zations prepared themselves for the defense of the
Constituent Assembly: The Union of Postal Employees, a part of the Union of
Railway Workers, the Bank Employees, the City Employees, the food
distributors' organizations, the teachers' associations, the zemstvos, the
co-operatives. These organizations believed that the _coup d'etat_ of
October 25th was neither legal nor just; they demanded a convocation with
brief delay of the Constituent Assembly and the restoration of the
liberties that were trampled under foot by the Bolsheviki.

These treated them as _saboteurs_, "enemies of the people," deprived them
of their salaries, and expelled them from their lodgings. They ordered
those who opposed them to be deprived of their food-cards. They published
lists of strikers, thus running the risk of having them lynched by the
crowds. At Saratov, for example, the strike of postal workers and
telegraphers lasted a month and a half. The institutions whose strike would
have entailed for the population not only disorganization, but an arrest of
all life (such as the railroads, the organizations of food distributers),
abstained from striking, only asking the Bolsheviki not to meddle with
their work. Sometimes, however, the gross interference of the Bolsheviki in
work of which they understood nothing obliged those opposed to them, in
spite of everything, to strike. It is to be noted also that the professors
of secondary schools were obliged to join the strike movements (the
superior schools had already ceased to function at this time) as well as
the theatrical artistes: a talented artist, Silotti, was arrested; he
declared that even in the time of Czarism nobody was ever uneasy on
account of his political opinions.

IV

_The Bolsheviki and the Constituent Assembly_

At the time of the accomplishment of their _coup d'etat_, the Bolsheviki
cried aloud that the ministry of Kerensky put off a long time the
convocation of the Constituante (which was a patent lie), that they would
never call the Assembly, and that they alone, the Bolsheviki, would do it.
But according as the results of the elections became known their opinions
changed.

In the beginning they boasted of their electoral victories at Petrograd and
Moscow. Then they kept silent, as if the elections had no existence
whatever. But the _Pravda_ and the _Izvestya_ of the Soviet of Workmen's
and Soldiers' Delegates continued to treat as caluminators those who
exposed the dan