Power Struggle With The Provisional Government
The Petrograd Soviet developed into an alternate source of authority to the Provisional Government under (Prince) Georgy Lvov and later Alexander Kerensky·
This created a situation described as dvoevlastie (dual power), in which the Petrograd Soviet competed for legitimacy with the Provisional Government until the October Revolution.
The Ispolkom (the "executive committee") of the Petrograd Soviet often publicly attacked the Provisional Government as bourgeois and boasted of its de facto power over de jure authority (control over post, telegraphs, the press, railroads, food supply, and other infrastructure). A "shadow government" with a Contact Commission (created March 8) to "inform... about the demands of the revolutionary people, to exert pressure on the government to satisfy all these demands, and to exercise uninterrupted control over their implementation." On March 19, the control extended into the military frontlines with commissars appointed with Ministry of War support.
On March 1917, the Petrograd Soviet was actually opposed to the workers, which protested its deliberations with strikes. On March 8, the Menshevik Rabochaia Gazeta even claimed that the strikers were discrediting the soviet by not obeying it.
The Ispolkom expanded to 19 members on April 8, nine representing the Soldiers' Section, and ten the Workers' Section. All members were socialists, the majority Mensheviks or Socialist-Revolutionaries; there was no Bolshevik representation. After the All-Russian Consultation of Soviets, the Petrograd Soviet began adding representatives from other parts of Russia and the front lines, renaming itself the All-Russian Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. The executive committee became the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (CEC or VTsIK) with over 70 members (but no peasant representatives). The mass meeting of the entire body were tapered off, being reduced from daily in the first weeks to roughly weekly by April.
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