The decrees on land and peace, approved by the Council, were printed in
huge quantities and--through delegates from the front, peasant
pedestrians arriving from the villages, and agitators sent by us to the
trenches in the provinces--were strewn broadcast all over the country.
Simultaneously the work of organizing and arming the Red Guards was
carried on. Together with the old garrison and the sailors, the Red
Guard was doing hard patrol duty. The Council of People's Commissaries
got control of one government department after another, though
everywhere encountering the passive resistance of the higher and middle
grade officials. The former Soviet parties tried their utmost to find
support in this class and organize a sabotage of the new government. Our
enemies felt certain that the whole affair was a mere episode, that in a
day or two--at most a week--the Soviet Government would be overthrown.
The first foreign councillors and members of the embassies, impelled
quite as much by curiosity as by necessary business on hand, appeared at
the Smolny Institute. Newspaper correspondents hurried thither with
their notebooks and cameras. Everyone hastened to catch a glimpse of the
new government, being sure that in a day or two it would be too late.
Perfect order reigned in the city. The sailors, soldiers and the Red
Guards bore themselves in these first days with excellent discipline and
nobly supported the regime of stern revolutionary order.
In the enemy's camp fear arose lest the "episode" should become too
protracted, and so the first force for attacking the new government was
being hastily organized. In this, the initiative was taken by the
Social-Revolutionists and the Mensheviki. In the preceding period they
would not, and dared not, take all the power into their own hands. In
keeping with their provisional political position, they contented
themselves with serving in the coalition government in the capacity of
assistants, critics, and benevolent accusers and defenders of the
bourgeoisie. During all elections they conscientiously anathematized the
liberal bourgeoisie, while in the government they just as regularly
combined with it. In the first six months of the revolution they
managed, as a result of this policy, to lose absolutely all the
confidence of the populace and army; and now, the October revolt was
dashing them from the helm of the state. And yet, only yesterday they
considered themselves the masters of the situation. The Bolshevik
leaders whom they persecuted were in hiding, as under Czarism. To-day
the Bolsheviki were in power, while yesterday's coalitionist ministers
and their co-workers found themselves cast aside and suddenly deprived
of every bit of influence upon the further course of events. They would
not and could not believe that this sudden revolt marked the beginning
of a new era. They preferred to consider it as merely accidental, the
result of some misunderstanding, which could be removed by a few
energetic speeches and accusational newspaper articles. But every hour
they encountered more and more insurmountable obstacles. This is what
caused their blind, truly furious hatred.
The bourgeois politicians did not venture, to be sure, to get too close
to danger. They pushed to the front the Social-Revolutionists and
Mensheviki, who, in the attack upon us acquired all that energy which
they had lacked during the period when they were a semi-governing power.
Their organs circulated the most amazing rumors and lies. In their name
it was that the proclamations containing open appeals to crush the new
government were issued. It was they, too, who organized the government
officials for sabotage and the cadets for military resistance.
On the 27th and 28th we continued to receive persistent threats by
telegraph from army committees, town dumas, vikzhel zemstvos, and
organizations (which had charge of the management of the Railroad
Union). On the Nevsky Prospect, the principal thoroughfare of the
capital's bourgeoisie, things were becoming more and more lively. The
bourgeois youth was emerging from its stupor and, urged on by the press,
was developing a wider and wider agitation against the Soviet
government. With the help of the bourgeois crowd, the cadets were
disarming individual Red Guardsmen. On the side-streets Red Guardsmen
and sailors were being shot down. A group of cadets seized the telephone
station. Attempts were made by the same side to seize the telegraph
office. Finally, we learned that three armored cars had fallen into the
hands of some inimical military organization. The bourgeois elements
were clearly raising their heads. The newspapers heralded the fact that
we had but a few hours more to live. Our friends intercepted a few
secret orders which made it clear, however, that a militant organization
had been formed to fight the Petrograd Soviet. The leading place in this
organization was taken by the so-called Committee for the Defence of the
Revolution, organized by the local Duma and the Central Executive
Committee of the former regime. Here and there Right
Social-Revolutionists and Mensheviki held sway. At the disposal of this
committee were the cadets, students, and many counter-revolutionary army
officers, who sought, from under cover of the coalitions, to deal the
Soviets a mortal blow.