SATURDAY, November 10th. . . .

Citizens!

The Military Revolutionary Committee declares that it will not tolerate any violation of revolutionary order. . . .

Theft, brigandage, assaults and attempts at massacre will be severely punished. . . .

Following the example of the Paris Commune, the Committee will destroy without mercy any looter or instigator of disorder. . . .

Quiet lay the city. Not a hold-up, not a robbery, not even a drunken fight. By night armed patrols went through the silent streets, and on the corners soldiers and Red Guards squatted around little fires, laughing and singing. In the daytime great crowds gathered on the sidewalks listening to interminable hot debates between students and soldiers, business men and workmen.

Citizens stopped each other on the street.

“The Cossacks are coming?”

“No. . . . ”

“What’s the latest?”

“I don’t know anything. Where’s Kerensky?”

“They say only eight versts from Petrograd. . . . Is it true that the Bolsheviki have fled to the battleship Avrora?“

“They say so. . . . ”

Only the walls screamed, and the few newspapers; denunciation, appeal, decree. . . .

An enormous poster carried the hysterical manifesto of the Executive Committee of the Peasant’ Soviets:

. . . . They (the Bolsheviki) dare to say that they are supported by the Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies, and that they are speaking on behalf of the Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies. . . .

Let all working-class Russia know that this is a LIE, AND THAT ALL THE WORKING PEASANTS-in the person of — the EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE ALL-RUSSIAN SOVIETS OF PEASANTS’ DEPUTIES-refutes with indignation all participation of the organised peasantry in this criminal violation of the will of the working-classes. . . .

From the Soldier Section of the Socialist Revolutionary party:

The insane attempt of the Bolsheviki is on the eve of collapse. The garrison is divided. . . . The Ministries are on strike and bread is getting scarcer. All factions except the few Bolsheviki have left the Congress. The Bolsheviki are alone. . . .

We call upon all sane elements to group themselves around the Committee for Salvation of Country and Revolution, and to prepare themselves seriously to be ready at the first call of the Central Committee. . . .

In a hand-bill the Council of the Republic recited its wrongs:

Ceding to the force of bayonets, the Council of the Republic has been obliged to separate, and temporarily to interrupt its meetings.

The usurpers, with the words “Liberty and Socialism” on their lips, have set up a rule of arbitrary violence. They have arrested the members of the Provisional Government, closed the newspapers, seized the printing-shops. . . . This power must be considered the enemy of the people and the Revolution; it is necessary to do battle with it, and to pull it down. . . .

The Council of the Republic, until the resumption of its labours, invites the citizens of the Russian Republic to group themselves around the. . . . local Committees for Salvation of Country and Revolution, which are organising the overthrow of the Bolsheviki and the creation of a Government capable of leading the country to the Constituent Assembly.

Dielo Narodasaid:

A revolution is a rising of all the people. . . . But here what have we? Nothing but a handful of poor fools deceived by Lenin and Trotzky. . . . Their decrees and their appeals will simply add to the museum of historical curiosities. . . .

And Narodnoye Slovo(People’s Word–Populist Socialist):

“Workers’ and Peasants’ Government?” That is only a pipedream; nobody, either in Russia or in the countries of our Allies, will recognise this “Government” — or even in the enemy countries. . . .

The bourgeois press had temporarily disappeared. . . . Pravada had an account of the first meeting of the new Tsay-ee-kah, now the parliament of the Russian Soviet Republic. Miliutin, Commissar of Agriculture, remarked that the Peasants’ Executive Committee had called an All–Russian Peasant Congress for December 13th.

“But we cannot wait,” he said. “We must have the backing of the peasants. I propose that we call the Congress of Peasants, and do it immediately. . . . ” The Left Socialist Revolutionaries agreed. An Appeal to the Peasants of Russia was hastily drafted, and a committee of five elected to carry out the project.

The question of detailed plans for distributing the land, and the question of Workers’ Control of Industry, were postponed until the experts working on them should submit a report.

Three decrees (See App. VII, Sect. 1) were read and approved: first, Lenin’s “General Rules For the Press,” ordering the suppression of all newspapers inciting to resistance and disobedience to the new Government, inciting to criminal acts, or deliberately perverting the news; the Decree of Moratorium for House-rents; and the Decree Establishing a Workers’ Militia. Also orders, one giving the Municipal Duma power to requisition empty apartments and houses, the other directing the unloading of freight cars in the railroad terminals, to hasten the distribution of necessities and to free the badly-needed rolling-stock. . . .

Two hours later the Executive Committee of the Peasants’ Soviets was sending broadcast over Russia the following telegram:

The arbitrary organisation of the Bolsheviki, which is called “Bureau of Organisation for the National Congress of Peasants,“is inviting all the Peasants’ Soviets to send delegates to the Congress at Petrograd. . . .

The Executive Committee of the Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies declares that it considers, now as well as before, that it would be dangerous to take away from the provinces at this moment the forces necessary to prepare for elections to the Constituent Assembly, which is the only salvation of the working-class and the country. We confirm the date of the Congress of Peasants, December 13th.

At the Duma all was excitement, officers coming and going, the Mayor in conference with the leaders of the Committee for Salvation. A Councillor ran in with a copy of Kerensky’s proclamation, dropped by hundreds from an aeroplane low flying down the Nevsky, which threatened terrible vengeance on all who did not submit, and ordered soldiers to lay down their arms and assemble immediately in Mars Field.

The Minister–President had taken Tsarskoye Selo, we were told, and was already in the Petrograd campagna, five miles away. He would enter the city to-morrow-in a few hours. The Soviet troops in contact with his Cossacks were said to be going over to the Provisional Government. Tchernov was somewhere in between, trying to organise the “neutral” troops into a force to halt the civil war.

In the city the garrison regiments were leaving the Bolsheviki, they said. Smolny was already abandoned. . . . All the Governmental machinery had stopped functioning. The employees of the State Bank had refused to work under Commissars from Smolny, refused to pay out money to them. All the private banks were closed. The Ministries were on strike. Even now a committee from the Duma was making the rounds of business houses, collecting a fund to pay the salaries of the strikers. . . .

Trotzky had gone to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and ordered the clerks to translate the Decree on Peace into foreign languages; six hundred functionaries had hurled their resignations in his face. . . . Shliapnikov, Commissar of Labour, had commanded all the employees of his Ministry to return to their places within twenty-four hours, or lose their places and their pension-rights; only the door-servants had responded. . . . Some of the branches of the Special Food Supply Committee had suspended work rather than submit to the Bolsheviki. . . . In spite of lavish promises of high wages and better conditions, the operators at the Telephone Exchange would not connect Soviet headquarters. . . .

The Socialist Revolutionary Party had voted to expel all members who had remained in the Congress of Soviets, and all who were taking part in the insurrection. . . .

News from the provinces. Moghilev had declared against the Bolsheviki. At Kiev the Cossacks had overthrown the Soviets and arrested all the insurrectionary leaders. The Soviet and garrison of Luga, thirty thousand strong, affirmed its loyalty to the Provisional Government, and appealed to all Russia to rally around it. Kaledin had dispersed all Soviets and unions in the Don Basin, and his forces were moving north. . . .

Said a representative of the Railway Workers: “Yesterday we sent a telegram all over Russia demanding that war between the political parties cease at once, and insisting on the formation of a coalition Socialist Government. Otherwise we shall call a strike to-morrow night. . . . In the morning there will be a meeting of all factions to consider the question. The Bolsheviki seem anxious for an agreement. . . . ”

“If they last that long!” laughed the City Engineer, a stout, ruddy man. . . .

As we came up to Smolny-not abandoned, but busier than ever, throngs of workers and soldiers running in and out, and doubled guards everywhere-we met the reporters for the bourgeois and “moderate” Socialist papers.

“Threw us out!” cried one, from Volia Naroda. “Bonch–Bruevitch came down to the Press Bureau and told us to leave! Said we were spies!” They all began to talk at once: “Insult! Outrage! Freedom of the press!”

In the lobby were great tables heaped with stacks of appeals, proclamations and orders of the Military Revolutionary Committee. Workmen and soldiers staggered past, carrying them to waiting automobiles.

One began:

TO THE PILLORY!

In this tragic moment through which the Russian masses are living, the Mensheviki and their followers and the Right Socialist Revolutionaries have betrayed the working-class. They have enlisted on the side of Kornilov, Kerensky and Savinkov. . . .

They are printing orders of the traitor Kerensky and creating a panic in the city, spreading the most ridiculous rumours of mythical victories by that renegade. . . .

Citizens! Don’t believe these false rumours. No power can defeat the People’s Revolution. . . . Premier Kerensky and his followers await speedy and well-deserved punishment. . . .

We are putting them i............