IV
The crisis was not due solely to the diplomacy of the Provisional
Government. Indeed, that was a minor cause. Behind all the discussions and
disputes over Miliukov's conduct of the affairs of the Foreign Office there
was the far more serious issue created by the agitation of the Bolsheviki.
Under the leadership of Kamenev, Lenine, and others less well known, who
skillfully exploited the friction with the Provisional Government, the idea
of overthrowing that bourgeois body and of asserting that the Councils of
Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates would rule Russia in the interests of the
working class made steady if not rapid progress.
Late in April Lenine and several other active Bolshevik leaders returned to
Petrograd from Switzerland, together with Martov and other Menshevik
leaders, who, while differing from the Bolsheviki upon practically all
other matters, agreed with them in their bitter and uncompromising
opposition to the war and in demanding an immediate peace.[8] As is well
known, they were granted special facilities by the German Government in
order that they might reach Russia safely. Certain Swiss Socialist leaders,
regarded as strongly pro-German, arranged with the German Government that
the Russian revolutionists should be permitted to travel across Germany by
rail, in closed carriages.
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