Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/277

 power at the feet of Kerensky. The Cadets accepted this gift graciously: in any event, they regarded Kerensky, not as a great impartial referee, but only as an intermediary agent. To take all power into their hands at once would have been too dangerous in view of the inevitable revolutionary resistance of the masses. It was much more sensible to hand over to the at present "independent" Kerensky, with the collaboration of the AvksentiefFs, Savinkovs, and other Social-Revolutionary moderates, the task of paving the way for a purely bourgeois government, with the aid of a system of more savage repressions.

The new coalition ministry—"the Kerensky government"—was formed. At first glance it differed in no wise from the other coalition government, which had so ignobly collapsed on July 16. Shingarev departed, Kokoshkin arrived; Tseretelli stepped out, Avksentieff stepped in. All the losses in personnel merely emphasized the fact that both sides regarded the Cabinet simply as a stepping stone. But much more important was the radical alteration in the "significance" of the two groups. Formerly—at least "in idea"—the "Socialist" ministers had been considered representative of the Soviets controlled by the Soviets: the bourgeois ministers acted as screens between them and the Allies and the capitalists. Now, on the other hand, the bourgeois minister enter, as a subordinate group, into the personnel of the frankly counter-revolutionary bloc of the propertied classes (the Cadet Party, the leaders of trade and industry, the landowners' league, the Provisional Committee of the Duma, the Cossack Circle, the General Staff, the Allied diplomacy) and the "Socialist" ministers serve simply as a screen against the masses of the people. Meeting with the silence of the Executive Committees of the Soviets, Kerensky succeeded in obtaining ovations by promising not to permit a restoration of the monarchy. So low had fallen the requirements of philistine democracy! Avksentieff called upon all for "sacrifices," lavishly distributing half-Kantian, half-revival meeting drivel, which was his great stock in trade; and as is proper for an idealist in power, in this categorical imperative, he constantly dragged in the Cossacks and the military cadets. And the surprised peasant deputies cast their eyes about in wonderment, observing that before they had a chance to take away the land from the landholders, something was taking away their influence over the power of the state.

The counter revolutionary general staffs, everywhere supplanting the army committees, were making a very general use of them