Quotes by John Reed

Mysterious individuals circulated around the shivering women who waited in _queue_ long cold hours for bread and milk, whispering that the Jews had cornered the food supply—and that while the people starved, the Soviet members lived luxuriously…. [10] See Notes and Explanations. At Smolny there were strict guards at the door and the outer gates, demanding everybody’s pass. The committee-rooms buzzed and hummed all day and all night, hundreds of soldiers and workmen slept on the floor, wherever they could find room. Upstairs in the great hall a thousand people crowded to the uproarious sessions of the Petrograd Soviet…. Gambling clubs functioned hectically from dusk to dawn, with champagne flowing and stakes of twenty thousand rubles. In the centre of the city at night prostitutes in jewels and expensive furs walked up and down, crowded the cafés…. Monarchist plots, German spies, smugglers hatching schemes…. And in the rain, the bitter chill, the great throbbing city under grey skies rushing faster and faster toward—what? Chapter III On the Eve In the relations of a weak Government and a rebellious people there comes a time when every act of the authorities exasperates the masses, and every refusal to act excites their contempt…. The proposal to abandon Petrograd raised a hurricane; Kerensky’s public denial that the Government had any such intention was met with hoots of derision. Pinned to the wall by the pressure of the Revolution (cried _Rabotchi Put),_ the Government of “provisional” bourgeois tries to get free by giving out lying assurances that it never thought of fleeing from Petrograd, and that it didn’t wish to surrender the capital…. In Kharkov thirty thousand coal miners organised, adopting the preamble of the I. W. W. constitution: “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.” Dispersed by Cossacks, some were locked out by the mine-owners, and the rest declared a general strike. Minister of Commerce and Industry Konovalov appointed his assistant, Orlov, with plenary powers, to settle the trouble. Orlov was hated by the miners. But the _Tsay-ee-kah_ not only supported his appointment, but refused to demand that the Cossacks be recalled from the Don Basin….