, several times, the offices of the paper Dielo Narvda (22 Litcinaia Street), as well as the office of the "League for the Defense of the Constituent Assembly," the premises of the committees of divers sections of the Revolutionary Socialist party, the office of the paper Volia Naroda, etc.

Leaders of the different parties were arrested. The arrest of the whole Central Committee of the Revolutionary Socialist party was to be carried out as well as the arrest of all the Socialist-Revolutionists, and of all the Mensheviki in sight. The Bolshevist press became infuriated, exclaiming against the "counter-revolution," against their "complicity" with Kornilov and Kalodine.

All those who did not adhere to the Bolsheviki were indignant at the sight of the crimes committed, and wished to defend the Constituent Assembly. Knowingly, and in a premeditated manner, the Bolshevist press excited the soldiers and the workmen against all other parties. And then when the unthinking masses, drunk with flattery and hatred, committed acts of lynching, the Bolshevist leaders expressed sham regrets! Thus it was after the death of Doukhonine, who was cut to pieces by the sailors; and thus it was after the dastardly assassination of the Cadets, Shingariev and Kokochkine, after the shootings en masse and the drowning of the officers.

It was under these conditions that the fight was carried on; and the brunt of it, as I have already stated, was sustained by the Revolutionary Socialist party and the National Soviet of Peasants' Delegates, and it was against these two that the Bolsheviki were particularly infuriated. "Now it is not the Cadets who are dangerous to us," said they, "but the Socialist-Revolutionists—these traitors, these enemies of the people." The most sacred names of the Revolution were publicly trampled under foot by them. Their cynicism went so far as to accuse Breshkovskaya, "the Grandmother of the Russian Revolution," of having sold out to the Americans. Personally I had the opportunity to hear a Bolshevist orator, a member of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates, express this infamous calumny at a meeting organized by the Preobrajenski Regiment. The Bolsheviki tried, by every means, to crush the party, to reduce it to a clandestine existence. But the Central Committee declared that it would continue to fight against violence—and that in an open manner; it continued to issue a daily paper, only changing its title, as in the time of Czarism, and thus continued its propaganda in the factories, and helped to form public opinion, etc.

At the Fourth Congress of the party, which took place in December, the delegates from the provinces, where the despotism of the Bolsheviki was particularly violent, raised the question of introducing terrorist methods in the fight against the Bolsheviki. "From the time that the party is placed in a fight under conditions which differ nothing from those of Czarism, ancient methods are to be resumed; violence must be opposed to violence," they said. But the Congress spurned this means; the Revolutionary Socialist party did not adopt the methods of terrorism; it could not do it, because the Bolsheviki were, after all, followed by the masses—unthinking, it is true, but the masses, nevertheless. It is by educating them, and not by the use of violence, that they are to be fought against. Terrorist acts could bring nothing but a bloody suppression.

VIII

The Second Peasant Congress

In the space of a month a great amount of work was accomplished. A breach was made in the general misunderstanding. Moral help was assured to the Constituent Assembly on the part of the workmen and part of the soldiers of Petrograd. There was no longer any confidence placed in the Bolsheviki. Besides, the agitation was not the only cause of this change. The workers soon came to understand that the Bolshevik tactics could only irritate and disgust the great mass of the population, that the Bolsheviki were not the representatives of the workers, that their promises of land, of peace, and other earthly goods were only a snare. The industrial production diminished more and more; numerous factories and shops closed their doors and thousands of workmen found themselves on the streets. The population of Petrograd, which, at first, received a quarter of a pound of bread per day (a black bread made with straw), had now but one-eighth of a pound, while in the time of Kerensky the ration was half a pound. The other products (oatmeal, butter, eggs, milk) were entirely lacking or cost extremely high prices. One ruble fifty copecks for a pound of potatoes, six rubles a pound of meat, etc. The transportation of products to Petrograd had almost ceased. The city was on the eve of famine.

The workers were irritated by the violence and the arbitrary manner of the Bolsheviki, and by the exploits of the Red Guard, well paid, enjoying all the privileges, well nourished, well clothed, and well shod in the midst of a Petrograd starving and in rags.

Discontent manifested itself also among the soldiers of the Preobrajenski and Litovsky regiments, and others. In this manner in the day of the meeting of the Constituent Assembly they were no longer very numerous. What loud cries, nevertheless, they had sent forth lately when Kerensky wished to send the Preobrajenski and Seminovski regiments from Petrograd! "What? Send the revolutionary regiments from Petrograd? To make easier the surrender of the capital to the counter-revolution?" The soldiers of the Preobrajenski Regiment organized in their barracks frequent meetings, where the acts of the Bolsheviki were sharply criticized; they started a paper, The Soldiers' Cloak, which was confiscated.

On the other hand, here is one of the resolutions voted by the workers of the Putilov factory:

The Constituent Assembly is the only organ expressing the will of the entire people. It alone is able to reconstitute the unity of the country.

The majority of the deputies to the Constituent Assembly who had for some time been elected had arrived in Petrograd, and the Bolsheviki always retarded the opening. The Socialist-Revolutionist fraction started conferences with the other fractions on the necessity for fixing a day for the opening of the Constituante, without waiting the good pleasure of the Commissaries of the People. They chose the date, December 27th, but the opening could not take place on that day, the Ukrainian fraction having suddenly abandoned the majority to join themselves to the Bolsheviki and the Revolutionary Socialists of the Left. Finally, the government fixed the opening of the Constituent Assembly for the 5th (18th) of January.

Here is a document which relates this fight for the date of the opening of the Constituante:

Bulletin of Members of the Constituent Assembly Belonging to the Socialist-Revolutionist Fraction. No. 5, Dec. 31, 1917.

To All the Citizens:

The Socialist-Revolutionist fraction of the Constituent Assembly addresses the whole people the present expose of the reasons for which the Constituent Assembly has not been opened until this day: it warns them, at the same time, of the danger which threatens the sovereign rights of the people.

Let it be thus placed in clear daylight, the true character of those who, under pretext of following the well-being of the workers, forge new chains for liberated Russia, those who attempt to assassinate the Constituent Assembly, which alone is able to save Russia from the foreign yoke and from the despotism which has been born within.

Let all the citizens know that the hour is near when they must be ready to rise like one man for the defense of their liberty and their Constituent Assembly.

For, citizens, your salvation is solely in your own hands.

Citizens! you know that on the day assigned for the opening of the Constituent Assembly, November 28th, all the Socialist-Revolutionist deputies who were elected had come to Petrograd. You know that neither violence of a usurping power nor arrests of our comrades, by force of arms which were opposed to us at the Taurida Palace, could prevent us from assembling and fulfilling our duty.

But the civil war which has spread throughout the country retarded the election to the Constituent Assembly and the number of deputies elected was insufficient.

It was necessary to postpone the opening of the Constituent Assembly.

Our fraction utilized this forced delay by an intensive preparatory work. We elaborated, in several commissions, projects of law concerning all the fundamental questions that the Constituante would have to solve. We adopted the project of our fundamental law on the question of the land; we elaborated the measures which the Constituante would have to take from the very first day in order to arrive at a truly democratic peace, so necessary to our country; we discussed the principles which should direct the friendly dwelling together of all the nationalities which people Russia and assure each people a national point of view, the free disposition of itself, thus putting an end to the fratricidal war.

Our fraction would have been all ready for the day of the opening of the Constituante, in order to commence, from the first, a creative work and give to the impoverished country peace, bread, land, and liberty.

At the same time, we did our utmost to accelerate the arrival of the deputies and the opening of the Assembly.

During this time events became more and more menacing every day, the Bolshevik power was more rapidly leading our country to its fall. From before the time when the Germans had presented their conditions of peace the Bolsheviki had destroyed the army, suppressed its provisioning, and stripped the front, while at the same time by civil war and the looting of the savings of the people they achieved the economic ruin of the country. Actually, they recognized themselves that the German conditions were unacceptable and invited the reconstruction of the army. In spite of this, these criminals do not retire; they will achieve their criminal work.

Russia suffers in the midst of famine, of civil war, and enemy invasion which threatens to reach even the heart of the country.

No delay is permissible.

Our fraction fixed on the 27th of December the last delay for the opening of the Constituante; on this day more than half of the deputies could have arrived in Petrograd. We entered into conference with the other fractions. The Ukrainians, some other national fractions, and the Menshevik Social Democrats adhered to our resolution. The Revolutionary Socialists of the Left hypocritically declared themselves partizans of an early opening of the Constituante. But behold, the Council of the so-called "Commissaries of the People" fixed the opening for the 5th of January. At the same time they called for the 8th of January a Congress of the Soviets of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates, thus hoping to be able to trick and to cover with the name of this Congress their criminal acts. The object of this postponement is clear; they did not even hide it and threatened to dissolve the Constituent Assembly in case that it did not submit to the Bolshevik Congress of Soviets. The same threat was repeated by those who are called Socialist-Revolutionists of the Left.

The delegation of the Ukrainian Revolutionary Socialists abandoned us also and submitted to the order for the convocation on January 5th, considering that the fight of the Bolshevik power against the Constituent Assembly is an internal question, which interests only Greater Russia.

Citizens! We shall be there, too, on January 5th, so that the least particle of responsibility for the sabotage of the Constituent Assembly may not fall upon us.

But we do not think that we can suspend our activity with regard to the speediest possible opening of the Constituent Assembly.

We address an energetic appeal to all the deputies; in the name of the fatherland, in the name of the Revolution, in the name of the duty which devolves upon you by reason of your election, come, all, to Petrograd! On the 1st of January all the deputies present will decide on the day for the opening of the Constituent Assembly.

We appeal to you, citizens! Remind your elected representatives of their duty.

And remember that your salvation is solely in your own hands, a mortal danger threatens the Constituent Assembly; be all ready to rise in its defense!

THE REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALIST FRACTION OF THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY.

On the 3d of January the League for the Defense of the Constituent Assembly held a meeting at which were present 210 delegates, representing the Socialist parties as well as various democratic organizations and many factories—that of Putilov, that of Oboukhov, and still others from the outskirts of Narva, from the districts of Viborg, Spassky, and Petrogradsky, from the Isle Vassily. It was decided to organize for January 5th a peaceful display in honor of the opening of the Constituent Assembly.

The Bolsheviki answered this by furious articles in the Pravda, urging the people not to spare the counter-revolutionaries, these bourgeoisie who intend, by means of their Constituante, to combat the revolutionary people. They advised the people of Petrograd not to go out on the streets that day. "We shall act without reserve," they added.

Sailors were called from Cronstadt; cruisers and torpedo-boats came. An order was issued to the sailors and to the Red Guards who patrolled all the works of the Taurida, to make use of their arms if any one attempted to enter the palace. For that day unlimited powers were accorded to the military authorities. At the same time an assembly of the representatives of the garrison at Petrograd, fixed for that day, was proscribed, and the newspaper, The Soldiers' Cloak, was suppressed.

A Congress of Soviets was called for the 8th of January. They prepared the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly and they wanted to place the Congress before the accomplished fact. The Executive Committee of the Soviet of Peasants' Delegates, and the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates chosen at the first elections answered by the two following appeals:

Peasant Comrades!

The Bolsheviki have fixed the 5th of January for the opening of the Constituent Assembly; for the 8th of January they call the III Congress of the Soviets of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates, and for the 13th the Peasant Congress.

The peasants are, by design, relegated to the background.

An outrage against the Constituent Assembly is being prepared.

In this historic moment the peasants cannot remain aloof.

The Provisional Executive Committee of the National Soviet of Peasants' Delegates, which goes on duty as a guard to the Constituent Assembly, has decided to call, on the 8th of January, also, the Third National Congress of the Soviets of Peasants' Delegates. The representation remains the same as before. Send your delegates at once to Petrograd, Grand Bolotnai, 2A.

The fate of the Constituent Assembly is the fate of Russia, the fate of the Revolution.

All up for the defense of the Constituent Assembly, for the defense of the Revolution—not by word alone, but by acts!

[Signed] The Provisional Executive Committee of the National Soviet of Peasants' Delegates, upholding the principle of the defense of the Constituent Assembly.

APPEAL OF THE CENTRAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE SOVIETS OF WORKMEN'S AND SOLDIERS' DELEGATES, CHOSEN AT THE FIRST ELECTIONS

To all the Soviets of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates, to all the Committees of the Army and of the Navy, to all the organizations associated with the Soviets and Committees, to all the members of the Socialist-Revolutionist and Menshevist Social Democratic fractions who left the Second Congress of Soviets:

Comrades, workmen, and soldiers! Our cry of alarm is addressed to all those to whom the work of the Soviets is dear. Know that a traitorous blow threatens the revolutionary fatherland, the Constituent Assembly, and even the work of the Soviets. Your duty is to prepare yourselves for their defense.

The Central Executive Committee, nominated at the October Congress, calls together for the 8th of January a Congress of Soviets, destined to bungle the Constituent Assembly.

Comrades! The Second Congress of Soviets assembled at the end of October, under conditions particularly unfavorable, at the time that the Bolshevik party, won over by its leaders to a policy of adventure, a plot unbecoming a class organization, executed at Petrograd a coup d'etat which gave it power; at a time when certain groups with the same viewpoint disorganized even the method of convocation of the Second Congress, thus openly aspiring to falsify the results; at this same Congress the regular representatives of the army were lacking (only two armies being represented), and the Soviets of the provinces were very insufficiently represented (only about 120 out of 900). Under these conditions it is but natural that the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets chosen at the first election would not recognize the right of this Congress to decide the politics of the Soviets.

However, in spite of the protestations, and even of the departure of a great number of delegates (those of the Revolutionary Socialist fraction, Mensheviki, and Populist-Socialists), a new Executive Committee of the Soviets was elected. To consider this last as the central director of all the Soviets of the country was absolutely impossible. The delegates who remained in the Congress formed only an assembly of a group with a little fraction of the Revolutionary Socialists of the Left, who had given their adhesion to them. Thus the Central Committee named by their Conference could not be considered except as representatives of these two groups only.

Bringing to the organization of Soviets an unheard-of disorder, establishing by their shameful methods of fighting its domination over the Soviets, some of which were taken by surprise, the others terrorized and broken in their personnel, deceiving the working class and the army by its short-sighted policy of adventure, the new Executive Committee during the two months that have since passed has attempted to subject all the Soviets of Russia to its influence. It succeeded in part in this, in the measure in which the confidence of the groups which constituted it in the policy was not yet exhausted. But a considerable portion of the Soviets, as well as fractions of other Soviets, fractions composed of the most devoted and experienced fighters, continued to follow the only true revolutionary road; to develop the class organization of the working masses, to direct their intellectual and political life, to develop the political and social aspects of the Revolution, to exert, by all the power of the working class organized into Soviets, the necessary pressure to attain the end that it proposed. The questions of peace and of war, that of the organization of production and of food-supply, and that of the fight for the Constituent Assembly are in the first place. The policy of adventure of the groups which seized the power is on the eve of failure. Peace could not be realized by a rupture with the Allies and an entente with the imperialistic orb of the Central Powers. By reason of this failure of the policy of the Commissaires of the People, of the disorganization of production (which, among other things, has had as a result the creation of hundreds of thousands of unemployed), by reason of the civil war kindled in the country and the absence of a power recognized by the whole people, the Central Powers tend to take hold in the most cynical fashion of a whole series of western provinces (Poland, Lithuania, Courland), and to subject the whole country to their complete economic, if not political, domination.

The question of provisioning has taken on an unheard-of acuteness; the gross interference in the functioning of organs already created for this object, and the civil war kindled everywhere throughout the country, have completely demoralized the provisioning of wheat in regions where they had none, the north and the army are found on the eve of famine.

Industry is dying. Hundreds of factories and workshops are stopped. The short-sighted policy of the Commissaries has caused hundreds of workmen to be thrown on the streets and become unemployed. The will of the entire people is threatened with being violated. The usurpers who in October got hold of the power by launching the word of order for a swift convocation of the Constituent Assembly strive hard, now that the elections are over, to retain the power in their hands by arresting the deputies and dissolving the Constituante itself.

All that which the country holds of life, and in the first place all the working class and all the army, ought to rise with arms in their hands to defend the popular power represented by the Constituante, which must bring peace to the people and consolidate by legislative means the revolutionary conquests of the working class.

In bringing this to your knowledge, the Central Committee chosen at the first elections invites you, Comrades, to place yourself immediately in agreement with it.

Considering the Congress of October as incompetent, the Central Committee chosen at the first elections has decided to begin a preparatory work in view of the convocation of a new Congress of the Soviets of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates.

In the near future, while the Commissaires of the People, in the persons of Lenine and Trotzky, are going to fight against the sovereign power of the Constituent Assembly, we shall have to intervene with all our energy in the conflict artificially encited by the adventurers, between that Assembly and the Soviets. It will be our task to aid the Soviets in taking consciousness of their role, in defining their political lines, and in determining their functions and those of the Constituante.

Comrades! The convocation of the Congress for the 8th of January is dictated by the desire to provoke a conflict between the Soviets and the Constituante, and thus botch this last. Anxious for the fate of the country, the Executive Committee chosen at the first elections decides to convoke at Petrograd for the 8th of January an extraordinary assembly of all the Soviets, all the Committees of the Army and the Navy, all the fractions of the Soviets and military committees, all the organizations that cluster around the Soviets and the Committees that are standing upon the ground of the defense of the Constituante. The following are the Orders of the Day:

1. The power of the Constituent Assembly. 2. The fight for the general democratic peace and the re-establishment of the International. 3. The immediate problems of the policy of the Soviets.

Comrades! Assure for this extraordinary assembly of Soviets the most complete representation of all the organizations of workmen and soldiers. Establish at once election centers. We have a fight to uphold.

In the name of the Revolution, all the reason and all the energy ought to be thrown into the balance.

THE CENTRAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF SOVIETS OF WORKMEN'S AND SOLDIERS' DELEGATES CHOSEN AT THE FIRST ELECTIONS.

25 December, 1917.

IX

The Manifestation of January 5th at Petrograd

From eleven o'clock in the morning corteges, composed principally of working-men bearing red flags and placards with inscriptions such as "Proletarians of All Countries, Unite!" "Land and Liberty!" "Long Live the Constituent Assembly!" etc., set out from different parts of the city. The members of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Peasants' Delegates had agreed to meet at the Field, of Mars where a procession coming from the Petrogradsky quarter was due to arrive. It was soon learned that a part of the participants, coming from the Viborg quarter, had been assailed at the Liteiny bridge by gunfire from the Red Guards and were obliged to turn back. But that did not check the other parades. The peasant participants, united with the workers from Petrogradsky quarter, came to the Field of Mars; after having lowered their flags before the tombs of the Revolution of February and sung a funeral hymn to their memory, they installed themselves on Liteinaia Street. New manifestants came to join them and the street was crowded with people. At the corner of Fourstatskaia Street (one of the Streets leading to the Taurida Palace) they found themselves all at once assailed by shots from the Red Guards.

The Red Guard fired without warning, something that never before happened, even in the time of Czarism. The police always began by inviting the participators to disperse. Among the first victims was a member of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Peasants' Delegates, the Siberian peasant, Logvinov. An explosive bullet shot away half of his head (a photograph of his body was taken; it was added to the documents which were transferred to the Commission of Inquiry). Several workmen and students and one militant of the Revolutionary Socialist party, Gorbatchevskaia, were killed at the same time. Other processions of participants on their way to the Taurida Palace were fired into at the same time. On all the streets leading to the palace, groups of Red Guards had been established; they received the order "Not to spare the cartridges." On that day at Petrograd there were one hundred killed and wounded.

It must be noted that when, at a session of the Constituent Assembly, in the Taurida Palace, they learned of this shooting, M. Steinberg, Commissioner of Justice, declared in the corridor that it was a lie, that he himself had visited the streets of Petrograd and had found everywhere that "all was quiet." Exactly as the Ministers of Nicholas Romanov after the suppressions said "Lie. Lie," so cried the Bolsheviki and the Revolutionary Socialists of the Left, in response to the question formally put on the subject of the shooting by a member of the Constituent Assembly.

The following day the Bolshevik organs and those of the Revolutionary Socialists of the Left passed over these facts in silence. This silence they kept also on the 9th of January, the day on which literally all Petrograd assembled at the funeral of the victims. Public indignation, however, obliged them in the end to admit that there had been some small groups of participants and to name a Commission of Inquiry concerning the street disorders which had taken place on January 5th. This Commission was very dilatory in the performance of its duty and it is very doubtful if they ever came to any decision.

Analogous manifestations took place at Moscow, at Saratov and other cities; everywhere they were accompanied by shootings. The number of victims was particularly considerable at Moscow.

X

At the Taurida Palace on the Day of the Opening of the Constituent Assembly

The Taurida Palace on that day presented a strange aspect. At every door, in the corridors, in the halls, everywhere soldiers and sailors and Red Guards armed with guns and hand-grenades, who at every turn demanded your pass. It was no easy matter to get into the palace. Nearly all the places reserved for the public were occupied by the Bolsheviki and their friends. The appearance of the Taurida Palace was not that of a place where the free representatives of a free people were going to assemble.

The Bolsheviki delayed as much as possible the opening of the session. It was only at four o'clock instead of at midday that they deigned to make up their minds. They and the Revolutionary Socialists of the Left occupied seats of the extreme left; then came the Revolutionary Socialists, the Mensheviki, and the other Socialist fractions. The seats on the right remained vacant. The few Cadets that had been chosen preferred not to come. In this manner the Constituent Assembly was composed at this first and last session solely of Socialists. This, however, did not prevent the presence in the corridors and the session hail of a crowd of sailors and Red Guards armed, as if it were a question of an assembly of conspirators, enemies of the Revolution.

From the beginning a fight was started by the election of president. The majority nominated for the office of president Chernov; the Bolsheviki and the Revolutionary Socialists of the Left voted against him. The Bolsheviki did not propose any candidate of their own, and placed before the members the candidacy of a Revolutionary Socialist of the Left, Marie Spiridonova, who was totally incapable of fulfilling this role. Afterward several declarations were read—that of the Bolsheviki, that of the Socialist-Revolutionists (read by Chernov), that of the Mensheviki (read by Tseretelli). The partizans of each fraction greeted the reading of their own declaration with deafening applause (for the audience was one of "comrades" and did not hesitate to take part in the debates); cat-calls and shouts greeted the orators of the opposing fractions. Each word of the declarations of the Socialist-Revolutionists and of the Mensheviki (declarations which every Socialist could sign) was received with a round of hisses, shouts, deafening cries, exclamations of contempt for the Bolsheviki, the sailors, and the soldiers. The speech of Chernov—president and member of a detested party—had above all the honor of such a greeting. As for Tseretelli, he was at first greeted by an inconceivable din, but was able afterward—his speech was so full of profound sense—to capture the attention of the Bolsheviki themselves.

A general impression that was extremely distressing came from this historic session. The attitude of the Bolsheviki was grossly unbecoming and provocative of disdain. It indicated clearly that the dissolution of the Constituante was, for them, already decided. Lenine, who continually kept contemptuous silence, wound up by stretching himself upon his bench and pretending to sleep. Lunotcharsky from his ministerial bench pointed contemptuously with his finger toward the white hair of a veteran of the Revolutionary Socialist party. The sailors leveled the muzzles of their revolvers at the Socialist-Revolutionists. The audience laughed, whistled, and shouted.

The Bolsheviki finally left the Assembly, followed, as might be understood, by their servants, the Revolutionary Socialists of the Left. The fractions which remained voted the law proposed by the Socialist-Revolutionists on the transfer of the lands to common ownership (socialization of the soil). The sailors and Red Guards attempted several times to interrupt the session. At five o'clock in the morning they finally demanded with a loud voice that everybody leave.

"We were obliged to go," said, later, the members of the Constituent Assembly at a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Peasants' Delegates in recounting these tragic moments, "not that we were afraid of being shot; we were prepared for that, and each one of us expected it, but fear of something else which is far worse: for fear of insults and gross violence. We were only a handful; what was that beside those great big fellows full of malice toward the Constituante and of defiance for the 'enemies of the people,' the 'servants of the bourgeoisie,' which we were in their eyes, thanks to the lies and the calumnies of the Bolsheviki? Careful of our dignity, and out of respect for the place where we were, we could not permit ourselves to be cuffed, nor that they throw us out of the Taurida Palace by force—and that is what would have inevitably happened."

It was thus that the Constituent Assembly ended. The Socialist-Revolutionist fraction maintained an attitude of surprising calm and respectful bearing, not allowing itself to be disturbed by any provocation. The correspondents of foreign newspapers congratulated the members and said to them that in this session to which the Bolsheviki had wished to give the character of "any-old-kind-of-a-meeting" all the fractions maintained a truly parliamentary attitude.

The Bolshevik terror became rife. All the newspapers that tried to open the eyes of the people as to what was happening were confiscated. Every attempt to circulate the Dielo Naroda or other newspapers of the opposition was severely punished. The volunteer venders of these papers were arrested, cruelly struck down by rifle butts, and sometimes even shot. The population, indignant, gathered in groups on the streets, but the Red Guards dispersed all assemblages.

XI

The Dissolution of the Third All-Russian Peasants' Congress

This is the course of the events which followed the dissolution of the Constituante. On the 8th of January the members of the Constituante assembled at Bolotnaia; two were arrested; the premises of the fraction were occupied by the Red Guards. On the 9th of January took place the funeral of the victims, in which all Petrograd took part. The Bolsheviki this time did not dare to shoot into the magnificent procession preceded by a long line of coffins. The 10th of January they dispersed the Third All-Russian Congress of Peasants which had placed itself on the side of the Constituent Assembly. The Congress had been at first arranged for the 8th of January (the same day as the Bolshevik Congress of the Soviets), but, because of the events, it was postponed to the 10th. The peasants who had come to this Congress knew perfectly well that they would have a fight to uphold, perhaps even to give their lives. Their neighbors, their co-villagers, wept when they saw them set out, as if it were a question of men condemned to death. That alone suffices to show to what degree were conscious these peasants who had come from all corners of the country to prepare themselves for the defense of the Constituent Assembly.

As soon as the Congress was opened sailors and Red Guards, armed with guns and hand-grenades, broke into the premises (11 Kirillovskaia Street), surrounded the house, poured into the corridors and the session hall, and ordered all persons to leave.

"In whose name do you order us, who are Delegates to the Peasants' Congress of All-Russia, to disperse?" asked the peasants.

"In the name of the Baltic fleet," the soldiers replied.

The peasants refused; cries of protest were raised. One by one the peasant delegates ascended the tribune to stigmatize the Bolsheviki in speeches full of indignation, and to express the hopes that they placed in the Constituent Assembly.

The sailors listened. They had come to disperse a counter-revolutionary Congress, and these speeches troubled them. One sailor, not able to stand it any longer, burst into tears.

"Let me speak!" he shouted to the president. "I hear your speeches, peasant comrades, and I no longer understand anything.... What is going on? We are peasants, and you, too, are peasants. But we are of this side, and you are of the other.... Why? Who has separated us? For we are brothers.... But it is as if a barrier had been placed between us." He wept and, seizing his revolver, he exclaimed, "No, I would rather kill myself!"

This session of the Congress presented a strange spectacle, disturbed by men who confessed that they did not know why they were there; the peasants sang revolutionary songs; the sailors, armed with guns and grenades, joined them. Then the peasants knelt down to sing a funeral hymn to the memory of Logvinov, whose coffin was even yesterday within the room. The soldiers, lowering their guns, knelt down also.

The Bolshevik authorities became excited; they did not expect such a turn to events. "Enough said," declared the chief; "we have come not to speak, but to act. If they do not want to go to Smolny, let them get out of here." And they set themselves to the task.

In groups of five the peasants were conducted down-stairs, trampled on, and, on their refusal to go to Smolny, pushed out of doors during the night in the midst of the enormous city of which they knew nothing.

Members of the Executive Committee were arrested, the premises occupied by sailors and Red Guards, the objects found therein stolen.

The peasants found shelter in the homes of the inhabitants of Petrograd, who, indignant, offered them hospitality; a certain number were lodged in the barracks of the Preobrajenski Regiment. The sailors, who but a few minutes before had sung a funeral hymn to Logvinov, and wept when they saw that they understood nothing, now became the docile executors of the orders of the Bolsheviki. And when they were asked, "Why do you do this?" they answered as in the time, still recent, of Czarism: "It is the order. No need to talk."

It was thus there was manifested the habit of servile obedience, of arbitrary power and violence, which had been taking root for several centuries; under a thin veneer of revolution one finds the servile and violent man of yesterday.

In the midst of these exceptional circumstances the peasants gave proof of that obstinacy and energy in the pursuit of their rights for which they are noted. Thrown out in the middle of the night, robbed, insulted, they decided, nevertheless, to continue their Congress. "How, otherwise, can we go home?" said they. "We must come to an understanding as to what is to be done."

The members of the Executive Committee who were still free succeeded in finding new premises (let it be noted that among others the workmen of the big Oboukhovsky factory offered them hospitality), and during three days the peasants could assemble secretly by hiding themselves from the eyes of the Red Guard, and the spies in various quarters of Petrograd, until such time as the decisions were given on all great questions. A proces-verbal was prepared concerning all that had taken place on Kirillovskaia Street. A declaration was made protesting against the acts of the Bolshevik government. This declaration was to be read at the Taurida Palace when the Soviets were in congress by delegates designated for that purpose. The Bolsheviki, however, would not permit the delegates to enter the Taurida Palace.

Here are the texts of the declaration and of the proces-verbal:

At the Third National Congress of Soviets of Peasants' Delegates grouped around the principle of the defense of the Constituent Assembly, this declaration was sent to the Congress of Workmen's, Soldiers' and Peasants' Delegates called together by the Bolshevist government at the Taurida Palace:

At the Second National Peasants' Congress the 359 delegates who had come together for the defense of the Constituent Assembly continued the work of the Congress and elected a provisional Executive Committee, independently of the 354 delegates who had opposed the power of the Constituent Assembly and adhered to the Bolsheviki.

We, peasant delegates, having come to Petrograd, more than 300 in number, to participate in a Congress called by the Provisional Executive Committee, which is that of those of the Soviets which acknowledge the principle of the defense of the Constituent Assembly, declare to our electors, to the millions of the peasant population, and to the whole country, that the actual government which is called "The Government of the Peasants and Workmen" has established in their integrity the violence, the arbitrariness, and all the horrors of the autocratic regime which was overthrown by the great Revolution of February. All the liberties attained by that Revolution and won by innumerable sacrifices during several generations are scouted and trodden under foot. Liberty of opinion does not exist; men who under the government of the Czar had paid by years of prison and exile for their devotedness to the revolutionary cause are now again thrown into the dungeons of fortresses without any accusation whatever, of anything of which they might be guilty, being made to them. Again spies and informers are in action. Again capital punishment is re-established in its most horrible forms; shooting on the streets and assassinations without judgment or examination. Peaceful processions, on their way to salute the Constituent Assembly, are greeted by a fusillade of shots upon the orders of the autocrats of Smolny. The liberty of the press does not exist; the papers which displease the Bolsheviki are suppressed, their printing plants and offices looted, their editors arrested.

The organizations which, during the preceding months, were established with great difficulty—zemstvos, municipalities, agricultural and food committees—are foolishly destroyed in an excess of savage fanaticism.

The Bolsheviki even try to kill the supreme representation, the only one legitimately established, of the popular will—the Constituent Assembly.

To justify this violence and this tyranny they try to allege the well-being of the people, but we, peasant workers, we see well that their policy will only tighten the cord around the workers' necks, while the possibility of a democratic peace becomes more remote every day; matters have come to the point where the Bolsheviki proclaim a further mobilization—of salaried volunteers, it is true—to renew the hostilities. They strive to represent the war with Ukraine and with the Cossacks under the aspect of a war of classes; it is not, however, the bourgeoisie, but the representatives of the working classes who are killed on one side and on the other. They promised the Socialist regime, and they have only destroyed the production of the factories so as to leave the population without product and throw the workers into an army of unemployed; the horrible specter of famine occupies the void left by the broken organizations of food-supply; millions of the money of the people are squandered in maintaining a Red Guard—or sent to Germany to keep up the agitation there, while the wives and the widows of our soldiers no longer receive an allowance, there being no money in the Treasury, and are obliged to live on charity.

The Russian country is threatened with ruin. Death knocks at the doors of the hovels of the workmen.

By what forces have the Bolsheviki thus killed our country? Twelve days before the organization of the autonomous administration was achieved and the elections to the Constituent Assembly begun, at the time when there had been organized all the autonomous administrations of volosts, districts, governments, and cities, chosen by equal, direct, and secret universal suffrage, thus assuring the realization of the will of the people and justifying the confidence of the population—even then they seized the power and established a regime which subjects all the institutions of the country to the unlicensed power of the Commissaries of the People. And these Commissaries rely upon the Soviets, which were chosen at elections that were carried out according to rank, with open balloting and inequality of vote, for therein the peasants count only as many representatives as the workmen of the cities, although in Russia their number is sixty times greater.

Absence of control permits every abuse of power; absence of secret voting permits that into these Soviets at these suspicious elections some enter who are attracted by the political role of these institutions; the defeat of inequality in the suffrage restrains the expression of the will of the peasants, and, accordingly, these cannot have confidence in this system of government. The tyranny that presided at these elections was such that the Bolsheviki themselves pay no attention to the results, and declare that the Soviets that are opposed to themselves are bourgeoisie and capitalists. We, representing the peasant workers, must declare in the name of our constituents: if anything can save Russia, it can only be the re-establishment of the organs of local autonomous administration, chosen by equal, direct, and secret universal suffrage and the resumption, without delay, of the work of the Constituent Assembly.

The Constituent Assembly alone can express the exact will of the working-people, for the system of election which governs it includes every measure of precaution against violence, corruption, and other abuses, and assures the election of deputies chosen by the majority; now, in the country, the majority is composed of the working class.

Millions of peasants delegated us to defend the Constituante, but this was dissolved as soon as it began to work for the good of the people. The work of the Constituante was interrupted at the time that it was discussing the law concerning land, when a new agricultural regime was being elaborated for the country. For this reason, and for this alone, the Constituante adopted only the first articles of this law, articles which established the definite transfer of all the land to the hands of the workers, without any ransom. The other articles of this law, which concerned the order of the apportionment of lots, its forms, its methods of possession, etc., could not be adopted, although they were completely elaborated in the commission and nothing remained but to sanction them.

We, peasants assembled in Congress, we, too, have been the object of violence and outrages, unheard of even under the Czarist regime. Red Guards and sailors, armed, invaded our premises. We were searched in the rudest manner. Our goods and the provisions which we had brought from home were stolen. Several of our comrade-delegates and all the members of the Committee were arrested and taken to Peter and Paul Fortress. We ourselves were, late at night, put out of doors in a city which we did not know, deprived of shelter under which to sleep. All that, to oblige us either to go to Smolny, where the Bolshevist government called another Congress, or to return to our homes without having attained any result. But violence could not stop us; secretly, as in the time of Czarist autocracy, we found a place to assemble and to continue our work.

In making known these facts to the country and the numerous millions of the peasant population, we call upon them to stigmatize the revolting policy practised by the Bolshevik government with regard to all those who are not in accord with it. Returned to our villages, dispersed in every corner of immense Russia, we shall use all our powers to make known to the mass of peasants and to the entire country the truth concerning this government of violence; to make known in every corner of the fatherland that the actual government, which has the hardihood to call itself "Government of the Workmen and Peasants," in reality shoots down workmen and peasants and shamelessly scoffs at the country. We shall use all our strength to induce the population of peasant workers to demand an account from this government of violence, as well as from their prodigal children, their sons and brothers, who in the army and navy give aid to these autocrats in the commission of violence.

In the name of millions of peasants, by whom we were delegated, we demand that they no longer obstruct the work of the Constituent Assembly. We were not allowed to finish the work for which we had come; at home we shall continue this work. We shall employ all our strength to effect, as soon as possible, the convocation of a new National Congress of Peasants' Delegates united on the principle of the defense of the Constituante, and that in a place where we need not fear a new dissolution. Lately we fought against autocracy and Czarist violence; we shall fight with no less energy against the new autocrats who practise violence, whoever they may be, and whatever may be the shibboleths by which they cover their criminal acts. We shall fight for the Constituent Assembly, because it is in that alone that we see the salvation of our country, that of the Revolution, and that of Land and Liberty.

Charged by our constituents to defend the Constituent Assembly, we cannot participate in a Congress called by those who have dissolved it; who have profaned the idea which to the people is something sacred; who have shot down the defenders of true democracy; who have shed the sacred blood of our Logvinov, member of the Executive Committee of peasant deputies, who on the 5th of January was killed by an explosive bullet during a peaceful manifestation, bearing the flag "Land and Liberty." Comrade-peasants who have come by chance to this Congress declare to these violators that the only Executive Committee that upholds the idea of the defense of the Constituante forms a center around which are grouped all the peasant workers. We call the entire mass of peasants to the work that is common to all—the fight for "Land and Liberty," for the true government of the people. "We all come from the people, children of the same family of workers," and we all have to follow a route that leads to happiness and liberty. Now this road, which leads to "Land and Liberty," goes through the Constituent Assembly alone. The Constituent Assembly was dissolved, but it was chosen by the entire people, and it ought to live.

Long live the Constituent Assembly! Down with violence and tyranny! All power to the people, through the agency of the Constituent Assembly!

[Signed] The Third National Congress of Soviets of Peasant Delegates, United on the Principle of the Defense of the Constituent Assembly.

PROCES-VERBAL OF THE SESSION OF THE III NATIONAL CONGRESS OF SOVIETS OF PEASANTS' DELEGATES, UNITED ON THE PRINCIPLE OF THE DEFENSE OF THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY

The Provisional Executive Committee of Soviets of Peasants' Delegates nominated by the fraction of the Second National Congress of these Soviets, which, to the number of 359 delegates, was organized on the basis of the principle of the defense of the Constituent Assembly, had addressed to all the Soviets an appeal inviting those who believe in the defense of the Constituante to send representatives to the Third Congress, fixed by the Committee for the 8th of January, and destined to offset the Congress called for the 12th of January by the Committee of that fraction of the Congress which, to the number of 314 votes, took sides against the power of the Constituent Assembly and joined the Bolsheviki.

The Peasants' Congress, meeting by districts and by governments, as well as the local executive committees of Soviets which have chosen us, knew well to which Congress they delegated us and had given us precise mandates, expressing their confidence in the Constituent Assembly and their blame of the Soviets and the Bolshevik organs that impede the work of the Constituante and call the peasants to the Congress of January 12th. These congresses and these committees have charged us to use all our efforts to defend the Constituent Assembly, binding themselves, on their part, in case our efforts were insufficient, to rise in a body for its defense.

By reason of the disorganization of postal and telegraphic communications, and because in different localities the calls of the Committee were held up by the Bolshevist organizations, the instructions concerning the Congress fixed for the 8th of January were not received in many provinces until after considerable delay.

Some minutes before the opening of the Conference, which was to take place on the premises of the Committee (11 Kirillovskaia Street), where the delegates on hand had lodged, there arrived a detachment of sailors and Red Guards armed with guns and bombs, who surrounded the house, guarding all the entrances, and occupied all the apartments. The Executive Committee, performing its duty toward the peasant workers, which duty was to hold their flag with a firm hand, not fearing any violence, and not allowing themselves to be intimidated by the bayonets and the bombs of the enemies of the peasant workers, opened the session at the hour indicated.

The Bolshevist pretorians, however, violating the freedom of assembly, broke into the hall and surrounded the office and members of the Conference with bayonets drawn. Their leader, Kornilov, staff-commandant of the Red Guards of the Rojdestvensky quarter, made a speech to the delegates, in which he said that they were to go to the Smolny Institute, to the Bolshevist Congress, assuring them that they had come to this Congress by mistake; at the end he read a document ordering him to make a search of the premises, to confiscate all papers, and to arrest all who would offer resistance. In reply to this speech the delegates and the members of the Executive Committee spoke in turn; they stigmatized vehemently the criminal policy of the Bolshevist government, which dissolved the Constituent Assembly, the true representation of the popular will, without having given it the time to register a vote on the agricultural law; which shot down workers participating in peaceful negotiations; which deprived the people of the right of assembly to discuss their needs; which destroyed freedom of speech and assembly and trampled in the dust the whole Russian Revolution. The delegates, one after another, tried to explain to the Red Guards that it was not the delegates that were deceived in coming to this conference, but those who were going to Smolny to the Bolshevist Congress, those who, by order of the Bolsheviki, kill the peasants' representatives and dissolve their Congress.

In the midst of these speeches Kornilov declared the Congress dissolved; to this Comrade Ovtchinnikov, president of the Conference, replied that the Congress would not be dissolved except by force, and, besides, that the document read by Kornilov did not authorize him to pronounce its dissolution. Members of the Congress having entered into arguments with the sailors and the Red Guards, concerning the violence inflicted on the peasant delegates, the sound of the rattling of guns was heard and the leader of the pretorians declared that if the Congress would not submit to his orders he would stop at nothing. All the members of the Congress were forthwith searched and thrown out of doors in groups of five, with the idea that, having come from the provinces, and not knowing Petrograd, they would find themselves dispersed in such a way as not to be able to assemble again anywhere, and would be obliged either to betake themselves to the railway and return home or to direct their steps toward Smolny, the address of which was given to each one at the exit. At the same time, without reason, the following were arrested: Minor, a deputy to the Constituent Assembly; Rakitnikov, Ovtchinnikov, Roussine, Sorokine, and Tchernobaiev, members of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Peasant Delegates; and Chmelev, a soldier. The premises of the Committee, on which were various documents and papers which were to be sent into the country, were occupied by Red Guards, and machine-guns were placed at the entrance. The search ended about nine o'clock in the evening. Some late delegates alone were authorized to spend the night on the premises under the supervision of Red Guards.

An inquiry held among the comrades, who had come for this Third National Peasants' Congress, established that, at the time when the premises of the Executive Committee were seized, January 10, 1918, there were, among the sailors and Red Guards of the detachment that did the work, German and Austrian prisoners dressed in Russian uniforms; it also established the fact that many objects had disappeared in the course of the search. The Congress decided: first, to consider as a law the socialization of the soil voted by the Constituent Assembly and to apply the same in the country; second, to consider that the Constituent Assembly, dispersed by brutal force, was nevertheless elected by the whole people and ought to exist and to assemble again as soon as that would be possible; third, to fight everywhere in the provinces in the defense of the organs of autonomous administration, which the Bolsheviki dispersed by armed force. During these few days when the peasants were obliged to assemble in secret and to station patrols to protect their meetings, they followed those methods of conspiracy that the Russian Socialists had been obliged to employ when they fought against the tyranny of autocracy. Returning to their villages, the peasants bore with them the greatest hate for the Bolsheviki, whom they considered the personification of tyranny and violence. And they took with them also a firm resolution to fight against this violence.

The Executive Committee, whose powers were confirmed by the Third Congress, found itself thus, for the second time, deprived of all its goods, its premises, and its pecuniary resources; it found itself obliged to lead a half-clandestine existence, to organize secret assemblies, etc. Miss Spiridonova, who, in this fight against the peasants that rose to the defense of the Constituent Assembly, gave proof of intolerance and peculiar fanaticism, found herself at the head of the "peasants in uniform," sitting at Smolny, adopting a decree whereby all the moneys that came by post to the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Peasant Delegates defending the Constituent Assembly were to be confiscated.

The action of the Executive Committee was thus rendered very difficult. But it continued to fight, to publish an organ, to commission delegates, to entertain continued relations with the provinces and the country.

XII

Conclusion

Morally, Bolshevism was killed in the eyes of the workers in the course of these days when a peaceful demonstration was fired upon, the Constituent Assembly dissolved, the Peasant Congress (and, very soon, the Congress of the Agricultural Committees) dispersed. The Central Committee of the Revolutionary Socialist party issued an order for new elections to the Soviets, thinking thus to eliminate automatically the Bolsheviki. And, in truth, when at Petrograd and in the provinces, these elections began, the Revolutionary Socialists and the Mensheviki received the majority and the Bolsheviki were snowed under. But these new elections were thwarted by many circumstances: first, because of the lessening of production the workmen were discharged in a body and quit the factories; second, the Bolsheviki put obstacles in the way of the elections and sometimes openly prohibited them. Nevertheless, wherever they could be held, the results were unfavorable to the Bolsheviki.

Finally, when the working classes clearly saw the shameful role played by the Bolsheviki in the matter of peace, when they saw the Bolsheviki humbly beg for peace at any price from the Germans, they understood that it was impossible to continue to tolerate such a government. The Central Committee of the Revolutionary Socialist party published a Manifesto appealing to an armed fight against the Bolshevik government and the German gangs that were overrunning the country.

The frightful results of this "peace," so extolled by the Bolsheviki, rendered even the name of the Bolshevist government odious in the eyes of every conscientious and honest man.

* * * * *

But Bolshevism still endures, for it is based on the armed force of the Red Guard, on the supineness of the masses deprived of a political education, and not accustomed to fight or to act, and from ancient habit of submitting to force.