as the programs of the different parties.  On the night of October 28th [November 10th, European calendar], by reason of an order that had come from Petrograd, the Bolshevik coup d’etat broke out at Saratov.  The following forces were its instruments:  the garrison, which was a stranger to the mass of the population, a weak party of workers, and, in the capacity of leaders, some Intellectuals, who, up to that time, had played no role in the public life of the town.

It was indeed a military coup d’etat.  The city hall, where sat the Socialists, who were elected by equal, direct, and secret universal suffrage, was surrounded by soldiers; machine-guns were placed in front and the bombardment began.  This lasted a whole night; some were wounded, some killed.  The municipal judges were arrested.  Soon after a Manifesto solemnly announced to the population that the “enemies of the people,” the “counter-revolutionaries,” were overthrown; that the power of Saratov was going to pass into the hands of the Soviet (Bolshevist) of the Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates.

As soon as the overthrow of the existing authorities was effected and the Bolsheviki, through their Red Guards and other means, were in a position to exert their authority, they resorted to every method of oppression and repression known to the old autocratic regime.  They suppressed the papers of the Socialist parties and groups opposed to them, and in some instances confiscated the plants, turned out the editors, and used the papers themselves.  In one of his “Letters to the Comrades,” published in the Rabochiy Put, a few days before the insurrection, Lenine had confessed that Kerensky had maintained freedom of the press and of assemblage.  The passage is worth quoting, not only for the information it contains concerning the Kerensky regime, but also because it affords a standard by which to judge the Bolsheviki.  Lenine wrote: 

The Germans have only one Liebknecht, no newspapers, no freedom of assemblage, no councils; they are working against the intense hostility of all classes of the population, including the wealthy peasants—­with the imperialist bourgeoisie splendidly organized—­and yet the Germans are making some attempt at agitation; while we, with tens of papers, with freedom of assemblage, with the majority of the Council with us, we, the best situated of all the proletarian internationalists, can we refuse to support the German revolutionists in organizing a revolt?

That it was not the “German revolutionists” who in November, 1917, wanted the Russians to revolt against the Kerensky government, but the Majority Socialists, upon whom Lenine had poured his contempt, on the one hand, and the German General Staff, on the other hand, is a mere detail.  The important thing is that Lenine admitted that under the Kerensky government the Russian workers, including the Bolsheviki, were “the best situated of all the proletarian internationalists,” and that they had “tens of papers, with freedom of assemblage.”  In the face of such statements by Lenine himself, written a few days before the Bolshevik counter-revolution, what becomes of the charge that the suppression of popular liberties under Kerensky was one of the main causes of the revolt of the Bolsheviki?