How to capture and hold the support of the peasant was the chief problem of every revolutionary leader in Russia. The story of Nicholas Tchaikovsky, called the Grandfather of the Russian Revolution, who formed the first peasants’ council, is typical of the struggle. Tchaikovsky is one of the three survivors of the first revolutionary group. Before the March Revolution, Tchaikovsky, who had spent most of his life in exile or in prison, had made temporary peace with the government for the purpose of helping to win the war. He was working behind the lines along the front, establishing agricultural committees to sow the deserted land. When Rodzianko’s proclamation declaring the abdication of the Tsar reached him, he started immediately for Petrograd. He joined the Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Deputies, but found himself entirely out of place there. He shook his fine old white head as he told me about it. “I believed,” he said, “as I do now, that the defense of the country was the first consideration. Whenever I mentioned the war, they answered that the English and French bankers were the only ones who wanted the war to continue, and that the French and English people were as eager for peace as they were. Having lived in England for twenty-eight years, I knew better. I could not sleep. I lost my temper. They laughed at me. I found myself a reactionary, an imperialist. After three weeks I decided I could stand it no longer, and asked them to send a more patient delegate to take my place. “I started to work to create a council of peasants to bring in a more sensible current. Delegates from twenty-seven provinces came, and on May 4 the council was held. There were thirteen hundred and sixty delegates, and a Central Executive Committee of two hundred and fifty members remained in Petrograd to carry on the work. About a hundred of these kept going back and forth to the provinces; but every time they came back they reported that the Bolshevist influence had swept through the local peasant councils, and they found themselves entirely out of the trend. Some of them became Bolsheviki. The others could not stem the tide, and soon we found that the peasants had a great distrust of the Central Executive Committee. What are we to do now?” he said. “I don’t know.” Tchaikovsky was utterly at sea. Fine, brilliant old idealist that he was, he could neither control nor understand the course of the Russian mass. His executive committee was completely repudiated, and all he could do was to shake his head. His last hope was the Council of the Republic; and when that was disbanded by order of the Bolsheviki he was in despair. He came one day to a meeting of the railroad workers, where he made a speech of protest against the Council of People’s Commissaries, and threatened them with terroristic methods. His long beard shaking, his kind eyes aflame, he lifted his clenched fists and shouted: