It was the Revolutionary Socialist party and the National Soviet of Peasants’ Delegates that had to bear the brunt of this fight, which was carried on under extremely difficult conditions.  All the non-Bolshevik newspapers were confiscated or prosecuted and deprived of every means of reaching the provinces; their editors’ offices and printing establishments were looted.  After the creation of the “Revolutionary Tribunal,” the authors of articles that were not pleasing to the Bolsheviki, as well as the directors of the newspapers, were brought to judgment and condemned to make amends or go to prison, etc.

The premises of numerous organizations were being constantly pillaged; the Red Guard came there to search, destroying different documents; frequently objects which were found on the premises disappeared.  Thus were looted the premises of the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Socialist party (27 Galernaia Street), and, several times, the offices of the paper Dielo Narvda (22 Litcinaia Street), as well as the office of the “League for the Defense of the Constituent Assembly,” the premises of the committees of divers sections of the Revolutionary Socialist party, the office of the paper Volia Naroda, etc.

Leaders of the different parties were arrested.  The arrest of the whole Central Committee of the Revolutionary Socialist party was to be carried out as well as the arrest of all the Socialist-Revolutionists, and of all the Mensheviki in sight.  The Bolshevist press became infuriated, exclaiming against the “counter-revolution,” against their “complicity” with Kornilov and Kalodine.

All those who did not adhere to the Bolsheviki were indignant at the sight of the crimes committed, and wished to defend the Constituent Assembly.  Knowingly, and in a premeditated manner, the Bolshevist press excited the soldiers and the workmen against all other parties.  And then when the unthinking masses, drunk with flattery and hatred, committed acts of lynching, the Bolshevist leaders expressed sham regrets!  Thus it was after the death of Doukhonine, who was cut to pieces by the sailors; and thus it was after the dastardly assassination of the Cadets, Shingariev and Kokochkine, after the shootings en masse and the drowning of the officers.

It was under these conditions that the fight was carried on; and the brunt of it, as I have already stated, was sustained by the Revolutionary Socialist party and the National Soviet of Peasants’ Delegates, and it was against these two that the Bolsheviki were particularly infuriated.  “Now it is not the Cadets who are dangerous to us,” said they, “but the Socialist-Revolutionists—­these traitors, these enemies of the people.”  The most sacred names of the Revolution were publicly trampled under foot by them.  Their cynicism went so far as to accuse Breshkovskaya, “the Grandmother of the Russian Revolution,” of having sold out to the Americans.  Personally I had the opportunity