useless to talk about. Whatever difficulty its realisation may now present (after July and August, two months equivalent to a score of years of peaceable torpor), it seems to me that it is not yet quite impossible, and what makes me think this is the decision taken by the S.-R.'s and the Mensheviks not to participate in the Government with the Cadets.[1]
The Bolsheviks will gain from this compromise in that they will secure the ability freely to propagate their point of view and the possibility of exercising their influence in the Soviets, thanks to the effective realisation of integral democracy. Nominally everyone already grants this freedom to the Bolsheviks. In fact, it is impossible under a bourgeois Government or under a Government in which the bourgeoisie joins, to wit, under any Government other than that of the Soviets. Under the Government of the Soviets this freedom would be possible (we do not say absolutely assured, but possible). Therefore, it is in order to try and realise this possibility that it would be convenient, at such a painful time, to make a compromise with the present majority in the Soviets. We have nothing to fear under a regime of genuine democracy for life is on our side, and even the tendencies that are developing within the womb of the parties of our adversaries, the S.-R.'s and the Mensheviks, will in time confirm the justice of our position.
The Mensheviks and the S.R.'s would gain by this compromise in the sense that they would obtain at one stroke the complete possibility of realising the programme of their bloc, by resting on the immense majority of the people and in assuring themselves of the ability to use "peacefully" their majority in the Soviets.
In this bloc, necessarily heterogenous both as a coalition and because the petty bourgeois democracy is always less homogeneous than the bourgeoisie or the proletariat, two voices would, apparently, make themselves heard.
One would say: "Our path is neither with the Bolsheviks nor with the revolutionary proletariat. The latter's demands will be extravagant, and it will, by means of demagogue orations, drag the poor peasants in its wake. It will demand peace and a rupture with the Allies. And that is impossible. We are nearer to the
- ↑ In fact, on August 31 the Petrograd Soviet had voted by 279 to 115 with 51 abstentions against the participation of the Cadets (Liberals) in the Government: "The sole issue is the constitution of a Government formed of representatives of the proletariat and the peasant class."
