The allied ambassadors were pressing the government with the
demand that army discipline be restored and the advance continued. The
greatest panic prevailed in government circles, while among the
workingmen much discontent had accumulated, which craved for outward
expression. "Avail yourselves of the resignations of the Cadet ministers
and take all the power into your own hands!" was the call addressed by
the workingmen of Petrograd to the Socialist-Revolutionists and
Mensheviki in control of the Soviet parties.
I recall the session of the Executive Committee which was held on the
2nd of July. The Soviet ministers came to report a new crisis in the
government. We were intensely interested to learn what position they
would take now that they had actually gone to pieces under the great
ordeals arising from coalition policies. Their spokesman was Tseretelli.
He nonchalantly explained to the Executive Committee that those
concessions which he and Tereshchenko had made to the Kiev Rada did not
by any means signify a dismemberment of the country, and that this,
therefore, did not give the Cadets any good reason for leaving the
Ministry. Tseretelli accused the Cadet leaders of practising a
centralistic doctrinairism, of failing to understand the necessity for
compromising with the Ukrainians, etc., etc. The total impression was
pitiful in the extreme: the hopeless doctrinaire of the coalition
government was hurling the charge of doctrinairism against the crafty
capitalist politicians who seized upon the first suitable excuse for
compelling their political clerks to repent of the decisive turn they
had given to the course of events by the military advance of June 18th.
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