The defenders and supporters of the Bolsheviki have made much of the fact that there was very little bloodshed connected with the successful Bolshevik uprising in Petrograd.  That ought not to be permitted, however, to obscure the fundamental fact that it was a military coup d’etat, the triumph of brute force over the will of the vast majority of the people.  It was a crime against democracy.  That the people were passive, worn out, and distracted, content to wait for the Constituent Assembly, only makes the Bolshevik crime appear the greater.  Let us consider the facts very briefly.  Less than three weeks away was the date set for the Constituent Assembly elections.  Campaigns for the election of representatives to that great democratic convention were already in progress.  It was to be the most democratic constitutional convention that ever existed in any country, its members being elected by the entire population, every man and woman in Russia being entitled to vote.  The suffrage was equal, direct, universal, and secret.

Moreover, there was a great democratic reconstruction of the nation actually in progress at the time.  The building up of autonomous democratic local governing bodies, in the shape of a new type of zemstvos, was rapidly progressing.  The old-time zemstvos had been undemocratic and did not represent the working-people, but the new zemstvos were composed of representatives nominated and elected by universal suffrage, equal, secret, and direct.  Instead of being very limited in their powers as the old zemstvos were, the new zemstvos were charged with all the ordinary functions of local government.  The elections to these bodies served as an admirable practical education in democracy, making it more certain than would otherwise have been the case that the Russian people would know how to use their new political instrument so as to secure a Constituent Assembly fully representing their will and their desire.

At the same time active preparations for holding the election of members to the Constituent Assembly were actually under way.  The Socialist parties were making special efforts to educate the illiterate voters how to use their ballots correctly.  The Provisional Government, on its part, was pushing the preparations for the elections as rapidly as possible.  All over the country special courts were established, in central places, to train the necessary workers so that the elections might be properly conducted.  Above all, the great problem of the socialization of the land which had been agitated for so many years had now reached the stage at which its solution might almost have been said to be complete.  The National Soviet of Peasants, together with the Socialist Revolutionary party, had formulated a law on the subject which represented the aspiration and the best thought of the leaders of the peasants’ movement.  That law had been approved in the Council of Ministers and was ready for immediate promulgation.  Peasant leaders