"In whose name do you order us, who are Delegates to the Peasants' Congress
of All-Russia, to disperse?" asked the peasants.
"In the name of the Baltic fleet," the soldiers replied.
The peasants refused; cries of protest were raised. One by one the peasant
delegates ascended the tribune to stigmatize the Bolsheviki in speeches
full of indignation, and to express the hopes that they placed in the
Constituent Assembly.
The sailors listened. They had come to disperse a counter-revolutionary
Congress, and these speeches troubled them. One sailor, not able to stand
it any longer, burst into tears.
"Let me speak!" he shouted to the president. "I hear your speeches, peasant
comrades, and I no longer understand anything.... What is going on? We are
peasants, and you, too, are peasants. But we are of this side, and you are
of the other.... Why? Who has separated us? For we are brothers.... But it
is as if a barrier had been placed between us." He wept and, seizing his
revolver, he exclaimed, "No, I would rather kill myself!"
This session of the Congress presented a strange spectacle, disturbed by
men who confessed that they did not know why they were there; the peasants
sang revolutionary songs; the sailors, armed with guns and grenades, joined
them.
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