Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/195

 On August 3 there was a new ministerial crisis, Minister of Agriculture Chernov resigning, and on August 7 Premier Kerensky announced the new Cabinet, including Chernov and representatives of the Cadets, who agreed to participate in the new government.

The resignation of the Cadets from the Ministry on July 15, and of Prince Lvov on July 20, was an offensive maneuvre against the Soviets, an attempt to thrust power upon the Soviets, which the Cadets knew very well would be declined. Premier Kerensky made his peace with the Cadets by means of concessions, and the consequence of these concessions was a definite swing to the right by the new government, the adoption of a general policy making consistently for reaction. On July 22, the Executive Committee of the All-Russian Soviets, proclaimed the Kerensky Government "the Government of National Safety," and declared: "That unlimited powers be accorded the Government for re-establishing the organization and discipline of the Army for a fight to the finish against the enemies of public order and for the realization of the whole program of the Government." The dictatorship was used against "the enemies of public order," enthusiastically, rigorously and systematically; but the "realization of the whole program" still remained a thing of the future. The death penalty was restored in the army. The dictatorship was in action, a counter-revolutionary dictatorship. But whose dictatorship? The fatal weakness of the whole regime was that it was based on compromise, that behind it was no class capable of sustaining a dictatorship; and the inevitable consequence was the creation of a situation in which either an individual would become dictator, or the whole system would collapse. Kerensky did try to become dictator; he essayed the role of Bonaparte, but he was not even a mediocre Napoleon the Great, simply a shabby, theatrical imitation of Napoleon the Little. Kerensky talked and fumed and threatened, while the bourgeoisie patently awaited for the moment when they could march in and assume all power. The internal crisis became still more acute, disintegration the order of the day. Over the mass of misery, of oppression, poured the golden flood of Kerensky's eloquence; but the flood obliterated neither the sufferings of the masses nor the counter-revolutionary plots of the bourgeoisie.

Reaction was to have its day. The Moscow Conference, the Fall of Riga, the Kornilov-Kerensky rebellion, the reactionary "Democratic Congress"—through all these reaction was to express itself in a last, desperate spasmodic struggle; and all the while the masses were preparing for the final action—and victory.

Sources: Chapter I and II, from Lenin's pamphlet, "Aims of the Proletariat"; Chapters VIIX [sic] and VIII from Lenin's pamphlet, "Lessons of the Revolution;" Chapters VII and IX from Lenin's pamphlet; "At the Moment." All the chapters of Trotzky appeared as articles in Trotzky's paper Vperiod during June and July.