Red Dusk and the Morrow · Chapter
XII: "The Party" and the People explained
The chapter describes a session of the Petrograd Soviet, featuring speeches by Zinoviev and Badaev, and the orchestrated nature of the proceedings.
What happens
The chapter describes a session of the Petrograd Soviet, featuring speeches by Zinoviev and Badaev, and the orchestrated nature of the proceedings. It then examines the farce of Soviet elections under Bolshevik control, detailing how opposition is suppressed through intimidation, arrests, and manipulation. The narrative culminates in a wave of worker unrest, including strikes and a resolution from the Putilov works demanding the restoration of cooperative societies and an end to Cheka torture, which is violently suppressed by the authorities.
Themes in this chapter
Propaganda and the Corruption of Language
The chapter highlights how the Bolsheviks maintain the farce of elections to call themselves the 'Soviet' Government for propagandist purposes, while suppressing free soviets.
Totalitarian Control and Repression
The chapter details the suppression of worker unrest through arrests, the use of spies from the Extraordinary Commission, and the shooting of workers who criticize the regime.
Class Warfare and Social Destruction
The chapter describes the Bolsheviks' targeting of workers and their wives during arrests, and the workers' demands for the restoration of cooperative societies and an end to torture.
Survival and Everyday Resistance
The chapter shows workers' resistance through strikes, the distribution of typed resolutions, and the singing of the 'Marseillaise' with anti-Bolshevik slogans.
Characters to notice
- Badaev
Commissar of food who speaks at the Soviet session, acknowledging the deplorable food situation and abuses in communal kitchens.
- The Little Policeman
A militiaman who stops the narrator by the Neva and demands identification.
Key passages
“Badaev spoke well but with no oratorical cunning. He said the food situation was deplorable, that speculation was rife, and mentioned decrees which should rectify defects. Badaev could hardly be called a logician. He said in effect that, though the soup was bad, the Communist provisioning apparatus would be the most perfect in the world.”
Badaev acknowledged the terrible food shortage and rampant speculation, but illogically claimed that the Communist system for distributing food would eventually be the best in the world.
Highlights the contradiction between the dire reality and the regime's propaganda.
“One of these leaflets was the resolution passed unanimously by 12,000 workers (at that time the entire staff) of the Putilov works, demanding that the task of provisioning be restored to the former cooperative societies. The language of the resolution was violent, the Bolshevist leaders were referred to as bloody and hypocritical tyrants, and demands were also put forward for the cessation of the practice of torture by the Extraordinary Commission and for the immediate release of numerous workers' representatives.”
A resolution from 12,000 Putilov workers called for the return of food distribution to cooperative societies, denounced Bolshevik leaders as bloody tyrants, and demanded an end to Cheka torture and the release of worker representatives.
Illustrates the depth of worker opposition and the specific demands for reform.