and in all probability
really were, unconscious of the spies in their midst, they accepted
the cooperation of the dark elements, and together they set to work to
create disorder. The Kronstadt affair was their initial success.

In the early days of June, 1917, armed bands of these disturbers began
parading the streets of the capital, haranguing the crowds. The
Provisional Government followed the policy of noninterference. One
party of the armed propagandists entered and took possession of a
large residential building in the Viborg section of the city and held
this position until late in July, 1917.

These activities culminated in an attempt on the part of the
Maximalist leaders to organize a giant demonstration in the streets
on June 23, 1917. Placards were posted all over the city denouncing
the war, calling upon the soldiers to refuse to fight for the
capitalist governments, etc.

The action taken by the Workingmen's and Soldiers' Council, itself so
often denounced as being under pro-German influence, and even in
German pay, by the press of the Allied countries, was extremely
significant. It immediately placarded the city with appeals to the
soldiers and workingmen to ignore the call of the Maximalists. All
that night until daybreak not only Kerensky himself, but N. C.
Tcheidze, the president of the council, and his associates, spent in
making the rounds of the barracks, addressing the soldiers, appealing
to them against participating in the demonstration. Their efforts were
a complete success; on the following day there was no demonstration.
And apparently in the last hour the Maximalist leaders themselves
realized that foreign influences were at work, for when their organ,
"Pravda," appeared, its front page was covered with an appeal to their
followers not to demonstrate.

On June 16, 1917, a convention of newly elected deputies to the
Workingmen's and Soldiers' Council, representing all Russia, convened
in Petrograd. One of its first acts was to pass a resolution of
approval of the Provisional Government's expulsion of Grimm, the Swiss
Socialist, who had attempted pro-German activities in the capital, the
vote being 640 against 121.

In the middle of the month the two American commissions, one under
Root and the other under Stevens, arrived in Russia, and it was
notable that the reported utterances of their members were sharply in
contrast to the press dispatches in their optimism. The conclusion
must be ob