Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/195

 while leaving the officers nominally in power, claimed and exercised in reality the power which had belonged to them.

To realize that such a state of things could not last, we need not go very deeply into the question. We have but to ask ourselves how such quasi-parliamentary institutions as the Soviets could be usefully incorporated in the organization of a modern army. The system adopted left all responsibility to the officers, while giving all the power to irresponsible assemblies, who even claimed the direction of strategic operation, or, to be more exact, non- operations. This system was given a trial, negative, it must be admitted, in the domain of military tactics at Stokhod, and in the domain of the internal discipline of the units at the front. But little by little the force of facts compelled them to admit that the power of the Soviets must be limited, in a large measure the authority of the officers re-established.

We can see now that the former hierarchy had simply suffered a partial eclipse. At first it was a total eclipse, but that did not last. The partial eclipse will probably last. The present régime is a co-existence,