As a whole, it was the fact that the
Provisional Government was too fully representative of the bourgeois
parties and groups which gave the Bolsheviki and other radicals a chance to
condemn it.
The absence of the name of Tchcheidze from the list was a surprise and a
disappointment to most of the moderate Socialists, for he had come to be
regarded as one of the most capable and trustworthy leaders of the masses.
The fact that he was not included in the new government could hardly fail
to cause uneasy suspicion. It was said later that efforts had been made to
induce him to join the new government, but that he declined to do so.
Tchcheidze's position was a very difficult one. Thoroughly in sympathy with
the plan to form a coalition Provisional Government, and supporting
Kerensky in his position, Tchcheidze nevertheless declined to enter the new
Cabinet himself. In this he was quite honest and not at all the tricky
politician he has been represented as being.
Tchcheidze knew that the Duma had been elected upon a most undemocratic
suffrage and that it did not and could not represent the masses of the
peasants and wage-workers. These classes were represented in the Council of
Workmen's and Soldiers' Deputies, which continued to exist as a separate
body, independent of the Duma, but co-operating with it as an equal.
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