The political situation was critical. Kerensky was already balancing on a tight-rope. The cry of “All Power to the Soviets,” was growing louder and more insistent. Marie Spiridonova, though she was not a Bolshevik, inclined toward the Bolshevist program. She knew that the land-hunger of the peasants could not long go unsatisfied, and that no government that did not recognize this immediate demand could possibly survive. To those of us who believed that the wisest policy for Russia was to stand by Alexander Kerensky, the intense little bundle of enthusiasms that was Marie Spiridonova seemed a real fire-brand. In the tea-room where, in intermissions, we worshiped at the shrine of the bubbling samovar, or lined up at the counters for black bread and butter sandwiches, I had the first of many talks with her. She seemed pathetically frail and exhausted, and told me that she was sleeping only about two hours a night. All day long, in and out of convention, the peasants came flocking to see her, and would talk to no one else. When she wasn’t in convention, or party caucus, or meeting delegations from the front and the villages, she was editing a newspaper for distribution among the peasants. When the November Revolution overthrew the coalition government and placed the Bolsheviki in power, it was the voice of Marie Spiridonova more than any other that brought about the combination of the left Social Revolutionists and the Bolsheviki. She argued that to stay aloof from the government of the People’s Commissaries was to put oneself, in effect, on the side of the counter-revolutionists. She was offered a place in the Cabinet, but refused, believing she could do better work simply as a leader of the peasants. Many times in the year I have seen her and Chernoff contest for the control of the bearded men in the faded brown coats, and in the end little Marie Spiridonova always came away with the honors. The first woman to accept a place in the Cabinet was Countess Panina, who became Assistant Minister of Public Welfare in one of the early Kerensky governments, and was later transferred to the Department of Education. Countess Panina was perhaps the best representative of a small group of big-spirited, high-thinking women of the aristocracy who were in protest against the oppression of the Tsar. She was a rebel in the days of autocracy, but the ever-increasing radicalism of the revolutionists made her seem more and more the conservative as the months went on. She did a big job as well as the facilities permitted, until her arrest following the downfall of Kerensky.