Back in the assembly room, more and more seats were filled. Chernoff was there. I had last seen him sitting dejectedly in a corner at the Peasants’ Convention, shaking his head, while his tiny arch-enemy, Marie Spiridonova, swayed the meeting to her will. In a few minutes these two were again to be pitted against each other. Tseretelli, whose dark, sad face and tragic eyes had not been seen in public places since the dissolution of the Council of the Republic, had also come. At four o’clock a bell rang, and a member of the “Right S. R.”--the conservative wing of the Socialist Revolutionists--asked that the oldest man in the convention be chosen to open the Assembly. The right side of the house arose and vigorously applauded the suggestion. The members of the left sat stolidly in their seats and hammered their desks, shouting, “Sverdloff! Sverdloff!” For fully five minutes they pounded without ceasing, their closed fists making a din that drowned every other sound. The white-haired, white-whiskered old man who had taken his place on the rostrum looked from left to right in a bewildered way, and finally yielded the gavel to Sverdloff. The Bolsheviki had won the first round in the fight. The Assembly was to be officially opened by the government. Sverdloff was the chairman of the Executive Committee of the All-Russian Soviet. He was a small, pale, dark little chap, quick moving and fiery spirited. He began by saying that, as in their time the French bourgeois revolutionists made a declaration of the rights of man, so the Socialist members of this new time must make their own declaration, fitting the hour and the new demand. He followed with a statement of the Bolshevik program of land to the peasants, control of industry by the workers, government by the Soviets, recognition of the People’s Commissaries by the Constituent Assembly, and immediate general democratic peace. The Bolsheviki punctuated his speech with vigorous applause. The right Socialists expressed themselves equally emphatically by stolid silence. When he finished, a delegate proposed that the Assembly sing the “International.” It was a challenge no Socialist could refuse. They arose to a man. This was the first and last time, in that stormy twelve hours’ session, that they were united upon any single point. The Cadet members had all remained away. Every man in the room was a Socialist. But worlds of unbridgable distance kept them apart. Combination and compromise were utterly impossible. The Bolsheviki had all the powers of possession, reinforced by the unanimous backing of the Russian bayonets. The conservatives had a feeble and helpless majority. The right S. R.’s proposed Chernoff as chairman of the Assembly. Squertsoff, an old Moscow schoolmaster, nominated Marie Spiridonova in a brief challenge of uncompromise. “Everything is ended between us,” he said. “You are with the Cadets and the bourgeoisie. We are with the workers!”