— 78 —
turn would have come for the direct struggle for the power.
3. At the beginning of the February revolution of 1917, when the Soviets of Workers' Deputies were transformed into Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, they drew into the sphere of their influence the widest circles of the popular masses and at once acquired a tremendous authority, because the real force was on their side, in their hands. But when the liberal bourgeoisie recovered from the suddenness of the first revolutionary blows, and when the social traitors, the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Mensheviki helped the Russian bourgeoisie to take the power into its hands, the importance of the Soviets began to dwindle. Only after the July days and after the ill-success of Komilov's counter-revolutionary campaign, when the wider popular masses began to move, and when the threat of the counter-revolutionary bourgeois coalition government came quite near, then the Soviets began to flourish again; and they soon acquired a prominent importance in the country.
4. The history of the German and the Austrian revolutions shows the same. When the popular masses revolted, when the revolutionary wave rose so high that it washed away the strongholds of the monarchies of the Hohenzollerns and the Habsburgs, in Germany and in Austria the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies
