Only in the Petrograd garrison was there still uncertainty. A great soldier meeting was held on November 24th, addressed by representatives of all the political parties. By a vast majority Lenin’s policy was sustained, and the Left Socialist Revolutionaries were told that they must enter the government…. See next page.

The Mensheviki delivered a final ultimatum, demanding that all Ministers and yunkers be released, that all newspapers be allowed full freedom, that the Red Guard be disarmed and the garrison put under command of the Duma. To this Smolny answered that all the Socialist Ministers and also all but a very few yunkers had been already set free, that all newspapers were free except the bourgeois press, and that the Soviet would remain in command of the armed forces…. On the 19th the Conference to Form a New Government disbanded, and the opposition one by one slipped away to Moghilev, where, under the wing of the General Staff, they continued to form Government after Government, until the end….

[Graphic, page 276: Meeting announcement]

Announcement, posted on the walls of Petrograd, of the result of a meeting of representatives of the garrison regiments, called to consider the question of forming a new Government. For translation see App. XI, Sect. 6.

Meanwhile the Bolsheviki had been undermining the power of the Vikzhel. An appeal of the Petrograd Soviet to all railway workers called upon them to force the Vikzhel to surrender its powers. On the 15th, the Tsay-ee-kah, following its procedure toward the peasants, called an All-Russian Congress of Railway Workers for December 1st; the Vikzhel immediately called its own Congress for two weeks later. On November 16th, the Vikzhel members took their seats in the Tsay-ee-kah. On the night of December 2d, at the opening session of the All-Russian Congress of Railway Workers, the Tsay-ee-kah formally offered the post of Commissar of Ways and Communications to the Vikzhel—which accepted….

Having settled the question of power, the Bolsheviki turned their attention to problems of practical administration. First of all the city, the country, the Army must be fed. Bands of sailors and Red Guards scoured the warehouses, the railway terminals, even the barges in the canals, unearthing and confiscating thousands of poods of food held by private speculators. Emissaries were sent to the provinces, where with the assistance of the Land Committees they seized the store-houses of the great grain-dealers. Expeditions of sailors, heavily armed, were sent out in groups of five thousand, to the South, to Siberia, with roving commissions to capture cities still held by the White Guards, establish order, and get food. Passenger traffic on the Trans-Siberian Railroad was suspended for two weeks, while thirteen trains, loaded with bolts of cloth and bars of iron assembled by the Factory-Shop Committees, were sent out eastward, each in charge of a Commissar, to barter with the Siberian peasants for grain and potatoes….

Kaledin being in possession of the coal-mines of the Don, the fuel question became urgent. Smolny shut off all electric lights in theatres, shops and restaurants, cut down the number of street cars, and confiscated the private stores of fire-wood held by the fuel-dealers…. And when the factories of Petrograd were about to close down for lack of coal, the sailors of the Baltic Fleet turned over to the workers two hundred thousand poods from the bunkers of battle-ships….

Toward the end of November occurred the “wine-pogroms” (See App. XI, Sect. 7)—looting of the wine-cellars—beginning with the plundering of the Winter Palace vaults. For days there were drunken soldiers on the streets…. In all this was evident the hand of the counter-revolutionists, who distributed among the regiments plans showing the location of the stores of liquor. The Commissars of Smolny began by pleading and arguing, which did not stop the growing disorder, followed by pitched battles between soldiers and Red Guards…. Finally the Military Revolutionary Committee sent out companies of sailors with machine-guns, who fired mercilessly upon the rioters, killing many; and by executive order the wine-cellars were invaded by Committees with hatchets, who smashed the bottles—or blew them up with dynamite….

Companies of Red Guards, disciplined and well-paid, were on duty at the headquarters of the Ward Soviets day and night, replacing the old Militia. In all quarters of the city small elective Revolutionary Tribunals were set up by the workers and soldiers to deal with petty crime….

The great hotels, where the speculators still did a thriving business, were surrounded by Red Guards, and the speculators thrown into jail. (See App. XI, Sect. 8)…