The difference was only a matter of scope. Some papers, akin to the Soviet semi-official organ, the _Izvestia of the Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates_, undermined the country and the Army, while others of the _Pravda_ type (the organ of the Bolshevik Social Democrats) broke them down.
At the same time as the _Izvestia_ would call on its readers to support the Provisional Government, while secretly ready to strike a blow at it, the _Pravda_ would declare that "the Government is counter-Revolutionary, and therefore there can be no relations with it. The task of the Revolutionary Democracy is to attain to the dictatorship of the proletariat." And Tchernov's Socialist Revolutionary organ, the _Delo Naroda_, would discover a neutral formula: all possible support to the Coalition Government, but "there is not, and cannot be, any unanimity in this question; more than that, there must not be, in the interests of the double defence."
At the same time as the _Izvestia_ began to preach an advance, but without a final victory, not abandoning, however, the intention of "deciding over the heads of the Government and the ruling classes the conditions on which the War might be stopped," the _Pravda_ called for universal fraternisation, and the Socialist Revolutionary, _Zemlia i Volia_, alternately grieved that Germany still wished for conquest, or demanded a separate peace. Tchernov's paper, which in March had considered that, "should the enemy be victorious, there would be an end to Russian freedom," now, in May, saw in the preaching of an advance "the limit of unblushing gambling on the fate of the Fatherland, the limit of irresponsibility and demagogy." Gorky's paper, _Novaya Zhizn_, speaking through Gimmer (Soukhanov), rises to cynicism when it says: "When Kerensky gives orders for _Russian soil to be cleared of enemy troops_, his demands far exceed the limits of military _technique_. He calls for a political act, one which has never been provided for by the Coalition Government. For clearing the country by an advance signifies 'complete victory'...." Altogether the _Novaya Zhizn_ supported German interests with especial warmth, raising its voice in all cases when German interests were threatened with danger, either on the part of the Allies or on ours. And when the advance of the disorganised Army ended in failure--in Tarnopol and Kalush--when Riga had fallen, the Left Press started a bitter campaign against the Stavka and the commanding personnel, and Tchernov's paper, in connection with the proposed reforms in the Army, cried hysterically: "Let the proletarians know that it is proposed again to give them up to the iron embrace of beggary, slavery and hunger.... Let the soldiers know that it is proposed again to enslave them with the 'discipline' of their commanders and to force them to shed their blood without end, so long as the belief of the Allies in Russia's 'gallantry' is restored." The most straightforward of all, however, was afterwards the _Iskra_, the organ of the Menshevist Internationalists (Martov-Zederbaum), which, on the day of the occupation of the island of Oesel by a German landing-party, published an article entitled "Welcome to the German Fleet!"