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At the end of Febraury 1917 the tsarist government of Russia collapsed in a whirlwind of demonstrations by the workers and soldier of Petrograd. Ziva Galili tells how the moderate socialists, or Mensheviks, then attempted to prevent the conflicts between the newly formed liberal Provisional Government (the "bourgeois" camp) and the Petrograd Soviet (the "democractic" camp) from escalating into civil war--and how, in October of that same year, they finally failed. Placing narrative history in a broad social and political context, she creates an absorbing study of idealists who tried in vain to reflect as well as to contain the unfolding revolutionary process.Galili focuses on the Menshevik Revolutionary Defensists who became the leaders of the Petrograd Soviet and of the all-Russian network of soviets. She examines Menshevik political strategy as well as the three-way interaction between Mnesheviks (both in the Soviet and the Provisional Government), workers, and indsutrialists. She emphasizes the perpceptual and interactive aspects of the analysis of revolutions: the relations between social realities, perceptions of realities, and the formulation of political strategies; the roles of rhetorics and societal conflict in shaping social identities; and the impact of political authority and state institutions on the terms of social interaction.Ziva Galili is Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University. She is coeditor and annotator of The Making of Three Russian Revolutionsaries: Voice from the Menshevik Past (Cambridge).Studies of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University.Originally published in 1989.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905

The Moscow Station in Petrograd was the scene of a familiar ritual of the Revolution late on the night of March 20, 1917 — the triumphant return of exiled revolutionary leaders. The red banners on the locomotive from Irkutsk read "Train of the Social Democratic Deputies of the Second Duma." On board were the legendary leader of the arrested Social Democratic faction, the Georgian Menshevik I. G. Tsereteli, and a group of his followers known as the Siberian Zimmerwaldists. They were experienced in revolutionary politics, closely knit, and completely dedicated to the policies and leadership of Tsereteli. Within ten days of their arrival in the capital, these men would take control of the bloc of Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries which held the majority in the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet and the First All-Russian Conference of Soviets. In the coming months they would provide effective, often forceful leadership for the Soviets, guiding them by a new and distinctive political strategy which they called Revolutionary Defensism.