All honest workmen desirous of carrying out the decision of the Petrograd Soviet and ready to start work will be allowed to go into the factory on condition that they forthwith go to their places and take up their work. All those who begin work will receive an additional ration of one-half pound of bread. They who do not want to resume work will be at once discharged, without receiving any concessions. A special commission will be formed for the reorganization of the works. _No meetings will be allowed to be held...._ For the last time the Petrograd Soviet invites the Putilov workmen to expiate their crime committed against the working-class and the peasantry of Russia, and to cease at once their foolish strike. On the following day this “invitation” was followed up by a typical display of Bolshevist force. A detachment of armed sailors went to the homes of the striking workmen and at the point of the bayonet drove the men back into the works, about which a strong guard was placed. The men were kept at work by armed guards placed at strategic positions in the shops. All communication with the outside was strictly prohibited. Numerous arrests were made. With grim irony the Bolshevist officials posted in and around the shops placards explaining that, unlike imperialistic and capitalistic governments, the Soviet authority had no intention of suppressing strikes or insurrections by armed force. For the good of the Revolution, however, and to meet the war needs, the government would use every means at its command to force the workmen to remain at their tasks and to prevent all demonstrations. A bitter struggle took place between the trades-unions and the Soviet Government. It was due, not to strikes merely, or even mainly, though these naturally brought out its bitterest manifestations. The real cause of the conflict was the fact that the government had thrown communism to the winds and adopted a policy of state capitalism. All the evils of capitalism in its relation to the workers reappeared, intensified and exaggerated as an inevitable result of being fundamental elements of the polity of an all-powerful state wholly free from democratic control. The abolition of the right to strike; the introduction of piece-work, augmented by a bonus system in place of day wages; the arbitrary fixing of wages and working conditions; the withdrawal of the powers which the workers’ councils, led by the unions, had possessed since the beginning of the Revolution, and the substitution for the crude spirit of democracy which inspired the Soviet control of industry of the despotic principle of autocracy, “absolute submission to the will of a single individual”--these things inevitably evoked the active hostility of the organized workers. It was from the proletariat, and from its most “class-conscious” elements, that the Bolshevist régime received this determined resistance.