THE FIRST DAYS OF THE NEW REGIME

The decrees on land and peace, approved by the Council, were printed in
huge quantities and--through delegates from the front, peasant
pedestrians arriving from the villages, and agitators sent by us to the
trenches in the provinces--were strewn broadcast all over the country.
Simultaneously the work of organizing and arming the Red Guards was
carried on. Together with the old garrison and the sailors, the Red
Guard was doing hard patrol duty. The Council of People's Commissaries
got control of one government department after another, though
everywhere encountering the passive resistance of the higher and middle
grade officials. The former Soviet parties tried their utmost to find
support in this class and organize a sabotage of the new government. Our
enemies felt certain that the whole affair was a mere episode, that in a
day or two--at most a week--the Soviet Government would be overthrown.
The first foreign councillors and members of the embassies, impelled
quite as much by curiosity as by necessary business on hand, appeared at
the Smolny Institute. Newspaper correspondents hurried thither with
their notebooks and cameras. Everyone hastened to catch a glimpse of the
new government, being sure that in a day or two it would be too late.

Perfect order reigned in the city. The sailors, soldiers and the Red
Guards bore themselves in these first days with excellent discipline and
nobly supported the regime of stern revolutionary order.

In the enemy's camp fear arose lest the "episode" should become too
protracted, and so the first force for attacking the new government was
being hastily organized. In this, the initiative was taken by the
Social-Revolutionists and the Mensheviki. In the preceding period they
would not, and dared not, take all the power into their own hands. In