gitation assumed large proportions. Copies of the _Pravda_,
spread lavishly here and there, were poisoned with calumny, campaigns
against the other parties, boasting gross flatteries addressed to the
soldiers and appeals to trouble. Bolsheviki meetings permeated with the
same spirit were organized at Petrograd, Moscow, and other cities.
Bolshevist agitators set out for the front at the same time with copies of
the _Pravda_ and other papers, and the Bolsheviki enjoyed, during this
time--as Lenine himself admits--complete liberty. Their chiefs, compromised
in the insurrection of June 3d, had been given their freedom.

Their principal watchword was "Down with the war!" "Kerensky and the other
conciliators," they cried, "want war and do not want peace. Kerensky will
give you neither peace, nor land, nor bread, nor Constituent Assembly. Down
with the traitor and the counter-revolutionists! They want to smother the
Revolution. We demand peace. We will give you peace, land to the peasants,
factories and work to the workmen!" Under this simple form the agitation
was followed up among the masses and found a propitious ground, first among
the soldiers who were tired of war and athirst for peace. In the Soviet of
the Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates of Petrograd the Bolshevist party
soon found itself strengthened and fortified. Its influence was also
considerable among the sailors of the Baltic fleet. Cronstadt was entirely
in their hands. New elections of the Central Executive Committee of the
Soviet of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates soon became necessary; they
gave a big majority to the Bolsheviki. The old bureau, Tchcheidze at its
head, had to leave; the Bolsheviki triumphed clamorously.

To fight against the Bolsheviki the Executive Committee of the National
Soviet of Peasants' Delegates decided at the beginning of December to call
a Second General Peasants' Congress. This was to decide if the peasants
would defend the Constituent Assembly or if they would follow the
Bolsheviki. This Congress had, in effect, a decisive importance. It showed
what was the portion of the peasant class that upheld the Bolsheviki. It
was principally the peasants in soldiers' dress, the "declasse soldiers,"
men taken from the country life by the war, from their natural
surroundings, and desiring but one thing, the end of the war. The peasants
who had come from the country had, on the contrary, received the mandate to
uphold the Constituent Assemb