government was hurling the charge of doctrinairism against the crafty
capitalist politicians who seized upon the first suitable excuse for
compelling their political clerks to repent of the decisive turn they
had given to the course of events by the military advance of June 18th.

After all the preceding experience of the coalition, there would seem to
be but one way out of the difficulty--to break with the Cadets and set
up a Soviet government. The relative forces within the Soviets were such
at the time that the Soviet's power as a political party would fall
naturally into the hands of the Social-Revolutionists and the
Mensheviki. We deliberately faced the situation. Thanks to the
possibility of reelections at any time, the mechanism of the Soviets
assured a sufficiently exact reflection of the progressive shift toward
the left in the masses of workers and soldiers. After the break of the
coalition with the bourgeoisie, the radical tendencies should, we
expected, receive a greater following in the Soviet organizations. Under
such circumstances, the proletariat's struggle for power would naturally
move in the channel of Soviet organizations and could take a more normal
course. Having broken with the bourgeoisie, the middle-class democracy
would itself fall under their ban and would be compelled to seek a
closer union with the Socialistic proletariat. In this way the
indecisiveness and political indefiniteness of the middle-class
democratic elements would be overcome sooner or later by the working
masses, with the help of our criticism. This is the reason why we
demanded that the leading Soviet parties, in which we had no real
confidence (and we frankly said so), should take the governing power
into their own hands.

But even after the ministerial crisis of the 2nd of July, Tseretelli and
his adherents did not abandon the coalition idea. They explained in the