...
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.
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