Page:John Reed - Ten Days that Shook the World - 1919, Boni and Liveright.djvu/340

284 voting again and again not to recognise the Soviet Government, openly cooperating with the new counter-revolutionary “Governments” set up at Moghilev… On the 17th of November, for example, the Committee for Salvation addressed “all Municipal Governments, Zemstvos, and all democratic and revolutionary organisations of peasants, workers, soldiers and other citizens”, in these words:

Meanwhile the elections for the Constituent Assembly in Petrograd gave an enormous plurality to the Bolsheviki; so that even the Mensheviki Internationalists pointed out that the Duma ought to be re-elected, as it no longer represented the political composition of the Petrograd population… At the same time floods of resolutions from workers’ organisations, from military units, even from the peasants in the surrounding country, poured in upon the Duma, calling it “counter-revolutionary, Kornilovitz,” and demanding that it resign. The last days of the Duma were stormy with the bitter demands of the Municipal workers for decent living wages, and the threat of strikes…

On the 23d a formal decree of the Military Revolutionary Committee dissolved the Committee for Salvation. On the 29th, the Council of People’s Commissars ordered the dissolution and re-election of the Petrograd City Duma:

In view of the fact that the Central Duma of Petrograd, elected September 2d, … has definitely lost the right to represent the population of Petrograd, being in complete disaccord with its state of mind and its aspirations … and in view of the fact that the personnel of the Duma majority, although having

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