Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: September 14, 2025
The Bolsheviki did this, it should be remembered, not merely in cases where Mensheviki or Socialist-Revolutionists were in the majority, but also in cases where the majority consisted of members of the Socialist-Revolutionary party of the Left the faction which had united with the Bolsheviki in suppressing the Constituante.
The Socialist-Revolutionists did not see clearly what there was at the bottom of the whole affair. It was as much as any one knew at the moment. Kerensky, in presence of the menace of the counter-revolution on the right and of the growing anarchy on the extreme left, would have called to Petrograd a part of the troops from the front to stem the tide.
Many non-Bolshevist Socialist organs were suppressed; papers containing matter displeasing to the Bolshevik authorities were suspended, whole issues were confiscated, and editors were imprisoned, precisely as in the days of the Czar. It became necessary for the Socialist-Revolutionists to issue their paper with a different title, and from a different place, every day.
Whatever truth there may be in the suspicion that the anti-war Bolshevik faction of the Social Democrats were the victims of the Russian police espionage system, and were betrayed by one whom they had trusted, as the Socialist-Revolutionists had been betrayed by Azev, the fact remains that the government ordered the arrest of five of the Bolshevist Social Democratic members of the Duma, on November 17th.
Now, however, the Socialists in the Duma both the Social Democrats and the Socialist-Revolutionists together with the semi-Socialist Labor Group, decided that it was not enough to appeal for passive resistance; that only an armed uprising could accomplish anything.
Back of all the strife between the Bolsheviki centered around the Soviets and the Socialist-Revolutionists and Mensheviki, centered around the Constituent Assembly, was a greater fact than any we have been discussing, however.
The Socialists, adopting the tactics of Plechanov, against the advice of Lenine, his former pupil and disciple, had decided not to boycott the elections this time, but to participate in them. When the returns were published it was found that the Social Democrats and the Socialist-Revolutionists had each elected over sixty deputies, the total being nearly a third of the membership 455.
"The majority of the Constituent Assembly is formed," said the Bolsheviki, "of Socialist-Revolutionists and Cadets that is to say, enemies of the people. This composition assures it of a counter-revolutionary spirit. Its destiny is therefore clear. Historic examples come to its aid. The victorious people has no need of a Constituent Assembly. It is above the Constituante. It has gone beyond it."
They pointed out that this position was evidently feared by the bureaucracy far more than the position of the extremists among the Social Democrats and the Socialist-Revolutionists, who refused to consider such co-operation, and pointed to the fact that provocateurs in large numbers associated themselves with the latter in their organizations and preached the same doctrine of absolute isolation and exclusiveness.
"Avail yourselves of the resignations of the Cadet ministers and take all the power into your own hands!" was the call addressed by the workingmen of Petrograd to the Socialist-Revolutionists and Mensheviki in control of the Soviet parties. I recall the session of the Executive Committee which was held on the 2nd of July. The Soviet ministers came to report a new crisis in the government.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking