b. _Maximalists._ An off-shoot of the _Socialist Revolutionary party_ in the Revolution of 1905, when it was a powerful peasant movement, demanding the immediate application of the maximum Socialist programme. Now an insignificant group of peasant anarchists.
Russian meetings and conventions are organised after the continental model rather than our own. The first action is usually the election of officers and the _presidium._
The _presidium_ is a presiding committee, composed of representatives of the groups and political factions represented in the assembly, in proportion to their numbers. The _presidium_ arranges the Order of Business, and its members can be called upon by the President to take the chair _pro tem._
Each question (_vopros_) is stated in a general way and then debated, and at the close of the debate resolutions are submitted by the different factions, and each one voted on separately. The Order of Business can be, and usually is, smashed to pieces in the first half hour. On the plea of “emergency,” which the crowd almost always grants, anybody from the floor can get up and say anything on any subject. The crowd controls the meeting, practically the only functions of the speaker being to keep order by ringing a little bell, and to recognise speakers. Almost all the real work of the session is done in caucuses of the different groups and political factions, which almost always cast their votes in a body and are represented by floor-leaders. The result is, however, that at every important new point, or vote, the session takes a recess to enable the different groups and political factions to hold a caucus.
The crowd is extremely noisy, cheering or heckling speakers, over-riding the plans of the _presidium._ Among the customary cries are: _“Prosim!_ Please! Go on!” _“Pravilno!”_ or _“Eto vierno!_ That’s true! Right!” _“Do volno!_ Enough!” _“Doloi!_ Down with him!” _“Posor!_ Shame!” and _“Teesche!_ Silence! Not so noisy!”
1. _Soviet._ The word _soviet_ means “council.” Under the Tsar the Imperial Council of State was called _Gosudarstvennyi Soviet._ Since the Revolution, however, the term _Soviet_ has come to be associated with a certain type of parliament elected by members of working-class economic organisations—the Soviet of Workers’, of Soldiers’, or of Peasants’ Deputies. I have therefore limited the word to these bodies, and wherever else it occurs I have translated it “Council.”