So instead of marching on the kremlin and overthrowing the Soviet Government, a detachment of Left SRs, headed by P. P. Proshian, went to the Central Post and Telegraph Office, which it occupied without resistance and from where it sent out appeals to Russian workers, peasants, and soldiers as well as the “whole world.” These appeals were confused and contradictory. The Left SRs took responsibility for the murder of Mirbach and denounced the Bolsheviks as “agents of German imperialism.” They declared themselves in favor the “soviet system” but rejected all other socialist parties as “counter-revolutionary.” In one telegram, they declared themselves to be “in power.” In the words of Vatsetis, the Left SRs acted “indecisively.”
Spiridonova [Leader of the Left SRs] arrived at the Bolshoi Theater at 7 p.m. and delivered a long and rambling speech to the congress. Other Left SR speakers followed. There was total confusion. At 8 p.m. the delegates learned that armed Latvians had surrounded the building and sealed off the entrances, whereupon the Bolsheviks left.
Spiridonova asked her followers to adjourn to the second floor. There she jumped on a table and screamed: “Hey, you, land, listen! Hey, you, land, listen!”
The Bolshevik delegates, assembled in a wing of the Bolshoi, could not decide whether they were attacking or under attack.
As Bukharin later told Isaac Steinberg: “We were sitting in our room waiting for you to come and arrest us… As you did not do it, we decided to arrest you instead.”
Source:
Pipes, Richard. "The Revolution Internationalized." The Russian Revolution. New York: Knopf, 1990. 641, 642. Print.
Original Source(s) Listed:
V. Vladimirova in PR, No. 4/63 (1927), 122-23.
Lenin, Sochineniia, XXIII, 554-56.
Krasnaia Kniga VChK, II (Moscow, 1920), 148-55.
Vatsetis in Pamiat’, No. 2, 19.
NV, No. 113/137 (July 10, 1918), 3.
J. [Isaac] Steinberg, “The Events of July 1918,” Manuscript, Hoover Institution Archive, DK 265. S818, p. 20.
Further Reading:
Left Socialist Revolutionaries / Left SRs
Prosh Perchevich Proshian (TheFreeDictionary.com)
Иоаким Иоакимович Вацетис (Ioakim Ioakimovich Vatsetis) / Jukums Vācietis
Мари́я Алекса́ндровна Спиридо́нова (Maria Alexandrovna Spiridonova)
Никола́й Ива́нович Буха́рин (Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin)
Shit, that's ridiculous. Was this literally THE turning point in the relationship between the two groups?