declared that if the Congress would not submit to his orders he would stop at nothing.  All the members of the Congress were forthwith searched and thrown out of doors in groups of five, with the idea that, having come from the provinces, and not knowing Petrograd, they would find themselves dispersed in such a way as not to be able to assemble again anywhere, and would be obliged either to betake themselves to the railway and return home or to direct their steps toward Smolny, the address of which was given to each one at the exit.  At the same time, without reason, the following were arrested:  Minor, a deputy to the Constituent Assembly; Rakitnikov, Ovtchinnikov, Roussine, Sorokine, and Tchernobaiev, members of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Peasant Delegates; and Chmelev, a soldier.  The premises of the Committee, on which were various documents and papers which were to be sent into the country, were occupied by Red Guards, and machine-guns were placed at the entrance.  The search ended about nine o’clock in the evening.  Some late delegates alone were authorized to spend the night on the premises under the supervision of Red Guards.

An inquiry held among the comrades, who had come for this Third National Peasants’ Congress, established that, at the time when the premises of the Executive Committee were seized, January 10, 1918, there were, among the sailors and Red Guards of the detachment that did the work, German and Austrian prisoners dressed in Russian uniforms; it also established the fact that many objects had disappeared in the course of the search.  The Congress decided:  first, to consider as a law the socialization of the soil voted by the Constituent Assembly and to apply the same in the country; second, to consider that the Constituent Assembly, dispersed by brutal force, was nevertheless elected by the whole people and ought to exist and to assemble again as soon as that would be possible; third, to fight everywhere in the provinces in the defense of the organs of autonomous administration, which the Bolsheviki dispersed by armed force.  During these few days when the peasants were obliged to assemble in secret and to station patrols to protect their meetings, they followed those methods of conspiracy that the Russian Socialists had been obliged to employ when they fought against the tyranny of autocracy.  Returning to their villages, the peasants bore with them the greatest hate for the Bolsheviki, whom they considered the personification of tyranny and violence.  And they took with them also a firm resolution to fight against this violence.

The Executive Committee, whose powers were confirmed by the Third Congress, found itself thus, for the second time, deprived of all its goods, its premises, and its pecuniary resources; it found itself obliged to lead a half-clandestine existence, to organize secret assemblies, etc.  Miss Spiridonova, who, in this fight against the peasants that rose to the defense of the Constituent Assembly, gave proof of intolerance and peculiar fanaticism, found herself at the head of the “peasants in uniform,” sitting at Smolny, adopting a decree whereby all the moneys that came by post to the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Peasant Delegates defending the Constituent Assembly were to be confiscated.