Committee of Defense and of the Revolutionary Military Soviet of the Republic, denounced the strike movement in sharpest terms. He charged the workers of the Trubotchny factory with inciting dissatisfaction, accused them of being “self-seeking labor skinners (shkurniki) and counter-revolutionists,” and proposed that the Trubotchny factory be closed. The Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet (Zinoviev, Chairman) accepted the suggestion. The Trubotchny strikers were locked out and thus automatically deprived of their rations.
These methods of the Bolshevik Government served still further to embitter and antagonise the workers.
Strikers’ proclamations now began to appear on the streets of Petrograd. Some of them assumed a distinctly political character, the most significant of them, posted on the walls of the city February 27, reading:
A complete change is necessary in the policies of the Government. First of all, the workers and peasants need freedom. They don’t want to live by the decrees of the Bolsheviki: they want to control their own destinies.
Comrades, preserve revolutionary order! Determinedly and in an organised manner demand:
Liberation of all arrested socialists and nonpartisan workingmen;
Abolition of martial law; freedom of speech, press and assembly for all who labor;
Free election of shop and factory committees (zahvkomi), of labor union and soviet representatives.
Call meetings, pass resolutions, send your delegates to the authorities and work for the realisation of your demands.
The Government replied to the demands of the strikers by making numerous arrests and suppressing several labor organisations. The action resulted in popular temper growing more anti-Bolshevik; reactionary slogans began to be heard. Thus on February 28 there appeared a proclamation of the “Socialist Workers of the Nevsky District,” which concluded with a call for the Constituent Assembly:
