Contact Commission

an agency of the Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, founded on Mar. 8 (21), 1917, to influence and control the Provisional Government. The commission’s members included the Mensheviks M. I. Skobelev and N. S. Chkheidze, nonfactional Social Democrats Iu. M. Steklov and N. N. Sukhanov, and the Socialist Revolutionary V. N. Filippovskii. Later, V. M. Chernov (Socialist Revolutionary) and I. G. Tsereteli (Menshevik) joined the com-mission. In claiming that the Contact Commission was an agency capable of controlling the government, the conciliators deceived the masses. “Control without power,” said V. I. Lenin, “is an empty phrase” (Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 31, p. 345). The Bolsheviks denounced the Contact Commission as an instrument of the policy of compromise and as a “democratic cover” for uncontrolled bourgeois power. The commission ceased to exist in mid-April 1917 as a result of the reorganization of the membership of the Bureau of the Executive Committee of the Soviet, which took over the commission’s functions.