Before the peasant masses could be drawn together by revolutionary
demands and ideas, they were already organized in regimental staffs,
divisions and army corps. The representatives of petty bourgeois
democracy, scattered through this army and playing a leading role in it,
both in a military and in a conceptual way, were almost completely
permeated with middle-class revolutionary tendencies. The deep social
discontent in the masses became more acute and was bound to manifest
itself, particularly because of the military shipwreck of Czarism. The
proletariat, as represented in its advanced ranks, began, as soon as the
revolution developed, to revive the 1905 tradition and called upon the
masses of the people to organize in the form of representative
bodies--soviets, consisting of deputies. The army was called upon to
send its representatives to the revolutionary organizations before its
political conscience caught up in any way with the rapid course of the
revolution. Whom could the soldiers send as deputies? Eventually, those
representatives of the intellectuals and semi-intellectuals who chanced
to be among them and who possessed the least bit of knowledge of
political affairs and could make this knowledge articulate. In this way,
the petty bourgeois intellectuals were at once and of necessity raised
to great prominence in the awakening army. Doctors, engineers, lawyers,
journalists and volunteers, who under pre-bellum conditions led a rather
retired life and made no claim to any importance, suddenly found
themselves representative of whole corps and armies and felt that they
were "leaders" of the revolution.
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