Word: bolsheviks
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Assembly. Now word came that they had decided to remain neutral; they would neither go into the streets against the demonstrators nor join with them. Like other regular army units, they believed that all that was at stake was a simple misunderstanding between the authority of the Bolshevik regime and that of the Constituent Assembly. The soldiers hoped both bodies could find a way of uniting peacefully. So did the 40 delegates of the "Left" Social Revolutionaries who had decided to collaborate with the Bolsheviks. Lenin was later to describe them as "little fools...
...Deputy, S. P. Shvetsov. He mounted the stage, accompanied by a bestial racket from the left that was to continue for hours. Mingled with the shouts and whistles were howls and yells, stamping of feet and pounding on desktops. The galleries, jammed with members of the Bolshevik party, added to the appalling...
...Bolsheviks leaped to the stage and wrested the Speaker's bell from Shvetsov's hand. The Bolshevik Sverdlov, ringing the captured bell, announced the opening of the Assembly for the second time. After a singing of the Internationale, Sverdlov invited the Deputies to become a rubber-stamp Parliament, warning us that "even from a formal point of view," any opposition to the Soviet regime was, in essence, illegal. Before murdering the Assembly, the Reds were giving it the option of committing suicide...
Mute Deputies. The first vote was the crucial one-for the chairmanship of the Assembly. The SRs nominated Chernov; the Bolsheviks, Marya Skpiridonova. Chernov won, 244-151. Apparently, he had the pathetic hope that the Reds might be persuaded to moderation and compromise; his speech was couched in Socialist and international tones, as though attempting to placate the Bolsheviks and appealing for the unity that all Russia desperately wanted. The response was bloodthirsty. "Bullets are the only way!" screamed the Bolsheviks. In answer to Chernov, Bolshevik Nikolai Bukharin strode to the platform to cry, "We demand a dictatorship...
...that night it became clear to Lenin that harassment and threats would not prevent the SR majority from enacting a whole series of resolutions that would have the effect of law. His tactic: an order to the Bolshevik Deputies to walk out of the Assembly. After some hesitation, the Left SRs followed them. In the hall, the sailors and Red soldiers now threw off all restraint. They leaped through the barriers, carried their rifles cocked along the corridors, stormed into the galleries. In their seats the Deputies were motionless, tragically mute. We were isolated from the world, just...