When the chairman had calmed them, Lenin took his place. He stood quietly for a moment, surveying his audience, with his hands in his pockets and an appraising expression in his brown eyes. He knew what was expected of him. He must win the wavering members of his own flock. He must reach out to the larger audience spread over the vast areas of Russia. He must speak so that he would be heard beyond the confines of his country, in that world whose attention was focused for the time on this group of strange new actors in the international drama. Lenin began quietly tracing the historical developments of the Soviet as an institution. He made a critical analysis of the workings of various parliaments, declaring that they had become merely a sparring-place for the verbal contests of socialists. “In Russia,” he said, “the workers have developed organizations, which give them power to execute their aspirations. You are told that we ask you to jump a hundred years. We do not ask you to do anything. We did not organize the Soviets. They were not organized in 1917: they were created in the revolution of 1905. The people organized the Soviets. When I tell you that the government of the Soviets is superior to the Constituent Assembly, that it is more fundamentally representative of the will of the mass, I do not tell you anything new. As long ago as April 4, I told you that the Soviets were more representative of the people than this Constituent Assembly which you wanted to organize.” He explained in detail the political break in the Social Revolutionary Party, and said: “When the people voted for delegates of the Constituent Assembly, they did not know the difference between the Right S. R.’s and the Left. They did not know that when they voted for the Right Social Revolutionists they voted for the bourgeoisie, and when they voted for the Left they voted for Socialism.” At first he spoke quietly, but before long his hands had come out of his pockets. These, and his brown eyes alternately snapping and smiling, and his eyebrows humorously expressive, all vigorously emphasized his phrases. It was evident from the faces of the men before him that he was justifying himself and them to their satisfaction. “The February Revolution was a political bourgeois revolution overthrowing Tsarism. In November a social revolution occurred, and the working masses became the sovereign authority. The Workmen’s and Soldiers’ delegates are not bound by any rules or traditions to the old bourgeois society. Their government has taken all the power and rights into its own hands. The Constituent Assembly is the highest expression of the political ideals of bourgeois society, which are no longer necessary in a Socialist state. The Constituent Assembly will be dissolved. “If the Constituent Assembly represented the will of the people, we would shout: ‘Long live the Constituent Assembly!’ Instead we shout: ‘Down with the Constituent Assembly!’” he finished.