George, Death Battalions, [*] protesting....
[*See Notes and Explanations.]
The Council of the Russian Republic was one chorus of disapproval.
The entire machinery set up by the Russian Revolution of March
functioned to block the Congress of Soviets....
On the other hand was the shapeless will of the proletariat-the
workmen, common soldiers and poor peasants. Many local Soviets were
already Bolshevik; then there were the organisations of the
industrial workers, the _Fabritchno-Zavodskiye Comitieti-_
Factory-Shop Committees; and the insurgent Army and Fleet
organisations. In some places the people, prevented from electing
their regular Soviet delegates, held rump meetings and chose one of
their number to go to Petrograd. In others they smashed the old
obstructionist committees and formed new ones. A ground-swell of
revolt heaved and cracked the crust which had been slowly hardening
on the surface of revolutionary fires dormant all those months. Only
an spontaneous mass-movement could bring about the All-Russian
Congress of Soviets....
Day after day the Bolshevik orators toured the barracks and
factories, violently denouncing "this Government of civil war." One
Sunday we went, on a top-heavy steam tram that lumbered through
oceans of mud, between stark factories and immense churches, to
_Obukhovsky Zavod,_ a Government munitions-plant out on the
Schl?sselburg Prospekt.
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