r Union in an American
city, in that it is composed of representatives of workers of all kinds.
These delegates are, in the main, chosen by the workers in the shops and
factories and in the meetings of the unions. The anti-Bolshevist
Socialists, such as the Mensheviki and the Socialist-Revolutionists, were
not opposed to Soviets as working-class organizations. On the contrary,
they approved of them, supported them, and, generally, belonged to them.

They were opposed only to the theory that these Soviets, recruited in a
more or less haphazard manner, as such organizations must necessarily be,
were better adapted to the governing of a great country like Russia than a
legal body which received its mandate in elections based upon universal,
equal, direct, and secret suffrage. No one ever pretended that the Soviets
represented all the workers of Russia--including peasants in that term--or
even a majority of them. No one ever pretended that the Soviet, as such,
was a stable and constant factor. New Soviets were always springing up and
others dying out. Many existed only in name, on paper. _There never has
been an accurate list of the Soviets existing in Russia_. Many lists have
been made, but always by the time they could be tabulated and published
there have been many changes. For these and other reasons which will
suggest themselves to the mind of any thoughtful reader, many of the
leaders of the revolutionary movement in Russia have doubted the value of
the Soviet as a _unit of government, while highly valuing it as a unit of
working-class organization and struggle_.

Back of all the strife between the Bolsheviki centered around the Soviets
and the Socialist-Revolutionists and Mensheviki, centered around the
Constituent Assembly, was a greater fact than any we have been discussing,
however. The Bolsheviki with their doctrinaire Marxism had carried the
doctrine of the class struggle to such extreme lengths that they virtually
placed the great mass of the peasants with the bourgeoisie. The Revolution
must be controlled by the proletariat, they argued. The control of the
government and of industry by the people, which was the slogan of the old
democracy, will not do, for the term "the people" includes bourgeois
elements. Even if it is narrowed by excluding the great capitalists and
landowners, still it embraces the lesser capitalists, small landowners,
shopkeepers, and the petty bourgeoisie in general. These elements weaken