The Democratic Soviet which had detached itself from the Democratic
Conference had absorbed all the helplessness of the latter. The old
Soviet parties, the Social-Revolutionists and the Mensheviks, had
created an artificial majority in it for themselves, only the more
strikingly to reveal their political prostration. Behind the Soviet
curtains, Tseretelli was carrying on involved parleys with Kerensky and
the representatives of the "professional elements" as they began to say
in the Soviet,--in order to avoid the "insulting" term bourgeoisie.
Tseretelli's report on the course and issue of the negotiations was a
sort of funeral oration over a whole period of the Revolution. It turned
out that neither Kerensky nor the professional elements had consented to
responsibility toward the new semi-representative institution. On the
other hand, outside the limits of the Cadet Party, they had not
succeeded in finding so-called "efficient" social leaders. The
organizers of the venture had to capitulate on both points. The
capitulation was all the more eloquent, because the Democratic
Conference had been called exactly for the purpose of doing away with
the irresponsible regime, while the Conference, by a formal vote,
rejected a coalition with the Cadets. At several meetings of the
Democratic Soviet which took place prior to the Revolution, there
prevailed an atmosphere of tenseness and utter incapacity for action.
The Soviet did not reflect the Revolution's march forward but the
dissolution of the parties that had lagged behind the Revolution.
Even previous to the Democratic Conference, in our party faction, I had
raised the question of demonstratively withdrawing from the Conference
and boycotting the Democratic Soviet. It was necessary to show the
masses by action that the fusionists had led the Revolution into a blind
alley. The fight for building up the Soviet power could be carried on
only in a revolutionary way. The power must be snatched from the hands
of those who had proven incapable of doing any good and were furthermore
even losing their capacity for active evil. Their method of working
through an artificially picked Pre-Parliament and a conjectural
Constituent Assembly, had to be opposed by our political method of
mobilizing the forces around the Soviets, through the All-Russian
Congress of Soviets and through insurrection. This could be done only by
means of an open break, before the eyes of the entire people, with the
body created by Tseretelli and his adherents, and by focusing on the
Soviet institutions, the entire attention and all the forces of the
working class. This is why I proposed the demonstrative withdrawal from
the Conference and a revolutionary agitation, in shops and regiments,
against the attempt to play false with the will of the Revolution and
once again turn its progress into the channel of cooperation with the
bourgeoisie. Lenin, whose letter we received a few days later, expressed
himself to the same effect. But in the party's upper circles hesitation
was still apparent on this question. The July days had left a deep
impression in the party's consciousness. The mass of workingmen and
soldiers had recovered from the July debacle much more rapidly than had
many of the leading comrades who feared the nipping of the Revolution in
the bud by a new premature onslaught of the masses. In our group of the
Democratic Conference, I mustered 50 votes in favor of my proposal
against 70 who declared for participating in the Democratic Council.
However, the experience of this participation soon strengthened the
party's left wing. It was growing too manifest that combinations
bordering on trickery, combinations that aimed at securing further
leadership in the Revolution for the professional elements, with the
assistance of the fusionists, who had lost ground among the lower levels
of the people, offered no escape from the impasse into which the laxness
of bourgeois democracy had driven the revolution. By the time the
Democratic Soviet, its ranks filled up with professional elements,
became a Pre-Parliament, readiness to break with this institution had
matured in our party.