Page:John Reed - Ten Days that Shook the World - 1919, Boni and Liveright.djvu/106

 “No. The history of the last seven months shows that the masses have left the Mensheviki. The Mensheviki and the Socialist Revolutionaries conquered the Cadets, and then when they got the power, they gave it to the Cadets…

“Dan tells you that you have no right to make an insurrection. Insurrection is the right of all revolutionists! When the down-trodden masses revolt, it is their right…”

Then the long-faced, cruel-tongued Lieber, greeted with groans and laughter.

“Engels and Marx said that the proletariat had no right to take power until it was ready for it. In a bourgeois revolution like this… the seizure of power by the masses means the tragic end of the Revolution… Trotzky, as a Social Democratic theorist, is himself opposed to what he is now advocating…” (Cries, “Enough! Down with him!”)

Martov, constantly interrupted: “The Internationalists are not opposed to the transmission of power to the democracy, but they disapprove of the methods of the Bolsheviki. This is not the moment to seize the power…”

Again Dan took the floor, violently protesting against the action of the Military Revolutionary Committee, which had sent a Commissar to seize the office of Izviestia and censor the paper. The wildest uproar followed. Martov tried to speak, but could not be heard. Delegates of the Army and the Baltic Fleet stood up all over the hall, shouting that the Soviet was their Government…

Amid the wildest confusion Ehrlich offered a resolution, appealing to the workers and soldiers to remain calm and not to respond to provocations to demonstrate, recognising the necessity of immediately creating a Committee of Public Safety, and asking the Provisional Government at once to pass decrees transferring the land to the peasants and beginning peace negotiations…

Then up leaped Volodarsky, shouting harshly that the