Not without good and sufficient reason,
they mistrusted the bourgeois statesmen and believed that some of the most
influential among them were imperialists, actuated by a desire for
territorial expansion, especially the annexation of Constantinople, and
that they were committed to various secret treaties entered into by the old
regime with England, France, and Italy. In the meetings of the Soviet, and
in other assemblages of workers, the ugly suspicion grew that the war was
not simply a war for national defense, for which there was democratic
sanction and justification, but a war of imperialism, and that the
Provisional Government was pursuing the old ways of secret diplomacy.
Strength was given to this feeling when Miliukov, the Foreign Minister, in
an interview championed the annexation of Constantinople as a necessary
safeguard for the outlet to the Mediterranean which Russian economic
development needed. Immediately there was an outcry of protest from the
Soviet, in which, it should be observed, the Bolsheviki were already
gaining strength and confidence, thanks to the leadership of Kamenev,
Lenine's colleague, who had returned from Siberian exile. It was not only
the Bolsheviki, however, who protested against imperialistic tendencies.
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