Page:John Reed - Ten Days that Shook the World - 1919, Boni and Liveright.djvu/196

154 with the Bolsheviki, that night when Tseretelli and the “compromisers” forced Coalition upon the democracy of Russia.

“You here?” I asked him.

His eyes flashed fire. “Yes!” he cried. “I left the Congress with my party Wednesday night. I have not risked my life for twenty years and more to submit now to the tyranny of the Dark People. Their methods are intolerable. But they have not counted on the peasants… When the peasants begin to act, then it is a question of minutes before they are done for.”

“But the peasants—will they act? Doesn’t the Land decree settle the peasants? What more do they want?”

“Ah, the Land decree!” he said furiously. “Yes, do you know what that Land decree is? It is our decree—it is the Socialist Revolutionary programme, intact! My party framed that policy, after the most careful compilation of the wishes of the peasants themselves. It is an outrage…”

“But if it is your own policy, why do you object? If it is the peasants’ wishes, why will they oppose it?”

“You don’t understand! Don’t you see that the peasants will immediately realise that it is all a trick—that these usurpers have stolen the Socialist Revolutionary programme?”

I asked if it were true that Kaledin was marching north.

He nodded, and rubbed his hands with a sort of bitter satisfaction. “Yes. Now you see what these Bolsheviki have done. They have raised the counter-revolution against us. The Revolution is lost. The Revolution is lost.”

“But won’t you defend the Revolution?”

“Of course we will defend it—to the last drop of our blood. But we won’t cooperate with the Bolsheviki in any way…”

“But if Kaledin comes to Petrograd, and the Bolsheviki defend the city. Won’t you join with them?”