e to our electors, to the millions of the peasant
population, and to the whole country, that the actual government
which is called "The Government of the Peasants and Workmen" has
established in their integrity the violence, the arbitrariness,
and all the horrors of the autocratic regime which was overthrown
by the great Revolution of February. All the liberties attained by
that Revolution and won by innumerable sacrifices during several
generations are scouted and trodden under foot. Liberty of opinion
does not exist; men who under the government of the Czar had paid
by years of prison and exile for their devotedness to the
revolutionary cause are now again thrown into the dungeons of
fortresses without any accusation whatever, of anything of which
they might be guilty, being made to them. Again spies and
informers are in action. Again capital punishment is
re-established in its most horrible forms; shooting on the streets
and assassinations without judgment or examination. _Peaceful
processions, on their way to salute the Constituent Assembly, are
greeted by a fusillade of shots upon the orders of the autocrats
of Smolny. The liberty of the press does not exist; the papers
which displease the Bolsheviki are suppressed, their printing
plants and offices looted, their editors arrested._

The organizations which, during the preceding months, were
established with great difficulty--zemstvos, municipalities,
agricultural and food committees--are foolishly destroyed in an
excess of savage fanaticism.

The Bolsheviki even try to kill the supreme representation, the
only one legitimately established, of the popular will--the
Constituent Assembly.

To justify this violence and this tyranny they try to allege the
well-being of the people, but we, peasant workers, we see well
that their policy will only tighten the cord around the workers'
necks, while the possibility of a democratic peace becomes more
remote every day; matters have come to the point where the
Bolsheviki proclaim a further mobilization--of salaried
volunteers, it is true--to renew the hostilities. They strive to
represent the war with Ukraine and with the Cossacks under the
aspect of a war of classes; it is not, however, the bourgeoisie,
but the representatives of the working classes who are killed on
one sid