Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/276

 was enough to take in the liberals. Only the more enlightened workers kept at a distance. But their Soviets successfully dissolved into a "revolutionary democracy."

His freedom from any doctrinal impediment permitted Kerenksy to be the first of the "Socialists" to enter the bourgeois government. He was the first to apply the name of "anarchy" to the increasingly insistent social demands of the masses: already in May he had threatened the Finns with the sharpest of reprisals and uttered his high-sounding phrase about "risen slaves," which came as a balm to the hearts of all the injured property-holders. In this way his popularity soon involved a veritable tangle of contradictions, thus properly reflecting the vagueness of the first stage of the Revolution and the hopelessness of the second. And when History was obliged to fill a vacancy in the office of referee, there was no more appropriate man at her disposal than Kerensky.

"The historic night session" in the Winter Palace was only a repetition of the political humiliation which the "revolutionary" democracy had prepared for itself at the Moscow Conference. In these transactions all the trumps were in the hands of the Cadets: The Social-Revolutionary and Menshevik democracy, which was gaining successes in all the democratic elections, without exception, and which was frightened to death by these successes, humbly begs the privileged liberals for their collaboration in the government! As the Cadets had not feared on the 16th of July to thrust power on the Soviets, and as, on the other hand, the liberals were not afraid of assuming the power altogether, it is plain that they were the masters of the situation.

If Kerensky was the last word of the impotent Soviet hegemony, it was now necessary for him to stand as the first word of the liberation from that hegemony. For the time being, we shall take Kerensky, but only under the condition that you will sever the umbilical cord connecting him with the Soviet!—such was the ultimatum of the bourgeoisie.

"Unfortunately, the debate at the Winter Palace was mere talk and uninteresting talk at that"—was Dan's complaint in his report to the Soviet.

It is difficult to appreciate the full depth of these complaints on the part of the parliamentarian of "revolutionary" democracy, who left the Tauride Palace in the evening, still at the helm, and came back empty-handed in the morning. The leaders of the Social-Revolutionists and Mensheviki respectfully laid their share of