Most
of these men were of liberal and democratic tendencies, but they were
in actual fact, as compared with the broader masses, of the privileged
classes. They had emphasized always the essentially democratic character of
the activity of the institutions in which they were the leaders. They put
particular stress on the fact that the activities of the local provincial
councils, for example, were directed mainly toward the amelioration of
conditions of life among the peasantry. But the fact that the control over
these institutions, even in the cooperative movement (so far as independent
control was allowed by the bureaucracy of the old regime), was secured to
the less democratic elements of the community, did contradict the idea of
coalition, of the bringing together of all interests and forces. These
institutions had been permitted to exist and develop only because they
were controlled by the more conservative groups. The cooperative societies
represented more truly the idea of coalition. Here in the cooperative
movement the leaders of political liberalism had always noted with relief
that one was gradually attaining the end toward which they knew they must
work--the organic union between the so-called Intelligentsia, and the
"people," meaning the broader, democratic classes.
When the anarchy resulting from the incompetence, stupidity and perhaps
treason of the old bureaucracy reached such an acute stage in the first
weeks of March that the leaders of the Russian public saw that some action
must be taken by some one, it was the Duma that assumed the initiative,
acting in a revolutionary manner, through an executive committee.
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