The National Soviet of Peasants’ Delegates in the session that it held that same night at No. 6 Fontaka Street adopted a resolution calling all the peasants to armed resistance against Kornilov.  The Central Executive Committee with the Soviet of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates established a special organization which was to defend Petrograd and to fight against the insurrection.  Detachments of volunteers and of soldiers were directed toward the locality where Kornilov was, to get information and to organize a propaganda among the troops that followed the General, and in case of failure to fight hand to hand.  As they quit in the morning they did not know how things would turn; they were rather pessimistic with regard to the issue of the insurrection for the Socialists.

The end of this conspiracy is known.  The troops that followed Kornilov left him as soon as they found out the truth.  In this respect, everything ended well, but this event had profound and regrettable circumstances.

The acute deplorable crisis of the central power became chronic.  The Cadets, compromised by their participation in the Kornilov conspiracy, preferred to remain apart.  The Socialist-Revolutionists did not see clearly what there was at the bottom of the whole affair. It was as much as any one knew at the moment.  Kerensky, in presence of the menace of the counter-revolution on the right and of the growing anarchy on the extreme left, would have called to Petrograd a part of the troops from the front to stem the tide.  Such was the role of different persons in this story.  It is only later, when all the documents will be shown, that the story can be verified, but at all events it is beyond doubt that the Revolutionary Socialist party was in no wise mixed in this conspiracy.  The conspiracy of Kornilov completely freed the hands of the Bolsheviki.  In the Pravda, and in other Bolshevist newspapers, complaints were read of the danger of a new counter-revolution which was developing with the complicity of Kerensky acting in accord or in agreement with the traitor Cadets.  The public was excited against the Socialist-Revolutionists, who were accused of having secretly helped this counter-revolution.  The Bolsheviki alone, said its organs, had saved the Revolution; to them alone was due the failure of the Kornilov insurrection.

The Bolsheviki agitation assumed large proportions.  Copies of the Pravda, spread lavishly here and there, were poisoned with calumny, campaigns against the other parties, boasting gross flatteries addressed to the soldiers and appeals to trouble.  Bolsheviki meetings permeated with the same spirit were organized at Petrograd, Moscow, and other cities.  Bolshevist agitators set out for the front at the same time with copies of the Pravda and other papers, and the Bolsheviki enjoyed, during this time—­as Lenine himself admits—­complete liberty.  Their chiefs, compromised in the insurrection of June 3d, had been given their freedom.