The Political Situation
which took place almost entirely in the capital, it was the Soviet of Petrograd alone that spoke and decided in the name of the workmen and soldiers of the whole country. The Extremists are represented there in a minority, but in an aggressive and determined minority. The Moderates are especially moderate when it is a question of an energetic carrying on of the war. There are, in this revolutionary commune, many foreigners, Cosmopolitans, Jews especially, hiding under a borrowed name their German origin, but who cannot regard as their fatherland a country where they have scarcely known anything but persecution.
But soon the Soviet of Petrograd took second place. It gradually became a local assembly, very influential, certainly, but whose influence was henceforth limited. The Congress of Peasants met. The Congress of the Soviets of all Russia assembled in its turn. The feeling there is quite different. Provincial elements bring to it a breath of national enthusiasm. They are longing for peace, certainly, for the country is war weary, and peasants and soldiers
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