contained not only the inner contradictions of the developing
Revolution, but also the prejudices inherent in the backwardness of the
peasant masses, and the sentimentalism, instability and career-chasing
of the intellectual strata. It was perfectly clear that in that form the
party could not last long. With regard to ideas, it proved impotent from
the very start.

Politically, the guiding role belonged to the Mensheviks who had gone
through the school of Marxism and derived from it certain procedures and
habits, which aided them in finding their bearings in the political
situation to the extent of scientifically falsifying the meaning of the
current class struggle and securing the hegemony of the liberal
bourgeoisie in the highest degree possible under the given
circumstances. This is why the Mensheviks, direct pleaders for the
bourgeoisie's right to power, exhausted themselves so rapidly and, by
the time of the October Revolution, were almost completely played out.

The S. R.'s, too, were losing influence more and more--first among the
workingmen, then in the army, and finally in the villages. But toward
the time of the October upheaval, they remained still a very powerful
party, numerically. However, class contradictions were undermining them
from within. In opposition to the right wing which, in its most
chauvinistic elements, such as Avksentyef, Breshko-Breshkovskaya,
Savinkoff, etc., had finally gone over into the counter-revolutionary
camp, a left wing was forming, which strove to preserve its connection
with the toiling masses. If we merely recall the fact that the S. R.,
Avksentyef, as Minister of the Interior, arrested the Peasant Land
Committees, composed of S. R.'s, for their arbitrary solution of the
agrarian question, the amplitude of "differences" within this party will
become sufficiently clear to us.