Kaplan became disillusioned with Lenin sometime around 1917, as a result of conflict between the SRs and the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks had strong support in the soviets, but in elections to a competing body, the Constituent Assembly, the Bolsheviks failed to win a majority in the November 1917 elections, and a Socialist Revolutionary was elected president in January 1918. The Bolsheviks, supporting soviets, ordered for the Constituent Assembly to be dissolved. By August 1918 conflicts between the Bolsheviks and their political opponents had led to the banning of most other influential parties, most recently the Left Socialist Revolutionaries (Left SRs), who had been the Bolsheviks' main coalition partner for some time but then organised the Left SR uprising in July because of their opposition to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Kaplan decided to assassinate Lenin because she considered him "a traitor to the Revolution".