Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/252

 and Social-Revolutionists. This policy of coalition with the bourgeoisie, on the part of the Social-Revolutionists and Mensheviki, who enjoyed the confidence of a majority of the people, contains the gist of the whole course of the Revolution in the five months that have elapsed since its inception.

An agreement of the Social-Revolutionists and Mensheviki with the capitalists has been manifest, in one form or another, at every stage of the Russian Revolution.

When the people, in March, had barely won their victory and Czarism had been overthrown, the Provisional Government of the capitalists added to their number the "Socialist" Kerensky. As a matter of fact, Kerensky had never been a Socialist; he had simply been a Laborite, and counted himself a "Socialist-revolutionary" only since March, 191 7, when the thing was already safe and valueless. It was through Kerensky, in his capacity of Vice-Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, that the Provisional Government of the capitalists now tried to win over and domesticate the Soviet. The Soviet, that is, the Social-Rievolutionists and Mensheviki who controlled it, permitted themselves to be soft-soaped, and agreed, immediately after its formation, to "support" the Provisional Government of the capitalists, "provided" it would carry out its promises.

The Soviet considered itself to be a sort of auditing commission, checking up the activities of the Provisional Government. The heads of the Soviets established the so-called "Consulting Committee," that is, a committee to secure contact and understanding with the Government. Through this Consulting Committee, the Social-Revolutionist and Menshevist leaders of the Soviet conducted continual conversations with the government of the capitalists, since they were, properly speaking, in the situation of ministers without portfolios, unofficial ministers.

Most of March and all of April passed with this state of affairs prevailing. The capitalists, in order to gain time, took refuge in delays and subterfuges. During this time the capitalist government did not take a single step of any consequence for the advancement of the Revolution. Even in its most elementary duty, the calling of the Constituent Assembly, the government did absolutely nothing, not even proposing the question of time and place nor appointing a central committee to consider the question. The government was concerned with one thing only, namely, to renew, surreptitiously, the predatory international treaties which the Czar had concluded with the capitalists of England and France; and to block the Revolution as carefully and imperceptibly as they could, to pro-