Page:John Reed - Ten Days that Shook the World - 1919, Boni and Liveright.djvu/218

174 The Council of the Republic, until the resumption of its labours, invites the citizens of the Russian Republic to group themselves around the… local Committees for Salvation of Country and Revolution, which are organising the overthrow of the Bolsheviki and the creation of a Government capable of leading the country to the Constituent Assembly.

Dielo Naroda said:

And Narodnoye Slovo (People’s Word—Populist Socialist):

The bourgeois press had temporarily disappeared…

Pravda had an account of the first meeting of the new Tsay-ee-kah, now the parliament of the Russian Soviet Republic. Miliutin, Commissar of Agriculture, remarked that the Peasants’ Executive Committee had called an All-Russian Peasant Congress for December 13th.

“But we cannot wait,” he said. “We must have the backing of the peasants. I propose that we call the Congress of Peasants, and do it immediately…” The Left Socialist Revolutionaries agreed. An Appeal to the Peasants of Russia was hastily drafted, and a committee of five elected to carry out the project.

The question of detailed plans for distributing the land, and the question of Workers’ Control of Industry, were postponed until the experts working on them should submit a report.