each time—whereupon the Vikzhel threatened an immediate general strike unless they were released…
Smolny was plainly powerless. The newspapers said that all the factories of Petrograd must shut down for lack of fuel in three weeks; the Vikzhel announced that trains must cease running by December first; there was food for three days only in Petrograd, and no more coming in; and the Army on the Front was starving… The Committee for Salvation, the various Central Committees, sent word all over the country, exhorting the population to ignore the Government decrees. And the Allied Embassies were either coldly indifferent, or openly hostile…
The opposition newspapers, suppressed one day and reappearing next morning under new names, heaped bitter sarcasm on the new regime.[N 1] Even Novaya Zhizn characterised it as “a combination of demagoguery and impotence.”
From day to day (it said) the Government of the People’s Commissars sinks deeper and deeper into the mire of superficial haste. Having easily conquered the power… the Bolsheviki can not make use of it.
Powerless to direct the existing mechanism of Government, they are unable at the same time to create a new one which might work easily and freely according to the theories of social experimenters.
Just a little while ago the Bolsheviki hadn’t enough men to run their growing party—a work above all of speakers and writers; where then are they going to find trained men to execute the diverse and complicated functions of government?
The new Government acts and threatens, it sprays the country with decrees, each one more radical and more “socialist” than the last. But in this exhibition of Socialism on Paper—more likely designed for the stupefaction of our descendants—there appears neither the desire nor the capacity to solve the immediate problems of the day!
N
- ↑ References in this chapter refer to the Appendix to Chapter XI. See page 355.
