... The strike of Government Employees, led by the Union of
Unions, collapsed, deserted by the financial and commercial
interests which had been backing it. The bank clerks returned to
their jobs....
With the decree on the Nationalisation of Banks, the formation of
the Supreme Council of People's Economy, the putting into practical
operation of the Land decree in the villages, the democratic
reorganisation of the Army, and the sweeping changes in all branches
of the Government and of life,-with all these, effective only by the
will of the masses of workers, soldiers and peasants, slowly began,
with many mistakes and hitches, the moulding of proletarian Russia.
Not by compromise with the propertied classes, or with the other
political leaders; not by conciliating the old Government mechanism,
did the Bolsheviki conquer the power. Nor by the organized violence
of a small clique. If the masses all over Russia had not been ready
for insurrection it must have failed. The only reason for Bolshevik
success lay in their accomplishing the vast and simple desires of
the most profound strata of the people, calling them to the work of
tearing down and destroying the old, and afterward, in the smoke of
falling ruins, cooperating with them to erect the frame-work of the
new....
Chapter XII
The Peasants' Congress
IT was on November 18th that the snow came.
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