ABSTRACT
Historians and political leaders are accustomed to speak of "the dual power" that prevailed in Petrograd during the spring of 1917. The Soviet had no intention of setting up a rival power, merely of protecting and voicing the interests of the popular masses in an uncertain situation. Lenin called his article "On the Dual Power", thus maintaining, as did others who followed his lead, that there were two powers in Russia, each with a distinct ideology, each-or so he claimed-representing a different class, each possessing a share of governmental power which the leaders both of the Duma and the Soviet were striving to merge into a single and unitary power vested in the Provisional Government. But actually there existed at that moment in Petrograd a third power, to which, without formulating it clearly in their minds, both the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet appealed and Lenin as well.
