The Right Social
Revolutionists, moreover, had to leave the Soviets, which in
October--that is, before the convocation of the Constituent
Assembly--had taken the government into their own hands. On whom, then,
could a ministry formed by the Constituent Assembly's majority depend
for support? It would be backed by the upper classes in the provinces,
the intellectuals, the government officials, and temporarily by the
bourgeoisie on the Right. But such a government would lack all the
material means of administration. At such a political center as
Petrograd, it would encounter irresistible opposition from the very
start. If under these circumstances the Soviets, submitting to the
formal logic of democratic conventions, had turned the government over
to the party of Kerensky and Chernov, such a government, compromised and
debilitated as it was, would only introduce temporary confusion into the
political life of the country, and would be overthrown by a new uprising
in a few weeks. The Soviets decided to reduce this belated historical
experiment to its lowest terms, and dissolved the Constituent Assembly
the very first day it met.
For this, our party has been most severely censured. The dispersal of
the Constituent Assembly has also created a decidedly unfavorable
impression among the leading circles of the European Socialist parties.
Kautsky has explained, in a series of articles written with his
characteristic pedantry, the interrelation existing between the
Social-Revolutionary problems of the proletariat and the regime of
political democracy.
Pages:
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121