Taken together, the parties of the revolution – the agrarian Socialist Revolutionaries and their Ukrainian sister party, the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks – commanded almost 80 per cent of the vote. The parties of revolutionary defensism – the Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) and Mensheviks – were still the most popular, even after the Bolshevik coup. But by the autumn of 1917 their positions were painfully incoherent. By contrast, a large and energetic minority clustered around the urban areas and above all around Petrograd, giving their backing to the Bolsheviks.
