Page:Yevgeni Alekseyevich Preobrazhensky - Third Anniversary of the Russian October Revolution (1921).djvu/5

Rh The second All Russian Congress of Soviets proclaimed Russia a Soviet Republic, and adopted three most important decrees, viz., on peace, on the land, and on labour control of industry.

The soldiers, weary from three years of war in the interests of capitalism, greeted with enthusiasm the decree on peace and offer of an armistice on the German front. The resistance of the officers and generals was rapidly overcome, and the chief command of the army passed from the hands of the assassinated General Doukhonin to comrade Krilenko, who was appointed by the Soviet Government. The attempts on the part of the counter-revolutionists to set the uneducated part of the soldiers against the proletarian Revolution miscarried. The toiling masses at the front took their stand on the side of the Revolution.

By the decree on the land all the land belonging to the landlords was transferred to the peasants on the basis of equal rights in the use of the land. The thought cherished by the peasantry for decades, the thought on which the Social-Revolutionists, who betrayed the Revolution, only wasted so much breath, was put into effect by the party of the Bolsheviki in a single day. The land passed into the hands of the toiling peasantry.

Finally all the factories and works were placed under the control of the workers, so that the latter, after becoming familiar with them, might manage the industries themselves in the place of their old masters.