the government, and also the fact that most of the members of the
new government had worked in and through institutions, in which peasants
and workmen also had been represented.

Though the word "coalition" was not used during the first weeks of the
revolution, one had constantly in mind the idea of "bringing together
all the vital forces of the country." In this last expression I quote
one of the first and most emphasized slogans of the revolution. But the
problem proved most difficult, complicated by the fact that one had to
solve at one and the same time two most stupendous tasks. One had to
consolidate the conquests of the revolution, and also prosecute the
war. The prosecution of the war required the acceptance of a strong
authority, vested in the Provisional Government. But naturally the
first aim of the revolution was to extend its ideas to the rest of the
country, for the actual overthrow of the old order had been largely
the work of Petrograd. The two tasks were closely associated with one
another, because one could not reorganize the country for the war until
the new ideas had taken root.

The first parliamentary leaders wished to use as the basis for carrying
out both tasks the old institutions, the municipal and provincial
councils, and the cooeperative societies, at the same time taking steps
gradually to democratize them. But the strictly revolutionary leaders
wished to democratize immediately, and put this forward as the first
object to be accomplished. So they demanded and promoted the organizing
of revolutionary democracy all over the country, through councils
of workmen, soldiers, and peasants, through army committees, land
committees, professional unions, and so forth. The champions of this
immediate democratization policy were almost exclusively members of the
various socialist parties, some of them representing the most extreme
views. The majority of them were not consciously striving to undermine
the authority of the Provisional Government. They recognized and in fact
advocated the compromise represented in the first group of leaders.
They trusted most of them, but wished at the same time to organize
revolutionary democracy, for self-protection for the moment, and perhaps
for self-assertion at a later date. But a minority of the socialist
leaders did not take this constructive line. From the very start they
professed to distrust the first Provisional Government, for they did
not believe in "coali