but there was never any doubt of the outcome. The revolutionary masses secured a complete victory, the ministers of the Provisional Government were arrested, and Kerensky fled from Petrograd to the front to secure the adhesion of "loyal" troops, march upon Petrograd and crush the sevolution.
The All-Russian Congress of Soviets convened at the Smolny institute, confronted with the accomplished fact of the Provisional Government's overthrow. The Bolsheviki and the Social Revolutionists of the Left, representatives of the peasants who accepted the Bolsheviki program, dominated the Congress. While the armed revolutionary masses were completing the work of overthrowing the government and preparing to meet the attack of any troops that Kerensky might hurl at Petrograd, the Congress heatedly debated the problem of all power to the Soviets. A number of delegates, a small number, wished to ignore the successful revolution of the proletariat, and yield all government power to the Constituent Assembly, the Congress, in the meanwhile, to suspend its sessions while a new bourgeois-coalition government was organized.[1] But their arguments were brushed aside, and the Congress decreed that the Soviets should be constituted as the government of Russia. The Congress elected a ministry in the form of a Council of People's Commissaires, with Lenin as President of the Council (Premier) and Trotzky as Commissaire of Foreign Affairs.
In the meanwhile, Kerensky had succeeded in rallying some
- ↑ L. A. Martov, on behalf of the Menshevik-Internadonalists, proposed the following resolution:
Whereas, First, the coup d'etat which placed all authority in Petrograd in the hands of the Military Revolutionary Committee but a single day before the opening of the Congress, was accomplished by the action of the Bolsheviki Party alone, and by means which were exclusively military in their nature; and,
Whereas, Second, this coup d'etat threatens to produce bloodshed, civil war and a triumph of the counter-revolution which will drown in blood the entire proletarian movement and thereby destroy all the achievements of the Revolution; and,
Whereas, Third, the sole remedy for this situation, which might still prevent the outbreak of civil war, is an agreement between the insurgent section of the democracy and the remaining democratic organizations, concerning the formation of a democratic government that would be recognized by the whole revolutionary democracy and to whom the Provisional Government could hand over its authority without a struggle;
Therefore, the Menshevik Fraction calls upon the Congress to recognize officially the absolute necessity of an amicable settlement of the crisis thus produced, by forming a government composed of representatives of all the democratic elements; and the Menshevik-Internationalists, with this purpose in view, offer the Congress to appoint a deletion to consult with the other organs of democracy and with the socialistic parties.
And, until the results of the work of this delegation shall become apparent, the Menshevik-Internationalist Fraction proposes to the Congress that it discontinue its labors.
