brutality and force only the most extreme measures were deemed adequate.
The Council of Workmen's Deputies, which had been organized by the
proletariat of St. Petersburg a few days before the Czar issued his
Manifesto, now became a great power, the central guiding power of the
Revolution. Similar bodies were organized in other great cities. The
example set by the city workers was followed by the peasants in many places
and Councils of Peasants' Deputies were organized. In a few cases large
numbers of soldiers, making common cause with these bodies representing the
working class, formed Councils of Soldiers' Deputies. Here, then, was a new
phenomenon; betrayed by the state, weary of the struggle to democratize
and liberalize the political state, the workers had established a sort of
revolutionary self-government of a new kind, entirely independent of the
state. We shall never comprehend the later developments in Russia,
especially the phenomenon of Bolshevism, unless we have a sympathetic
understanding of these Soviets--autonomous, non-political units of
working-class self-government, composed of delegates elected directly by
the workers.

As the revolutionary resistance to the Black Hundreds increased, and the
rapidly growing Soviets of workmen's, peasants' and soldiers' delegates
asserted a constantly increasing indifference to the existing political
state, the government again tried to stem the tide by making concessions.
On November 3d--new style--in a vain attempt to appease the incessant
demand for the release of the thousands of political prisoners, and to put
an end to the forcible release of such prisoners by infuriated mobs, a
partial amnesty was declared. On the 16th a sop was thrown to the peasants
in the shape of a decree abolishing all the remaining land-redemption
payments. Had this reform come sooner it might have had the effect of
stemming the tide of revolt among the peasants, but in the circumstances it
was of no avail. Early in December the press censorship was abolished by