Page:Albert Rhys Williams - Through the Russian Revolution (1921).djvu/139

Rh crimes. We invite all delegates to leave this congress." With a dramatic gesture he steps from the platform and stalks towards the door. About eighty delegates rise from their seats and push their way after him.

"Let them go," cries Trotzky, "let them go! They are just so much refuse that will be swept into the garbage-heap of history."

In a storm of hoots, jeers and taunts of "Renegades! Traitors!" from the proletarians, the intelligentsia pass out of the hall and out of the Revolution. A supreme tragedy! The intelligentsia rejecting the Revolution they had helped to create, deserting the masses in the crisis of their struggle. Supreme folly, too. They do not isolate the Soviets, they only isolate themselves. Behind the Soviets are rolling up solid battalions of support.

Every minute brings news of fresh conquests of the Revolution—the arrest of ministers, the seizure of the State Bank, telegraph station, telephone station, the staff headquarters. One by one the centers of power are passing into the hands of the people. The spectral authority of the old government is crumbling before the hammer strokes of the insurgents.

A commissar, breathless and mud-spattered from riding, climbs the platform to announce: "The garrison of Tsarskoye Selo for the Soviets. It stands