ple. At the corner of Fourstatskaia Street (one
of the Streets leading to the Taurida Palace) they found themselves all at
once assailed by shots from the Red Guards.

The Red Guard fired _without warning_, something that never before
happened, even in the time of Czarism. The police always began by inviting
the participators to disperse. Among the first victims was a member of the
Executive Committee of the Soviet of Peasants' Delegates, the Siberian
peasant, Logvinov. An explosive bullet shot away half of his head (a
photograph of his body was taken; it was added to the documents which were
transferred to the Commission of Inquiry). Several workmen and students and
one militant of the Revolutionary Socialist party, Gorbatchevskaia, were
killed at the same time. Other processions of participants on their way to
the Taurida Palace were fired into at the same time. On all the streets
leading to the palace, groups of Red Guards had been established; they
received the order "Not to spare the cartridges." On that day at Petrograd
there were one hundred killed and wounded.

It must be noted that when, at a session of the Constituent Assembly, in
the Taurida Palace, they learned of this shooting, M. Steinberg,
Commissioner of Justice, declared in the corridor that it was a lie, that
he himself had visited the streets of Petrograd and had found everywhere
that "all was quiet." Exactly as the Ministers of Nicholas Romanov after
the suppressions said "Lie. Lie," so cried the Bolsheviki and the
Revolutionary Socialists of the Left, in response to the question formally
put on the subject of the shooting by a member of the Constituent Assembly.

The following day the Bolshevik organs and those of the Revolutionary
Socialists of the Left passed over these facts in silence. This silence
they kept also on the 9th of January, the day on which literally all
Petrograd assembled at the funeral of the victims. Public indignation,
however, obliged them in the end to admit that there had been some small
groups of participants and to name a Commission of Inquiry concerning the
street disorders which had taken place on January 5th. This Commission was
very dilatory in the performance of its duty and it is very doubtful if
they ever came to any decision.

Analogous manifestations took place at Moscow, at Saratov and other cities;
everywhere they were accompanied by shootings. The number of victims was
particularly considerable at Moscow.