Page:John Reed - Ten Days that Shook the World - 1919, Boni and Liveright.djvu/379

Rh writer. "For the people are becoming interested in the more permanent legislative organs— the Municipal Dumas and the Zemstvos. . . . "In the important centres of Petrograd and Moscow, where the Soviets were best organised, they did not take in all the democratic elements. . . . The majority of the intellectuals did not participate, and many workers also; some of the workers because they were politically backward, others because the centre of gravity for them was in their Unions. . . . We cannot deny that these organisations are firmly united with the masses, whose everyday needs are better served by them. . ..

"That the local democratic administrations are being energetically or- ganised is highly important. ITie City Dumas are elected by universal su£frage, and in purely local matters have more authority than the Soviets. Not a single democrat will see anything wrong in this. . ..

". . . Elections to the Municipalities are being conducted in a better and more democratic way than the elections to the Soviets. . . . All classes are represented in the Municipalities. . . . And as soon as the local Self-Gov- ernments begin to organise life in the Municipalities, the rdle of the local Soviets naturally ends. . ..

". . . There are two factors in the falling off of interest in the Soviets. The first we may attribute to the lowering of political interest in the masses; the second, to the growing effort of provincial and local governing bodies to organise the buSding of new Russia. . . . The more the tendency lies in this latter direction, the sooner disappears the significance of tiie Soviets. • • •

"We ourselves are being called the ^undertakers' of our own organisa- tion. In reality, we ourselves are the hardest workers in constructing the new Russia. . . . Soviets as a barraclcB in which all the democracy could find temporary shelter. Now, instead of barracks, we are building the permanent edifice of a new system, and naturally the people will gradually leave the barracks for more comfortable quarters."
 * When autocracy and the whole bureaucratic regime fell, we set up the

"The purpose of the Democratic Conference, which was called by the Tsay-ee-kah, was to do away with the irresponsible personal government which produced Kornilov, and to establish a responsible government which would be capable of finishing the war, and ensure the calling of the Con- stituent Assembly at the given time. In the meanwhile, behind the back of the Democratic Conference, by trickery, by deals between Citizen Kerensky, the Cadets, and the leaders of the Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary parties, we received the opposite result from the officially announced pur- pose. A power was created around which and in which we have open and secret Kornilovs playing leading parts. The irresponsibility of the Gov- ernment is offically proclaimed, when it is announced that the Council of the Russian Republic is to be a consultative and not a legislative body. In the eighth month of the Revolution, the irresponsible Government cre- ates a cover for itself in this new edition of Bieligen's Duma.

"The propertied classes have entered this Provisional Council in a proportion which clearly shows, from elections all over the country, that many of them have no right here whatever. In spite of that the Cadet party, which until yesterday wanted the Provisional Government to be responsible to the State Duma — ^this same Cadet party secured the independence of the Government from the Council of the Republic. In the Constituent Assembly the propertied classes will no doubt have a less favourable position than they have in this Council, and they will not be able to be responsible to the Constituent Assembly.