On that day the Duma Coalition Ministry was announced; the Premier was Prince Lvov, Miliukov took charge of Foreign Affairs, Gutchkov of War and the Marine, and Kerensky, a Socialist, of Justice. Ministers were in favour of a regency, but the Soviet--a Russian word which originally meant no more than Council--of Soldiers' and Workmen's Delegates demanded a republic. Kerensky, however, persuaded it to support the Provisional Government by an enormous majority and the revolution appeared to have produced a government. But even in orderly countries enormous majorities secured in moments of emotion are apt to be evanescent, and the Provisional Government had an uneasy lease of life for just two months. The Duma had not made the revolution, and the middle classes for which it stood were weak in numbers and prestige. The vast mass of the Russian people consisted of peasants who were illiterate and unorganized, and cared for little but the land. The urban proletariat, not having been educated by the Government, had partially educated itself in the abstract socialism of Karl Marx, Lavrov, and Tolstoy. The Extremists followed Marx and were called Social Democrats; but they had themselves split into two sections, the Bolsheviks or Maximalists and the Mensheviks or Minimalists; the former wanted a dictatorship of the proletariat, a complete inversion of the Tsardom consisting in the substitution of the tyranny of the bottom for the tyranny of the top, while the Mensheviks were willing to recognize the claims of other classes than the proletariat. More moderate, though still socialists, were the followers of Lavrov, who called themselves Social Revolutionaries and found a leader in Kerensky. The middle classes and intelligentsia formed the bulk of the Cadet party led by Miliukov and were predominant in the Duma and the Provisional Government. In the Soviet power gradually passed farther and farther to the left, from Social Revolutionaries to Mensheviks and from Mensheviks to Bolsheviks under the leadership of Lenin, whose return from exile in Switzerland was facilitated for its own purposes by the German Government.