"
VI
Immediately following the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly a body of
Red Guards shot the two Constitutional Democrats, Kokoshkin and Shingariev,
who were at the time confined as prisoners who were ill in the Naval
Hospital. The reason for the brutal murder of these men was that they were
bourgeoisie and, therefore, enemies of the working class! It is only just
to add that the foul deed was immediately condemned by the Bolshevik
government and by the Soviet of Petrograd. "The working class will never
approve of any outrages upon our prisoners, whatever may have been their
political offense against the people and their Revolution," the latter body
declared, in a resolution on the subject of the assassinations. Two days
after the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly twenty-three
Socialist-Revolutionist members of that body, assembled at the office of
their party, were arrested, and the premises occupied by Red Guards, the
procedure being exactly as it used to be in the old days under the Czar.
There is a relentless logic of life and action from which there can be no
escape. Czarism was a product of that inexorable process. All its
oppression and brutality proceeded by an inevitable and irresistible
sequence from the first determination and effort to realize the principle
of autocracy.
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