The Moscow Conference did in fact give to all organizations, Duma, Councils of Workmen's and Soldiers' Deputies, the recently elected local-government bodies, cooeperative and professional unions, in fact every group, socialist and non-socialist, revolutionary and pre-revolutionary institutions, the opportunity to express views. The speeches did perhaps help the Coalition Government to sense the situation with which it had to deal, though the Conference showed that the Coalition Government was unstable, and that the extreme ideas of the Bolsheviki had penetrated deeply in the broader masses. Again the Bolsheviki attacked the principle of coalition, and demanded that revolutionary democracy take over all authority. Then came the Kornilov affair, which in its conception was an effort on the part of the constructive groups, including the moderate socialists, to discredit the extremists, and establish a stronger government, free from party ties and party programs, representing a national movement to organize "all the vital forces of the country," to use again the phraseology of the revolution. But there was a misunderstanding, and also perhaps it was premature--"revolutionary democracy" was not yet sufficiently sobered to accept a program of common constructive effort. The movement had the opposite effect; it split the country into two openly hostile camps, and brought revolutionary democracy still more under the influence of the extremists. The Coalition Government fell to pieces, and a Directorate of Five, with almost dictatorial powers, still headed by Kerensky, assumed authority.