Measures of political repression can only be employed subject to
decision of a special tribunal, elected by the _Tsay-ee-kah_
proportionally to the strength of the different parties represented;
and this tribunal shall have the right also to reconsider measures
of repression already taken.
This was met by a thunder of applause, not only from the Left
Socialist Revolutionaries, but also from a part of the Bolsheviki.
Avanessov, for the Leninites, hastily proposed that the question of
the Press be postponed until after some compromise between the
Socialist parties had been reached. Overwhelmingly voted down.
"The revolution which is now being accomplished," went on Avanessov,
"has not hesitated to attack private property; and it is as private
property that we must examine the question of the Press...."
Thereupon he read the official Bolshevik resolution:
The suppression of the bourgeois press was dictated not only by
purely military needs in the course of the insurrection, and for the
checking of counter-revolutionary action, but it is also necessary
as a measure of transition toward the establishment of a new r?gime
with regard to the Press-a r?gime under which the capitalist owners
of printing-presses and of paper cannot be the all-powerful and
exclusive manufacturers of public opinion.
We must further proceed to the confiscation of private printing
plants and supplies of paper, which should become the property of
the Soviets, both in the capital and in the provinces, so that the
political parties and groups can make use of the facilities of
printing in proportion to the actual strength of the ideas they
represent-in other words, proportionally to the number of their
constituents.
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