Almost immediately it was evident that most of the delegates were hostile to the Government of the People’s Commissars. Zinoviev, attempting to speak for the Bolsheviki, was hooted down, and as he left the platform, amid laughter, there were cries, “There’s how a People’s Commissar sits in a mudpuddle!” “We Left Socialist Revolutionaries refuse,” cried Nazariev, a delegate from the Provinces, “to recognise this so-called Workers’ and Peasants’ Government until the peasants are represented in it. At present it is nothing but a dictatorship of the workers…. We insist upon the formation of a new Government which will represent the entire democracy!” The reactionary delegates shrewdly fostered this feeling, declaring, in the face of protests from the Bolshevik benches, that the Council of People’s Commissars intended either to control the Congress or dissolve it by force of arms—an announcement which was received by the peasants with bursts of fury…. On the third day Lenin suddenly mounted the tribune; for ten minutes the room went mad. “Down with him!” they shrieked. “We will not listen to any of your People’s Commissars! We don’t recognise your Government!” Lenin stood there quite calmly, gripping the desk with both hands, his little eyes thoughtfully surveying the tumult beneath. Finally, except for the right side of the hall, the demonstration wore itself out somewhat. “I do not come here as a member of the Council of People’s Commissars,” said Lenin, and waited again for the noise to subside, “but as a member of the Bolshevik faction, duly elected to this Congress.” And he held his credentials up to that all might see them. “However,” he went on, in an unmoved voice, “nobody will deny that the present Government of Russia has been formed by the Bolshevik party—” he had to wait a moment, “so that for all purposes it is the same thing….” Here the right benches broke into deafening clamour, but the centre and left were curious, and compelled silence. Lenin’s argument was simple. “Tell me frankly, you peasants, to whom we have given the lands of the _pomieshtchiki;_ do you want now to prevent the workers from getting control of industry? This is class war. The _pomieshtchiki_ of course oppose the peasants, and the manufactures oppose the workers. Are you going to allow the ranks of the proletariat to be divided? Which side will you be on? “We, the Bolsheviki, are the party of the proletariat—of the peasant proletariat as well as the industrial proletariat. We, the Bolsheviki, are the protectors of the Soviets—of the Peasants’ Soviets as well as those of the Workers and Soldiers. The present Government is a Government of Soviets; we have not only invited the Peasants’ Soviets to join that Government, but we have also invited representatives of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries to enter the Council of People’s Commissars….