This was the beginning of Trotzky's warfare upon the Coalition Government, a warfare which he afterward systematically waged with all his might. Tchcheidze and others effectively replied to the Bolshevik leader's criticisms and after long and strenuous debate the resolution of the Executive Committee presented by Tchcheidze was carried by a large majority, the opposition only mustering seven votes. The resolution read as follows:
Acknowledging that the declaration of the Provisional Government, which has been reconstructed and fortified by the entrance of representatives of the Revolutionary Democracy, conforms to the idea and purpose of strengthening the achievements of the Revolution and its further development, the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates has determined:
I. Representatives of the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates must enter into the Provisional Government.
II. Those representatives of the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates who join the government must, until the creation of an All-Russian organ of the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates, consider themselves responsible to the Petrograd Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates, and must pledge themselves to give accounts of all their activities to that Council.
III. The Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates expresses its full confidence in the new Provisional Government, and urges all friends of democracy to give this government active assistance, which will insure it the full measure of power necessary for the safety of the Revolution's gains and for its further development.
If there is any one thing which may be said with certainty concerning the state of working-class opinion in Russia at that time, two months after the overthrow of the old régime, it is that the overwhelming majority of the working-people, both city workers and peasants, supported the policy of the Mensheviki and the Socialist-Revolutionists--the policy of co-operating with liberal bourgeois elements to win the war and create a stable government--as against the policy of the Bolsheviki. The two votes of the Petrograd Soviet told where the city workers stood. That very section of the proletariat upon which the Bolsheviki leaders based their hopes had repudiated them in the most emphatic manner. The Delegates of the Soldiers at the Front had shown that they would not follow the advice of the leaders of the Bolsheviki. And at the first opportunity which presented itself the peasants placed themselves in definite opposition to Bolshevism.