Since the spring of 1917, the SRs and Mensheviks had been imploring the Bolsheviks to form a broad-based revolutionary coalition. But this was of no interest to Lenin and Trotsky. Instead, they allied themselves opportunistically with the extreme left wing of the agrarians, the Left SRs, whose advocacy of class war was even more militant than their own. The first meeting of the Constituent Assembly was postponed until January 1918 and in the meantime the Bolsheviks set about consolidating a Soviet regime and making good on Lenin’s most popular slogan: ‘Land, Bread and Peace’.
