ABSTRACT
The massive task facing the Provisional government (all governments before October 1917, and even the first Soviet, were provisional or temporary – until the Constituent Assembly met) was how to cooperate with the new organisations, gain authority over them, respond to their aspirations and implement some of their demands. Another major problem was that the February Revolution swept away the parties of the right and left the liberals as the right. Facing them were the socialists on the left. There was nothing else in between. A coalition government had to be composed of liberals and
SRs (agrarian non-Marxist socialists) and the Bolsheviks (left-wing Marxist socialists).
