Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/39

 ional Government; surrendered to the government, making the Soviet the government's moral apologist and physical supporter. The Provisional Government had absolutely no power by which it could maintain itself; municipal elections through Russia cast an overwhelming majority of votes for Socialist candidates, the bourgeois Cadets being everywhere swamped; and yet the Council accepted coalition with the discredited Cadets. By a simple stroke of moral courage and revolutionary spirit the Council could have constituted itself the government, discarding completely the bourgeoisie. But the petet bourgeois psychology of the moderate Socialists dominating the Council resulted in an acceptance of the ideology of a "democratic war," of "national unity," and a naive faith in the "necessity" of the bourgeoisie to establish the conquests of the Revolution. The representatives of the proletariat having taken the initiative, it was inevitable that the peasants should accept the coalition, as they did on May 24, through the Peasants' Congress.

The Soviets, however, were not by any means united on the problems of the day. In the Soviets were represented three groups: the Social-Revolutionists and Mensheviki, constituting the moderates (Cheidse, Skobeleff, Tseretelli, Chernov), and the Bolsheviki, constituting the uncompromising group (Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, and, later, Trotzky, who, while not an affiliated Bolshevik, had a similar program and acted with the Bolsheviki.)

The Social-Revolutionists represented the peasantry, not the mass of agricultural workers, but largely the middle class peasantry dominated by the petty bourgeois ideology. They represented that conservative middle class which in previous revolutions had always acted against and betrayed the proletariat. The interests of this class of peasants moved within the orbit of the bourgeois regime of property, and its representatives acted accordingly. In the normal times of peaces the well-to-do, bourgeois-aspiring peasants first awoke to political consciousness, constituted the real force in the Social-Revolutionary Party, and imparted to the party its petty bourgeois ideology. For a time the peasants, and particularly the soldiers, who were mostly peasants, accepted the leadership of the Social-Revolutionary moderates; but as the Revolution developed its antagonisms and awoke to political consciousness the great mass of agricultural workers, the Social-Revolutionary Party split, and the Social-Revolutionists of the Left accepted the Bolshevik program. But at this stage, and for months after, the Social-Revolutionists and their petty bourgeois policy constituted the real governing force in Russia.

The Mensheviki represented the dominant, moderate Socialism, that moderate Socialism which directed the International straight to disaster by accepting the policy of their governments in all belligerent nations; and which, moreover, had become, in the words of Trotzky, the greatest obstacle to the revolutionary development of the proletariat. The Mensheviki represented those social elements which everywhere have dominated organized Socialism,—the intellectualss, liberal democrats, bourgeois reformers, the lower petit bourgeoisie, and, above all, the upper layers of the working class, the skilled workers, which everywhere are a reactionary force in the councils of Socialism, having been corrupted by Imperialism and striving to secure a place as a caste in the governing system of things. The ideology of this group was the ideology of the petite bourgeoisie, of the bourgeois revolution in which, according to Marx, the phrase surpasses the substance. The Mensheviki were moderate and hesitant, convinced that, the Russian Revol-