The very same Kronstadt sailors--whom they had dubbed burglars and
counter-revolutionists in the days following the July uprising--were
summoned during the Korniloff danger to Petrograd for the defence of the
revolution. They came without a murmur, without a word of reproach,
without recalling the past, and occupied the most responsible posts.
I had the fullest right to recall to Tseretelli these words which I had
addressed to him in May, when he was occupied in persecuting the
Kronstadt sailors: "When a counter-revolutionary general attempts to
throw the noose around the neck; of the revolution, the Cadets will
grease the rope with soap, while the Kronstadt sailors will come to
fight and die together with us."
The Soviet organizations had revealed everywhere, in the rear and at the
front, their vitality and their power in the struggle with the Korniloff
uprising. In almost no instance did things ever come to a military
conflict. The revolutionary masses ground into nothingness the general's
conspiracy. Just as the moderates in July found no soldiers among the
Petrograd garrison to fight against us, so now Korniloff found no
soldiers on the whole front to fight against the revolution. He had
acted by virtue of a delusion and the words of our propaganda easily
destroyed his designs.
According to information in the newspapers, I had expected a more rapid
unfolding of subsequent events in the direction of the passing of the
power into the hands of the Soviets.
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