‘We demand to pass!’ Shreider and Prokopovich shouted. ‘We are going to the Winter Palace!’ A sailor, bemused, refused to let them through. ‘Shoot us if you want to!’ the marchers challenged. ‘We are ready to die, if you have the heart to fire on Russians and comrades … We bare our breasts to your guns!’ The peculiar standoff continued. The left refused to shoot, the right demanded their right to pass and/or be shot. ‘What will you do?’ yelled someone at the sailor who doggedly refused to murder him. John Reed’s eyewitness account of what happened next is famous. ‘Another sailor came up, very
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