The speech of Lenine was received with hostility;
as for Trotzky, who, some time before, had publicly threatened with the
guillotine all the "enemies of the Revolution," they prevented him from
speaking, crying out: "Down with the tyrant! Guillotineur! Assassin!" To
give his speech Trotzky, accompanied by his faithful "capotes," was obliged
to repair to another hall.
The Second Peasants' Congress was thus distinctly split into two parties.
The Bolsheviki tried by every means to elude a straight answer to the
question, "Does the Congress wish to uphold the Constituent Assembly?" They
prolonged the discussion, driving the peasants to extremities by every kind
of paltry discussion on foolish questions, hoping to tire them out and thus
cause a certain number of them to return home. The tiresome discussions
carried on for ten days, with the effect that a part of the peasants,
seeing nothing come from it, returned home. But the peasants had, in spite
of all, the upper hand; by a roll-call vote 359 against 314 pronounced
themselves for the defense without reserve of the Constituent Assembly.
Any work in common for the future was impossible. The fraction of the
peasants that pronounced itself for the Constituent Assembly continued to
sit apart, named its Executive Committee, and decided to continue the fight
resolutely.
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