The newspapers said that all the
factories of Petrograd must shut down for lack of fuel in three
weeks; the _Vikzhel_ announced that trains must cease running by
December first; there was food for three days only in Petrograd, and
no more coming in; and the Army on the Front was starving.... The
Committee for Salvation, the various Central Committees, sent word
all over the country, exhorting the population to ignore the
Government decrees. And the Allied Embassies were either coldly
indifferent, or openly hostile....
The opposition newspapers, suppressed one day and reappearing next
morning under new names, heaped bitter sarcasm on the new regime.
(See App. XI, Sect. 5) Even _Novaya Zhizn_ characterised it as "a
combination of demagoguery and impotence."
From day to day (it said) the Government of the People's Commissars
sinks deeper and deeper into the mire of superficial haste. Having
easily conquered the power... the Bolsheviki can not make use of it.
Powerless to direct the existing mechanism of Government, they are
unable at the same time to create a new one which might work easily
and freely according to the theories of social experimenters.
Just a little while ago the Bolsheviki hadn't enough men to run
their growing party-a work above all of speakers and writers; where
then are they going to find trained men to execute the diverse and
complicated functions of government?
The new Government acts and threatens, it sprays the country with
decrees, each one more radical and more "socialist" than the last.
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