Leon Trotsky

“ When the Petersburg masses, led by our party, raised the slogan: “Down with the ten capitalist ministers!” they thereby demanded that the posts of these ministers be filled by Mensheviks and Narodniks. “Messrs. bourgeois democrats, kick the Cadets out! Take power into your own hands! Put in the government twelve (or as many as you have) Peshekhonovs, and we promise you, so far as it is possible, to remove you ‘peacefully’ from your posts when the hour will strike which should be very soon!” There was no special political line here, it was the same line that Lenin formulated time and again. ”

“ The initial phase of the “democratic” revolution extends from the February revolution to the crisis in April, and its solution on May 6 by the formation of a coalition government with the participation of the Mensheviks and the Narodniks. Throughout this initial phase, the writer did not participate directly, arriving in Petrograd only on May 5, on the very eve of the formation of the coalition government. ”

“ A cursory inspection of several documents of this sort caused me to reject offhand the original plan of correcting and supplementing them to a certain extent. Let them remain as they are. They, too, in their own fashion, are documents of the epoch, although emanating “from the other side.” ”