From October to Brest-Litovsk | Page 8

of the newspapers, but also in the streets of
Petrograd, and more especially on the Nevsky Prospect, where
individual workmen and soldiers caught in the act of "criminal"
agitation were mercilessly beaten up. The junkers, army-officers,
policemen, and the St. Georgian cavaliers were now the masters of the
situation. And all these were headed by the savage
counter-revolutionists. The workers' organizations and establishments
of our party were being ruthlessly crushed and demolished. Arrests,
searches, assaults and even murders came to be common occurrences.
On the night of the 4th the then Attorney-General, Pereverzev, handed
over to the press "documents" which were intended to prove that the
Bolshevist party was headed by bribed agents of Germany.
The leaders of the Social-Revolutionist and Menshevik parties have
known us too long and too well to believe these accusations. At the
same time, they were too deeply interested in their success to repudiate
them publicly. And even now one cannot recall without disgust that
saturnalia of lies which was celebrated broadcast in all the bourgeois
and coalition newspapers. Our organs were suppressed. Revolutionary
Petrograd felt that the provinces and the army were still far from being
with it. In workingmen's sections of the city a short period of tyrannical
infringements set in, while in the garrison repressive measures were
introduced against the disorganized regiments, and certain of its units
were disarmed. At the same time, the political leaders manufactured a
new ministry, with the inclusion of representatives of third-rate

bourgeois groups, which, although adding nothing to the government,
robbed it of its last vestige of revolutionary initiative.
Meanwhile events at the front ran their own course. The organic unity
of the army was shaken to its very depths. The soldiers were becoming
convinced that the great majority of the officers, who, at the beginning
of the revolution, bedaubed themselves with red revolutionary paint,
were still very inimical to the new regime. An open selection of
counter-revolutionary elements was being made in the lines. Bolshevik
publications were ruthlessly persecuted. The military advance had long
ago changed into a tragic retreat. The bourgeois press madly libelled
the army. Whereas, on the eve of the advance, the ruling parties told us
that we were an insignificant gang and that the army had never heard of
us and would not have anything to do with us, now, when the gamble
of the drive had ended so disastrously, these same persons and parties
laid the whole blame for its failure on our shoulders. The prisons were
crowded with revolutionary workers and soldiers. All the old legal
bloodhounds of Czarism were employed in investigating the July 3-5
affair. Under these circumstances, the Social-Revolutionsts and the
Alensheviki went so far as to demand that Lenin, Zinoviev and others
of their group should surrender themselves to the "Courts of Justice."

THE EVENTS FOLLOWING THE JULY DAYS
The infringements of liberty in the working-men's quarters lasted but a
little while and were followed by accessions of revolutionary spirit, not
only among the proletariat, but also in the Petrograd garrison. The
coalitionists were losing all influence. The wave of Bolshevism began
to spread from the urban centers to every part of the country and,
despite all obstacles, penetrated into the army ranks. The new coalition
government, with Kerensky at its head, had already openly embarked
upon a policy of repression. The ministry had restored the death penalty
in the army. Our papers were suppressed and our agitators were
arrested; but this only increased our influence. In spite of all the
obstacles involved in the new elections for the Petrograd Soviet, the
distribution of power in it had become so changed that on certain
important questions we already commanded a majority vote. The same
was the case in the Moscow Soviet.
At that time I, together with many others, was imprisoned at Kresty,

having been arrested for instigating and organizing the armed revolt of
July 3-5, in collusion with the German authorities, and with the object
of furthering the military ends of the Hohenzollerns. The famous
prosecutor of the Czarist regime, Aleksandrov, who had prosecuted
numerous revolutionists, was now entrusted with the task of protecting
the public from the counter-revolutionary Bolsheviki. Under the old
regime the inmates of prisons used to be divided into political prisoners
and criminals. Now a new terminology was established: Criminals and
Bolsheviks. Great perplexity reigned among the imprisoned soldiers.
The boys came from the country and had previously taken no part in
political life. They thought that the revolution had set them free, once
and for all. Hence they viewed with amazement their doorlocks and
grated windows. While taking their exercise in the prison-yard, they
would always ask me what all this meant and how it would end. I
comforted them with the hope of our ultimate victory.
Toward the end