Any work in common for the future was impossible.  The fraction of the peasants that pronounced itself for the Constituent Assembly continued to sit apart, named its Executive Committee, and decided to continue the fight resolutely.  The Bolsheviki, on their part, took their partizans to the Smolny, declared to be usurpers of the Soviet of Peasants’ Delegates who pronounced themselves for the defense of the Constituante, and, with the aid of soldiers, ejected the former Executive Committee from their premises and took possession of their goods, the library, etc.

The new Executive Committee, which did not have at its disposition Red Guards, was obliged to look for another place, to collect the money necessary for this purpose, etc.  Its members were able, with much difficulty, to place everything upon its feet and to assure the publication of an organ (the Izvestya of the National Soviet of Peasants’ Delegates determined to defend the Constituent Assembly), to send delegates into different regions, and to establish relations with the provinces, etc.

Together with the peasants, workmen and Socialist parties and numerous democratic organizations prepared themselves for the defense of the Constituent Assembly:  The Union of Postal Employees, a part of the Union of Railway Workers, the Bank Employees, the City Employees, the food distributors’ organizations, the teachers’ associations, the zemstvos, the co-operatives.  These organizations believed that the coup d’etat of October 25th was neither legal nor just; they demanded a convocation with brief delay of the Constituent Assembly and the restoration of the liberties that were trampled under foot by the Bolsheviki.

These treated them as saboteurs, “enemies of the people,” deprived them of their salaries, and expelled them from their lodgings.  They ordered those who opposed them to be deprived of their food-cards.  They published lists of strikers, thus running the risk of having them lynched by the crowds.  At Saratov, for example, the strike of postal workers and telegraphers lasted a month and a half.  The institutions whose strike would have entailed for the population not only disorganization, but an arrest of all life (such as the railroads, the organizations of food distributers), abstained from striking, only asking the Bolsheviki not to meddle with their work.  Sometimes, however, the gross interference of the Bolsheviki in work of which they understood nothing obliged those opposed to them, in spite of everything, to strike.  It is to be noted also that the professors of secondary schools were obliged to join the strike movements (the superior schools had already ceased to function at this time) as well as the theatrical artistes:  a talented artist, Silotti, was arrested; he declared that even in the time of Czarism nobody was ever uneasy on account of his political opinions.

IV