Ten Days That Shook the World by John Reed (booksvooks .TXT) 📖

country and for the Cossacks in particular is a prompt and honest peace. The Council of People�s Commissars has declared to all Governments and peoples: We do not want other people�s property, and we do not wish to give away our own. Peace without annexations and without indemnities. Every nation must decide its own fate. There must be no oppressing of one nation by another. Such is the honest, democratic, People�s peace which the Council of People�s Commissars is proposing to all Governments, to all peoples, allies and enemies. And the results are visible: ON THE RUSSIAN FRONT AN ARMISTICE HAS BEEN CONCLUDED.

�The soldier�s and the Cossack�s blood is not flowing there any more. Now, Cossacks, decide: do you wish to continue this ruinous, senseless, criminal slaughter? Then support the Cadets, the enemies of the people, support Tchernov, Tseretelli, Skobeliev, who drove you into the offensive of July 1st; support Kornilov, who introduced capital punishment for soldiers and Cossacks at the front. BUT IF YOU WISH A PROMPT AND HONEST PEACE, THEN ENTER THE RANKS OF THE SOVIETS AND SUPPORT THE COUNCIL OF PEOPLE�s COMMISSARS.

�Your fate, Cossacks, lies in your own hands. Our common foes, the landowners, capitalists, officers-Kornilovists, bourgeois newspapers, are deceiving you and driving you along the road to ruin. In Orenburg, Dutov has arrested the Soviet and disarmed the garrison. Kaledin is threatening the Soviets in the province of the Don. He has declared the province to be in a state of war and is assembling his troops. Karaulov is shooting the local tribes in the Caucasus. The Cadet bourgeoisie is supplying them with its millions. Their common aim is to suppress the People�s Soviets, to crush the workers and peasants, to introduce again the discipline of the whip in the army, and to eternalise the bondage of the toiling Cossacks.

�Our revolutionary troops are moving to the Don and the Ural in order to put an end to this criminal revolt against the people. The commanders of the revolutionary troops have received orders not to enter into any negotiations with the mutinous Generals, to act decisively and mercilessly.

�Cossacks! On you depends now whether your brothers� blood is to flow still. We are holding out our hand to you. Join the whole people against its enemies. Declare Kaledin, Kornilov, Dutov, Karaulov and all their aiders and abettors to be the enemies of the people, traitors and betrayers. Arrest them with your own forces and turn them over into the hands of the Soviet authority, which will judge them in open and public Revolutionary Tribunal. Cossacks! Form Soviets of Cossacks� Deputies. Take into your toil-worn hands the management of all the affairs of the Cossacks. Take away the lands of your own wealthy landowners. Take over their grain, their inventoried property and live-stock for the cultivation of the lands of the toiling Cossacks, who are ruined by the war.

�Forward, Cossacks, to the fight for the common cause of the people!

�Long live the toiling Cossacks!

�Long live the union of the Cossacks, the soldiers, peasants and workers!

�Long live the power of the Soviets of Cossacks�, Soldiers�, Workers� and Peasants� Deputies.

�Down with the war! Down with the landowners and the Kornilovist-Generals!

�Long live Peace and the Brotherhood of peoples!�

Council of People�s Commissars.

17.

FROM THE COMMISSION ON PUBLIC EDUCATION ATTACHED TO THE CENTRAL CITY DUMA

�Comrades Workingmen and Workingwomen!

�A few days before the holidays, a strike has been declared by the teachers of the public schools. The teachers side with the bourgeoisie against the Workers� and Peasants� Government.

�Comrades, organise parents� committees and pass resolutions against the strike of the teachers. Propose to the Ward Soviets of Workers� and Soldiers� Deputies, the Trade Unions, the Factory-Shop and Party Committees, to organise protest meetings. Arrange with your own resources Christmas trees and entertainments for the children, and demand the opening of the schools, after the holidays, at the date which will be set by the Duma.

�Comrades, strengthen your position in matters of public education, insist on the control of the proletarian organisations over the schools.�

Commission on Public Education attached to the Central City Duma.

18.

DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE OF THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT

The notes issued by Trotzky to the Allies and to the neutral powers, as well as the note of the Allied military Attach�s to General Dukhonin, are too voluminous to give here. Moreover they belong to another phase of the history of the Soviet Republic, with which this book has nothing to do�the foreign relations of the Soviet Government. This I treat at length in the next volume, �Kornilov to Brest-Litovsk.�

19.

APPEALS TO THE FRONT AGAINST DUKHONIN

�� The struggle for peace has met with the resistance of the bourgeoisie and the counter-revolutionary Generals�. From the accounts in the newspapers, at the Stavka of former Supreme Commander Dukhonin are gathering the agents and allies of the bourgeoisie, Verkhovski, Avksentiev, Tchernov, Gotz, Tseretelli, etc. It seems even that they want to form a new power against the Soviets.

�Comrades soldiers! All the persons we have mentioned have been Ministers already. They have acted in accord with Kerensky and the bourgeoisie. They are responsible for the offensive of July 1st and for the prolongation of the war. They promised the land to the peasants and then arrested the Land Committees. They reestablished capital punishment for soldiers. They obey the orders of French, English and American financiers�.

�General Dukhonin, for having refused to obey orders of the Council of People�s Commissars, has been dismissed from his position as Supreme Commander�. For answer he is circulating among the troops the note from the Military Attach�s of the Allied imperialist Powers, and attempting to provoke a counterrevolution�.

�Do not obey Dukhonin! Pay no attention to his provocation! Watch him and his group of counter-revolutionary Generals carefully�.�

20.

FROM KRYLENKO Order Number Two

�� The ex-Supreme Commander, General Dukhonin, for having opposed resistance to the execution of orders, for criminal action susceptible of provoking a new civil war, is declared enemy of the People. All persons who support Dukhonin will be arrested, without respect to their social or political position or their past. Persons equipped with special authority will operate these arrests. I charge General Manikhovsky with the execution of the above-mentioned dispositions�.�

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER XII

1.

INSTRUCTION TO PEASANTS

In answer to the numerous enquiries coming from peasants, it is hereby explained that the whole power in the country is from now on held by the Soviets of the Workers�, Soldiers�, and Peasants� Deputies. The Workers� Revolution, after having conquered in Petrograd and in Moscow, is now conquering in all other centres of Russia. The Workers� and Peasants� Government safeguards the interests of the masses of peasantry, the poorest of them; it is with the majority of peasants and workers against the landowners, and against the capitalists.

Hence the Soviets of Peasants� Deputies, and before all the District Soviets, and subsequently those of the Provinces, are from now on and until the Constituent Assembly meets, full-powered bodies of State authority in their localities. All landlords� titles to the land are cancelled by the second All-Russian Congress of Soviets. A decree regarding the land has already been issued by the present Provisional Workers� and Peasants� Government. On the basis of the above decree all lands hitherto belonging to landlords now pass entirely and wholly into the hands of the Soviets of Peasants� Deputies. The Volost (a group of several villages forms a Volost) Land Committees are immediately to take over all land from the landlords, and to keep a strict account over it, watching that order be maintained, and that the whole estate be well guarded, seeing that from now on all private estates become public property and must therefore be protected by the people themselves.

All orders given by the Volost Land Committees, adopted with the assent of the District Soviets of Peasants� Deputies, in fulfilment of the decrees issued by the revolutionary power, are absolutely legal and are to be forthwith and irrefutably brought into execution.

The Workers� and Peasants� Government appointed by the second All-Russian Congress of Soviets has received the name of the Council of People�s Commissars.

The Council of People�s Commissars summons the Peasants to take the whole power into their hands in every locality.

The workers will in every way absolutely and entirely support the peasants, arrange for them all that is required in connection with machines and tools, and in return they request the peasants to help with the transport of grain.

President of the Council of People�s Commissars, V. ULIANOV (LENIN).

Petrograd, November 18th, 1917.

2.

The full-powered Congress of Peasants� Soviets met about a week later, and continued for several weeks. Its history is merely an expanded version of the history of the �Extraordinary Conference.� At first the great majority of the delegates were hostile to the Soviet Government, and supported the reactionary wing. Several days later the assembly was supporting the moderates with Tchernov. And several days after that the vast majority of the Congress were voting for the faction of Maria Spiridonova, and sending their representatives into the Tsay-ee-kah at Smolny�. The Right Wing then walked out of the Congress and called a Congress of its own, which went on, dwindling from day to day, until it finally dissolved�.

 

End of Project Gutenberg’s Ten Days That Shook the World, by John Reed