The members of the Executive Committee who were still free succeeded in finding new premises (let it be noted that among others the workmen of the big Oboukhovsky factory offered them hospitality), and during three days the peasants could assemble secretly by hiding themselves from the eyes of the Red Guard, and the spies in various quarters of Petrograd, until such time as the decisions were given on all great questions. A procès-verbal was prepared concerning all that had taken place on Kirillovskaia Street. A declaration was made protesting against the acts of the Bolshevik government. This declaration was to be read at the Taurida Palace when the Soviets were in congress by delegates designated for that purpose. The Bolsheviki, however, would not permit the delegates to enter the Taurida Palace.
Here are the texts of the declaration and of the procès-verbal:
At the Third National Congress of Soviets of Peasants' Delegates grouped around the principle of the defense of the Constituent Assembly, this declaration was sent to the Congress of Workmen's, Soldiers' and Peasants' Delegates called together by the Bolshevist government at the Taurida Palace:
At the Second National Peasants' Congress the 359 delegates who had come together for the defense of the Constituent Assembly continued the work of the Congress and elected a provisional Executive Committee, independently of the 354 delegates who had opposed the power of the Constituent Assembly and adhered to the Bolsheviki.
We, peasant delegates, having come to Petrograd, more than 300 in number, to participate in a Congress called by the Provisional Executive Committee, which is that of those of the Soviets which acknowledge the principle of the defense of the Constituent Assembly, declare to our electors, to the millions of the peasant population, and to the whole country, that the actual government which is called "The Government of the Peasants and Workmen" has established in their integrity the violence, the arbitrariness, and all the horrors of the autocratic régime which was overthrown by the great Revolution of February. All the liberties attained by that Revolution and won by innumerable sacrifices during several generations are scouted and trodden under foot. Liberty of opinion does not exist; men who under the government of the Czar had paid by years of prison and exile for their devotedness to the revolutionary cause are now again thrown into the dungeons of fortresses without any accusation whatever, of anything of which they might be guilty, being made to them. Again spies and informers are in action. Again capital punishment is re-established in its most horrible forms; shooting on the streets and assassinations without judgment or examination. Peaceful processions, on their way to salute the Constituent Assembly, are greeted by a fusillade of shots upon the orders of the autocrats of Smolny. The liberty of the press does not exist; the papers which displease the Bolsheviki are suppressed, their printing plants and offices looted, their editors arrested.
The organizations which, during the preceding months, were established with great difficulty—zemstvos, municipalities, agricultural and food committees—are foolishly destroyed in an excess of savage fanaticism.
The Bolsheviki even try to kill the supreme representation, the only one legitimately established, of the popular will—the Constituent Assembly.
To justify this violence and this tyranny they try to allege the well-being of the people, but we, peasant workers, we see well that their policy will only tighten the cord around the workers' necks, while the possibility of a democratic peace becomes more remote every day; matters have come to the point where the Bolsheviki proclaim a further mobilization—of salaried volunteers, it is true—to renew the hostilities. They strive to represent the war with Ukraine and with the Cossacks under the aspect of a war of classes; it is not, however, the bourgeoisie, but the representatives of the working classes who are killed on one side and on the other. They promised the Socialist régime, and they have only destroyed the production of the factories so as to leave the population without product and throw the workers into an army of unemployed; the horrible specter of famine occupies the void left by the broken organizations of food-supply; millions of the money of the people are squandered in maintaining a Red Guard—or sent to Germany to keep up the agitation there, while the wives and the widows of our soldiers no longer receive an allowance, there being no money in the Treasury, and are obliged to live on charity.
The Russian country is threatened with ruin. Death knocks at the doors of the hovels of the workmen.