elieved that there should be at least an absolute
Socialist predominance in the Provisional Government. Of course, the new
Coalition Ministry infuriated the Bolsheviki. From his hiding-place Lenine
issued a series of "Letters to the Comrades," which were published in the
_Rabochiy Put_, in which he urged the necessity of an armed uprising like
that of July, only upon a larger scale. In these letters he scoffed at the
Constituent Assembly as a poor thing to satisfy hungry men. Meanwhile,
Trotzky, out of prison again, and other Bolshevik leaders were agitating by
speeches, proclamations, and newspaper articles for an uprising. The
Provisional Government dared not try to suppress them. Its hold upon the
people was now too weak.

The Democratic Conference introduced one innovation. It created a
Preliminary Parliament, as the new body came to be known, though its first
official title was the Provisional Council of the Republic. This new body
was to function as a parliament until the Constituent Assembly convened,
when it would give place to whatever form of parliamentary body the
Constituent Assembly might create. This Preliminary Parliament and its
functions were thus described:

This Council, in which all classes of the population will be
represented, and in which the delegates elected to the Democratic
Conference will also participate, will be given the right of
addressing questions to the government and of securing replies to
them in a definite period of time, of working out legislative acts
and discussing all those questions which will be presented for
consideration by the Provisional Government, as well as those
which will arise on its own initiative. Resting on the
co-operation of such a Council, the government, preserving, in
accordance with its pledge, the unity of the governmental power
created by the Revolution, will regard it its duty to consider the
great public significance of such a Council in all its acts up to
the time when the Constituent Assembly gives full and complete
representation to all classes of the population of Russia.

This Preliminary Parliament was really another Duma--that is, it was a very
limited parliamentary body. Its life was short and quite uneventful. It
assembled for the first time on October 8th and was dispersed by the
Bolsheviki on November 7th. When it assembled there were 555 members--the
number fixed by the decree of the P