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….”