you have this provisional government and the electoral committee of the petrograd soviet. no one was quite sure what the form of the new russian government would be. it was a people's government. wilson could now make the claim that the allies stood for democracy. this claim was echoed back in a kind of mirror imaging in russia . there were problems with the new rhetoric about a war for democracy, various ideals which is the way wilson wanted to sell it. the allies had, after all, agreed amongst themselves to dispose of it enemy territory. those treaties were still secret. wilson himself was not privy to them. he may have suspected something of them which is part of the reason why he had always been a little load -- loathed to commit the united states fully to the alliance. he wanted to be an associated power. in practice, this meant that the united states declared war on imperial germany, seeing germany as the instigator of the aggression, particularly in the atlantic. united states did not declare war on austria, hungary, for another eight months. even then, it was rathe