Page:Vladimir Ilyich Lenin - Lessons of the Revolution (1918).djvu/10

 ces of the real Revolution with the representatives of the dying old order. Thus by a process of elimination the Soviet was finally purified of elements leaning toward the right; a process which showed, that as the individual hesitates before making his choice and stamping as his will one or the other of the ideas conflicting in his mind, so the Russian people hesitated before it found and expressed its conscious will. And the Soviet made all this possible.

In brief, these are the three phases passed through by the Soviet—from birth to manhood: 1) It issued from the very heart of the people as  2) While growing, it served as the pendulum—the   3) Fully matured as the volitional and intellectual organ of its parent, the people, it became the

The superiority of the Soviet over any other form of representation is easily demonstrable. All government pretends to represent the will of the people. Now granted, (for the sake of argument) that a people's will is as real as the will of an individual, and that it is the sum or resultant of the sundry wills composing it, it is manifest that no representative body can satisfactorily execute this composite will.

As a matter of fact, the will of an individual is not easily satisfied by proxy. So that it may