When it was all over--the killing and the burying--and there was nothing left but the joy of victory and the rancor of defeat, some one suddenly discovered that the light before the shrine of the Virgin on the Iberian Gate had gone out. All that was left of the sacred ikon was one bullet-wounded angel. Two soldiers passing by the shrine halted. “Look!” said one of them. “They said it was holy. It was just another of the d----d lies they have been telling us!” CHAPTER XV BLASTING AT THE ESTABLISHED ORDER Revolution is unconstitutional and illegal. In the scramble that follows the fall of tsar or kaiser, the spoils are to the nimblest. Any government that ensues is an illegitimate child. It can have no lawful parentage. After the March Revolution, the first hurriedly organized ministry took its power from the Duma; but the Duma itself had lost its legality with the overthrow of the Tsar who created it. Each successive ministry was equally without legal basis. No election giving them validity had taken place. There were, however, certain democratic movements in the army and navy and among the workers and peasants. The soldiers and sailors assumed power and immediately elected committees. The workers organized soviets. The peasants, constituting approximately one hundred and twenty-five million of Russia’s hundred and eighty million organized committees. There were all-Russian conventions of each of these bodies that functioned nationally. In its inception the government of Lenin and Trotzky was not sacrosanct in the eyes of the law, but the largest democratic forces in the country voted to support it. The Soviet had its origin in the Revolution of 1905. At that time it was composed of workers. Early in the Revolution of 1917 it was joined by the Soldiers’ Deputies, and became a Soviet of Workmen and Soldiers. Soon after the accession of the Bolsheviki to power, the peasants’ delegates combined with the others, and the All-Russian Soviet was the result. The local Soviet was simply a village or community council, like the old New England town meeting. The will of the majority prevailed. The local councils considered community problems and elected delegates, who met in what is known as the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workmen’s, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Deputies. [Illustration: © Orrin S. Wightman] [Illustration: © Orrin S. Wightman “Mother Moscow sat serene amid the domes of her churches”] [Illustration: After the Moscow battle] [Illustration: The Grave of the Brotherhood beside the old Kremlin wall] It was this Congress that was in session at Smolney on that November night when the Bolshevist guns on the cruiser _Aurora_ were deciding the fate of the Kerensky Cabinet. It was this Congress that created the Council of People’s Commissaries--that astounding government which was to make the old world stop still in its path and gasp with amazement.