Meanwhile events at the front ran their own course. The organic unity of
the army was shaken to its very depths. The soldiers were becoming
convinced that the great majority of the officers, who, at the beginning
of the revolution, bedaubed themselves with red revolutionary paint,
were still very inimical to the new regime. An open selection of
counter-revolutionary elements was being made in the lines. Bolshevik
publications were ruthlessly persecuted. The military advance had long
ago changed into a tragic retreat. The bourgeois press madly libelled
the army. Whereas, on the eve of the advance, the ruling parties told us
that we were an insignificant gang and that the army had never heard of
us and would not have anything to do with us, now, when the gamble of
the drive had ended so disastrously, these same persons and parties laid
the whole blame for its failure on our shoulders. The prisons were
crowded with revolutionary workers and soldiers. All the old legal
bloodhounds of Czarism were employed in investigating the July 3-5
affair. Under these circumstances, the Social-Revolutionsts and the
Alensheviki went so far as to demand that Lenin, Zinoviev and others of
their group should surrender themselves to the "Courts of Justice."
THE EVENTS FOLLOWING THE JULY DAYS
The infringements of liberty in the working-men's quarters lasted but a
little while and were followed by accessions of revolutionary spirit,
not only among the proletariat, but also in the Petrograd garrison.
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