We were confronted with the question whether the S. R.'s would follow us
in this path. This group was in the process of formation, but this
process, according to the standards of our party, went on too slowly and
irresolutely. At the outset of the Revolution, the S. R.'s proved the
predominating party in the whole field of political life. Peasants,
soldiers, even workingmen voted en masse for the S. R.'s. The party
itself had not expected anything of the kind, and more than once it
looked as if it were in danger of being swamped in the waves of its own
success. Excluding the purely capitalistic and landholder groups and the
professional elements among the intellectuals, one and all voted for the
revolutionary populists' party. This was natural in the initial stage of
the Revolution, when class lines had not had time to reveal themselves,
when the aspirations of the so-called united revolutionary front found
expression in the diffuse program of a party that was ready to welcome
equally the workingman who feared to break away from the peasant; the
peasant who was seeking land and liberty; the intellectual attempting to
guide both of them; the chinovnik (officeholder) endeavoring to adjust
himself to the new regime.

When Kerensky, who had been counted a laborite in the period of Czarism,
joined the S. R.'s Party after the victory of the Revolution, that
party's popularity began to grow in proportion as Kerensky mounted the
rungs of power. Out of respect, not always of a platonic nature, for the
War Minister, many colonels and generals hastened to enrol in the party
of the erstwhile terrorists. Old S. R.'s, with revolutionary traditions,
regarded with some uneasiness the ever increasing number of "March S.
R.'s" that is, such party members as had discovered within themselves a
revolutionary populist soul only in March, after the Revolution had
overthrown the old regime and placed the revolutionary populists in
authority. Thus, within the limits of its formlessness, this party