Members of the Executive Committee were arrested, the premises occupied by sailors and Red Guards, the objects found therein stolen.

The peasants found shelter in the homes of the inhabitants of Petrograd, who, indignant, offered them hospitality; a certain number were lodged in the barracks of the Preobrajenski Regiment.  The sailors, who but a few minutes before had sung a funeral hymn to Logvinov, and wept when they saw that they understood nothing, now became the docile executors of the orders of the Bolsheviki.  And when they were asked, “Why do you do this?” they answered as in the time, still recent, of Czarism:  “It is the order.  No need to talk.”

It was thus there was manifested the habit of servile obedience, of arbitrary power and violence, which had been taking root for several centuries; under a thin veneer of revolution one finds the servile and violent man of yesterday.

In the midst of these exceptional circumstances the peasants gave proof of that obstinacy and energy in the pursuit of their rights for which they are noted.  Thrown out in the middle of the night, robbed, insulted, they decided, nevertheless, to continue their Congress.  “How, otherwise, can we go home?” said they.  “We must come to an understanding as to what is to be done.”

The members of the Executive Committee who were still free succeeded in finding new premises (let it be noted that among others the workmen of the big Oboukhovsky factory offered them hospitality), and during three days the peasants could assemble secretly by hiding themselves from the eyes of the Red Guard, and the spies in various quarters of Petrograd, until such time as the decisions were given on all great questions. A proces-verbal was prepared concerning all that had taken place on Kirillovskaia Street.  A declaration was made protesting against the acts of the Bolshevik government.  This declaration was to be read at the Taurida Palace when the Soviets were in congress by delegates designated for that purpose.  The Bolsheviki, however, would not permit the delegates to enter the Taurida Palace.

Here are the texts of the declaration and of the proces-verbal: 

At the Third National Congress of Soviets of Peasants’ Delegates grouped around the principle of the defense of the Constituent Assembly, this declaration was sent to the Congress of Workmen’s, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Delegates called together by the Bolshevist government at the Taurida Palace: 

At the Second National Peasants’ Congress the 359 delegates who had come together for the defense of the Constituent Assembly continued the work of the Congress and elected a provisional Executive Committee, independently of the 354 delegates who had opposed the power of the Constituent Assembly and adhered to the Bolsheviki.

We, peasant delegates, having come to Petrograd, more than 300 in number, to participate