Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/269

 the petit bourgeois democracy to take power into its hands. After the miserable breakdown of the coalition government, there appeared to be no other alternative than an assumption of power by the Soviets. But the Mensheviki and Social-Revolutionists hesitated. To assume power, they reasoned, would mean a break with the bankers and diplomats,—a dangerous policy. And when, in spite of the ominous meaning of the events of July 16–18, the leaders of the Soviet continued running after the Efimovs, the propertied classes could not fail to understand that the policies of the Soviet were waiting upon them very much as a little storekeeper waits upon a banker, namely, with hat in hand. And that is what put courage into the counter-revolution.

The whole previous history of the Revolution is in the so-called dual authority. This designation, given by the liberals, is, in truth, very superficial. The matter is not exhausted when you say that beside the government stood the Soviet, which discharged a considerable number of government functions; for the Dans and Tseretellis did all in their power to annihilate, "painlessly," this division of power, by handing over everything to the government. The fact really is that behind the Soviets, and behind the government, there stood two different systems, each resting upon different class interests.

Behind the Soviets stood the workers' organizations, which were displacing, in every factory, the autocracy of the capitalist, and establishing a republican regime in industry, which was incompatible, however, with the capitalist anarchy and demanded an irrevocable state control of production. In defence of their property rights the capitalists sought assistance from above, from the government, pushed it with ever-increasing energy against the Soviets, and compelled it to accept the conclusion that it did not possess an independent apparatus, i. e., instruments of repression against the working masses. Hence the lamentations over "dual authority."

Behind the Soviet stood the electoral organization in the Army, and all the rest of the administration of the soldier democracy. The Provisional Government, keeping step with Lloyd George, Ribot and Wilson, recognizing the old obligations of Czarism, and proceeding by the old methods of secret diplomacy, could not but meet with the active hostility of the new army regime. The opposition from above had pretty nearly lost its effect by the time it reached the Soviet. Hence the complaints of "dual authority," especially on the part of the General Staff.

Finally, the Peasant Soviet, also, in spite of the miserable op-