representing as it did a combination of Soviets and organs of
self-government in a ratio calculated to secure a preponderance of the
fusionist parties. Born of helplessness and confusion, the Conference
ended in a pitiful fiasco. The professional bourgeoisie treated the
Conference with the greatest hostility, beholding in it an endeavor to
push the bourgeoisie away from the positions it had approached at the
Moscow Conference. The revolutionary proletariat, and the masses of
soldiers and peasants connected with it, condemned in advance the
fraudulent method of calling together the Democratic Conference. The
immediate task of the fusionists was to create a responsible ministry.
But even this was not achieved. Kerensky neither wanted nor permitted
responsibility, because this was not permitted by the bourgeoisie, which
was backing him. Irresponsibility towards the organs of the so-called
democracy meant, in fact, responsibility to the Cadets and the Allied
Embassies. For the time being this was sufficient for the bourgeoisie.
On the question of coalition the Democratic Conference revealed its
utter insolvency: the votes in favor of a coalition with the bourgeoisie
slightly outnumbered those against the coalition; the majority voted
against a coalition with the Cadets. But with the Cadets left out, there
proved to be, among the bourgeoisie, no serious counter-agencies for the
coalition. Tseretelli explained this in detail to the conference. If the
conference did not grasp it, so much the worse for the conference.
Behind the backs of the conference, negotiations were carried on without
concealment with the Cadets, whom they had repudiated, and it was
decided that the Cadets should not appear as Cadets, but as "Social
workers." Pressed hard on both right and left, the bourgeois democracy
tolerated all this dickering, and thereby demonstrated its utter
political prostration.

From the Democratic Conference a Soviet was picked, and it was decided