Like the glow on a hilltop illumined by a sun already set.

If the Russian bourgeoisie appeared in the world

too<br>
late to be democatic, the Russian democracy for the same reason wanted to consider itself socialistic. The<br>
democratic ideology had been hopelessly played out in the course of the nineteenth century. A radical<br>
intelligentsia standing on the edge of the twentieth, if it wanted to find a path to the masses, had need of a<br>
socialist colouring. This Is the general historic cause which gave rise to those two Intermediate parties: <br>
Menshevik and Social revolutionary. each of them, however, had its own genealogy and its own ideology.
The<br>
views of the Mensheviks were built up on a Marxian basis, in- consequence of that same historical belatedness
of<br>
Russia, Marxism had there become at first not so much a criticism of capitalist society as an- argument for
the<br>
inevitability of the bourgeois development of the country. History cleverly made use of the emasculated theory
of<br> proletarian- revolution, in order with its help to Europeanise, in- the bourgeois sense, wide circles of the
mouldy<br>
Narodnik intelligentsia. In. this process a very impornt role fell to the Mensheviks. Constituting the left
wing<br>
of the bourgeois intelligentsia, they put the bourgeoisie in touch with the more moderate upper layers of the<br>
workers, those with a tendency towards legal activity around Duma and in the trade unions. The Social<br>
Revolutionaries, on the contrary, struggled theoretically against Marxism-although sometimes surrendering
to<br>
it. They considered themselves a party which realised the union of the Intelligentsia, the workers and the<br>
peasants-under the leadership, it goes without saying, of the Critical Reason. In the economic sphere their
ideas<br>
were an indigestible mess of various historical accumulations, reflecting the contradictory life-conditions of
the<br>
peasantry in a country rapidly becoming capitalistic. The coming revolution presented itself to the Social<br>
Revolutionaries as neither bourgeois nor socialistic, but 'democratic': they substituted a political formula for
a<br>
social content. They thus laid out for themselves a course halfway between the bourgeoisie and the
proletariat,<br>
and consequently a position of arbiter between them. After February it might seem as though the Social<br>
Revolutionaries did actually approach this position. From the time of the first revolution they had had their
roots<br>
in the peasantry. In the first months of the whole rural Intelligentsia adopted for its own thetraditional<br>
formula of the Narodniks: "Land and Freedom.' in contrast to the Mensheviks who remained always a party
of<br>
the cities, the Social revolutionaries had found, It seemed, an amazingly powerful support In the country.
More<br>
than that, they dominated even In the cities: In the soviets through the soldiers' sections, and in the first<br>
democratic municipalities where they had an absolute majority of the votes. The power of this party
seemed<br>
unlimited, in reality It wllhelm was a political aberration. A party for whom everybody votes except that<br>
minority who know what they are voting for, is no more a party, than the tongue In which babies of all<br>
countries babble is a nationa ial revolutionary Party came forward as a solemn designation for everything
in<br>
the February revolution that was immature, unformulated and confused, everybody who had not inherited
from<br>
the prerevolutionary past sufficient raesons to vote for the Kadets or the Bolsheviks, voted for the Social<br>
Revolutionaries. But the Kadets stood inside a closed circle of property owners; and the Bolsheviks were still
few,<br>
misunderstood, and even terrifying. To vote for the Social Revolutionaries maent to vote for the revolution
in<br>
general, and involved no further obligation, in the city it meant the scholars desire of the soldiers to
associate<br>
themselves with a party that stood for the peasants, the desire of the backward part of the workers to stand
close<br>
to the soldiers, the desire of the small townspeople not to break away from the soldiers and the peasants. In
those<br>
days the Social revolutionary membership-card was a temporary ticket of admission to the institutions of
the<br>
revolution, and this ticket remained valid until it was rlaced by another card of a more serious character, It
has<br>
been truly said of this great party, which took In all and everybody, that it was only a grandiose zero. From
the<br>
time of the first revolution, the Mensheviks had inferred the necessity of a union with the liberals from the<br>
bourgeois character of the revolution. And they valued this union higher than cooperation with peasantry,<br>
whom they considered an unsafe ally. The Bolsheviks, on thecontrary, had founded their view of the
revolution<br>
on a union of the proletariat with the peasantry against the liberal bourgeoisie. As an actual fact we see in
the<br>
February revolution an opposite grouping - the Mensheviks and Social revolutionaries come out a close
union,<br>