Ten Days That Shook the World

kgr

rofessor wrote an article about it, and then travelled around the country, visiting factory towns and peasant communities-where, to his astonishment, the Revolution seemed to be speeding up. Among the wage-earn

servations were correct. The property-owning classes were bec

asted too long; that things should settle down. This sentiment was shared by the dominant "moderate" Socialist groups, the o

icial organ of the "mod

lasted long enough. Now it is time to go on to the second, and to play it as rapidly as possible. As a great revolutionis

human beings; in the rear the Land Committees elected by the peasants were being jailed for trying to carry out Government regulations concerning the land; and the workmen (See App. I, Sect. 2) in the factories were fighting black-lists and lockouts

definite things for which the Russian Revolution had been made, and for which the revolutionary martyrs rotted in their stark Brotherhood Grave on Mars Field, that must be achieved Constituent Assembly or no Constituent Assembly: Peace, Land, and Workers' Control o

uses and took over the great estates, the workers sabotaged and struck…. Of course, as was natural, the ma

Workers' Committees henceforth to meet only after working hours. Among the troops at the front, "agitators" of opposition political parties were arrested, radical newspaper

e Bolsheviki, who stood for Peace, Land, and Workers' Control of Industry, and a Government of the working-class. In September, 1917, matters reached a crisis. Against the overwhelming sentiment of the country, Kerens

ctober, entitled "The Socialist Ministers," expressed the feeli

their services.(Se

of General Polovtsev, checkmated the revolutionary so

f their profits, and finished-and finished by an attempt to

son, members of the Land Committees, and suppre

l" manifest, ordering the dis

. If this saviour of the country was not able to betray Pe

Kerensky, put some of the best workers of th

ulgar policeman again

say anything about him. The li

tic Fleet, at Helsingfors, passed

e political adventurer-Kerensky, as one who is scandalising and ruining the great Revolution, and w

all this was the ri

and peasants, which forced every change in the course of the Revolution. They hurled the Miliukov Ministry down; it was their Soviet which proclaimed to the world the Russian peace terms-"No annexations, no indemnities, and the

nk back into the Viborg Quarter, which is Petrograd's St. Antoine. Then followed a savage hunt of the Bolsheviki; hundreds were imprisoned, among them Trotzky, Madame Kollontai and Kameniev; Lenin and Zinoviev

ased from prison without trial, on nominal or no bail-until only six remained. The impotence and indecision of the ever-changing Provisional Government was an argument nobody could refute. The Bolsheviki

e famous "Siss

n compromise with the bourgeoisie, the Bolsheviki rapidly captured the Russian masses. In July they were hunted and despised; by September the metropolitan workmen, the sailors of the Baltic Fleet, and the soldiers, had been won almost

delayed or prevented any new elections. Thus, according to the constitution of the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, the All-Russian Congress should have been called in September; but the Tsay-ee-kah[2] would not call the meeting, on the ground that the Constituent Assembly was only two months away, at which time, they hinted, the Soviets would abdicate. Meanwhile, one by one, the Bolsheviki were winning in the local Soviets all over the country, in the Union branches and the ranks of th

tes and Ex

urlesque called Sins of the Tsar was interrupted by a group of Monarchists, who threatened to lynch the actors for "insulting the Emperor." Certain newspapers began to sigh for a

conversation with a gr

anozov, known as the

politic

improper, but the nations must realise the danger of Bolshevism in their own countries-such contagious ideas as 'proletarian dictatorship,' and 'world social revolution'… There is a chance that this

ossible for merchants and manufacturers to permit the existence of the workers'

state of siege declared, and the military commander of the district can deal with these gentlemen without legal formaliti

le armies continued to starve and die, without enthusiasm. The railways were breaking down, food lessening, factories closing. The desperate masses cried out that the bourgeoisie was sabotaging the li

-Litovsk" by John Reed. Bo

grad branch of the Cadet party told me that the break-down of the country's economic life was part of a campaign to discredit the Revolution. An Allied diplomat, whose name I promised not to mention, confirmed this from his own knowledge. I know of c

hold where I lived, the subject of conversation at the dinner table was almost invariably the coming of the Germans, bringing "law and order."… One evening I spent at t

f the Revolution, for example, the reserve food-supplies were almost openly looted from the great Municipal warehouses of Petrograd, until the two-years' provision of grain had fallen to less than enough to feed the city for one month…. According to the official report of t

interest in a chocolate factory, which supplied the local Cooperative societies-on condition that the Cooperatives furnished him everything he needed. And so, while the masses of the people got a quarter pound of black bread on their bread cards, he had an abundance of white bread, sugar, tea, candy, cake

active. The agents of the notorious Okhrana still functioned, for and against the Tsar, for and against Kerensky-whoever would pay…. In the

to the Soviets! All power to the direct representatives of millions on millions of common workers, soldiers, peasants. Land, bread, an end to the sen

in the first March days, was about to culminate. Having at one bound leaped from the Middle Ages into the twentieth

f starvation and disillusionment! The bourgeoisie should have better known its Russia

as Russian politics swung bodily to the Left-until the Cadets were outlawed as "enemies of the people," Kerensky became a "counter-revolutionist," the "middle" Socialist lea

private visit to Sir George Buchanan, the British Ambassador, and implored him not to

o my Government instructed me not to receive

f the Municipal administration. Bitter damp winds rushed in from the Gulf of Finland, and the chill fog rolled through the streets. At night, for motives of economy as well as fear of Zeppelins, the street-lights were few and far between; in private dwellings and apartment-houses the electricity was turned on from six

ugar one was entitled to at the rate of two pounds a month-if one could get it at all, which was seldom. A bar of chocolate or a pound of tasteless candy cost anywhere from seven to ten rubles-at least a dollar.

nch people as distinguished above all others by their faculty of standing in queue. Russia had accustomed herself to the practice, begun in the reign of Nicholas the Blessed as long ago as 1915, and from then continued intermittently until the summer of 1917, when it settled down as the regular or

he Alexandrinsky they were reviving Meyerhold's production of Tolstoy's "Death of Ivan the Terrible"; and at that performance I remember noticing a student of the Imperial School of Pages, in

entzia went to hear lectures on Art, Literature and the Easy Philosophies. It was a particularly active season for Theosophists. And the Salvation Army, a

pital to learn French and cultivate their voices, and the gay young beautiful officers wore their gold-trimmed crimson bashliki and their elaborate Caucasian swords around the hotel lobbies. The ladies of the minor bureaucratic set took tea with each other in the afternoon, carrying each her little gold or silver

nd in queue and wear out their shoes. But more than that. In the new Russia every man and woman could vote; there were working-class newspapers, saying new and startling things; there were the Soviets; and there were the Unions. The izvoshtchiki (cab-drivers) had a Union; they were also repr

cause the people wanted to know…. In every city, in most towns, along the Front, each political faction had its newspaper-sometimes several. Hundreds of thousands of pamphlets were distributed by thousands of organisations, and poured into the armies, the villages, the factories, the streets. The thirst for education, so long thwarted, burst with the Revolution into a frenzy of expressio

tes and Ex

ches at the Front, in village squares, factories…. What a marvellous sight to see Putilovsky Zavod (the Putilov factory) pour out its forty thousand to listen to Social Democrats, Socialist Revolutionaries, Anarchists, anybody, w

priests, peasants, political parties; the Democratic Conference, the Moscow Conference, the Council of the Russian Republic. There were always three or four con

tes and Ex

the mud of desperate trenches; and when they saw us they started up, with their pinched faces and th

d flag in its hand, and others-somewhat faded-floated from all public buildings; and the Imperial monograms and eagles were either torn down or covered up; an

on and shoulder-strap. Along about five o'clock in the afternoon the streets were full of subdued old gentlemen in uniform, with portfolios, going home from work in the huge, barrack-like Ministries or Government institutions, calculating

e to a meeting of the Senate one day in civilian clothes, and was not adm

n in ferment and disintegration that the pagean