those circumstances, to break with the bourgeoisie, their own and that
of the Allies. And we have already said that the political helplessness
of the intellectual and semi-intellectual middle class sought shelter
for itself in a union with bourgeois liberalism. This caused the pitiful
and truly shameful attitude of the middle-class leaders towards the war.
They confined themselves to sighs, phrases, secret exhortations or
appeals addressed to the Allied Governments, while they were actually
following the same path as the liberal bourgeoisie. The masses of
soldiers in the trenches could not, of course, reach the conclusion that
the war, in which they had participated for nearly three years, had
changed its character merely because certain new persons, who called
themselves "Social-Revolutionists" or "Mensheviki," were taking part in
the Petrograd Government. Milyukov displaced the bureaucrat Pokrovsky;
Tereshtchenko displaced Milyukov--which means that bureaucratic
treachery had been replaced first by militant Cadet imperialism, then by
an unprincipled, nebulous and political subserviency; but it brought no
objective changes, and indicated no way out of the terrible war.

Just in this lies the primary cause of the subsequent disorganization of
the army. The agitators told the soldiers that the Czarist Government
had sent them into slaughter without any rime or reason. But those who
replaced the Czar could not in the least change the character of the
war, just as they could not find their way clear for a peace campaign.
The first months were spent in merely marking time. This tried the
patience both of the army and of the Allied Governments, and prompted
the drive of June 18, which was demanded by the Allies, who insisted
upon the fulfillment of the old Czarist obligations. Scared by their own
helplessness and by the growing impatience of the masses, the leaders of
the middle class complied with this demand. They actually began to think
that, in order to obtain peace, it was only necessary for the Russian