Toward the end of September what may be termed the Kerensky regime entered upon its last phase.  For reasons which have been already set forth, the Bolsheviki kept up a bitter attack upon the Provisional Government, and upon the official leaders of the Soviets, on account of the Moscow Conference.  They demanded that the United Executive Committee of the Soviets convoke a new Conference.  They contended that the Moscow Conference had been convoked by the government, not by the Soviets, and that the United Executive Committee must act for the latter.  The United Executive Committee complied and summoned a new National Democratic Conference, which assembled on September 27th.  By this time, as a result of the exhaustion of the patience of many workers, many of the Soviets had ceased to exist, while others existed on paper only.  According to the Izvestya Soveta, there had been more than eight hundred region organizations at one time, many scores of which had disappeared.  According to the same authority, the peasants were drawing away from the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviets.  The United Executive Committee, which had been elected in June, was, of course, dominated by anti-Bolsheviki—­that is, by Menshevik Social Democrats and by Socialist-Revolutionists.

The Democratic Conference was not confined to the Soviets.  It embraced delegates from Soviets of peasants, soldiers, and industrial workers; from municipalities, from zemstvos, co-operatives, and other organizations.  It differed from the Moscow Conference principally in that the delegates were elected and that it did not include so many representatives of the capitalist class.  The petty bourgeoisie was represented, but not the great capitalists.  There were more than a thousand members in attendance at this Democratic Conference, which was dominated by the most moderate section of the Social Democrats.  The Socialist-Revolutionists were not very numerous.

This Conference created another Coalition Cabinet, the last of the Kerensky regime.  Kerensky continued as Premier and as commander-in-chief of the army.  There were in the Cabinet five Social Democrats, two Socialist-Revolutionists, eight Constitutional Democrats, and two non-partisans.  It was therefore as far as its predecessors from meeting the standards insisted upon by many radical Socialists, who, while not Bolsheviki, still believed that there should be at least an absolute Socialist predominance in the Provisional Government.  Of course, the new Coalition Ministry infuriated the Bolsheviki.  From his hiding-place Lenine issued a series of “Letters to the Comrades,” which were published in the Rabochiy Put, in which he urged the necessity of an armed uprising like that of July, only upon a larger scale.  In these letters he scoffed at the Constituent Assembly as a poor thing to satisfy hungry men.  Meanwhile, Trotzky, out of prison again, and other Bolshevik leaders were agitating by speeches, proclamations, and newspaper articles for an uprising.  The Provisional Government dared not try to suppress them.  Its hold upon the people was now too weak.