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The Bourgeois Press on the Bolsheviki
Russkaya Volia, October 28. “The decisive moment approaches. … It is decisive for the Bolsheviki. Either they will give us … a second edition of the events of July 16–18, or they will have to admit that with their plans and intentions, with their impertinent policy of wishing to separate themselves from everything consciously national, they have been definitely defeated. …
“What are the chances of Bolshevik success?
“It is difficult to answer that question, for their principal support is the … ignorance of the popular masses. They speculate on it, they work upon it by a demagogy which nothing can stop. …
“The Government must play its part in this affair. Supporting itself morally by the Council of the Republic, the Government must take a clearly-defined attitude toward the Bolsheviki. …
“And if the Bolsheviki provoke an insurrection against the legal power, and thus facilitate the German invasion, they must be treated as mutineers and traitors. …”
Birzhevya Viedomosti, October 28. “Now that the Bolsheviki have separated themselves from the rest of the democracy, the struggle against them is very much simpler—and it is not reasonable, in order to fight against Bolshevism, to wait until they make a manifestation. The Government should not even allow the manifestation. …
“The appeals of the Bolsheviki to insurrection and anarchy are acts punishable by the criminal courts, and in the freest countries, their authors would receive severe sentences. For what the Bolsheviki are carrying on is not a political struggle against the Government, or even for the power; it is propaganda for anarchy, massacres, and civil war. This propaganda must be extirpated at its roots; it would be strange to wait, in order to begin action against an agitation for pogroms, until the pogroms actually occurred. …”
Novoye Vremya, November 1. “… Why is the Government excited only about November 2nd (date of calling of the Congress of Soviets), and not about September 12th, or October 3rd?
“This is not the first time that Russia burns and falls in ruins, and that the smoke of the terrible conflagration makes the eyes of our Allies smart. …
“Since it came to power, has there been a single order issued by the Government for the purpose of halting anarchy, or has anyone attempted to put out the Russian conflagration?
“There were other things to do. …
“The Government turned its attention to a more immediate problem. It crushed an insurrection (the Kornilov attempt) concerning which everyone is now asking, ‘Did it ever exist?’ ”