Sensing the growing vulnerability of the Bolshevik regime, the terrorist teams of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries raised the stakes. Three days after the Supplementary Treaty to Brest was initialled, on 30 August, Lenin was in an industrial suburb of Moscow delivering the new and drastic slogan that had replaced his promises of peace – ‘Victory or death!’ As he left the Mekhelnson armaments works, he was hit in the neck and shoulder by an assassin’s bullets.
