In the meantime, the struggle for Soviet control spread all over the country. In Moscow, especially, this struggle took on an extremely protracted and bloody character. Perhaps not the least important cause of this was the fact that the leaders of the revolt did not at once show the necessary determination in attacking. In civil war, more than in any other, victory can be insured only by a determined and persistent course. There must be no vacillation. To engage in parleys is dangerous; merely to mark time is suicidal. We are dealing here with the masses, who have never held any power in their hands, who are therefore most wanting in political self-confidence. Any hesitation at revolutionary headquarters demoralizes them immediately. It is only when a revolutionary party steadily and resolutely makes for its goal, that it can help the toilers to overcome their century-old instincts of slavery and lead them on to victory. And only by these means of aggressive charges can victory be achieved with the smallest expenditure of energy and the least number of sacrifices. But the great difficulty is to acquire such firm and positive tactics. The people's want of confidence in their own power and their lack of political experience are naturally reflected in their leaders, who, in their turn, find themselves subjected, besides, to the tremendous pressure of bourgeois public opinion, from above. The liberal bourgeoisie treated with contempt and indignation the mere idea of the possibility of a working class government and gave free vent to their feelings on the subject, in the innumerable organs at their disposal. Close behind them trailed the intellectuals, who, with all their professions of radicalism and all the socialistic coating of their world-philosophy, are, in the depths of their hearts, completely steeped in slavish worship of bourgeois strength and administrative ability. All these "Socialistic" intellectuals hastily joined the Right and considered the ever-increasing strength of the Soviet government as the clear beginning of the end. After the representatives of the "liberal" professions came the petty officials, the administrative technicians--all those elements which materially and spiritually subsist on the crumbs that fall from the bourgeois table. The opposition of these elements was chiefly passive in character, especially after the crushing of the cadet insurrection; but, nevertheless, it might still seem formidable. We were being denied co-operation at every step. The government officials would either leave the Ministry or refuse to work while remaining in it. They would turn over neither the business of the department nor its money accounts. The telephone operators refused to connect us, while our messages were either held up or distorted in the telegraph offices. We could not get translators, stenographers or even copyists.