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As Minister of War and head of the army and navy Alexander Kerensky took the place of Guchkov, while P.N. Pereverzev, a clever member of the Socialist-Revolutionary party, succeeded Kerensky as Minister of Justice.
The majority of the Bolshevik faction made common cause with the extreme left-wing Socialists of the Socialist-Revolutionary party, who shared their views and became known as "Porazhentsi" that is, advocates of defeat. Naturally, the charge was made that they were pro-German, and it was even charged that they were in the pay of Germany.
For the Liberals it means simply democratic parliamentary government; for the Social Democrat it means the undisputed predominance of the Proletariat; for the Socialist-Revolutionary it means the opportunity of realising immediately the Socialist ideal; for the representative of a subject-nationality it means the abolition of racial and religious disabilities and the attainment of local autonomy or political independence.
The leaders of the Socialist-Revolutionary party were warning their followers that the Bolsheviki would try to wreck the Constituent Assembly, for which they were bitterly denounced in organs like Pravda and Izvestya. Very soon, however, these Bolshevist organs began to discuss the Constituent Assembly in a very critical spirit.
The "Narodniki," or peasant Socialists, later organized into the Socialist-Revolutionary party, wanted distribution of the land belonging to the big estates among the peasant communes, to be co-operatively owned and managed. They did not want land nationalization, which was the program of the Marxists the Social Democrats.
On the platform were the members of the Organizing Committee, the Executive Committee of the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates, the Socialist-Revolutionary party, the Social Democratic party, and a number of prominent Socialist leaders. As might be expected in a peasants' Congress, members of the Socialist-Revolutionary party were in the majority, numbering 537.
The speech created a profound impression and it was voted to have it printed in millions of copies, at the expense of the Congress, and have them distributed throughout the army. A similar honor was accorded the speech of I.I. Bunakov, one of the best known and most popular of the leaders of the Socialist-Revolutionary party.
V.M. Chernov, leader of the Socialist-Revolutionary party, the new Minister of Agriculture, made a notable address in which he traversed with great skill and courage the arguments of the Bolsheviki, making a superb defense of the policy of participation in the government.
As early as May 18, 1917, it was announced by the Provisional Government that the "question of the transfer of the land to the toilers" was to be left to the Constituent Assembly, and there was never a doubt in the mind of any Russian Socialist how that body would settle it; never a moment when it was doubted that the Constituent Assembly would be controlled by the Socialist-Revolutionary party.
We know, he would argue, that the terrorist section of the Socialist-Revolutionary group, the so-called Militant Organisation, are very busy preparing bombs, and the police, even with the extensive, ill-defined powers which they at present possess, have the greatest difficulty in preventing the use of such objectionable instruments of political warfare.
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