Page:Otto Wilhelm Kuusinen - The Finnish Revolution (1919).pdf/6

 and lasted two days until the organised proletariat ended it. The atmospheric pressure, increased in a most disturbing fashion for our Parliamentarianism. It was the realisation of Democracy; the free aggravation of the Class Struggle. But we Social-Democratic representatives failed to comprehend true Democracy, and only its fleeting image was before our eyes.

This phantasmagoria was shaken for the first time by the Provisional Government of Kerensky. In spite of a violent resistance on the part of the bourgeois minority, the Diet had passed a fundamental law relating to the internal democratic liberty of Finland and to the Diet's right of wielding supreme power in the country. This law had been drawn up in accordance with the decisions of the Congress of Representatives of the All-Russian Workers' and Soldiers' Councils. A semi-official deputation of Mensheviki (Tcheidze, Lieber, and Dan) came from Petrograd to prevent the passing of the so-called law of the "supreme power," but they were too late. Thereupon, at the end of July, the Russian Provisional Government dissolved the Diet and ordered new elections. On two occasions our Social-Democratic group attempted to hold a plenary session of the dissolved Diet. The first time hussars, sent by Kerensky, were found posted at the gates of the building. The second time we found nothing but "Kerensky's seals." The President of the Diet, Comrade Manner, had the doors opened, and the plenary session rook place, but it was only attended by members of the Social-Democratic group.

Our Party did not refuse to take part in the elections which were held at the beginning of October. By these elections, in spite of a marked increase in the number of Social-Democratic voters, we lost our majority in the Diet. The chief resource of the bourgeois parties in the elections was evidently sophistication. Immediately after the elections the Press gave out that in the constituencies where the bureau was made up solely of bourgeois, the bourgeois parties had obtained a number of votes greater than that of the sum-total by electors in the whole of the northern region. Later, during the revolution, there were discovered in the "cachettes" of presidents of electoral bureaux whole masses of Social-Democratic voting papers, regularly filled up. The bourgeois in addition gained several seats by means of