"You are no better than murderers!" he cried. "Shooting down your
Russian brothers on the streets!"
"When did we do that?" asked a worker.
"Last Sunday you did it, when the _yunkers_--"
"Well, didn't they shoot us?" One man exhibited his arm in a sling.
"Haven't I got something to remember them by, the devils?"
The captain shouted at the top of his voice. "You should remain
neutral! You should remain neutral! Who are you to destroy the legal
Government? Who is Lenin? A German--"
"Who are you? A counter-revolutionist! A provocator!" they bellowed
at him.
When he could make himself heard the captain stood up. "All right!"
said he. "You call yourselves the people of Russia. But you're _not_
the people of Russia. The _peasants_ are the people of Russia. Wait
until the peasants--"
"Yes," they cried, "wait until the peasants speak. We know what the
peasants will say.... Aren't they workingmen like ourselves?"
In the long run, everything depended upon the peasants. While the
peasants had been politically backward, still they had their own
peculiar ideas, and they constituted more than eighty per cent of
the people of Russia. The Bolsheviki had a comparatively small
following among the peasants; and a permanent dictatorship of Russia
by the industrial workers was impossible.... The traditional peasant
party was the Socialist Revolutionary party; of all the parties now
supporting the Soviet Government, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries
were the logical inheritors of peasant leadership-and the Left
Socialist Revolutionaries, who were at the mercy of the organised
city proletariat, desperately needed the backing of the peasants.
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