Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/192

 suppressed. The Congress declared against the demonstration (a demonstration to voice the attitude and purposes of the masses) and sent delegates to all the factory districts to counteract the agitation of the Bolsheviki and to prevent the demonstration. Tseretelli accused the Bolsheviki of intentions to overthrow the government by armed force. Tseretelli had become definitely counter-revolutionary, had constituted himself the guardian of a government that betrayed the hopes of the masses, had become a master mechanic forging fetters with which to shackle the action of the masses. Overthrow the government by aimed force! Is this not a method of revolution? What an accusation, what a terrible indictment, coming from a revolutionist who had himself applauded the armed force that overthrew Czarism!

The Soviet Congress itself issued the following appeal against the proposed demonstration:

As in the stormy days of May 2–3, the moderate majority in the Councils restrained and fettered the action of the masses. Opposed by the government, opposed by the Soviets, still unaware of its mighty strength, the Petrograd masses abandoned the proposed demonstration.

The Congress' declaration against the demonstration says that it was called without consultation with the other parties and without the sanction of the Soviets. Precisely ; and it is precisely this circumstance which is important: the revolutionary struggle was now definitely and fundamentally a struggle between the right and left wings of the Revolution, between the moderates and the radicals in the Soviets. The problem of the Revolution was not to overthrow the Provisional Government, but to overthrow the domination of the moderates in the Soviets by securing the adhesion of the masses to a revolutionary program. The Provisional Government would collapse immediately and of itself the moment the radicals secured control of the Soviets, since the Soviet moderates alone sustained the Government.

All these events of June conspired to hearten the Provisional Government, particularly as the All-Russian Congress had decided in favor of a