BY ALEXANDER PETRUNKEVITCH

In an interview dated November 21, and published in the _New York Times_ in
a special cable from Petrograd, Leon Trotzky in defending the attitude of
the people toward the Bolsheviki _coup d'etat_ is reported to have said
substantially the following: "All the bourgeoisie is against us. The
greater part of the intellectuals is against us or hesitating, awaiting a
final outcome. The working class is wholly with us. The army is with us.
The peasants, with the exception of exploiters, are with us. The Workmen's
and Soldiers' government is a government of workingmen, soldiers, and
peasants against the capitalists and landowners."

On the other hand my father, Ivan Petrunkevitch, floorleader of the
Constitutional Democratic party in the first Duma and since that time owner
and publisher of the Petrograd daily _Rech_ writes in a private letter
dated June 12: "... the present real government, i. e., the Council of
Soldiers' and Workmen's Deputies, whose leaders are neither soldiers nor
workmen, but intellectuals, etc." Nothing has happened during the months
intervening between the letter and the interview to change the composition
of the Council appreciably. It is true that Kerensky who was vice-president
of the Council has been meanwhile deposed; that Tshcheidze had to
relinquish the presidency in the Council to Trotzky long before Kerensky's
downfall; but the leaders of the Council still are intellectuals, are well
educated men, some of them well known writers on political and economic
questions and withal very different from the masses which they lead and
which they purport to represent. In justice to those who had to give way to
the Lenine-Trotzky crowd of supporters, I wish to state emphatically that
I do not want to put them on the same plane. Tseretelli, Plekhanov,
Tshcheidze, and their co-workers are men of great courage, high ideals, and
personal integrity. On the other hand their successors in power are men of