With tears streaming down her face,
Kollontai arrested the strikers until they should deliver the keys
of the office and the safe; when she got the keys, however, it was
discovered that the former Minister, Countess Panina, had gone off
with all the funds, which she refused to surrender except on the
order of the Constituent Assembly. (See App. XI, Sect. 4)
In the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Supplies, the
Ministry of Finance, similar incidents occurred. And the employees,
summoned to return or forfeit their positions and their pensions,
either stayed away or returned to sabotage.... Almost all the
_intelligentzia_ being anti-Bolshevik, there was nowhere for the
Soviet Government to recruit new staffs....
The private banks remained stubbornly closed, with a back door open
for speculators. When Bolshevik Commissars entered, the clerks left,
secreting the books and removing the funds. All the employees of the
State Bank struck except the clerks in charge of the vaults and the
manufacture of money, who refused all demands from Smolny and
privately paid out huge sums to the Committee for Salvation and the
City Duma.
Twice a Commissar, with a company of Red Guards, came formally to
insist upon the delivery of large sums for Government expenses. The
first time, the City Duma members and the Menshevik and Socialist
Revolutionary leaders were present in imposing numbers, and spoke so
gravely of the consequences that the Commissar was frightened.
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