Kerensky's government arrested, during the first days, the leaders of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, Avksentieff, Gotz, Zenzinoff, the generals Boldareff, Krasnoff and others—later on, all of them, leaders of the armed struggle against the Soviet power and members of the rebel governments of Siberia, the Don and the South) were set free. Generals Denikin, Markoff, Erdeli and others remained in the hands of the Soviet power up to November 20th and left its limits alive.
Yes, that was the period of "rosy illusions." It continued for a few months.
The conditions began to change by April–May, 1918, In April, 1918, the decree regarding the formation of a standing Red Army was published. Only in April the Extraordinary Commissions acquired the right to execute robbers caught in the act and officers going off to Korniloff, according to his secret mobilisation. Only on June 18th did the Revolutionary Court pass its first sentence of death on the Admiral commanding the Baltic Fleet. Only in May were measures taken to stop the publication of the bourgeois papers (at the moment of this suppression there were thirty papers against three of the Soviets in Moscow alone). Only in June, 1918, were the Mensheviks driven out of the Soviets.
Thus over six months (November, 1917—April–May, 1918) passed from the moment of the formation of the Soviet power to the practical application by the proletariat of any harsh dictatorial measures. The increased severity in the dictatorship was called forth by a series of very elementary facts. In April, the government of Skoropadsky was organised in Kieff; in May took place the rising of the Czecho-Slovaks, their siezure of the railway system and the formation of the Socialist-Revolutionary government in the East; in May, too, the Cossack counter-revolution on the Don—the Russian Vendée—acquired increased importance under the command of General Krasnoff.
Parallel with this, all the attention and energy of the
10
