central and local committees and Councils." (Vigorous protest on the Left. Shouts: "Down with him!" "Counter-Revolutionist!" Enthusiastic applause from the Right.)
Cheidse, president of the Central Committee of the All-Russian Soviets, answered Kaledine and defended the Soviets, declaring that the revolutionary democracy "has always placed the interests of the country and the Revolution above the interests of separate classes and groups. … Only due to the revolutionary organizations has the creative spirit of the Revolution been preserved; that is saving the country from disolution and anarchy." But Cheidse's answer was not an answer to the problem, since the status quo was itself responsible for the prevailing situation: the status quo had to be destroyed either by the bourgeoisie or by the revolutionary proletariat. The measures proposed by General Kaledine were unavoidable if the army was to be restored, but the introduction of these measures, under the prevailing conditions, would have necessarily meant the abolition of the Soviets as the active force of the Revolution, the conversion of the army into a counter-revolutionary instrument, and a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The attacks upon the Provisional Government emphasized that the end of the Soviets equally meant the end of the "liberal" government of the imperialistic bourgeoisie: the Provisional Government itself assailed by the Right. The lament of the former Minister of War Guchkov that the Provisional Government without power revealed the situation clearly: the Soviets had the power and the Provisional Government could have power only with the destruction of the Soviets.
It was this abolition of the Soviets that was being engineered. The Cadets challenged the Soviets to assume full responsibility for the government, or else cease their "advisory" function. But the Mensheviki and Social-Revolutionists cravenly evaded the challenge: neither a dictatorship of the proletariat nor a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Milyukov and Nabokov refused to participate in the Minitsry, feeling that the annihilation of the Soviets was first necessary.
The Moscow Conference was called as a pledge of national unity and to promote naftional unity: it simply revealed the acute disunity and intensified the antagonisms. Nothing of a practical character was accomptisheed by the Conference, and Kerensky's final address indicated the depth of the failure: "The Government does not regret having called this Conference, for although it has not secured practical results, it has given an opportunity to all Russian citizens to say openly what they have on their minds. And that is essential for the state."
***
Sources: All the chapters of Part Four are from Trotzky's pamphlet, What Next? published in Petrograd in September, 1917. The following is Trotzky's preface to the pamphlet, which he calls "Instead of a Preface:"
