At ten in the evening
Lenin addressed a meeting of delegates from the city regiments, who
voted overwhelmingly to fight. A Committee of five soldiers was
elected to serve as General Staff, and in the small hours of the
morning the regiments left their barracks in full battle array....
Going home I saw them pass, swinging along with the regular tread of
veterans, bayonets in perfect alignment, through the deserted
streets of the conquered city....
At the same time, in the headquarters of the _Vikzhel_ down on the
Sadovaya, the conference of all the Socialist parties to form a new
Government was under way. Abramovitch, for the centre Mensheviki,
said that there should be neither conquerors nor conquered-that
bygones should be bygones. ...In this were agreed all the left wing
parties. Dan, speaking in the name of the right Mensheviki, proposed
to the Bolsheviki the following conditions for a truce: The Red
Guard to be disarmed, and the Petrograd garrison to be placed at the
orders of the Duma; the troops of Kerensky not to fire a single shot
or arrest a single man; a Ministry of all the Socialist parties
_except the Bolsheviki._ For Smolny Riazanov and Kameniev declared
that a coalition ministry of all parties was acceptable, but
protested at Dan's proposals. The Socialist Revolutionaries were
divided; but the Executive Committee of the Peasants's Soviets and
the Populist Socialists flatly refused to admit the Bolsheviki.
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