Night after night in the white hall at Smolney I watched it hurling decrees at the established order, smashing every “sacred” rule and precedent of diplomatic procedure, and tossing verbal bombs with equal dexterity at enemies and allies. Not until some quiet hour of the future, when the sociologists have had time to analyze those decrees, will the bewildered spectators looking on at those “madmen,” with theories in their heads and bayonets in their hands, know how much constructive work along the lines of their idealism went into their making. Even a superficial study will show the fallacy of the popular Western conception that the confusion in Russia was due to the absence of a formal government. The chaos existed in spite of the government, and continued because of lack of material power to enforce the decrees. That government amazed foreign diplomats. The longest span of life allotted to it by them was three weeks. Hourly they awaited its demise. No diplomatic group in Russia, excepting only the American Red Cross Mission, realized the depth of its roots, the strength of its power, or its probable longevity. Even the Bolsheviki themselves were surprised at its growing power. “We can’t succeed--Russia is too dark, too backward. But we have shown the way the world can follow. Other countries will succeed where we fail,” they said. The first decree of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets defined the form of what has generally come to be known as the Soviet Government. It provided that, until the convocation of a constituent assembly, “the direction of the individual branches of the state’s life will be intrusted to certain committees.” “The governmental power belongs to a collegium of the presidents of these committees, called Council of People’s Commissaries.” The decree of the new democracy of Russia adopted a principle of recall declaring: “The control of the activities of the People’s Commissaries, and the right of removing them, belongs to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workmen’s, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Delegates, and to its Central Executive Committee.” This Central Executive Committee functioned as a permanent parliament. The executive power was vested in the Council of People’s Commissaries, who also exercised legislative functions. The decree named as temporary president of the Council of People’s Commissaries, or as Commissary of Commissaries, Vladimir Oulianoff (Lenin), and as Commissary of Foreign Affairs L. D. Bronstein (Trotzky). Commissaries of other departments were chosen and governmental activities allotted much as they are in the Western democracies. The decree mentioned the commissaries by their own names and the names by which they have come to be known in the revolutionary movement.