General Staff), General Nikolai Dukhonin, refused to open peace negotiations with the Germans, Krylenko (an Ensign at this point) was appointed as Commander in Chief on November 9. He started negotiations with representatives of the German army on November 12–13. Krylenko arrived at the High Command HQ in Mogilev on November 20 and arrested General Dukhonin, who was bayoneted and shot to death by Red Guards answering to Krylenko. After the formation of the Red Army on January 15, 1918 (Old Style; January 28 in New Style), Krylenko was a member of the All-Russian Collegium that oversaw its buildup. He proved to be an excellent public speaker, able to win over hostile mobs with words alone. His organizational talents, however, lagged far behind his oratorical ones. Krylenko supported the policy of democratization of the Russian military, including abolishing subordination, providing for election of officers by enlisted men, and using propaganda to win over enemy units. Although the Red Army had some successes in early 1918 against small and poorly armed anti-Bolshevik detachments, the policy proved unsuccessful when Soviet forces were roundly defeated by the Imperial German Army in late February 1918 after the breakdown of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations. In his 1918 essay Scythians?, Yevgeny Zamyatin, an Old Bolshevik who is now considered the first Soviet dissident cited Krylenko as an example of the ugliness and repression within the new Soviet Union. Zamyatin wrote, "Christ on Golgotha, between two thieves, bleeding to death drop by drop, is the victor - because he has been crucified, because, in practical terms, he has been vanquished. But Christ victorious in practical terms is the Grand Inquisitor. And worse, Christ victorious in practical terms is a paunchy priest in a silk-lined purple robe, who dispenses benedictions with his right hand and collects donations with his left. The Fair Lady, in legal marriage, is simply Mrs. So-and-So, with hair curlers at night and a migraine in the morning. And Marx, having come down to earth, is simply a Krylenko. Such is the irony and such is the wisdom of fate. Wisdom because this ironic law holds the pledge of eternal movement forward. The realization, materialisation, practical victory of an idea immediately gives it a philistine hue. And the true Scythian will smell from a mile away the odor of dwellings, the odor of cabbage soup, the odor of the priest in his purple cassock, the odor