My appeal filled the soldiers with enthusiasm. They wanted to kick the SRs and SDs out of the workshops right away. And if they had not been restrained by their revolutionary consciousness of their responsibility for the lives of these people, why they would have torn them in pieces. Actually it was only with great effort that we succeeded in preventing the soldiers from committing an act unworthy of revolutionaries and directed against other revolutionaries. (However the agents of the government and of these “revolutionaries” on July 3–5, 1917 murdered Comrade Asnin in Petrograd at the Durnovo dacha, as well as many other revolutionaries and anarchists.)
The soldier-workers of the military workshops passed a resolution in connection with our report about recalling their representatives from the Soviet and the Public Committee if these two organizations were not re-organized by all the workers. They also passed a resolution supporting the revolutionary toilers of Gulyai-Pole raion…
And when we left the workshops the soldiers asked us to tell the peasants that the soldiers would always support them in their struggle for liberty and requested them to send similar reports more often.
It was already late. Exhausted, we grabbed a hasty meal at the home of the comrade workers and returned to our rooms.
During the night the Government and Military Commissars — the pomeshchik Mikhno and the S-D Popov — gathered their forces and ordered the secret arrest of the anarchist Nikiforova because she had accompanied us in our meetings with the workers and didn’t enjoy the protection of a mandate from the peasants. The agents of the commissars quickly found her apartment and, seizing her, they took to prison in an automobile.
But, unfortunately for the commissars, the workers of Aleksandrovsk found out about the Nikiforova’s arrest first thing in the morning when they went to work. They immediately elected delegates and sent them to the commissars, empowering them to demand the immediate release of Nikiforova. The commissars avoided the workers’ delegates and couldn’t be found.
Then the workers of the factories, plants, and workshops abandoned their machines and, accompanied by the wailing of the plant sirens, marched on the Soviet under their banners, singing revolutionary songs.
As the workers were showing their revolutionary solidarity by marching on the Soviet, they encountered the President of the Soviet, the Social Democrat Mochalii and seized him. A delegation, elected on the spot, put the President in a horse-drawn cab and accompanied him to the prison to liberate the anarchist Nikiforova.
When the workers’ delegation, President Mochalii, and the anarchist Nikiforova arrived back from the prison at the procession which was marching along Cathedral Street, the workers grabbed Nikiforova and, passing her from hand to hand, bore her in triumph to the Soviet, congratulating her on her release and cursing the Provisional Government and all its agents.
None of the commissars dared show themselves at the tribune of the Soviet. Only the anarchist Nikiforova occupied this tribune and, with her powerful voice, urged the workers to struggle against the Government for the Revolution and for a society free of all authority.
We had finished our reports with an appeal to the workers to do something about the Aleksandrovsk Soviet which had gone too far in its anti-revolutionary activities. We knew what kind of organization it was from the behaviour of its agents in the villages and at congresses. Our reports predicted its fate. The arrogant act of the commissars towards our comrade anarchist was inexcusable both from a political and a tactical point of view and could only hasten the fall of this Soviet of Right S-Rs, Menshevik S-Ds, and Kadets.
The industrial workers were now confronted with the problem of how to reelect the Soviet in the most expeditious manner. In the course of several days new elections were scheduled. The workers recalled all their former representatives and elected, in most cases, new people. In this way a new Executive Committee of the Aleksandrovsk Soviet was formed.
This new Executive Committee was again composed not of workers interested directly in furthering their class interests, but of people who, while they were workers, were also by conviction very close to the Left S-Rs, and Bolsheviks, and even the anarchists. These newly-elected people divided themselves into fractions and, from the very first day of their entry into the Executive Committee, were guilty of distorting the meaning of Revolution among the working masses and, if it were not for the anarchists, would have ended up doing away with the essence of Revolution altogether.
However, this new Executive of the Aleksandrovsk Soviet at least did not support the clearly counter-revolutionary Public Committee of Aleksandrovsk uyezd and the Government Commissar in their demands to the Gulyai-Pole Public Committee to remove me from organizational work because of my role in disarming the bourgeoisie. Also the new Soviet did not insist on the return of the confiscated weapons.
The new Aleksandrovsk Soviet, like all the higher political institutions and administrations, felt the need to give each of its members a portfolio to carry under their arms as if they were going to decide the fate of the Revolution. And they met day after day elaborating rules for their own activities. The time for such work was propitious. This was the period when the Bolsheviks and Left S-Rs agreed on many points and the question of forming a bloc arose. This question had not yet been posed by the leadership of either party but it was easy to predict a positive outcome.
Comrade Antonov and myself left Aleksandrovsk with regret. We would have liked to spend more time with the industrial workers of Aleksandrovsk, among whom were many well-known and devoted revolutionaries. They were outstanding members of their class and yet did not belong any political party. The sympathized with the anarchists. We would have liked to stay with them but we didn’t have the right. We had begun organizational work among the peasants and we had to see it through. We returned to Gulyai-Pole.
Upon our return we called a meeting of all the Gulyai-Pole revolutionary, trade union, and social organizations and made a detailed report about our successes in Aleksandrovsk. Then we convened a general assembly of the whole working population of Gulyai-Pole and made a detailed report about the reception we got from the city workers and their reaction to our report to them about the counter-revolutionary activities going on in Aleksandrovsk and its uyezd. We also passed on the message from the soldier-workers of the munitions workshops. Our successes among the Aleksandrovsk workers invoked general rejoicing among the toiling population.
The revolutionary toilers thirsted for action.
I proposed to the peasants to designate reliable people who would be able to help the Land Committee to proceed immediately to dividing up the land belonging to the churches, the monasteries, and the pomeshchiks, because it was necessary to seed this land before winter or plough it in preparation for spring.
The peasants resolutely set about this work, but when they got out in the field and actually began to divide up the land, they realized that each peasant would have to keep, for that year at least, the land which he had ploughed and seeded with winter wheat. It was decided that each of these peasants should pay a certain sum to the community in order to maintain the public funds which provided for needs of the community, funds which would receive nothing that year from those peasants who had not been working.