During these
few days when the peasants were obliged to assemble in secret and to
station patrols to protect their meetings, they followed those methods of
conspiracy that the Russian Socialists had been obliged to employ when they
fought against the tyranny of autocracy. Returning to their villages, the
peasants bore with them the greatest hate for the Bolsheviki, whom they
considered the personification of tyranny and violence. And they took with
them also a firm resolution to fight against this violence.
The Executive Committee, whose powers were confirmed by the Third Congress,
found itself thus, for the second time, deprived of all its goods, its
premises, and its pecuniary resources; it found itself obliged to lead a
half-clandestine existence, to organize secret assemblies, etc. Miss
Spiridonova, who, in this fight against the peasants that rose to the
defense of the Constituent Assembly, gave proof of intolerance and peculiar
fanaticism, found herself at the head of the "peasants in uniform," sitting
at Smolny, _adopting a decree whereby all the moneys that came by post to
the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Peasant Delegates defending the
Constituent Assembly were to be confiscated.
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