Their principal watchword was “Down with the war!” “Kerensky and the other conciliators,” they cried, “want war and do not want peace.  Kerensky will give you neither peace, nor land, nor bread, nor Constituent Assembly.  Down with the traitor and the counter-revolutionists!  They want to smother the Revolution.  We demand peace.  We will give you peace, land to the peasants, factories and work to the workmen!” Under this simple form the agitation was followed up among the masses and found a propitious ground, first among the soldiers who were tired of war and athirst for peace.  In the Soviet of the Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates of Petrograd the Bolshevist party soon found itself strengthened and fortified.  Its influence was also considerable among the sailors of the Baltic fleet.  Cronstadt was entirely in their hands.  New elections of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates soon became necessary; they gave a big majority to the Bolsheviki.  The old bureau, Tchcheidze at its head, had to leave; the Bolsheviki triumphed clamorously.

To fight against the Bolsheviki the Executive Committee of the National Soviet of Peasants’ Delegates decided at the beginning of December to call a Second General Peasants’ Congress.  This was to decide if the peasants would defend the Constituent Assembly or if they would follow the Bolsheviki.  This Congress had, in effect, a decisive importance.  It showed what was the portion of the peasant class that upheld the Bolsheviki.  It was principally the peasants in soldiers’ dress, the “declasse soldiers,” men taken from the country life by the war, from their natural surroundings, and desiring but one thing, the end of the war.  The peasants who had come from the country had, on the contrary, received the mandate to uphold the Constituent Assembly.  They firmly maintained their point of view and resisted all the attempts of the Bolsheviki and the “Socialist-Revolutionists of the Left” (who followed them blindly) to make their influence prevail.  The speech of Lenine was received with hostility; as for Trotzky, who, some time before, had publicly threatened with the guillotine all the “enemies of the Revolution,” they prevented him from speaking, crying out:  “Down with the tyrant!  Guillotineur!  Assassin!” To give his speech Trotzky, accompanied by his faithful “capotes,” was obliged to repair to another hall.

The Second Peasants’ Congress was thus distinctly split into two parties.  The Bolsheviki tried by every means to elude a straight answer to the question, “Does the Congress wish to uphold the Constituent Assembly?” They prolonged the discussion, driving the peasants to extremities by every kind of paltry discussion on foolish questions, hoping to tire them out and thus cause a certain number of them to return home.  The tiresome discussions carried on for ten days, with the effect that a part of the peasants, seeing nothing come from it, returned home.  But the peasants had, in spite of all, the upper hand; by a roll-call vote 359 against 314 pronounced themselves for the defense without reserve of the Constituent Assembly.