In the Petrograd Soviet, the domination of our party was definitely
strengthened from that time on. This was evidenced in dramatic fashion
when the question of the personnel of its presiding body came up. At
that epoch, when the Social-Revolutionists and the Minimalists were
holding sway in the Soviets, they isolated the Maximalists by every
means in their power. They did not admit even one Maximalist into the
membership of the Executive Committee at Petrograd, even when our party
represented at least one-third of all the Soviet members. Afterwards,
when the Petrograd Soviet, by a dwindling majority, passed the
resolution for the transfering of all power into the hands of the
Soviet, our party put forth the demand to establish a coalition
Executive Committee formed on a proportional basis. The old presiding
body, the members of which were Cheidze, Tseretelli, Kerensky,
Skobeloff, Chernoff, flatly refused this demand. It may not be out of
place to mention this here, inasmuch as representatives of the parties
broken up by the revolution speak of the necessity of presenting one
front for the sake of democracy, and accuse us of separatism. There was
called at that time a special meeting of the Petrograd Soviet, which was
to decide the question of the presiding body's fate. All forces, all
reserves had been mobilized on both sides. Tseretelli came out with a
speech embodying a programme, wherein he pointed out that the question
of the presiding body was a question of orientation. We reckoned that we
would sway somewhat less than half of the vote and were ready to
consider that a sign of our progress. Actually, however, the vote showed
that we had a majority of nearly one hundred. "For six months," said
Tseretelli at that time, "we have stood at the head of the Petrograd
Soviet and led it from victory to victory; we wish that you may hold for
at least half of that time the positions which you are now preparing to
occupy." In the Moscow Soviet a similar change of leadership among the
parties took place.
One after the other the Provincial Soviets joined the Bolshevik
position. The date of convoking the Second All-Russian Congress of
Soviets was approaching. But the leading group of the Central Executive
Committee was striving with all its might to put off the Congress to an
indefinite future time, in order thus to destroy it in advance. It was
evident that the new Congress of Soviets would give our party a
majority, would correspondingly alter the make-up of the Central
Executive Committee, and deprive the fusionists of their most important
position. The struggle for the convocation of the All-Russian Congress
of Soviets assumed the greatest importance for us.
To counterbalance this, the Mensheviks (Minimalists) and the
Social-Revolutionists put forth the Democratic Conference idea. They
needed this move against both us and Kerensky.
By this time the head of the Ministry assumed an absolutely independent
and irresponsible position. He had been raised to power by the Petrograd
Soviet during the first epoch of the revolution: Kerensky had entered
the Ministry without a preliminary decision of the Soviets, but his
admission was subsequently approved. After the First Congress of
Soviets, the Socialist ministers were held accountable to the Central
Executive Committee. Their allies, the Cadets (Constitutional Democrats)
were responsible only to their party. To meet the bourgeoisie's wishes,
the General Executive Committee, after the July days, released the
Socialist Ministers from all responsibility to the Soviets, in order, as
it were, to create a revolutionary dictatorship. It is rather well to
mention this, too, now that the same persons who built up the
dictatorship of a coterie, come forth with accusations and imprecations
against the dictatorship of a class. The Moscow Conference, at which the
skilfully manipulated professional and democratic elements balanced each
other, aimed to strengthen Kerensky's power over classes and parties.
This aim was attained only in appearance. In reality, the Moscow
Conference revealed Kerensky's utter impotence, for he was equally
remote from both the professional elements and the bourgeois democracy.
But since the liberals and conservatives applauded his onslaughts
against democracy, and the fusionists gave him ovations when he
cautiously upbraided the counter-revolutionaries, the impression was
growing upon him that he was supported, as it were, by both the former
and the latter, and, accordingly, commanded unlimited power. Over
workingmen and revolutionary soldiers he held the threat of blood and
iron. His policy continued the bargaining with Korniloff behind the
scenes--a bargaining which compromised him even in the fusionists' eyes:
in evasively diplomatic terms, so characteristic of him, Tseretelli
spoke of "personal" movements in politics and of the necessity of
curbing these personal movements. This task was to be accomplished by
the Democratic Conference, which was called, according to arbitrary
forms, from among representatives of Soviets, dumas, zemstvos,
professional trade unions and co-operative societies. Still, the main
task was to secure a sufficiently conservative composition of the
Conference, to dissolve the Soviets once for all in the formless mass of
democracy, and, on the new organizational basis, to gain a firm footing
against the Bolshevik tide.
Here it will not be out of place to note, in a few words, the difference
between the political role of the Soviets and that of the democratic
organs of self-government. More than once, the Philistines called our
attention to the fact that the new dumas and zemstvos elected on the
basis of universal suffrage, were incomparably more democratic than the
Soviets and were more suited to represent the population. However, this
formal democratic criterion is devoid of serious content in a
revolutionary epoch. The significance of the Revolution lies in the
rapid changing of the judgment of the masses, in the fact that new and
ever new strata of population acquire experience, verify their views of
the day before, sweep them aside, work out new ones, desert old leaders
and follow new ones in the forward march. During revolutionary times,
formally democratic organizations, based upon the ponderous apparatus of
universal suffrage, inevitably fall behind the development of the
political consciousness of the masses. Quite different are the Soviets.
They rely immediately upon organic groupings, such as shop, mill,
factory, volost, regiment, etc. To be sure, there are guarantees, just
as legal, of the strictness of elections, as are used in creating
democratic dumas and zemstvos. But there are in the Soviet incomparably
more serious, more profound guarantees of the direct and immediate
relation between the deputy and the electors. A town-duma or zemstvo
member is supported by the amorphous mass of electors, which entrusts
its full powers to him for a year and then breaks up. The Soviet
electors remain always united by the conditions of their work and their
existence; the deputy is ever before their eyes, at any moment they can
prepare a mandate to him, censure him, recall or replace him with
another person.
If during the revolutionary month preceding the general political
evolution expressed itself in the fact that the influence of the
fusionist parties was being replaced by a decisive influence of the
Bolsheviki, it is quite plain that this process found its most striking
and fullest expression in the Soviets, while the dumas and zemstvos,
notwithstanding all their formal democratism, expressed yesterday's
status of the popular masses and not to-day's. This is exactly what
explains the gravitation toward dumas and zemstvos on the part of those
parties which were losing more and more ground in the esteem of the
revolutionary class. We shall meet with the same question, only on a
larger scale, later, when we come to the Constituent Assembly.