ced by the revolution itself, emerging from
the chaos in the midst of which the other, already functioning bodies,
were trying to take a new and directing line. The most prominent of the
first type of institution was the Duma, the legislative parliament
of the old regime, and of the second type, the Petrograd Council of
Workmen's and Soldiers' Deputies.

The Duma, however, was only one of several legal institutions that had
developed under the old regime, and represented the first stages of
parliamentary, popular government. There were the local provincial and
municipal councils, and also the officially recognized war-industry
committees, which had come to have semi-governmental functions.
Finally one could bring under this category, with a little forcing, the
cooperative societies, which had assumed enormous importance during the
two and a half years of war.

In these institutions we had self-government, and participation in
public affairs, and also the idea of cooperation between the various
classes and political tendencies--the idea of coalition. The election
law of the Duma provided for the representation of all group interests
of the community, and representation by an actual member of the group,
by a _bona fide_ peasant in the case of the peasantry. The seats in the
assembly were distributed specifically to landlords, manufacturers,
the smaller bourgeoisie, workmen, and peasants. The election law of the
local government bodies made similar provision for group representation.
On the war-industry committees, the workmen had elected representatives,
sitting with the representatives of the manufacturers and owners. In the
cooeperative movement the bourgeois-intellectual element had taken the
initiative, but had always emphasized the direct participation of the
workmen and peasants in the actual management of the societies, as the
theory of the movement demanded.

Thus the broader democratic classes of the country, the workmen and
peasants, were represented in the somewhat popular institutions that had
developed under the old regime. But the actual control was in the hands
of the less democratic elements--the landlords, the manufacturers, men
of the liberal professions, and of the so-called Intelligentsia class.
Most of these men were of liberal and democratic tendencies, but
they were in actual fact, as compared with the broader masses, of
the privileged classes. They had emphasized always the essentially
democrati