at the
elections to the Constituent Assembly, which will be held on the
appointed date.

If this attitude had been maintained throughout, and had the Bolsheviki
loyally accepted the verdict of the electorate when it was given, there
could have been no complaint. But the evidence shows that their early
attitude was not maintained. Later on, as reports received from the
interior of the country showed that the masses were not flocking to their
banners, they began to assume a critical attitude toward the Constituent
Assembly. The leaders of the Socialist-Revolutionary party were warning
their followers that the Bolsheviki would try to wreck the Constituent
Assembly, for which they were bitterly denounced in organs like _Pravda_
and _Izvestya_. Very soon, however, these Bolshevist organs began to
discuss the Constituent Assembly in a very critical spirit. It was
possible, they pointed out, that it would have a bourgeois majority,
treating the Socialist-Revolutionists and the Cadets as being on the same
level, equally servants of the bourgeoisie. Then appeared editorials to
show that it would not be possible to place the destinies of Russia in the
hands of such people, even though they were elected by the "unthinking
masses." Finally, when it was clear that the Socialist-Revolutionary party
had elected a majority of the members, _Pravda_ and _Izvestya_ took the
position that _the victorious people did not need a Constituent Assembly_;
that a new instrument had been created which made the old democratic method
obsolete.[35] The "new instrument" was, of course, the Bolshevist Soviet.

IV

For the moment we are not concerned with the merits or the failings of the
Soviet considered as an instrument of government. We are concerned only
with democracy and the relation of the Bolshevist method to democracy. From
this point of view, then, let us consider the facts. The Soviet was not
something new, as so many of our American drawing-room champions of
Bolshevism seem to think. The Soviet was the type of organization common to
Russia. There were Soviets of peasants, of soldiers, of teachers, of
industrial workers, of officers, of professional men, and so on. Every
class and every group in the classes had its own Soviet. The Soviet in its
simplest form is a delegate body consisting of representatives of a
particular group--a peasants' Soviet, for example. Another type, more
important, roughly corresponds to the Central Labo