rovisional Government. Of these, 53 were
Bolsheviki, but these withdrew almost at the opening with three others,
thus reducing the actual membership of the body to less than five hundred.
Even with the Bolsheviki withdrawn, when Kerensky appeared before the
Preliminary Parliament on November 6th and made his last appeal, a
resolution expressing confidence in his government was carried only by a
small majority. Only about three hundred members were in attendance on this
occasion, and of these 123 voted the expression of confidence, while 102
voted against it, and 26 declined to vote at all.

The Bolsheviki had forced the United Executive Committee to convene a new
All-Russian Congress of Soviets, and the date of its meeting had been fixed
at November 7th. While the elections and arrangements for this Congress
were proceeding, the Bolsheviki were actively and openly organizing an
uprising. In their papers and at their meetings they announced that on
November 7th there would be an armed uprising against the government. Their
intentions were, therefore, thoroughly well known, and it was believed that
the government had taken every necessary step to repress any attempt to
carry those intentions into practice. It was said that of the delegates to
the All-Russian Congress of Soviets-numbering 676 as against more than one
thousand at the former Congress of peasant Soviets alone--a majority were
Bolsheviki. It was charged that the Bolsheviki had intimidated many workers
into voting for their candidates; that they had, in some instances, put
forward their men as anti-Bolsheviki and secured their election by false
pretenses; that they had practised fraud in many instances. It was quite
certain that a great many Soviets had refused to send delegates, and that
many thousands of workers, and these all anti-Bolsheviki, had simply grown
weary and disgusted with the whole struggle. Whatever the explanation might
be, the fact remained that of the 676 delegates 390 were generally rated as
Bolsheviki, while 230 were Socialist-Revolutionists and Mensheviki. Not all
of the Socialist-Revolutionists could be counted as anti-Bolsheviki,
moreover. There were fifty-six delegates whose position was not quite
clearly defined, but who were regarded as being, if not Bolsheviki, at
least anti-government. For the first time in the whole struggle the
Bolsheviki apparently had a majority of delegates in a working-class
convention.

On the night of the 6t