Before leaving the Provisional Parliament, where, according to the political statistics of Kerensky and Tsereteli, we only had about fifty seats, we organised a meeting with the Left Socialist Revolutionary group. They, however, refused to follow us, on the ground that it was necessary for them to prove to the peasantry by a practical experiment the hopelessness of that Parliament. “We think it our duty to warn you,” said one of their leaders, “that if you mean to leave the Provisional Parliament with the object of immediately descending into the street for an open struggle, we shall not follow you.” The bourgeois and coalitionist press accused us of aiming at a break-up of the Provisional Parliament for the sole purpose of creating a revolutionary situation. Our group in the Provisional Parliament decided not to wait for the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, but to act independently. The declaration of our party, read from the rostrum of the Provisional Parliament and explaining our reason for breaking away from this institution, was met with a howl of execration and impotent rage from the majority groups. In the Petrograd Soviet, where our action was approved by an overwhelming majority, the leader of the small group of ‘Internationalist’ Mensheviks, Martov, argued with us that our exit from the Provisional Council of the Republic (such was the official designation of this disreputable institution) would only then have any sense if we intended to pass immediately to an open offensive against the present government. But that was just what we did intend doing. The agents of the liberal bourgeoisie were quite right when they accused us of desiring to create a revolutionary situation. We saw that the only way out of the hopeless state of affairs was by means of an open rising and a direct seizure of power.

Again, as during the July days, the press and all other organs of so-called public opinion were set in motion against us. The most poisonous weapons were once more got out of the arsenals of the July days, where they had been deposited after the Kornilov rising. Vain efforts! The masses flocked to us irresistibly, and their spirit rose hourly higher and higher. Delegates would arrive from the trenches and ask us, at the sittings of the Petrograd Soviet: “How long will this unbearable situation last? The soldiers have authorised us to tell you that if by 15th November no decisive steps are taken towards peace, the trenches will be evacuated, and the whole army will march back to the rear!” Such a resolve had really spread all along the front. The soldiers were distributing from one sector to the other proclamations drawn up by themselves calling on all soldiers not to remain in the trenches after the first snow. “You have forgotten all about us,” the trench delegates would exclaim at the sittings of the Soviet “if you do not find some way out, we shall come here ourselves and scatter our enemies with our bayonets, but you, too, together with them.” Within a few weeks, the Petrograd Soviet became the centre of attraction for the whole army. After the change of its policy and the new election of its Presidential Bureau, its resolutions had been infusing into the exhausted and despairing troops new hopes that a way out of the impossible situation might at length be found on the lines laid down by the Bolsheviks, namely, by the publication of the secret treaties and the immediate proposal of an armistice on all fronts. “You say that full authority should pass into the hands of the Soviets? Then take it. Are you afraid that the front may not support you? Cast aside all doubt; the overwhelming mass of the soldiers are entirely on your side.”

In the meantime, the conflict regarding the evacuation of the Petrograd garrison was proceeding apace. There were almost daily meetings of the garrison, consisting of company, regimental, and other committees. The influence of our party in the garrison became absolute and quite undivided. The staff of the Petrograd military district was in a state of extreme confusion. At one time, they would try to enter into regular relations with us; at other times, urged on by the leaders of the Central Executive Committee, they would threaten us with repression.