it sounded—with blood-red flags over the dark ranks of workmen, to welcome home again their brothers who had defended “Red Petrograd”. In the bitter dusk they tramped, men and women, their tall bayonets swaying; through streets faintly lighted and slippery with mud, between silent crowds of bourgeois, contemptuous but fearful…
All were against them—business men, speculators, investors, land-owners, army officers, politicians, teachers, students, professional men, shop-keepers, clerks, agents. The other Socialist parties hated the Bolsheviki with an implacable hatred. On the side of the Soviets were the rank and file of the workers, the sailors, all the undemoralised soldiers, the landless peasants, and a few—a very few—intellectuals…
From the farthest corners of great Russia, whereupon desperate street-fighting burst like a wave, news of Kerensky’s defeat came echoing back the immense roar of proletarian victory. Kazan, Saratov, Novgorod, Vinnitza—where the streets had run with blood; Moscow, where the Bolsheviki had turned their artillery against the last strong-hold of the bourgeoisie—the Kremlin.
“They are bombarding the Kremlin!” The news passed from mouth to mouth in the streets of Petrograd, almost with a sense of terror. Travellers from “white and shining little mother Moscow” told fearful tales. Thousands killed; the Tverskaya and the Kuznetsky Most in flames; the church of Vasili Blazheiny a smoking ruin; Usspensky Cathedral crumbling down; the Spasskaya Gate of the Kremlin tottering; the Duma burned to the ground.[N 1]
Nothing that the Bolsheviki had done could compare with this fearful blasphemy in the heart of Holy Russia. To the ears of the devout sounded the shock of guns crashing in the
N
- ↑ References in this chapter refer to the Appendix to Chapter X. See page 353.
