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Is to mislead the masses by concealing from them the essential truth that a democratic peace is impossible without a series of revolutions. " To Lenin the fundamental of revolution was the dictatorship of the proletariat, a seizure of power which should ensure the leading role of the worker and peasant in the reconstruction of the entire social fabric, and there again he met with wavering support among his followers. His letters of the period to his friends Sklyapnikov and Alexandra Kollontai are full of protests against vacillation, " Who is wavering ?

It is possible to say directly that the Provisional Government exists only while this is permitted by the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. " l Sitting independently the Petrograd Soviet carried on its own foreign policy, and interpreted to the world the Russian workers' great desire for peace. The Soviet developed its it two on the one hand, impressed upon the Provisional Government the immedi1 W. H. Chamberlin, The Russian Revolution (London, 1935), i. 101. foreign policy along distinct lines : KERENSKY, LENIN, AND PEACE 29 ate urgency of a general democratic peace, negotiated between all the belligerent Governments, while, on the other, it appealed over the heads of all governments to the peoples.

KERENSKY, LENIN, AND PEACE 34 dominant thought, and he knew well enough that both the Provisional Government and the Allied Secret Service would go to any lengths to stop him. He planned fantashe would wear a wig tically he would take an aeroplane and travel under a forged passport as a dumb Swcdo. : " " ; You might talk in your sleep ", said his practical wife. " Very well, then, he would learn Swedish, Lenin ropliod. But after three days he regained his normal sense of If ' 1 proportion. His letters to the faithful Kollontai in displayed his old fierce analysis of the situation, Sweden showing that he was under no illusion as to the ability or durability of the Provisional Government.