“In the Menshevik-Social Revolutionary bloc, the dominant place belonged to the Mensheviks, in spite of the weight of numbers on the side of the Social Revolutionaries. In this distribution was expressed in a way … the predominance of the city over the rural petty bourgeoisie, and the intellectual superiority of a ‘Marxist’ intelligentsia … [over one which] prided itself on the meagreness of the old Russian history.” [Chapter Twelve of the ‘History of the Russian Revolution’ ²² ]

The president of the Menshevik faction of the Duma, Cheidze, had become almost automatically the President of the Soviet E.C. However, after an initial mood of watchful waiting by the temporary leaders in Petrograd, the return of the exiled leaders to the capital gave the E.C. a more solid, if more right-wing, foundation.

When the Menshevik Tseretelli returned on March 19^th, he immediately took over the leadership of both his party and the whole Soviet E.C. Trotsky explains how, with the support of other leading Mensheviks like Dan and Skobelev, the Soviet leadership was turned sharply to the right.

All these Mensheviks, previously anti-war 'Zimmerwaldist' socialists [i.e. supporting the conference of anti-war socialists held in Zimmerwald in 1915], now proclaimed that the war should be supported as a struggle in defence of the revolution.

“Under the leadership of Tseretelli, the vacillations of the E.C., if they were not put an end to, were at least organised into a system. Tseretelli openly announced that without a firm bourgeois power the revolution will inevitably fail. The democracy must limit itself to bringing pressure on the liberal bourgeoisie, beware of pushing it over by some incautious step into the camp of reaction, and conversely, support it in so far as it backs up the conquests of the revolution.” [Chapter Twelve ²² ]

Trotsky notes that the left-Menshevik, Martov, only arriving from France on May 9^th, remained in opposition to Tseretelli and Dan but his faction never played any significant part in events. The old Plekhanov had by now become hopelessly right-wing and led a group standing outside the Mensheviks. It had supported the war even before the revolution. He also observes that a large number of the leading Soviet figures were non-Russians, like the Georgians Tseretelli and Cheidze, showing how the oppressed nationalities played a significant part in the revolutionary movement.

He adds that the Narodnik leaders were of little significance, Kerensky being by far the most talented. He decided to formally join the Social-Revolutionary party but continued to act totally independently of it. The various non-party men who had taken an important role in the initial days of the Soviet, like Sukhanov, began to lose influence as the official party leaders began to return from exile.

But Trotsky also notes that the Bolsheviks also swung to the right under the influence of newly arrived leaders from exile: “It is true that with the arrival of Tseretelli from exile (March 19) the Soviet leadership took a rather sharp turn toward the right – toward direct responsibility for the government and the war. But the Bolsheviks also toward the middle of March, under the influence of Kamenev and Stalin who had arrived from exile, swung sharply to the right, so that the distance between the Soviet majority and its left opposition had become by the beginning of April even less than it was at the beginning of March. The real differentiation began a little later. It is possible to set the exact date: April 4, the day after the arrival of Lenin in Petrograd”. [Chapter Twelve ²² ]

Trotsky concludes, “such was the E.C., the highest organ of the democracy. Two parties which had lost their illusions but preserved their prejudices, with a staff of leaders who were incapable of passing from word to deed, arrived at the head of a revolution called to break the fetters of a century and lay the foundations of a new society. The whole activity of the Compromisers became one long chain of painful contradictions, exhausting the masses and leading to the convulsions of civil war.” [Chapter Twelve ²² ]

By the middle of April even the Executive Committee had become too broad a body for the leading Compromisers, and a right-wing ''bureau'' was set up which, in consultation with the Provisional Government's ruling nucleus, took most important decisions.

The meetings of the full Soviet were regarded as having no practical importance. “The main difficulty for the leaders was not so much to find a general plan, as a current programme of action. The Compromisers had promised the masses to get from the bourgeoisie by way of ‘pressure’, a democratic policy, foreign and domestic.  But ‘pressure’ means, in the last analysis, a threat to crowd the ruling class out of the power and occupy its place.  At moments of conflict the ‘democracy’ did not threaten to seize the power, but on the contrary the bourgeoisie frightened them with the idea of giving it back. Thus, the chief lever of pressure was in the hands of the bourgeoisie. This explains how, in spite of its complete impotence, the government succeeded in resisting every somewhat serious undertaking of the Soviet leaders.” [Chapter Twelve ²² ]

However, just as the ‘bureau’ was being formed and the right-wing seemed to have full control of the situation, then, according to one of Kerensky's allies, “exactly at this moment they let slip from their hands the leadership of the masses - the masses moved away from them.” As Trotsky notes: “These complacent rulers of destiny thought that in entrusting the leadership to them, the soviets had essentially completed their  task  … The masses are long-suffering but they are not clay out of which you can fashion anything you want to. Moreover, in a revolutionary epoch they learn fast. In that lies the power of a revolution.” [Chapter Twelve ²² ]