The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931

by Adam Tooze

As Trotsky was haggling with the Germans in Brest, heavily armed Red Guards were sweeping anti-Bolshevik protestors from the streets of the Russian capital, killing several dozen.8 The Assembly opened at 4 p.m. and promptly elected Victor Chernov, leader of the Social Revolutionaries, the winners of the election, as its president. Outside, Red Guard cannons were trained on the Assembly building. Inside, the majority faced the continuous, raucous barracking of the Bolshevik faction, with Lenin and the rest glaring down from the balcony. Despite the attempt at intimidation, the Assembly persisted in hearing speeches by the leaders of the February revolution, including the Georgian Menshevik Irakli Tsereteli, who since being declared an outlaw had been living in hiding. He warned that if the Constituent Assembly were ‘destroyed . . . then . . . civil war shall come to suck the life blood of democracy’. The Bolsheviks ‘would . . . open the door to counterrevolution’.

And guess fucking what