At that time I, together with many others, was imprisoned at Kresty,
having been arrested for instigating and organizing the armed revolt of
July 3-5, in collusion with the German authorities, and with the object
of furthering the military ends of the Hohenzollerns. The famous
prosecutor of the Czarist regime, Aleksandrov, who had prosecuted
numerous revolutionists, was now entrusted with the task of protecting
the public from the counter-revolutionary Bolsheviki. Under the old
regime the inmates of prisons used to be divided into political
prisoners and criminals. Now a new terminology was established:
Criminals and Bolsheviks. Great perplexity reigned among the
imprisoned soldiers. The boys came from the country and had previously
taken no part in political life. They thought that the revolution had
set them free, once and for all. Hence they viewed with amazement their
doorlocks and grated windows. While taking their exercise in the
prison-yard, they would always ask me what all this meant and how it
would end. I comforted them with the hope of our ultimate victory.

Toward the end of August occurred the revolt of Korniloff; this was the
immediate result of the mobilization of the counter-revolutionary forces
to which a forceful impulse had been imparted by the attack of July
18th. At the celebrated Moscow Congress, which took place in the middle
of August, Kerensky attempted to take a middle ground between the
propertied elements and the democracy of the small bourgeoisie. The
Maximalists were on the whole considered as standing beyond the bounds
of the "legal." Kerensky threatened them with blood and iron, which met
with vehement applause from the propertied half of the gathering, and
treacherous silence on the part of the bourgeois democracy. But the
hysterical outcries and threats of Kerensky did not satisfy the chiefs
of the counter-revolutionary interests. They had only too clearly