In the meantime, the struggle for the establishment of the Soviet regime was spreading all over the country. In Moscow, this struggle was particularly protracted and bloody. Perhaps this was due not the least to the fact that the leaders of the Revolution did not act at once with all the determination needed in offensive operations. In a civil war, more than in any other, victory can be secured only by a prompt and continuous offensive. Hesitation is dangerous, negotiations are risky, the policy of marking time is ruinous. One must always remember that the masses of the people have never been in possession of power, that they have always been under the heel of other classes, and that therefore they lack political self-confidence. Any hesitation shown in the revolutionary centres has an immediate deteriorating effect on them. Only when the revolutionary party firmly and unflinchingly speeds to its goal can it help the working masses to overcome all the slavish instincts inherited from centuries and lead the masses to victory. Only a resolute offensive secures victory with a minimum expenditure of strength and with the least losses.

But the attainment of resolute and firm tactics is just the difficulty. The lack of confidence of the masses in their own strength, the lack of experience of power, are reflected also in the leaders who, besides, are all the time under the powerful pressure of bourgeois public opinion.

The bare idea of the possibility of the establishment of a Workers’ Government filled our bourgeois liberals with hatred and spite. These feelings they expressed in the large number of papers they had at their disposal. Next came our intellectuals, who, with all their profession of radicalism and the socialistic colouring of their thought, were yet harbouring in the depth of their consciousness a most slavish admission of the bourgeoisie’s might and its art of ruling. All these intellectuals, with their socialistic plumage, at once shifted towards the right, regarding the consolidation of the power of the Soviets as the beginning of the end. Following on the heels of the representatives of liberal professions walked the old bureaucracy, the administrative and technical personnel, all those elements who, morally and materially, live on the crumbs falling from the table of the bourgeoisie. The opposition of all these classes was mostly of a passive character, especially after the suppression of the Cadet rebellion, but for that very reason it often seemed insurmountable. At every step, we were refused assistance. The officials would either leave the government offices or, remaining there, refused point-blank to work for us. They would not surrender the books or funds. The telephone exchanges refused to connect us. The telegraph offices would mutilate or delay our messages. We could not find translators, stenographers, or even copyists, etc. All that created such an atmosphere that some among us, even some of those at the head of our party, began to doubt whether the working masses would be able, in face of such resistance on the part of the bourgeois classes, to set in order the machinery of government and remain in power. Here and there were heard voices advising an agreement. But with whom? With the bourgeois liberals? Such a coalition had been already tried, and it drove the Revolution into a terrible bog. The insurrection of 7th November was an act of self-preservation on the part of the masses, after a period of impotence and treason on the part of the coalition government. The only coalition which still remained to be tried was the coalition within the ranks of the so-called revolutionary democracy, that is, of all Soviet parties. Such a coalition we had virtually proposed from the very beginning, at the sitting of the second All-Russian Congress on 7th November. The Kerensky government had just been overturned and we had proposed to the Soviet Congress to take over the government authority. But the parties of the right had left us and slammed the door behind them. And it was the very best they could have done. They represented but an insignificant section at the Congress. They were no longer supported by the masses, since even those sections of the people who, by their apathy, were still supporting them, were gradually drifting over to our side. The coalition with the Right Wing of the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks would not have broadened the social basis of the Soviet Government; at the same time, it would have introduced into its personnel elements demoralised through and through by political scepticism and by worship of bourgeois liberalism. All the strength of the new authority lay in the radicalism of its programme, in the determination with which it acted. To tie oneself to the groups of Chernov and Tsereteli would have meant to put shackles on the arms and legs of the new authority and to cause the masses to lose confidence in it in no time.

Our nearest neighbours on the right were the so-called ‘Left’ Socialist Revolutionaries. On the whole they were quite ready to support us, but at the same time they desired to form a Coalition Socialist Government. The Central Committee of the Railway Union, the Central Committee of the Post and Telegraph Employees, the Union of Government Officials – all these organisations were against us. At the head of our own party some were urging the need of coming to an agreement with these organisations in some way or other. But on what basis? All those above mentioned leading organisations of the past regime had already outlived themselves. Their relationship to the lower officials was roughly the same as that of the old army committees to the soldier masses in the trenches. History had drawn a deep line of demarcation between the higher and lower strata. An unprincipled alliance with these worn-out leading organisations of yesterday was doomed to an inevitable collapse. In order to overpower the sabotage and the aristocratic pretensions of those above, it was necessary to lean for support firmly and resolutely on the rank and file. We left to the Socialist Revolutionaries the task of continuing the hopeless attempts to effect a compromise. Our own policy was, on the contrary, to mobilise those who laboured at the bottom of the scale against all those representative bodies which had supported the Kerensky regime. This uncompromising policy caused friction and even a split amongst the leaders of our own party. At the Central Executive Committee, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries protested against the severity of the measures adopted by the new government, and insisted on the necessity of compromises. The protest was supported by a section of the Bolsheviks, and three People’s Commissioners resigned and left the government. Some other active members of the party expressed their fundamental solidarity with those who had resigned. This made a tremendous impression in various bourgeois and intellectual circles: it was now evident that the Bolsheviks, whom the Cadets and the cossacks of General Krasnov had failed to crush, were bound to perish, together with the Soviet regime, as a result of internal dissolution. However, the masses never noticed the split at all, and unanimously supported the Council of the People’s Commissioners, not only against the counter-revolutionary plotters and the saboteurs, but also against all compromise-mongers and sceptics.