a call to the population of Petrograd and Russia demanding the formation of a Constituent Assembly. “The old regime must be decisively overthrown and give place to the rule of the people. In this lies the salvation of Russia,” the Soviet states. “For the successful completion of the struggle in the interest of democracy, the people must create their own organs of power.”

Anxious to maintain bourgeois order in the midst of revolutionary upheaval, Menshevik leaders of the Soviet and liberals from the Duma Committee begin frenzied negotiations over a new government. The Menshevik M. I. Skobelev, a member of both the Duma and the Soviet, later described the prevailing mood of confusion in these circles: “...events were developing so incredibly that we could not have a clear viewsupport for the Provisional Government. Distrust Kerensky above all. Arm the proletariat as the only guarantee.” Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin’s wife and comrade, later recalled, “From the very first minutes when the news arrived of the February Revolution Ilyich was eager to get to Russia.”

Two days later, on March 17, Lenin writes his Draft Theses on the Revolution. Although the information available to him is very limited, he nevertheless carves out the central issues facing the working class following the overthrow of the Tsar:

The new government cannot give the peoples of Russia (and the nations tied to us by the war) either peace, bread, or full freedom. The working class must therefore continue its fight for socialism and peace, utilising for this purpose the new situation and explaining it