“Pass a resolution!”
Lieutenant-Colonel Petrov mounted the platform again, and began to read out a ready resolution for transferring the officers’ mess to privates’ rations. But no one listened to him now. Two or three voices shouted “That’s right!” Petrov hesitated a little, then put the paper in his pocket and left the platform. The second question, concerning the removal of the Chief of the Commissariat and the immediate election of his successor (the author of the report was the candidate proposed) remained unread. The Chairman of the Committee then announced:
“Comrade Sklianka, member of the Executive Committee of the Moscow Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates, will now address the meeting.”
They were tired of their own speakers—it was always one and the same thing—and the arrival of a new man, somewhat advertised by the Committee, aroused general interest. The crowd closed up round the platform and was still. A small, black-haired man, nervous and short-sighted, who constantly adjusted the eyeglasses which kept slipping off his nose, mounted the platform, or rather quickly ran up on to it. He began speaking rapidly, with much spirit and much gesticulation.
“Soldier comrades! Three months have passed already since the Petrograd workers and Revolutionary soldiers threw off the yoke of the Czar and of all his Generals. The Bourgeoisie, in the person of Tereshtchenko, the well-known sugar refiner; Konovalov, the factory owner; the landowners, Gutchkov, Rodzianko, Miliukov, and other traitors to the interests of the people, having seized the supreme power, have tried to deceive the popular masses.
“The demand of the people that negotiations be commenced at once for that peace which we are offered by our German worker and soldier brethren—who are just as much bereft of all that makes life worth living as we are—has ended in a fraud—a telegram from Miliukov to England and France to say that the Russian people are ready to fight until victory is attained.
“The unfortunate people understood that the supreme power had fallen into even worse hands, i.e., into those of the sworn foes of the workman and the peasant. Therefore the people shouted mightily: ‘Down with you, hands off!’
“And the accursed Bourgeoisie shook at the mighty cry of the workers and hypocritically invited to a share in their power the so-called Democracy—the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks, who always associated with the Bourgeoisie for the betrayal of the interests of the working people.”
Having thus outlined the process of the formation of the Coalition Ministry, Comrade Sklianka passed in greater detail to the fascinating prospects of rural and factory anarchy, where “the wrath of the people sweeps away the yoke of capital” and where “Bourgeois property gradually passes into the hands of its real masters—the workmen and the poorer peasants.”
“The soldiers and the workmen still have enemies,” he continued. “These are the friends of the overthrown Czarist Government, the hardened admirers of shooting, the knout, and blows. The most bitter foes of freedom, they have now donned crimson rosettes, call you ‘comrades’ and pretend to be friends, but cherish the blackest intentions in their hearts, preparing to restore the rule of the Romanovs.