The Bolsheviki finally left the Assembly, followed, as might be understood, by their servants, the Revolutionary Socialists of the Left.  The fractions which remained voted the law proposed by the Socialist-Revolutionists on the transfer of the lands to common ownership (socialization of the soil).  The sailors and Red Guards attempted several times to interrupt the session.  At five o’clock in the morning they finally demanded with a loud voice that everybody leave.

“We were obliged to go,” said, later, the members of the Constituent Assembly at a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Peasants’ Delegates in recounting these tragic moments, “not that we were afraid of being shot; we were prepared for that, and each one of us expected it, but fear of something else which is far worse:  for fear of insults and gross violence.  We were only a handful; what was that beside those great big fellows full of malice toward the Constituante and of defiance for the ‘enemies of the people,’ the ‘servants of the bourgeoisie,’ which we were in their eyes, thanks to the lies and the calumnies of the Bolsheviki?  Careful of our dignity, and out of respect for the place where we were, we could not permit ourselves to be cuffed, nor that they throw us out of the Taurida Palace by force—­and that is what would have inevitably happened.”

It was thus that the Constituent Assembly ended.  The Socialist-Revolutionist fraction maintained an attitude of surprising calm and respectful bearing, not allowing itself to be disturbed by any provocation.  The correspondents of foreign newspapers congratulated the members and said to them that in this session to which the Bolsheviki had wished to give the character of “any-old-kind-of-a-meeting” all the fractions maintained a truly parliamentary attitude.

The Bolshevik terror became rife. All the newspapers that tried to open the eyes of the people as to what was happening were confiscated.  Every attempt to circulate the Dielo Naroda or other newspapers of the opposition was severely punished.  The volunteer venders of these papers were arrested, cruelly struck down by rifle butts, and sometimes even shot.  The population, indignant, gathered in groups on the streets, but the Red Guards dispersed all assemblages.

XI

The Dissolution of the Third All-Russian Peasants’ Congress

This is the course of the events which followed the dissolution of the Constituante.  On the 8th of January the members of the Constituante assembled at Bolotnaia; two were arrested; the premises of the fraction were occupied by the Red Guards.  On the 9th of January took place the funeral of the victims, in which all Petrograd took part.  The Bolsheviki this time did not dare to shoot into the magnificent procession preceded by a long line of coffins.  The 10th of January they dispersed the Third All-Russian