Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/215

 government was the Guchkov-Milyukov government. It was permitted to exist only long enough to expose the full falsity of "national unity" and to awaken the revolutionary resistance of the proletariat against the bourgeois propaganda to prostitute the Revolution in the interests of Imperialism. The obviously makeshift coalition ministry could not, under these circumstances, stave off a calamity; it was itself destined to become the chief bone of contention, the chief source of schism and divergence in the ranks of "revolutionary democracy." Its political existence—for of its "activities" we shall not speak—is simply one long dissolution, decently enveloped in vast quantities of words.

To contend against a complete breakdown on the economic and, particularly, on the food question, the Economic Department of the Executive Committee of the Soviets worked out a plan for an extensive system of state management in the most important branches of industry. The members of the Economic Department differ from the political managers of the Soviet not so much in their political tendencies as in a serious acquaintance with the economic situation of the country. For this very reason they were led to conclusions of a profoundly revolutionary character. The only thing their structure lacks is the driving force of a revolutionary policy. The government, for the most part capitalistic, could not possibly give birth to a system that was diametrically opposed to the selfish interests of the propertied classes. If Skobeleff, the Menshevist Minister of Labor, did not understand this, it was fully understood by the serious and efficient Konovalov, the representative of trade and industry.

Konovalov's resignation was an irreparable blow to the coalition ministry. The whole bourgeois press gave unmistakable expression to this fact. Then began anew the exploitation of the panic terror of the present leaders of the Soviet: the bourgeoisie threatened to lay the babe of authority at their door. The "leaders" answered by making believe that nothing special had happened. If the responsible representative of capital has left us, let us invite M. Buryshkin. But Buryshkin ostentatiously refused to have anything to do with surgical operations on private property. And then began the search for an "independent" minister of commerce and industry, a man behind whom stood nothing and nobody, and who might serve as an inoffensive letter-box, in which the opposing demands of labor and capital might be dropped. Meanwhile the economic expenses continue on their course, and the