“Mr. Mayor,” I said, “we are American correspondents. Will you please tell us officially the result of your investigations?”
He turned to us his face of venerable dignity.
“There is no truth in the reports,” he said slowly. “Except for the incidents which occurred as the Ministers were being brought here, they have been treated with every consideration. As for the _yunkers,_ not one has received the slightest injury….”
Up the Nevsky, in the empty after-midnight gloom, an interminable column of soldiers shuffled in silence—to battle with Kerensky. In dim back streets automobiles without lights flitted to and fro, and there was furtive activity in Fontanka 6, headquarters of the Peasants’ Soviet, in a certain apartment of a huge building on the Nevsky, and in the _Injinierny Zamok_ (School of Engineers); the Duma was illuminated….
In Smolny Institute the Military Revolutionary Committee flashed baleful fire, pounding like an over-loaded dynamo….
The Military Revolutionary Committee declares that it will not tolerate any violation of revolutionary order….
Theft, brigandage, assaults and attempts at massacre will be severely punished….
Following the example of the Paris Commune, the Committee will destroy without mercy any looter or instigator of disorder….
Quiet lay the city. Not a hold-up, not a robbery, not even a drunken fight. By night armed patrols went through the silent streets, and on the corners soldiers and Red Guards squatted around little fires, laughing and singing. In the daytime great crowds gathered on the sidewalks listening to interminable hot debates between students and soldiers, business men and workmen.
Citizens stopped each other on the street.
“I don’t know anything. Where’s Kerensky?”
“They say only eight versts from Petrograd…. Is it true that the Bolsheviki have fled to the battleship _Avrora?”_
Only the walls screamed, and the few newspapers; denunciation, appeal, decree….
An enormous poster carried the hysterical manifesto of the Executive Committee of the Peasants’ Soviets:
….They (the Bolsheviki) dare to say that they are supported by the Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies, and that they are speaking on behalf of the Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies….
Let all working-class Russia know that this is a LIE, AND THAT ALL THE WORKING PEASANTS—in the person of—the EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE ALL-RUSSIAN SOVIETS OF PEASANTS’ DEPUTIES—refutes with indignation all participation of the organised peasantry in this criminal violation of the will of the working-classes….