'We demand to pass!' Shreider and Prokopovich shouted. 'We are going to the Winter Palace!'

A sailor, bemused, refused to let them through.

'Shoot us if you want to!' the marchers challenged. 'We are ready to die, if you have the heart to fire on Russians and comrades ... We Bear our breasts to your guns!'

The peculiar standoff continued. The left refused to shoot, the right demanded their right to pass and / or be shot.

'What will you do?' yelled someone at the sailor who doggedly refused to murder him.

John Reed's eyewitness account of what happened next is famous. Another sailor came up, very much irritated. "We will spank you!" he cried energetically. "And if necessary, we will shoot you too. Go home now, and leave us in peace."'

That would be no fir fate for champions of democracy. Standing on a box, waving his umbrella, Prokopovich announced to his followers that they would save these sailors from themselves. 'We cannot have our innocent blood upon the hands of these ignorant men! ... It is beneath our dignity to be shot down' - let alone spanked - 'here in...