Why did the non-Bolshevik socialists fail to take power from the provisional government in order to carry out a more popular policy that Russias people would have supported?
The Mensheviks believed that Russia was too backward for socialism and followed Marx in believing that only a advance capitalist society could support socialism. Hence they believed that socialists should support the liberal CADETS in bringing about a capitalist revolution. Only after decades of capitalist development would it be permissible for socialists to take power. This very theoretical position was quite suicidal for the people in Russia were not prepared to wait. The peasant based Socialist Revolutionary Party in theory was much more open to immediate revolution. However it had a conservative right wing. Its leader Chernov belonged to the left and in later years cursed his weakness in not taking a more radical line. He however was bound by personal friendship to the Mensheviks and the right SRs and did not wish to split his party. Both these parties had a left wing that was advocating Soviet power and giving the people what they wanted. Because they did not split from their par
