Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/190

 appointees in the Ministry are starving out the Russian Revolution practically in all spheres, while they themselves sit in the Tavrichevsky Palace and wait for the time when, as Deputy Kerensky thinks, the country itself will wish for the return of the old Octobrist Government. Then Rodzianko will come and tie us together in one bag, you from the right wing and us from the left"

In answering Trotzky, Minister Tseretelli declared that "the concentration of all forces of the country is needed to liquidate the internal and foreign crisis. This problem can be met adequately only by a government which unites the tremendous majority of the population and which rests on all the living forces of the country. The Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Delegates undoubtedly have great influence; none the less, we cannot say that they unite all the forces of the country. Except the masses, which are united by the Councils, there exists still tax-paying Russia and the propertied classes. … Only by actual experience will it be made clear whether the representatives of the bourgeoisie are really capable of undertaking a radical program of reforms or whether they came to sabotage this program. If the representatives of the bourgeoisie prove incapable, they will be expelled, but until that happens nobody may discredit them in advance, because exactly such a lack of confidence would bring the disorganization which is so dangerous at the present time. … The Bolsheviki road can only lead to civil war."

It was exactly the exclusion of the propertied classes that was necessary to a permanent, energetic and revolutionary government; it was exactly the necessity for excluding the bourgeoisie from the government that was a central feature of the policy of all power to the Soviets. A revolutionary Socialist would know that the bourgeoisie would prove incapable, a thing that Tseretelli was willing to learn only from experience; and when experience had proven the incapacity and treachery of the bourgeoisie beyond the shadow of a doubt, Tseretelli and other Mensheviki still opposed all power to the Soviets.

It was precisely confidence in the Coalition Government and its bourgeois policy that disorganized the country and weakened the morale of the Revolution. The problem of state power was a realistic problem: either all power to the Government or all power to the Soviets alone could cope with the situation. The duality of power simply intensified the crisis and prevented the organization of the internal forces. The moderates desired to have the Soviets play the role of opposition, the role of the opposition party in a parliamentary government—a policy expressing neither audacity nor an understanding of the revolutionary requirements of the situation. The policy of the moderate majority in the Soviets would have, if successful, produced a permanent, strongly bourgeois government; and this would have meant the ultimate destruction of the Soviets and their potential revolutionary mission. The policy of the Bolsheviki, all power to the Soviets and the abolition of the old state and its bureaucratic machinery of government, was a realistic policy determined by the immediate practical requirements of the Revolution; and it was a policy, moreover, that by the stress of events and necessity would convert itself into the policy of the proletarian revolution in Russia.

But the All-Russian Soviet Congress, still dominated by the moderates, persisted in the suicidal policy of coalition. Against the votes of the Bol-