ABSTRACT
The armistice negotiations began at Brest-Litovsk on November 20 after preliminary technical details had been arranged. In saying that those who were against the Brest-Litovsk talks had been proved wrong, that the Bolshevik delegates had won, and that "the conclusion of a general democratic peace is now assured", Zinoviev was indulging in wishful thinking; but at least he no longer talked of waging a revolutionary war. This chapter illustrates the tense relations which existed from January 1918 to the start of the Civil War in the autumn of the same year between the Soviet administration and the principal classes of the population, primarily the workers but also the peasants. The opposition of the Petrograd workers to the Soviet government grew from such spontaneous beginnings as these into an authentic movement with an official organization at its head, called the Assembly of Factory Representatives.
