Several subsequent decrees defined further governmental powers and limitations. Decree number nine vested all local power in local Soviets, automatically abolishing all previously existing governing bodies; and a later decree confirmed the right of the Soviet to levy taxes for local needs. The eighteenth decree provided what to my Western mind, looking for differences from and similarities to other governments, seemed to be either a veto or a referendum. It declared that all regulations or laws passed by the commissaries could be “postponed, changed, or removed” by the Central Executive Committee or the Soviet. From the outset, the sessions of the Central Executive Committee were stormy ones. There were few objections to the passage of any decree that we who looked on could have offered which were not made by some one of those soldiers, workers, or peasants of Russia, nightly groping along strange paths for a way to peace and happiness. In a bill of rights they declared for equality and sovereignty of peoples. It was in accordance with the second clause of this bill that the Soviets later voted to permit Finland and Ukraine to secede from Russia and establish independent states. The bill declared: “The right of the peoples of Russia for a free self-organization up to partition and the organization of an independent nation.” “The abolition of all national and religious privileges and limitations.” “A free development of national minorities and ethnic groups populating the territory of Russia.” The last two clauses in effect granted religious freedom to all sects, and affected particularly the “old believers” and the Jews, who had always been the object of pogroms and persecution. The first decree passed after the creation of the government was the decree of peace. By this decree the government proposed at once to begin negotiations for a “just and democratic peace.” It defined such a peace to be one “without annexations and indemnities, and with the right of self-determination.” The decree abolished secret diplomacy, and the government declared its intention to publish the secret treaties. It appealed to the workingmen of France, England, and Germany for aid, and after adverting to the Chartists Movement in England and the revolutions of the French proletariat, said: “All those examples of proletarian terrorism and historical creative genius are giving us a guaranty that the workmen of the above-mentioned countries will understand that the liberation of mankind from the horrors and consequences of this war depends on them. They give us a guaranty that those workmen, with their resolute and unlimited energy, will help us to bring successfully to an end the question of peace, and the liberation of all the working and exploited masses from any kind of slavery and exploitation.”