workingmen and revolutionary soldiers he held the threat of blood and
iron. His policy continued the bargaining with Korniloff behind the
scenes--a bargaining which compromised him even in the fusionists' eyes:
in evasively diplomatic terms, so characteristic of him, Tseretelli
spoke of "personal" movements in politics and of the necessity of
curbing these personal movements. This task was to be accomplished by
the Democratic Conference, which was called, according to arbitrary
forms, from among representatives of Soviets, dumas, zemstvos,
professional trade unions and co-operative societies. Still, the main
task was to secure a sufficiently conservative composition of the
Conference, to dissolve the Soviets once for all in the formless mass of
democracy, and, on the new organizational basis, to gain a firm footing
against the Bolshevik tide.

Here it will not be out of place to note, in a few words, the difference
between the political role of the Soviets and that of the democratic
organs of self-government. More than once, the Philistines called our
attention to the fact that the new dumas and zemstvos elected on the
basis of universal suffrage, were incomparably more democratic than the
Soviets and were more suited to represent the population. However, this
formal democratic criterion is devoid of serious content in a
revolutionary epoch. The significance of the Revolution lies in the
rapid changing of the judgment of the masses, in the fact that new and
ever new strata of population acquire experience, verify their views of
the day before, sweep them aside, work out new ones, desert old leaders
and follow new ones in the forward march. During revolutionary times,
formally democratic organizations, based upon the ponderous apparatus of
universal suffrage, inevitably fall behind the development of the
political consciousness of the masses. Quite different are the Soviets.
They rely immediately upon organic groupings, such as shop, mill,