Before withdrawing from the membership in the Pre-Parliament where,
according to Kerensky's and Tseretelli's political statistics, we were
entitled to some half a hundred seats, we arranged a conference with the
left S. R. group. They refused to follow us, claiming that they still
had to demonstrate practically before the peasantry the insolvency of
the Pre-Parliament. Said one of the leaders of the left S. R.'s:

"We deem it necessary to warn you that if you want to withdraw from the
Pre-Parliament in order forthwith to go into the streets for an open
fight, we shall not follow you."

The bourgeois-fusionist press accused us of striving to kill prematurely
the Pre-Parliament, for the very purpose of creating a revolutionary
situation. At our faction meeting in the Pre-Parliament, it was decided
to act independently and not wait for the left S. R.'s. Our party's
declaration, proclaimed from the Pre-Parliament rostrum and explaining
why we were breaking with this institution, was greeted with a howl of
hatred and impotence on the part of the majority groups. In the
Petrograd Soviet of Deputies, where our withdrawal from the
Pre-Parliament was approved by an overwhelming majority, the leader of
the tiny "internationalist" Menshevik group, Martof, explained to us
that the withdrawal from the temporary Soviet of the Republic (such was
the official appellation of this little-respected institution) would be
sensible only in case we proposed immediately to assume an open
offensive. But the point is that this is just what we intended. The
prosecutors for the liberal bourgeoisie were right, when accusing us of
striving to create a revolutionary situation. In open insurrection and
direct seizure of power we beheld the only way out of the situation.