The decrees regarding land and peace, confirmed by the Soviet Congress, were printed in vast numbers of copies and distributed throughout the length and breadth of the country by delegates from the front, by peasant messengers coming from the villages, and by propagandists whom we sent to the provinces and trenches. At the same time, we continued the organisation and arming of the Red Guard, who, together with the old garrison and sailors, were performing the arduous guard duties. The Council of People’s Commissioners was taking over one government institution after another, but everywhere were meeting with the passive resistance of the higher and middle officials. The former Soviet parties did everything they could to get support from these classes and thus organise a sabotage of the new authority. Our enemies were quite certain that the whole business was a mere episode, that it was only a question of a day or two, perhaps of a week, and the Soviet government would be overthrown. At the Smolny, the first foreign consuls and members of the embassies put in their appearance, impelled as much by business motives as by curiosity. Newspaper correspondents also hurried thither with their notebooks and cameras. All hastened to get a glimpse of the new government, certain that in a day or two it would be too late.

In the city, complete order reigned. The sailors, soldiers, and Red Guards behaved in these first days with exemplary discipline and maintained stern revolutionary order.

Among our enemies there was a growing fear lest the ‘episode’ should continue too long; and very soon they began to organise the first attack against the new government. The initiative emanated from the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. In the previous phases of the Revolution, they had not been anxious, and indeed had not dared, to take the entire power into their hands. In correspondence with their political position as go-betweens, they contented themselves with serving in the coalition government in the capacity of assistants, critics, friendly opponents, and apologists for the bourgeoisie. At all elections, they conscientiously denounced the liberal bourgeoisie, but in the government, they regularly united with it. Thanks to these tactics, they succeeded in the course of the first six months of the revolution in completely forfeiting the confidence of the popular masses and of the army, and now the November Revolution had finally hurled them from power. Yet only yesterday they had still considered themselves masters of the situation. The leaders of the Bolsheviks, whom they persecuted, had been obliged to live ‘illegally’ and in hiding, just as under the Tsardom. Today, however, the Bolsheviks were in power, and the former ministers and the coalitionists and their collaborators were swept aside and left without any influence on the further course of events. They did not want and could not believe that this sudden transformation signified the beginning of a new epoch. They wanted and forced themselves to think that it was all a mere accident, a misunderstanding, which could be righted by a few energetic speeches and indicting articles, but at every turn they stumbled upon ever increasing and irresistible obstacles. Hence their blind and truly savage hatred towards us.

The bourgeois politicians would not, of course, make up their minds to go into the fire themselves. Instead, they were pushing forward the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, who in their struggle against us had acquired all that energy which they had so sadly lacked when they were in semi-power. Their organs were spreading the most fantastic rumours and slanders. In their name appeared proclamations containing direct appeals to the people to destroy the new government. They, too, organised the officials for sabotage and the cadets for military action against us – throughout 9th and 10th November we continued to receive constant threats by telegram from the army committees, Town Councils, Zemstvos, and the managing committee of the railway union. The Nevsky Prospekt, the chief artery of the bourgeoisie of the capital, became more and more animated. The bourgeois youth were awakening from their torpor, and, urged on by the press, were unfolding at the Nevsky Prospekt an energetic agitation against the Soviet government. Helped by crowds of bourgeois cadets, they were disarming individual Red Guardsmen, and in side streets were shooting down sailors and Red Guards. A group of cadets seized the Telephone Exchange. They also made attempts to seize the Telegraph and Post Office. Finally, we were informed that three armoured cars had fallen into the hands of some unknown military organisation hostile to us. The bourgeois elements were evidently raising their heads. The press was announcing that we were fast approaching our last hour. Our people intercepted some secret orders from which it was clear that a military organisation had been formed against the Petrograd Soviet at the head of which stood a so-called Committee for the Defence of the Revolution, created by the City Council and the old Central Executive Committee. Both in the latter and in the City Council, the Right Socialist Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks were the leading parties. This Committee had at its disposal cadets, students, and many counter-revolutionary officers, who, behind the backs of the coalitionists, were hoping to deliver a death-blow to the Soviets.