Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/191

 sheviki and part of the Menshevik-Internationalists it adopted a resolution approving coalition: "(1) That under the conditions created as a result of the first ministerial crisis, the passing of all power to the bourgeois elements would deal a blow at the cause of the Revolution; (2) that the transfer of all power to the Councils of Workers' and Soldiers' Delegates at the present moment of the Russian Revolution, would greatly weaken her powers by prematurely driving away from her elements which are still capable of serving the Revolution and would threaten its ruin." After expressing "full confidence" in the "Comrade-Ministers" the resolution proceeds:

Just one demand in this resolution could be accepted sincerely and enthusiastically by the Provisional Government—the demand to strengthen the fighting power of the army. The rest of the program was persistently and consistently sabotaged by the government: it was a program that could be introduced only by a Soviet government Fettered by the coalition, afraid of revolutionary audacity and power, the Soviets were directed by the moderate majority into the sterile policy of words and demands. But the reaction scored, and prepared itself for the day when it could contemptuously disregard the Soviets, even in words, and overthrow them completely.

The attitude of the All-Russian Congress solved nothing and settled nothing. The answer to the policy of hesitation was given by the revolt in Sebastopol, where the sailors deposed Admiral Kolchak, commander of the Black Sea Fleet, and by demonstrations in Viborg, which cried, "Down with the capitalists! Long live the Social Republic!"

But the real answer to the policy of hesitation, an answer symptomatic of the widening split between the masses and the hesitating Soviet majority, was given by the masses of Petrograd. It was an answer that characterized equally the revolutionary impatience of the masses and the counter-revolutionary character of the Soviet moderates. The masses of Petrograd, aware of the counter-revolutionary trend of events, disgusted with the policy of hesitation, decided on June 18 upon a formidable demonstration. The All-Russian Congress united with the Provisional Government against the proposed demonstration. The Government posted placards calling upon the people to be calm, and declaring that any attempt at violence would be