lent itself admirably to the scheme of proletarian dictatorship.
Parliamentary government cannot be used to impose and maintain a
dictatorship, whether of autocracy or oligarchy, bourgeoisie or
proletariat. In the Soviet, as a result of six weeks' experience in
abnormal times, during which it was never for a moment subjected to the
test of maintaining the economic life of the nation, Trotzky saw the ideal
proletarian government. He once described the Soviet as "a true,
unadulterated democracy," but, unless we are to dismiss the description as
idle and vain rhetoric, we must assume that the word "democracy" was used
in an entirely new sense, utterly incompatible with its etymological and
historical meaning. Democracy has always meant absence of class rule;
proletarian dictatorship is class rule.

In the foregoing analysis of the theoretical and tactical views which
Trotzky held during and immediately after the First Revolution, it is easy
to see the genesis of the policies of the Bolshevik government which came
twelve years later. The intervening years served only to deepen his
convictions. At the center of all his thinking during that period was his
belief in the sufficiency of the Soviet, and in the need of proletarian
dictatorship. Throwing aside the first cautious thought that these things
arose from the peculiar conditions existing in Russia as a result of her
retarded economic development, he had come to regard them as applicable to
all nations and to all peoples, except, perhaps, the peoples still living
in barbarism or savagery.

VI

After the crisis which resulted in the resignation of Miliukov and Guchkov,
it was evident that the Lvov government could not long endure. The
situation in the army, as well as in the country, was so bad that the
complete reorganization of the Provisional Government, upon much more
radical lines, was imperative. The question arose among the revolutionary
working-class organizations whether they should consent to co-operation
with the liberal bourgeoisie in a new coalition Cabinet or whether they
should refuse such co-operation and fight exclusively on class lines. This,
of course, opened the entire controversy between Bolsheviki and Mensheviki.

In the mean time the war-weary nation was clamoring for peace. The army was
demoralized and saturated with the defeatism preached by the Porazhentsi.
To deal with this grave situation two important conventions were arranged
for, as foll