Page:John Reed - Ten Days that Shook the World - 1919, Boni and Liveright.djvu/342

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Ten Days that Shook the World

Hall while a member was speaking, and ordered the members to leave, or force would be used. They did so, protesting to the last, but finally “ceding to violence.”

The new Duma, which was elected ten days later, and for which the “Moderate” Socialists refused to vote, was almost entirely Bolshevik…

There remained several centres of dangerous opposition, such as the “republics” of Ukraine and Finland, which were showing definitely anti-Soviet tendencies. Both at Helsingfors and at Kiev the Governments were gathering troops which could be depended upon, and entering upon campaigns of crushing Bolshevism, and of disarming and expelling Russian troops. The Ukrainean Rada had taken command of all southern Russia, and was furnishing Kaledin reinforcements and supplies. Both Finland and Ukraine were beginning secret negotiations with the Germans, and were promptly recognised by the Allied Governments, which loaned them huge sums of money, joining with the propertied classes to create counter-revolutionary centres of attack upon Soviet Russia. In the end, when Bolshevism had conquered in both these countries, the defeated bourgeoisie called in the Germans to restore them to power…

But the most formidable menace to the Soviet Government was internal and two-headed—the Kaledin movement, and the Staff at Moghilev, where General Dukhonin had assumed command.

The ubiquitous Muraviov was appointed commander of the war against the Cossacks, and a Red Army was recruited from among the factory workers. Hundreds of propagandists were sent to the Don. The Council of People’s Commissars issued a proclamation to the Cossacks,[N 1] explaining what the Soviet Government was, how the propertied classes, the tchinovniki, landlords, bankers and their allies, the Cossack princes, land-owners and Generals, were trying to destroy the Revolu-


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  1. References in this chapter refer to the Appendix to Chapter XI. See page 355.