Certainly the Provisional Government—­which the government of the United States formally recognized on March 22d, being followed in this by the other Allied governments next day—­could not be accused fairly of being either slothful or unfaithful.  Its accomplishments during those first weeks were most remarkable.  Nevertheless, as the days went by it became evident that it could not hope to satisfy the masses and that, therefore, it could not last very long.

III

The Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates was pursuing its independent existence, under the leadership of Tchcheidze, Skobelev, Tseretelli, and other moderate Social Democrats.  As yet the Bolsheviki were a very small and uninfluential faction, lacking capable leadership.  There can be very little doubt that the Council represented the feelings of the great mass of the organized wage-earners far more satisfactorily than the Provisional Government did, or that it was trusted to a far greater degree, alike by the wage-earners of the cities and the peasants.  A great psychological fact existed, a fact which the Provisional Government and the governments of the Allied nations might well have reckoned with:  the Russian working-people, artisans and peasants alike, were aggressively class conscious and could trust fully only the leaders of their own class.

The majority of the Social Democratic party was, at the beginning, so far from anything like Bolshevism, so thoroughly constructive and opportunistic in its policies, that its official organ, Pravda—­not yet captured by the Bolsheviki—­put forward a program which might easily have been made the basis for an effective coalition.  It was in some respects disappointingly moderate:  like the program of the Provisional Government, it left the land question untouched, except in so far as the clause demanding the confiscation of the property of the royal family and the Church bore upon it.  The Social Democratic party, reflecting the interests of the city proletariat, had never been enthusiastic about the peasants’ claim for distribution of the land, and there had been much controversy between its leaders and the leaders of the Socialist-Revolutionary party, the party of the peasants.  The program as printed in Pravda read: 

    1.  A biennial one-house parliament.

    2.  Wide extension of the principle of self-government.

    3.  Inviolability of person and dwelling.

    4.  Unlimited freedom of the press, of speech, and of assembly.

    5.  Freedom of movement in business.

    6.  Equal rights for all irrespective of sex, religion, and
    nationality.

    7.  Abolition of class distinction.

    8.  Education in native language; native languages everywhere to
    have equal rights with official language.

    9.  Every nationality in the state to have the right of
    self-definition.