"
It is not just to judge the rules without considering the conditions which
called them forth.
Certainly the Provisional Government--which the government of the United
States formally recognized on March 22d, being followed in this by the
other Allied governments next day--could not be accused fairly of being
either slothful or unfaithful. Its accomplishments during those first weeks
were most remarkable. Nevertheless, as the days went by it became evident
that it could not hope to satisfy the masses and that, therefore, it could
not last very long.
III
The Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates was pursuing its
independent existence, under the leadership of Tchcheidze, Skobelev,
Tseretelli, and other moderate Social Democrats. As yet the Bolsheviki were
a very small and uninfluential faction, lacking capable leadership. There
can be very little doubt that the Council represented the feelings of the
great mass of the organized wage-earners far more satisfactorily than the
Provisional Government did, or that it was trusted to a far greater degree,
alike by the wage-earners of the cities and the peasants. A great
psychological fact existed, a fact which the Provisional Government and the
governments of the Allied nations might well have reckoned with: the
Russian working-people, artisans and peasants alike, were aggressively
class conscious and could trust fully only the leaders of their own class.
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