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the aim of the capitalist Provisional Government to use Kerensky, then Vice-President of the Petrograd Soviet, as a link by which it could chain to itself the whole Soviet. The Soviet—that is to say, its majority—consisting of Essers and Mensheviks, took the bait, and soon after the formation of the Provisional Government consented to support it «in as much as it fulfills its promises».
The Soviet regrded itself as the accountant, the comptroller of the deeds of the Provisional Government. But during all this time the Provisional Government did not make a single serious effort to foster the development of the revolution. It did absolutely nothing with regard to its own immediate task of convoking the Constituent Assembly; it has not yet presented the question to the locals, nor has it even established a central commission to elaborate this question. The government's only care was: clandestinely to renew the predatory international treaties which the Tsar had concluded with the capitalists of England and France, cautiously and insensibly to thwart the course of the revolution, to promise everything and to accomplish nothing. The Essers and Mensheviks of the «contact committee» played the role of fools lavishly fed on grand phrases, promises, «tomorrows»… Like the crow in the fable, the Essers and Mensheviks succumbed to flattery, listened complacently to the capitalists' assurances that they highly esteemed the Soviets, and that they would not move a step without them.
