Government and bank employees got out hundreds of proclamations and appeals,[N 1] protesting, defending themselves, such as this one:
to the attention of all citizens.
the state bank is closed!
why?Because the violence exercised by the Bolsheviki against the State Bank has made it impossible for us to work. The first act of the People’s Commissars was to demand ten million rubles, and on November 27th they demanded twenty-five millions, without any indication as to where this money was to go.
… We functionaries cannot take part in plundering the people’s property. We stopped work.
Citizens! The money in the State Bank is yours, the people’s money, acquired by your labour, your sweat and blood. Citizens! Save the people’s property from robbery, and us from violence, and we shall immediately resume work.
Employees of the State Bank.
From the Ministry of Supplies, the Ministry of Finance, from the Special Supply Committee, declarations that the Military Revolutionary Committee made it impossible for the employees to work, appeals to the population to support them against Smolny… But the dominant worker and soldier did not believe them; it was firmly fixed in the popular mind that the employees were sabotaging, starving the Army, starving the people… In the long bread lines, which as formerly stood in the iron winter streets, it was not the Government which was blamed, as it had been under Kerensky, but the tchinovniki, the sabotageurs; for the Government was their Government, their Soviets—and the functionaries of the Ministries were against it…
At the centre of all this opposition was the Duma, and its militant organ, the Committee for Salvation, protesting against all the decrees of the Council of People’s Commissars,
N
- ↑ References in this chapter refer to the Appendix to Chapter XI. See page 355.
