The morning
papers draw a blank on the events of the previous thirty-six hours. They
reported the taking of the Winter Palace and arrest of the ministry, but
weren’t sure what that meant or what kind of difference it would make. By
orders from Smolny, the streets, tramcars, shops, and restaurants opened and
functioned normally. So people went out or went to work and shared the rumors they’d
heard or speculations they’d made up. Trotsky
says “…the seismograph of the Stock Exchange describes a convulsive curve.”
Apparently he means stocks fell – at least they could still make trades.
The American
journalist Reed picked up whatever papers he could find through the course of
the day. Reed’s clippings from the compromisist papers predicted the failure of
the Bolshevik revolution, denounced the party program – peace, land, and bread
– as lies and false promises, and condemned the Congress of Soviets as illegal
and without authority. Trotsky says some of the bourgeois and compromisist
press were reviving the old slander of the German connection. Reed observes
that the few Cadet papers to be found took a “detached, ironical” attitude. A
few of the more destructive papers were suppressed.
So not everything
was new that day. But the Bolshevik paper, lately published under title of Rabochy Put, now reappeared as Pravda.
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