Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power? (Extract)

Written 1 (14) October 1917

Editor’s note:

Due to its length, only the afterword of this text has been reproduced below. The full text is available online on the Marxists Internet Archive and in LCW, Vol. 26, pp. 87-136.

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Afterword

The foregoing lines were already written when the leading article in Novaya Zhizn of 1 (14) October produced another gem of stupidity which is all the more dangerous because it professes sympathy with the Bolsheviks and offers most sagacious philistine admonitions ‘not to allow yourselves to be provoked’ (not to allow ourselves to be caught in the trap of screams about provocation, the object of which is to frighten the Bolsheviks and cause them to refrain from taking power).

Here is this gem:

The lessons of movements, like that of 3-5 (16-18) July, on the one hand, and of the Kornilov days, on the other, have shown quite clearly that the democracy, having at its command organs that exercise immense influence among the population, is invincible when it takes a defensive position in civil war, and that it suffers defeat, loses all the middle vacillating groups when it takes the initiative and launches an offensive.

If the Bolsheviks were to yield in any form and in the slightest degree to the philistine stupidity of this argument they would ruin their Party and the revolution.

For the author of this argument, taking it upon himself to talk about civil war (just the subject for a lady with many good points), has distorted the lessons of history on this question in an incredibly comical manner.

This is how these lessons, the lessons of history on this question, were treated by the representative and founder of proletarian revolutionary tactics, Karl Marx:

Now, insurrection is an art quite as much as war or any other art, and is subject to certain procedural rules which, when neglected, will bring about the downfall of the party neglecting them. These rules, logical deductions from the nature of the parties and the circumstances you have to deal with in such a case, are so plain and simple that the brief experience of 1848 made the Germans fairly well acquainted with them. Firstly, never play with insurrection unless you are fully prepared to go the whole way [literally: face the consequences of your game].

Insurrection is an equation with very indefinite magnitudes, the value of which may change every day; the forces opposed to you have all the advantage of organisation, discipline and habitual authority [Marx has in mind the most ‘difficult’ case of insurrection: against the ‘firmly established’ old authority, against the army not yet disintegrated by the influence of the revolution and the vacillation of the government]; unless you bring strong odds against them you are defeated and ruined.

Secondly, once you have entered upon the insurrectionary career, act with the greatest determination, and on the offensive. The defensive is the death of every armed rising; it is lost before it measures itself with its enemies. Surprise your antagonists while their forces are scattered, prepare the way for new successes, however small, but prepare daily; keep up the moral superiority which the first successful rising has given to you; rally in this way those vacillating elements to your side which always follow the strongest impulse and which always look out for the safer side; force your enemies to retreat before they can collect their strength against you; in the words of Danton, the greatest master of revolutionary tactics yet known: de l’audace, de l’audace, encore de l’audace!^[1]

We have changed all that, the ‘would-be Marxists’ of Novaya Zhizn may say about themselves; instead of triple audacity they have two virtues: “We have two, sir: moderation and accuracy.” For ‘us’, the experience of world history, the experience of the Great French Revolution, is nothing. The important thing for ‘us’ is the experience of the two movements in 1917, distorted by Molchalin spectacles.^[2]

Let us examine this experience without these charming spectacles.

You compare 3-5 July with ‘civil war’, because you believed Alexinsky, Pereverzev and co. It is typical of the gentlemen of Novaya Zhizn that they believe such people (and do absolutely nothing themselves to collect information about 3-5 July, although they have the huge apparatus of a big daily newspaper at their disposal).

Let us assume for a moment, however, that 3-5 July was not the rudiment of civil war that was kept within the rudimentary stage by the Bolsheviks, but actual civil war. Let us assume this.

In that case, then, what does this lesson prove?

First, the Bolsheviks did not take the offensive, for it is indisputable that on the night of 3-4 July, and even on 4 July, they would have gained a great deal if they had taken the offensive. Their defensive position was their weakness, if we are to speak of civil war (as Novaya Zhizn does, and not of converting a spontaneous outburst into a demonstration of the type of 20-21 April, as the facts show).

The ‘lesson’ therefore proves that the wise men of Novaya Zhizn are wrong.

Secondly, if the Bolsheviks did not even set out to start an insurrection on 3 or 4 July, if not a single Bolshevik body even raised such a question, the reason for it lies beyond the scope of our controversy with Novaya Zhizn. For we are arguing about the lessons of ‘civil war’, i.e. of insurrection, and not about the point that obvious lack of a majority to support it restrains the revolutionary party from thinking of insurrection.

Since everybody knows that the Bolsheviks received a majority in the metropolitan Soviets and in the country (over 49 per cent of the Moscow votes) much later than July 1917, it again follows that the ‘lessons’ are far, far from what Novaya Zhizn, that lady with many good points, would like them to be.

No, no, you had better not meddle with politics, citizens of Novaya Zhizn!

If the revolutionary party has no majority in the advanced contingents of the revolutionary classes and in the country, insurrection is out of the question. Moreover, insurrection requires:

1. Growth of the revol ution on a country-wide scale;
2. The complete moral and political bankruptcy of the old government, for example, the ‘coalition’ government;
3. Extreme vacillation in the camp of all middle groups, i.e. those who do not fully support the government, although they did fully support it yesterday.

Why did Novaya Zhizn, when speaking of the ‘lessons’ of 3-5 July, fail even to note this very important lesson? Because a political question was not dealt with by politicians but by a circle of intellectuals who had been terrified by the bourgeoisie.

To proceed. Thirdly, the facts show that it was after 3-4 July that the rot set in among the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, precisely because the Tseretelis had exposed themselves by their July policy, precisely because the mass of the people realised that the Bolsheviks were their own front-rank fighters and that the ‘social-bloc’ advocates were traitors. Even before the Kornilov revolt this rot was fully revealed by the Petrograd elections on 20 August, which resulted in a victory for the Bolsheviks and the rout of the ‘social-bloc’ advocates. (Dyelo Naroda recently tried to refute this by concealing the returns for all parties, but this was both self-deception and deception of its readers; according to the figures published in Dyen of 24 August, covering only the city, the Cadets’ share of the total vote increased from 22 to 23 per cent, but the absolute number of votes cast for the Cadets dropped 40 per cent; the Bolsheviks’ share of the total vote increased from 20 to 33 per cent, while the absolute number of votes cast for the Bolsheviks dropped only 10 per cent; the share of all ‘middle groups’ dropped from 58 to 44 per cent, but the absolute number of votes cast for them dropped 60 per cent!)

That a rot had set in among the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks after the July Days and before the Kornilov days is also proved by the growth of the Left wings in both parties, reaching almost 40 per cent: this is ‘retribution’ for the persecution of the Bolsheviks by the Kerenskys.

In spite of the ‘loss’ of a few hundred members, the proletarian party gained enormously from 3-4 July, for it was precisely during those stern days that the people realised and saw its devotion and the treachery of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. So, the ‘lesson’ is far, very far from being of the Novaya Zhizn sort, it is one entirely different, namely: don’t desert the seething masses for the ‘Molchalins of democracy’; and if you launch an insurrection, go over to the offensive while the enemy forces are scattered, catch the enemy unawares.

Is that not so, gentlemen ‘would-be Marxists’ of Novaya Zhizn?

Or does ‘Marxism’ mean not basing tactics on an exact appraisal of the objective situation but senselessly and uncritically lumping together “civil war” and “a Congress of Soviets and the convocation of the Constituent Assembly”?

But this is simply ridiculous, gentlemen, this is a sheer mockery of Marxism and of logic in general!

If there is nothing in the objective situation that warrants the intensification of the class struggle to the point of “civil war”, why did you speak of “civil war” in connection with “a Congress of Soviets and the Constituent Assembly”? (For this is the title of the leading article in Novaya Zhizn here under discussion.) In that case you should clearly have told the reader and proved to him that there is no ground in the objective situation for civil war and that, therefore, peaceful, constitutionally-legal, juridically and parliamentarily ‘simple’ things like a Congress of Soviets and a Constituent Assembly can and should be the cornerstone of tactics. In that case it is possible to hold the opinion that such a congress and such an assembly are really capable of making decisions.

If, however, the present objective conditions harbour the inevitability or even only the probability of civil war, if you did not ‘idly’ speak about it, but did so clearly seeing, feeling, sensing the existence of a situation of civil war, how could you make a Congress of Soviets or a Constituent Assembly the cornerstone? This is a sheer mockery of the starving and tormented people! Do you think the starving will consent to ‘wait’ two months? Or that the ruin, about the increase of which you yourselves write every day, will consent to ‘wait’ for the Congress of Soviets or for the Constituent Assembly? Or that the German offensive, in the absence of serious steps on our part towards peace (i.e. in the absence of a formal offer of a just peace to all belligerents), will consent to ‘wait’ for the Congress of Soviets or for the Constituent Assembly? Or are you in possession of facts which permit you to conclude that the history of the Russian revolution, which from 28 February to 30 September had proceeded with extraordinary turbulence and unprecedented rapidity, will, from 1 October to 29 November, proceed at a super-tranquil, peaceful, legally balanced pace that will preclude upheavals, spurts, military defeats and economic crises? Or will the army at the front, concerning which the non-Bolshevik officer Dubasov said officially, in the name of the front, “it will not fight”, quietly starve and freeze until the ‘appointed’ date? Or will the peasant revolt cease to be a factor of civil war because you call it ‘anarchy’ and ‘pogrom’, or because Kerensky will send ‘military’ forces against the peasants? Or is it possible, conceivable, that the government can work calmly, honestly, and without deception to convene the Constituent Assembly in a peasant country when that same government is suppressing the peasant revolt?

Don’t laugh at the “confusion in the Smolny Institute”, gentlemen!^[3] There is no less confusion in your own ranks. You answer the formidable questions of civil war with confused phrases and pitiful constitutional illusions. That is why I say that if the Bolsheviks were to give in to these moods they would ruin both their Party and their revolution.

N Lenin
1 (14) October 1917

To Workers, Peasants and Soldiers!

Written 1-2 (14-15) October 1917

Comrades! The Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries, to which Kerensky belongs, appeals to you in its paper Dyelo Naroda (of 30 September (12 October)) “to be patient”.

The paper asks us “to be patient” and urges that power be left in the hands of Kerensky’s government, that power should not pass to the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. Let Kerensky rely on the landowners, capitalists and kulaks, let the Soviets that have carried through the revolution and vanquished the Kornilovite generals “be patient”, we are told. Let them have patience until the Constituent Assembly, which will soon be convened.

Comrades! Look around you, see what is happening in the countryside, see what is happening in the army, and you will realise that the peasants and the soldiers cannot tolerate it any longer. An uprising of the peasants from whom the land has hitherto been withheld by fraud is sweeping like a broad river over the whole of Russia. The peasants cannot tolerate it any longer. Kerensky sends troops to suppress the peasants and to defend the landowners. Kerensky has again come to an agreement with the Kornilovite generals and officers who stand for the landowners.

Neither the workers in the cities nor the soldiers at the front can tolerate this military suppression of the just struggle of the peasants for the land.

As to what is going on in the army at the front, Dubasov, a non-Party officer, has declared before all of Russia: “The soldiers will not fight any longer.” The soldiers are tired out, the soldiers are barefooted, the soldiers are starving, the soldiers do not want to fight for the interests of the capitalists, they do not want to “be patient” when they are treated only to beautiful words about peace, while for months there has been a delay (as Kerensky is delaying it) in the peace proposal, the proposal for a just peace without annexations, to be offered to all the belligerent peoples.

Comrades! Know that Kerensky is again negotiating with the Kornilovite generals and officers to lead troops against the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, to prevent the Soviets from obtaining power! Kerensky “will under no circumstances submit” to the Soviets, Dyelo Naroda openly admits.

Go, then, to the barracks, go to the Cossack units, go to the working people and explain the truth to them.

If power is in the hands of the Soviets, then not later than 25 October (7 November) (if the Congress of Soviets opens on 20 October (2 November)) a just peace will be offered to all the belligerent peoples. There will be a workers’ and peasants’ government in Russia; it will immediately, without losing a single day, offer a just peace to all the belligerent peoples. Then the people will learn who wants the unjust war. Then in the Constituent Assembly the people will decide.

If power is in the hands of the Soviets, the landowners estates will immediately be declared the inalienable property of the whole people.

This is what Kerensky and his government fight against, relying on the village exploiters, capitalists and landowners!

This is for whom and for whose interests you are asked to “be patient”.

Are you willing to “be patient” in order that Kerensky may use armed force to suppress the peasants who have risen for land?

Are you willing to “be patient” in order that the war may be dragged out longer, in order that the offer of peace and the annulling of the former tsar’s secret treaties with the Russian and Anglo-French capitalists may be postponed?

Comrades, remember that Kerensky deceived the people once when he promised to convene the Constituent Assembly! On 8 July he solemnly promised to convene it not later than 17 September, and he has deceived the people. Comrades! Whoever believes in the Kerensky government is a traitor to his brothers, the peasants and soldiers!

No, not for one more day are the people willing to suffer postponement. Not for a single day longer can we suffer the peasants to be suppressed by armed force, thousands upon thousands to perish in the war, when a just peace can and must be offered at once.

Down with the government of Kerensky, who is conniving with the Kornilovite landowning generals to suppress the peasants, to fire on the peasants, to drag out the war!

All power to the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies!

Letter to the CC, the Moscow and Petrograd Committees and the Bolshevik Members of the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets

Written 1 (14) October 1917

Dear Comrades,

Events are prescribing our task so clearly for us that procrastination is becoming positively criminal.

The peasant movement is developing. The government is intensifying its severe repressive measures. Sympathy for us is growing in the army (99 per cent of the soldiers’ votes were cast for us in Moscow, the army in Finland and the fleet are against the government, and there is Dubasov’s evidence about the front in general).

In Germany the beginning of a revolution is obvious, especially since the sailors were shot. The elections in Moscow – 47 per cent Bolsheviks – are a tremendous victory. Together with the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries we have an obvious majority in the country.

The railway and postal employees are in conflict with the government. Instead of calling the Congress for 20 October (2 November), the Liberdans are already talking of calling it at the end of October, etc., etc.

Under such circumstances to ‘wait’ would be a crime.

The Bolsheviks have no right to wait for the Congress of Soviets, they must take power at once. By so doing they will save the world revolution (for otherwise there is danger of a deal between the imperialists of all countries, who, after the shootings in Germany, will be more accommodating to each other and will unite against us), the Russian revolution (otherwise a wave of real anarchy may become stronger than we are) and the lives of hundreds of thousands of people at the front.

Delay is criminal. To wait for the Congress of Soviets would be a childish game of formalities, a disgraceful game of formalities and a betrayal of the revolution.

If power cannot be achieved without insurrection, we must resort to insurrection at once. It may very well be that right now power can be achieved without insurrection, for example, if the Moscow Soviet were to take power at once, immediately, and proclaim itself (together with the Petrograd Soviet) the government. Victory in Moscow is guaranteed, and there is no need to fight. Petrograd can wait. The government cannot do anything to save itself; it will surrender.

For, by seizing power and taking over the banks, the factories and Russkoye Slovo, the Moscow Soviet would secure a tremendous basis and tremendous strength, it would be able to campaign throughout Russia and raise the issue thus: we shall propose peace tomorrow if the Bonapartist Kerensky surrenders (and if he does not, we shall overthrow him). We shall hand over the land to the peasants at once, we shall make concessions to the railway and postal employees at once, and so on.

It is not necessary to ‘begin’ with Petrograd. If Moscow ‘begins’ without any blood being shed, it will certainly be supported by (1) the army at the front by its sympathy, (2) the peasants everywhere and (3) the fleet and the troops in Finland, which will proceed to Petrograd.

Even if Kerensky has a corps or two of mounted troops near Petrograd, he will be obliged to surrender. The Petrograd Soviet can wait and campaign for the Moscow Soviet Government. The slogan is: Power to the Soviets, Land to the Peasants, Peace to the Nations, Bread to the Starving!

Victory is certain, and the chances are ten to one that it will be a bloodless victory.

To wait would be a crime to the revolution.

Greetings,
N Lenin

Letter to the Petrograd City Conference

Written 7 (20) October 1917

To be read in closed session

Comrades,

Permit me to call the attention of the Conference to the extreme seriousness of the political situation. I base my opinion on the news in the Saturday morning papers alone. That news, however, compels me to raise the question in this way.

The absolute inaction of the British fleet in general, and also of British submarines during the occupation of Esel by the Germans, coupled with the government’s plan to move from Petrograd to Moscow – does not all this prove that the Russian and British imperialists, Kerensky and the Anglo-French capitalists, have conspired to surrender Petrograd to the Germans and thus stifle the Russian revolution?

I think it does.

Perhaps there was no direct conspiracy, but an agreement reached through some Kornilovites (Maklakov or other Cadets, ‘non-party’ Russian millionaires, etc.), but this does not in any way change the nature of it.

The conclusion is clear.

We must admit that unless the Kerensky government is overthrown by the proletariat and the soldiers in the near future the revolution is ruined. The question of an uprising is on the order of the day.

We must mobilise all forces to convince the workers and soldiers that it is absolutely imperative to wage a last, desperate and decisive fight for the overthrow of the Kerensky government.

We must appeal to the Moscow comrades, persuade them to seize power in Moscow, declare the Kerensky government deposed and declare the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies in Moscow the provisional government of Russia in order to offer immediate peace and save Russia from the conspiracy. Let the Moscow comrades raise the question of the uprising in Moscow immediately.

We must use the opportunity offered by the Congress of the Soviets of Soldiers’ Deputies of the Northern Region, called for 8 (21) October in Helsingfors, and mobilise all our forces to win the delegates over for the uprising (as they go back through Petrograd).

We must put the request and proposal to the Central Committee of our Party that it hasten the withdrawal of the Bolsheviks from the Pre-parliament and devote all efforts to exposing to the masses Kerensky’s conspiracy with the imperialists of other countries and to preparing the uprising so that the right moment for it is chosen.

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PS: The resolution of the soldiers’ section of the Petrograd Soviet against moving the government from Petrograd shows that the soldiers are also becoming more convinced of Kerensky’s conspiracy. We must gather all forces to support this correct conviction and to carry on propaganda among the soldiers.

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I move that the following resolution be adopted:

The Conference, having discussed the present situation, which is generally admitted to be highly critical, establishes the following facts:

1. The aggressive operations of the German fleet, accompanied by the very strange inactivity of the British fleet and coupled with the Provisional Government’s plan to move from Petrograd to Moscow, arouse a very strong suspicion that the government of Kerensky (or, what is the same thing, the Russian imperialists behind him) have entered into a conspiracy with the Anglo-French imperialists to surrender Petrograd to the Germans and in this way to suppress the revolution.
2. These suspicions are greatly strengthened, and are being confirmed, as far as is possible in such cases, by the following:
   • First, the conviction has long been growing and strengthening in the army that it was betrayed by the tsarist generals and is also being betrayed by the generals of Kornilov and Kerensky (particularly in the surrender of Riga);
   • Second, the Anglo-French bourgeois press does not conceal its fierce, even frenzied hatred for the Soviets and its readiness to drown them in any quantity of blood;
   • Third, Kerensky, the Cadets, Breshkovskaya, Plekhanov and similar politicians are conscious or unconscious tools in the hands of Anglo-French imperialism, as six months’ history of the Russian revolution has proved in full;
   • Fourth, the vague but persistent rumours of a separate peace between Britain and Germany at the expense of Russia could not have arisen without cause;
   • Fifth, all the circumstances of the Kornilov conspiracy, as admitted even by Dyelo Naroda and Izvestia, papers that on the whole sympathise with Kerensky, have proved that Kerensky was to a very large extent mixed up in the Kornilov affair, that Kerensky was and is the most dangerous Kornilovite; Kerensky, in fact, has shielded such leaders of the Kornilov revolt as Rodzianko, Klembovsky, Maklakov and others.

The Conference, therefore, recognises that all the shouting by Kerensky and the bourgeois papers that support him about the defence of Petrograd is sheer deception and hypocrisy, and the soldiers’ section of the Petrograd Soviet was perfectly right when it sharply condemned the plan to move from Petrograd; furthermore, that Petrograd cannot be defended and the revolution saved unless the tired army is absolutely and urgently convinced of the sincerity of the government and is given bread, clothing and footwear at the cost of revolutionary measures against the capitalists, who hitherto have sabotaged the struggle against economic ruin (as admitted even by the Economic Department of the Menshevik-Socialist-Revolutionary Central Executive Committee).

The Conference therefore declares that only the overthrow of the Kerensky government with its packed Council of the Republic, and the substitution for it of a workers’ and peasants’ revolutionary government, can ensure:

1. The transfer of the land to the peasants instead of suppressing the peasant uprising;
2. The offer of an immediate and just peace so that our entire army will believe that truth exists;
3. Adoption of the most decisive revolutionary measures against the capitalists in order to provide the army with bread, clothing and footwear and in order to fight against economic ruin.

The Conference urgently requests the Central Committee to take all measures to lead the inevitable uprising of the workers, soldiers and peasants for the overthrow of the anti-popular, feudal Kerensky government.

The Conference decides on the immediate dispatch of delegations to Helsingfors, Vyborg, Kronstadt and Revel, to the military units south of Petrograd, and also to Moscow, to carry on propaganda in favour of adopting this resolution and in favour of a swift, general uprising and the overthrow of Kerensky as the steps necessary to open the road to peace, to save Petrograd and the revolution, and to give the land to the peasants and power to the Soviets.

Advice of an Onlooker

Written 8 (21) October 1917

I am writing these lines on 8 (21) October and have little hope that they will reach Petrograd comrades by the 9th. It is possible that they will arrive too late, since the Congress of the Northern Soviets has been fixed for 10 October. Nevertheless, I shall try to give my ‘Advice of an Onlooker’ in the event that the probable action of the workers and soldiers of Petrograd and of the whole ‘region’ will take place soon but has not yet taken place.

It is clear that all power must pass to the Soviets. It should be equally indisputable for every Bolshevik that proletarian revolutionary power (or Bolshevik power – which is now one and the same thing) is assured of the utmost sympathy and unreserved support of all the working and exploited people all over the world in general, in the belligerent countries in particular, and among the Russian peasants especially. There is no need to dwell on these all too well known and long established truths.

What must be dealt with is something that is probably not quite clear to all comrades, namely, that in practice the transfer of power to the Soviets now means armed uprising. This would seem obvious, but not everyone has or is giving thought to the point. To repudiate armed uprising now would mean to repudiate the key slogan of Bolshevism (‘All Power to the Soviets’) and proletarian revolutionary internationalism in general.

But armed uprising is a special form of political struggle, one subject to special laws to which attentive thought must be given. Karl Marx expressed this truth with remarkable clarity when he wrote that “insurrection is an art quite as much as war”.^[4]

Of the principal rules of this art, Marx noted the following:

1. Never play with insurrection, but when beginning it realise firmly that you must go all the way.
2. Concentrate a great superiority of forces at the decisive point and at the decisive moment, otherwise the enemy, who has the advantage of better preparation and organisation, will destroy the insurgents.
3. Once the insurrection has begun, you must act with the greatest determination, and by all means, without fail, take the offensive. “The defensive is the death of every armed rising.”
4. You must try to take the enemy by surprise and seize the moment when his forces are scattered.
5. You must strive for daily successes, however small (one might say hourly, if it is the case of one town), and at all costs retain “moral superiority”.

Marx summed up the lessons of all revolutions in respect to armed uprising in the words of “Danton, the greatest master of revolutionary policy yet known: de l’audace, de l’audace, encore de l’audace.”^[5]

Applied to Russia and to October 1917, this means: a simultaneous offensive on Petrograd, as sudden and as rapid as possible, which must without fail be carried out from within and from without, from the working-class quarters and from Finland, from Revel and from Kronstadt, an offensive of the entire navy, the concentration of a gigantic superiority of forces over the 15,000 or 20,000 (perhaps more) of our ‘bourgeois guard’ (the officers’ schools), our ‘Vendée troops’ (part of the Cossacks), etc.

Our three main forces – the fleet, the workers and the army units – must be so combined as to occupy without fail and to hold at any cost: (a) the telephone exchange; (b) the telegraph office; (c) the railway stations; (d) and above all, the bridges.

The most determined elements (our ‘shock forces’ and young workers, as well as the best of the sailors) must be formed into small detachments to occupy all the more important points and to take part everywhere in all important operations, for example:

1. To encircle and cut off Petrograd; to seize it by a combined attack of the sailors, the workers and the troops – a task which requires art and triple audacity;
2. To form detachments from the best workers, armed with rifles and bombs, for the purpose of attacking and surrounding the enemy’s ‘centres’ (the officers’ schools, the telegraph office, the telephone exchange, etc.). Their watch word must be: “Better die to a man than let the enemy pass!”

Let us hope that if action is decided on, the leaders will successfully apply the great precepts of Danton and Marx.

The success of both the Russian and the world revolution depends on two or three days’ fighting.

Letter to the Bolshevik Comrades Attending the Congress of Soviets of the Northern Region

Written 8 (21) October 1917

Comrades,

Our revolution is passing through a highly critical period. This crisis coincides with the great crisis – the growth of the world socialist revolution and the struggle waged against it by world imperialism. A gigantic task is being presented to the responsible leaders of our Party, and failure to perform it will involve the danger of a complete collapse of the internationalist proletarian movement. The situation is such that, in truth, delay would be fatal.

Take a glance at the international situation. The growth of a world revolution is beyond dispute. The outburst of indignation on the part of the Czech workers has been suppressed with incredible ferocity, testifying to the government’s extreme fright. Italy too has witnessed a mass outbreak in Turin. Most important, however, is the revolt in the German Navy. One can imagine the enormous difficulties of a revolution in a country like Germany, especially under present conditions. It cannot be doubted that the revolt in the German navy is indicative of the great crisis – the growth of the world revolution. While our chauvinists, who are advocating Germany’s defeat, demand a revolt of the German workers immediately, we Russian revolutionary internationalists know from the experience of 1905-17 that a more impressive sign of the growth of revolution than a revolt among the troops cannot be imagined.

Just think what our position is now in the eyes of the German revolutionaries. They can say to us: We have only Liebknecht who openly called for a revolution. His voice has been stifled in a convict prison. We have not a single newspaper which openly explains the necessity for a revolution; we have not got freedom of assembly. We have not a single Soviet of Workers’ or Soldiers’ Deputies. Our voice barely reaches the real, broad mass of people. Yet we made an attempt at revolt, although our chance was only one in a hundred. But you Russian revolutionary internationalists have behind you a half-year of free agitation, you have a score of newspapers, you have a number of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, you have gained the upper hand in the Soviets of Petrograd and Moscow, you have on your side the entire Baltic fleet and all the Russian troops in Finland. And still you do not respond to our call for an uprising, you do not overthrow your imperialist, Kerensky, although the chances are a hundred to one that your uprising will be successful.

Yes, we shall be real traitors to the International if, at such a moment and under such favourable conditions, we respond to this call from the German revolutionaries with… mere resolutions.

Add to this, as we all perfectly well know, that the plotting and conspiracy of the international imperialists against the Russian revolution are rapidly growing. International imperialism is coming closer to the idea of stifling the revolution at all costs, stifling it both by military measures and by a peace made at the expense of Russia. It is this that is making the crisis in the world socialist revolution so acute, and is rendering our delay of the uprising particularly dangerous – I would almost say criminal.

Take, further, Russia’s internal situation. The petty-bourgeois compromising parties which expressed the naive confidence of the masses in Kerensky and in the imperialists in general, are absolutely bankrupt. Their collapse is complete. The vote cast against coalition by the Soviet curia at the Democratic Conference, the vote cast against coalition by a majority of the local Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies (in spite of their central Soviet, where Avksentiev and other friends of Kerensky’s are installed), the elections in Moscow, where the working-class population has the closest ties with the peasants, and where over 49 per cent voted for the Bolsheviks (and among the soldiers 14,000 out of 17,000) – does this not signify that the confidence of the people in Kerensky and in those who are compromising with Kerensky and co. has completely collapsed? Can one imagine any way in which the people could say more clearly to the Bolsheviks than they did by this vote, “Lead us, we shall follow you”?

And we, who have thus won the majority of the people over to our side, and who have gained the Soviets in both the capital cities – are we to wait? What for? For Kerensky and his Kornilovite generals to surrender Petrograd to the Germans, and thus enter directly or indirectly, openly or secretly, into a conspiracy with both Buchanan and Wilhelm for the purpose of completely stifling the Russian revolution.

By the Moscow vote and by the re-elections to the Soviets, the people have expressed their confidence in us, but that is not all. There are signs of growing apathy and indifference. That is understandable. It implies not the ebb of the revolution, as the Cadets and their henchmen vociferate, but the ebb of confidence in resolutions and elections. In a revolution, the masses demand action, not words from the leading parties, they demand victories in the struggle, not talk. The moment is approaching when the people may conceive the idea that the Bolsheviks are no better than the others, since they were unable to act when the people placed confidence in them…

The peasant revolt is spreading over the whole country. It is perfectly clear that the Cadets and their hangers-on are minimising it in every way and are claiming it to be nothing but ‘riots’ and ‘anarchy’. That lie is being refuted because in the revolt centres the land is beginning to be handed over to the peasants. ‘Riots’ and ‘anarchy’ have never led to such splendid political results! The tremendous strength of the peasant revolt is shown by the fact that the compromisers and the Socialist-Revolutionaries of Dyelo Naroda, and even Breshko-Breshkovskaya, have begun to talk of transferring the land to the peasants in order to check the movement before it has finally engulfed them.

Are we to wait until the Cossack units of the Kornilovite Kerensky (who was recently exposed as a Kornilovite by the Socialist-Revolutionaries themselves) succeed in suppressing this peasant revolt piecemeal?

Apparently, many leaders of our Party have failed to note the specific meaning of the slogan which we all adopted and which we have repeated endlessly. The slogan is ‘All Power to the Soviets’. There were periods, there were moments during the six months of the revolution, when this slogan did not mean insurrection. Perhaps those periods and those moments blinded some of our comrades and led them to forget that now, at least since the middle of September, this slogan for us too has become equivalent to a call for insurrection.

There can be no shadow of doubt on this score. Dyelo Naroda recently explained this ‘in a popular way’, when it said “Kerensky will under no circumstances submit!” As if he could!

The slogan ‘All Power to the Soviets’ is nothing but a call for insurrection. And the blame will be wholly and undoubtedly ours, if we, who for months have been calling upon the people to revolt and repudiate compromise, fail to lead them to revolt on the eve of the revolution’s collapse, after the people have expressed their confidence in us.

The Cadets and compromisers are trying to scare us by citing the example of 3-5 July, by pointing to the intensified agitation of the Black Hundreds, and so forth. But if any mistake was made on 3-5 July, it was that we did not take power. I do not think we made a mistake then, for at that time we were not yet in a majority. But now it would be a fatal mistake, worse than a mistake. The spread of Black Hundred agitation is understandable. It is an aggravation of extremes in an atmosphere of a developing proletarian and peasant revolution. But to use this as an argument against an uprising is ridiculous, for the impotence of the Black Hundreds, hirelings of the capitalists, the impotence of the Black Hundreds in the struggle, does not even require proof. In the struggle they are not worth considering. In the struggle Kornilov and Kerensky can only rely on the Savage Division and the Cossacks. And now demoralisation has set in even among the Cossacks; furthermore, the peasants are threatening them with civil war within their Cossack regions.

I am writing these lines on Sunday 8 (21) October. You will read them not earlier than 10 October. I have heard from a comrade who passed through here that people travelling on the Warsaw railway say: “Kerensky is bringing Cossacks to Petrograd!” This is quite probable, and it will be entirely our fault if we do not verify it most carefully and do not make a study of the strength and distribution of the Kornilovite troops of the second draft.

Kerensky has again brought Kornilovite troops into the vicinity of Petrograd in order to prevent state power from passing into the hands of the Soviets, in order to prevent this power from proposing an immediate peace, in order to prevent all the land from being immediately handed over to the peasants, in order to surrender Petrograd to the Germans, and himself escape to Moscow! That is the slogan of the insurrection which we must circulate as widely as possible and which will have a tremendous success.

We must not wait for the All-Russia Congress of Soviets, which the Central Executive Committee may delay even until November. We must not delay and permit Kerensky to bring up more Kornilovite troops. Finland, the fleet and Revel are represented at the Congress of Soviets. These can together start an immediate movement on Petrograd against the Kornilovite regiments, a movement of the fleet, artillery, machine-guns and two or three army corps, such as have shown, for instance in Vyborg, the intensity of their hatred for the Kornilovite generals, with whom Kerensky is again in collusion.

It would be a great mistake to refuse to seize the opportunity of immediately smashing the Kornilovite regiments of the second draft on the ground that the Baltic fleet, by moving into Petrograd, would allegedly expose the front to the Germans. The Kornilovite slanderers will say this, as they will tell any lie, but it is unworthy of revolutionaries to allow themselves to be intimidated by lies and slanders. Kerensky will surrender Petrograd to the Germans, that is now as clear as daylight. No assertions to the contrary can destroy our full conviction that this is so, for it follows from the entire course of events and Kerensky’s entire policy.

Kerensky and the Kornilovites will surrender Petrograd to the Germans. And it is in order to save Petrograd that Kerensky must be overthrown and power taken by the Soviets of both capital cities. These Soviets will immediately propose a peace to all the nations and will thereby fulfil their duty to the German revolutionaries. They will thereby also be taking a decisive step towards frustrating the criminal conspiracies against the Russian revolution, the conspiracies of international imperialism.

Only the immediate movement of troops from Finland, and of the Baltic fleet, Revel and Kronstadt against the Kornilovite forces quartered near Petrograd can save the Russian and the world revolution. Such a movement has a hundred to one chance of leading within a few days to the surrender of a part of the Cossack troops, to the utter defeat of the other part, and to the overthrow of Kerensky, for the workers and the soldiers of both capital cities will support such a movement.

In truth, delay would be fatal.

The slogan ‘All Power to the Soviets’ is a slogan of insurrection. Whoever uses this slogan without having grasped this and given thought to it will have only himself to blame. And insurrection must be treated as an art. I insisted on this during the Democratic Conference and I insist on it now, because that is what Marxism teaches us, and it is what is being taught us by the present situation in Russia and in the world generally.

It is not a question of voting, of attracting the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, of additional provincial Soviets, or of a congress of these Soviets. It is a question of insurrection, which can and must be decided by Petrograd, Moscow, Helsingfors, Kronstadt, Vyborg and Revel. It is in the vicinity of Petrograd and in Petrograd itself that the insurrection can, and must be decided on and effected, as earnestly as possible, with as much preparation as possible, as quickly as possible and as energetically as possible.

The fleet, Kronstadt, Vyborg and Revel can and must advance on Petrograd; they can and must smash the Kornilovite regiments, rouse both the capital cities, start a mass agitation for a government which will immediately give land to the peasants and immediately make proposals for peace, overthrow Kerensky’s government and establish such a government.

Delay would be fatal.

N Lenin
8 (21) October 1917

Meeting of the CC of the RSDLP(B)

10 (23) October 1917

Editor’s note:

At this CC meeting, Lenin gave a report on the current situation, and the CC adopted the resolution motioned by Lenin proposing the immediate preparations for an armed uprising. Only Zinoviev and Kamenev voted against the proposal.

* * *

Report Minutes

Comrade Lenin maintains that a sort of indifference to the question of insurrection has been noticeable since the beginning of September. But this is impermissible if we are issuing the slogan of the seizure of power by the Soviets in all seriousness. It is therefore high time to pay attention to the technical aspect of the question. Apparently a lot of time has already been lost.

Nevertheless the question is an urgent one, and the decisive moment is near.

The international situation is such that we must take the initiative.

What is being done to surrender territory as far as Narva, and to surrender Petrograd makes it still more imperative for us to take decisive action.

The political situation is also working impressively in this direction. Decisive action on our part on 3, 4 and 5 July would have failed because we did not have the majority behind us. Since then we have made tremendous progress.

Absenteeism and indifference on the part of the masses is due to their being tired of words and resolutions.

We now have the majority behind us. Politically, the situation is fully ripe for taking power.

The agrarian movement is also developing in that direction, for it is obvious that extreme effort would be needed to stem that movement. The slogan of the transfer of all land has become the general slogan of the peasants. The political situation, therefore, is mature. We must speak of the technical aspect. That is the crux of the matter. Nevertheless we, like the defencists, are inclined to regard the systematic preparation of an uprising as something in the nature of a political sin.

It is senseless to wait for the Constituent Assembly that will obviously not be on our side, for this will only make our task more involved.

The regional congress and the proposal from Minsk must be used for the beginning of decisive action.^[6]

* * *

Resolution

The Central Committee recognises that the international position of the Russian revolution (the revolt in the German navy which is an extreme manifestation of the growth throughout Europe of the world socialist revolution; the threat of peace by the imperialists with the object of strangling the revolution in Russia) as well as the military situation (the indubitable decision of the Russian bourgeoisie and Kerensky and co. to surrender Petrograd to the Germans), and the fact that the proletarian party has gained a majority in the Soviets – all this, taken in conjunction with the peasant revolt and the swing of popular confidence towards our Party (the elections in Moscow), and, finally, the obvious preparations being made for a second Kornilov revolt (the withdrawal of troops from Petrograd, the dispatch of Cossacks to Petrograd, the encircling of Minsk by Cossacks, etc.) – all this places the armed uprising on the order of the day.

Considering therefore that an armed uprising is inevitable, and that the time for it is fully ripe, the Central Committee instructs all Party organisations to be guided accordingly, and to discuss and decide all practical questions (the Congress of Soviets of the Northern Region, the withdrawal of troops from Petrograd, the action of our people in Moscow and Minsk, etc.) from this point of view.

Meeting of the CC
of the RSDLP(B)

16 (29) October 1917

Report Minutes

Comrade Lenin read the resolution adopted by the Central Committee at the previous meeting. He stated that the resolution had been adopted with two dissenting votes. If the dissident comrades wished to make a statement, a discussion could be held; meanwhile he continued with the motives of the resolution.

If the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary parties were to break with their policy of conciliation, a compromise with them could be proposed. The proposal had been made, but those parties had obviously rejected the compromise. On the other hand, by that time it had become definitely clear that the masses were following the Bolsheviks. That had been before the Kornilov revolt. Lenin cited election returns from Petrograd and Moscow as evidence. The Kornilov revolt had pushed the masses still more decisively to the side of the Bolsheviks. The alignment of forces at the Democratic Conference. The position was clear – either Kornilov’s dictatorship or the dictatorship of the proletariat and the poorer strata of the peasantry. The Party could not be guided by the temper of the masses because it was changeable and incalculable; the Party must be guided by an objective analysis and an appraisal of the revolution. The masses had put their trust in the Bolsheviks and demanded deeds from them and not words, a decisive policy both in the struggle against the war and in the struggle against economic ruin. If the political analysis of the revolution were taken as the basis, it would be perfectly clear that even anarchic outbursts confirmed that.

Lenin went on to analyse the situation in Europe and showed that revolution would be even more difficult in Europe than in Russia; if matters had gone as far as a revolt in the navy in such a country as Germany, there too they must already have gone very far. Certain objective data on the international situation showed that by acting at that moment the Bolsheviks would have all proletarian Europe on their side; he showed that the bourgeoisie wanted to surrender Petrograd. That could only be prevented by the Bolsheviks taking over Petrograd. The obvious conclusion from all this was – the armed uprising was on the order of the day as was stated in the resolution of the Central Committee.

It would be better to draw practical conclusions from the resolution after hearing the reports of representatives from the centres.

From a political analysis of the class struggle in Russia and in Europe there emerged the necessity to pursue the most determined and most active policy, which could be only the armed uprising.

Speeches in Discussion (Minutes)

1. Comrade Lenin argued against Milyutin and Shotman and showed that it was not a matter of armed forces, that it was not a question of fighting against the troops but of one part of the army fighting against another. He could see no pessimism in what had been said there. He demonstrated that the forces on the side of the bourgeoisie were small. The facts showed that ours were superior to the enemy. Why could the Central Committee not begin? There was no reason that derived from the facts. To reject the resolution of the Central Committee it would have to be proved that there was no economic ruin and that the international situation would not lead to complications. If trade union leaders were in favour of full power they knew very well what they wanted. Objective conditions showed that the peasantry must be led; they would follow the proletariat.

   Some were afraid that Bolsheviks would not be able to maintain power, but at that moment there was a better chance than ever that they would be able to.

   Lenin expressed the wish that the debate be confined to the substance of the resolution.

2. If all resolutions were defeated in that manner nothing better could be wished for. Zinoviev was saying: do away with the ‘Power to the Soviets’ slogan and bring pressure to bear on the government. When it was said that the time was ripe for insurrection there could be no question of conspiracy. Since an insurrection was inevitable politically, it must be regarded as an art. Politically, an insurrection was due.

   Because there was only enough bread for a day the Party could not wait for the Constituent Assembly. Comrade Lenin proposed that the resolution be approved, that energetic preparations be begun and that it be left to the Central Committee and the Soviet to decide when.

3. Comrade Lenin opposed Zinoviev, saying that the revolution could not be contrasted to the February Revolution. He proposed a resolution straight to the point.

Resolution

The meeting fully welcomes and fully supports the resolution of the Central Committee and calls upon all organisations and on workers and soldiers to make all-round, energetic preparations for an armed uprising and to support the centre set up for that purpose by the Central Committee; the meeting expresses its complete confidence that the Central Committee and the Soviet will indicate in good time the favourable moment and the most appropriate methods of attack.

Letter to Comrades

Written 17 (30) October 1917

Comrades,

We are living in a time that is so critical, events are moving at such incredible speed that a publicist, placed by the will of fate somewhat aside from the mainstream of history, constantly runs the risk either of being late or proving uninformed, especially if some time elapses before his writings appear in print. Although I fully realise this, I must nevertheless address this letter to the Bolsheviks, even at the risk of its not being published at all, for the vacillations against which I deem it my duty to warn in the most decisive manner are of an unprecedented nature and may have a disastrous effect on the Party, the movement of the international proletariat and the revolution. As for the danger of being too late, I will prevent it by indicating the nature and date of the information I possess.

It was not until Monday morning, 16 (29) October, that I saw a comrade who had on the previous day participated in a very important Bolshevik gathering in Petrograd, and who informed me in detail of the discussion.^[7] The subject of discussion was that same question of the uprising discussed by the Sunday papers of all political trends. The gathering represented all that is most influential in all branches of Bolshevik work in the capital. Only a most insignificant minority of the gathering, namely, all in all two comrades, took a negative stand. The arguments which those comrades advanced are so weak, they are a manifestation of such an astounding confusion, timidity and collapse of all the fundamental ideas of Bolshevism and proletarian revolutionary internationalism that it is not easy to discover an explanation for such shameful vacillations. The fact, however, remains, and since the revolutionary party has no right to tolerate vacillations on such a serious question, and since this pair of comrades, who have scattered their principles to the winds, might cause some confusion, it is necessary to analyse their arguments, to expose their vacillations and to show how shameful they are. The following lines are an attempt to do this.

* * *

We have no majority among the people, and without this condition the uprising is hopeless…

People who can say this are either distorters of the truth or pedants who want an advance guarantee that throughout the whole country the Bolshevik Party has received exactly one-half of the votes plus one, this they want at all events, without taking the least account of the real circumstances of the revolution. History has never given such a guarantee, and is quite unable to give it in any revolution. To make such a demand is jeering at the audience, and is nothing but a cover to hide one’s own flight from reality.

For reality shows us clearly that it was after the July Days that the majority of the people began quickly to go over to the side of the Bolsheviks. This was demonstrated first by the 20 August (2 September) elections in Petrograd, even before the Kornilov revolt, when the Bolshevik vote rose from 20 to 33 per cent in the city not including the suburbs, and then by the district council elections in Moscow in September, when the Bolshevik vote rose from 11 to 49.3 per cent (one Moscow comrade, whom I saw recently, told me that the correct figure is 51 per cent). This was proved by the new elections to the Soviets. It was proved by the fact that a majority of the peasant Soviets, their ‘Avksentiev’ central Soviet notwithstanding, has expressed itself against the coalition. To be against the coalition means in practice to follow the Bolsheviks. Furthermore, reports from the front prove more frequently and more definitely that the soldiers are passing en masse over to the side of the Bolsheviks with ever greater determination, in spite of the malicious slanders and attacks by the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik leaders, officers, deputies, etc., etc.

Last, but not least, the most outstanding fact of present day Russian life is the revolt of the peasantry. This shows objectively, not by words but by deeds, that the people are going over to the side of the Bolsheviks. But the fact remains, notwithstanding the lies of the bourgeois press and its miserable yes-men of the ‘vacillating’ Novaya Zhizn crowd, who shout about riots and anarchy. The peasant movement in Tambov Gubernia^[8] was an uprising both in the physical and political sense, an uprising that has yielded such splendid political results as, in the first place, agreement to transfer the land to the peasants. It is not for nothing that the Socialist-Revolutionary rabble, including Dyelo Naroda, who are frightened by the uprising, now scream about the need to transfer the land to the peasants. Here is a practical demonstration of the correctness of Bolshevism and of its success. It proved to be impossible to ‘teach’ the Bonapartists and their lackeys in the Pre-parliament otherwise than by an uprising.

This is a fact and facts are stubborn things. And such a factual ‘argument’ in favour of an uprising is stronger than thousands of ‘pessimistic’ evasions on the part of confused and frightened politicians.

If the peasant uprising were not an event of nation-wide political import, the Socialist-Revolutionary lackeys from the Pre-parliament would not be shouting about the need to hand over the land to the peasants.

Another splendid political and revolutionary consequence of the peasant uprising, as already noted in Rabochy Put, is the delivery of grain to the railway stations in Tambov Gubernia. Here is another ‘argument’ for you, confused gentlemen, an argument in favour of the uprising as the only means to save the country from the famine that is knocking at our door and from a crisis of unheard-of dimensions. While the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik betrayers of the people are grumbling, threatening, writing resolutions, promising to feed the hungry by convening the Constituent Assembly, the people are beginning to solve the bread problem Bolshevik-fashion, by rebelling against the landowners, capitalists and speculators.

Even the bourgeois press, even Russkaya Volya, was compelled to admit the wonderful results of such a solution (the only real solution) of the bread problem, by publishing information to the effect that the railway stations in Tambov Gubernia were swamped with grain… And this after the peasants had revolted!

To doubt now that the majority of the people are following and will follow the Bolsheviks is shameful vacillation and in practice is the abandoning of all the principles of proletarian revolutionism, the complete renunciation of Bolshevism.

* * *

We are not strong enough to seize power, and the bourgeoisie is not strong enough to hinder the convening of the Constituent Assembly.

The first part of this argument is a simple paraphrase of the preceding one. It does not gain in strength or power of conviction, when the confusion of its authors and their fear of the bourgeoisie are expressed in terms of pessimism in respect of the workers and optimism in respect of the bourgeoisie. If the officer cadets and the Cossacks say that they will fight against the Bolsheviks to the last drop of blood, this deserves full credence; if, however, the workers and soldiers at hundreds of meetings express full confidence in the Bolsheviks and affirm their readiness to defend the transfer of power to the Soviets, then it is ‘timely’ to recall that voting is one thing and fighting another!

If you argue like that, of course, you ‘refute’ the possibility of an uprising. But, we may ask, in what way does this peculiarly orientated ‘pessimism’ with its peculiar urge differ from a political shift to the side of the bourgeoisie?

Look at the facts. Remember the Bolshevik declarations, repeated thousands of times and now ‘forgotten’ by our pessimists. We have said thousands of times that the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies are a force, that they are the vanguard of the revolution, that they can take power. Thousands of times have we upbraided the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries for phrase-mongering about the ‘plenipotentiary organs of democracy’ accompanied by fear to transfer power to the Soviets.

And what has the Kornilov revolt proved? It has proved that the Soviets are a real force.

And, now, after this has been proved by experience, by facts, we are expected to repudiate Bolshevism, deny ourselves, and say that we are not strong enough (although the Soviets of Petrograd and Moscow and a majority of the provincial Soviets are on the side of the Bolsheviks)! Are these not shameful vacillations? As a matter of fact, our ‘pessimists’ are abandoning the slogan of ‘All Power to the Soviets’, though they are afraid to admit it.

How can it be proved that the bourgeoisie are not strong enough to hinder the calling of the Constituent Assembly?

If the Soviets have not the strength to overthrow the bourgeoisie, this means the latter are strong enough to prevent the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, for there is nobody else to stop them. To trust the promises of Kerensky and co., to trust the resolutions of the servile Pre-parliament – is this worthy of a member of a proletarian party and a revolutionary?

Not only has the bourgeoisie strength enough to hinder the convocation of the Constituent Assembly if the present government is not overthrown, but it can also achieve this result indirectly by surrendering Petrograd to the Germans, laying open the front, increasing lockouts and sabotaging deliveries of foodstuffs. It has been proved by facts that the bourgeoisie have already been partly doing this, which means that they are capable of doing it to the full extent, if the workers and soldiers do not overthrow them.

* * *

The Soviets must be a revolver pointed at the head of the government with the demand to convene the Constituent Assembly and stop all Kornilovite plots.

This is how far one of the two sad pessimists has gone.

He had to go that far, for to reject the uprising is the same as rejecting the slogan ‘All Power to the Soviets’.

Of course, a slogan is ‘not sacred’; we all agree to that. But then why has no one raised the question of changing this slogan (in the same way as I raised the question after the July Days)? Why be afraid to say it openly, when the Party, since September, has been discussing the question of the uprising, which is now the only way to realise the slogan ‘All Power to the Soviets’.

There is no way for our sad pessimists to turn. A renunciation of the uprising is a renunciation of the transfer of power to the Soviets and implies a ‘transfer’ of all hopes and expectations to the kind bourgeoisie, which has ‘promised’ to convoke the Constituent Assembly.

Is it so difficult to understand that once power is in the hands of the Soviets, the Constituent Assembly and its success are guaranteed? The Bolsheviks have said so thousands of times and no one has ever attempted to refute it. Everybody has recognised this ‘combined type’, but to smuggle in a renunciation of the transfer of power to the Soviets under cover of the words ‘combined type’, to smuggle it in secretly while fearing to renounce our slogan openly is a matter for wonder. Is there any parliamentary term to describe it?

Someone has very pointedly retorted to our pessimist: “Is it a revolver with no cartridges?” If so, it means going over directly to the Liberdans, who have declared the Soviets a ‘revolver’ thousands of times and have deceived the people thousands of times. For while they were in control the Soviets proved to be worthless.

If, however, it is to be a revolver ‘with cartridges’, this cannot mean anything but technical preparation for an uprising; the cartridges have to be procured, the revolver has to be loaded – and cartridges alone will not be enough.

Either go over to the side of the Liberdans and openly renounce the slogan ‘All Power to the Soviets’, or start the uprising.

There is no middle course.

* * *

The bourgeoisie cannot surrender Petrograd to the Germans, although Rodzianko wants to, for the fighting is done not by the bourgeoisie, but by our heroic sailors.

This argument again reduces itself to the same ‘optimism’ in respect of the bourgeoisie which is fatally manifested at every step by those who are pessimistic about the revolutionary forces and capabilities of the proletariat.

The fighting is done by the heroic sailors, but this did not prevent two admirals from disappearing before the capture of Esel!

That is a fact and facts are stubborn things. The facts prove that admirals are capable of treachery no less than Kornilov. It is an undisputed fact that Field Headquarters has not been reformed, and that the commanding staff is Kornilovite in composition.

If the Kornilovites (with Kerensky at their head, for he is also a Kornilovite) want to surrender Petrograd, they can do it in two or even in three ways.

First, they can, through an act of treachery on the part of the Kornilovite officers, open the northern land front.

Second, they can ‘agree’ on freedom of action for the entire German navy, which is stronger than we are; they can agree both with the German and the British imperialists. Moreover, the admirals who have disappeared may have delivered the plans to the Germans as well.

Third, they can, by means of lockouts, and by sabotaging the delivery of food, bring our troops to complete desperation and impotence.

Not a single one of these three ways can be denied. The facts have proved that the bourgeois-Cossack party of Russia has already knocked at all three doors and has tried to force open each of them.

What follows? It follows that we have no right to wait until the bourgeoisie strangle the revolution.

Experience has proved that Rodzianko’s wishes are no trifle. Rodzianko is a man of affairs. Rodzianko is backed by capital. This is beyond dispute. Capital is tremendous strength as long as the proletariat do not have power. For decades, Rodzianko has faithfully and truly carried out the policies of capital.

What follows? It follows that to vacillate on the question of an uprising as the only means to save the revolution means to sink into that cowardly credulity in the bourgeoisie which is half-Liberdan, Socialist-Revolutionary-Menshevik and half ‘peasant-like’ unquestioning credulity, against which the Bolsheviks have been battling most of all.

Either fold your idle arms on your empty chest, wait and swear ‘faith’ in the Constituent Assembly until Rodzianko and co. have surrendered Petrograd and strangled the revolution or start an uprising. There is no middle course.

Even the convocation of the Constituent Assembly does not, in itself, change anything, for no ‘constituting’, no voting by any arch-sovereign assembly will have any effect on the famine, or on Wilhelm. Both the convocation and the success of the Constituent Assembly depend upon the transfer of power to the Soviets. This old Bolshevik truth is being proved by reality ever more strikingly and ever more cruelly.

* * *

We are becoming stronger every day. We can enter the Constituent Assembly as a strong opposition; why should we stake everything?

This is the argument of a philistine who has ‘read’ that the Constituent Assembly is being called, and who trustingly acquiesces in the most legal, most loyal, most constitutional course.

It is a pity, however, that waiting for the Constituent Assembly does not solve either the question of famine or the question of surrendering Petrograd. This ‘trifle’ is forgotten by the naive or the confused or those who have allowed themselves to be frightened.

The famine will not wait. The peasant uprising did not wait. The war will not wait. The admirals who have disappeared did not wait.

Will the famine agree to wait, because we Bolsheviks proclaim faith in the convocation of the Constituent Assembly? Will the admirals who have disappeared agree to wait? Will the Maklakovs and Rodziankos agree to stop the lockouts and the sabotaging of grain deliveries, or to denounce the secret treaties with the British and the German imperialists?

This is what the arguments of the heroes of ‘constitutional illusions’ and parliamentary cretinism amount to. The living reality disappears, and what remains is only a paper dealing with the convocation of the Constituent Assembly; there is nothing left – but to hold elections.

And blind people are still wondering why hungry people and soldiers betrayed by generals and admirals are indifferent to the elections! Oh, wiseacres!

* * *

Were the Kornilovites to start again, we would show them! But why should we take risks and start?

This is extraordinarily convincing and revolutionary. History does not repeat itself, but if we turn our backs on it, contemplate the first Kornilov revolt and repeat: “If only the Kornilovites would start” – if we do that, what excellent revolutionary strategy it would be. How much like a waiting game it is! Maybe the Kornilovites will start again at an inopportune time. Isn’t this a ‘weighty’ argument? What kind of an earnest foundation for a proletarian policy is this?

And what if the Kornilovites of the second draft will have learned a thing or two? What if they wait for the hunger riots to begin, for the front to be broken through, for Petrograd to be surrendered, before they begin? What then?

It is proposed that we build the tactics of the proletarian party on the possibility of the Kornilovites’ repeating one of their old errors!

Let us forget all that was being and has been demonstrated by the Bolsheviks a hundred times, all that the six months’ history of our revolution has proved, namely, that there is no way out, that there is no objective way out and can be none except a dictatorship of the Kornilovites or a dictatorship of the proletariat. Let us forget this, let us renounce all this and wait! Wait for what? Wait for a miracle, for the tempestuous and catastrophic course of events from 20 April to 29 August to be succeeded (due to the prolongation of the war and the spread of famine) by a peaceful, quiet, smooth, legal convocation of the Constituent Assembly and by a fulfilment of its most lawful decisions. Here you have the ‘Marxist’ tactics! Wait, ye hungry! Kerensky has promised to convene the Constituent Assembly.

* * *

There is really nothing in the international situation that makes it obligatory for us to act immediately, we would be more likely to damage the cause of a socialist revolution in the West, if we were to allow ourselves to be shot…

This argument is truly magnificent: Scheidemann ‘himself’, Renaudel ‘himself’ would not be able to ‘manipulate’ more cleverly the workers’ sympathies for the international socialist revolution!

Just think of it: under devilishly difficult conditions, having but one Liebknecht (and he in prison) with no newspapers, with no freedom of assembly, with no Soviets, with all classes of the population, including every well-to-do peasant, incredibly hostile to the idea of internationalism, with the imperialist big, middle and petty bourgeoisie splendidly organised – the Germans, i.e., the German revolutionary internationalists, the German workers dressed in sailors’ jackets, started a mutiny in the navy with one chance in a hundred of winning.

But we, with dozens of papers at our disposal, freedom of assembly, a majority in the Soviets, we, the best situated proletarian internationalists in the world, should refuse to support the German revolutionaries by our uprising. We ought to reason like the Scheidemanns and Renaudels, that it is most prudent not to revolt, for if we are shot, then the world will lose such excellent, reasonable, ideal internationalists!

Let us prove how reasonable we are. Let us pass a resolution of sympathy with the German insurrectionists, and let us renounce the insurrection in Russia. This would be genuine, reasonable internationalism. Imagine how fast world internationalism would blossom forth, if the same wise policy were to triumph everywhere!

The war has fatigued and tormented the workers of all countries to the utmost. Outbursts are becoming frequent in Italy, Germany and Austria. We alone have Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. Let us then keep on waiting. Let us betray the German internationalists as we are betraying the Russian peasants, who, not by words but by deeds, by their uprising against the landowners, appeal to us to rise against Kerensky’s government…

Let the clouds of the imperialist conspiracy of the capitalists of all countries who are ready to strangle the Russian revolution gather – we shall wait patiently until we are strangled by the rouble! Instead of attacking the conspirators and breaking their ranks by a victory of the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, let us wait for the Constituent Assembly, where all international plots will be vanquished by voting, provided Kerensky and Rodzianko conscientiously convene the Constituent Assembly. Have we any right to doubt the honesty of Kerensky and Rodzianko?

* * *

But ‘everyone’ is against us! We are isolated; the Central Executive Committee, the Menshevik internationalists, the Novaya Zhizn people, and the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries have been issuing and will continue to issue appeals against us!

A crushing argument. Up to now we have been mercilessly scourging the vacillators for their vacillations. By so doing, we have won the sympathies of the people. By so doing, we have won over the Soviets, without which the uprising could not be safe, quick and sure. Now let us use the Soviets which we have won over in order to move into the camp of the vacillators. What a splendid career for Bolshevism!

The whole essence of the policy of the Liberdans and Chernovs, and also of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, consists in vacillations. The Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and Menshevik internationalists have tremendous political importance as an indication of the fact that the masses are moving to the left. Two such facts as the passing of some 40 per cent of both Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries into the camp of the Left, on the one hand, and the peasant uprising, on the other, are clearly and obviously interconnected.

But it is the very character of this connection that reveals the abysmal spinelessness of those who have now undertaken to whimper over the fact that the Central Executive Committee, which has rotted away, or the vacillating Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and co., have come out against us. For these vacillations of the petty-bourgeois leaders – the Martovs, Kamkovs, Sukhanovs and co. – have to be compared to the uprising of the peasants. Here is a realistic political comparison. With whom shall we go? Should it be with the vacillating handfuls of Petrograd leaders, who have expressed indirectly the leftward swing of the masses, but who, at every political turn, have shamefully whimpered, vacillated, run to ask forgiveness of the Liberdans, Avksentievs and co., or with those masses that have moved to the left?

Thus, and only thus, can the question be presented.

Because the peasant uprising has been betrayed by the Martovs, Kamkovs and Sukhanovs, we, the workers’ party of revolutionary internationalists, are asked to betray it, too. This is what the policy of blaming the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and Menshevik internationalists reduces itself to.

But we have said that to help the vacillating, we must stop vacillating ourselves. Have those ‘nice’ Left petty-bourgeois democrats not ‘vacillated’ in favour of the coalition? In the long run we succeeded in making them follow us because we ourselves did not vacillate. Events have shown we are right.

These gentlemen by their vacillations have always held back the revolution. We alone have saved it. Shall we now give up, when the famine is knocking at the gates of Petrograd and Rodzianko and co. are preparing to surrender the city?!

* * *

But we have not even firm connections with the railwaymen and the postal employees. Their official representatives are the Plansons.^[9] And can we win without the post office and without railways?

Yes, yes, the Plansons here, the Liberdans there. What confidence have the masses shown them? Have we not always shown that those leaders betrayed the masses? Did the masses not turn away from those leaders towards us, both at the elections in Moscow and at the elections to the Soviets? Or perhaps the mass of railway and postal employees are not starving! Or do not strike against Kerensky and co.?

“Did we have connections with these unions before 28 February?” one comrade asked a pessimist. The latter replied by pointing out that the two revolutions could not be compared. But this reply only strengthens the position of the one who asked the question. For it is the Bolsheviks who have spoken thousands of times about prolonged preparation for the proletarian revolution against the bourgeoisie (and they have not spoken about it in order to forget their words when the decisive moment is at hand). The political and economic life of the unions of postal and telegraph employees and railwaymen is characterised by the very separation of the proletarian elements of the masses from the petty-bourgeois and bourgeois upper layer. It is not absolutely necessary to secure ‘connections’ with one or the other union beforehand; what matters is that only a victory of a proletarian and peasant uprising can satisfy the masses both of the army of railwaymen and of postal and telegraph employees.

* * *

There is only enough bread in Petrograd for two or three days. Can we give bread to the insurrectionists?

This is one of a thousand sceptical remarks (the sceptics can always ‘doubt’ and cannot be refuted by anything but experience), one of those remarks that put the blame on the wrong shoulders.

It is Rodzianko and co., it is the bourgeoisie that are preparing the famine and speculating on strangling the revolution by famine. There is no escaping the famine and there can be none except by an uprising of the peasants against the landowners in the countryside and by a victory of the workers over the capitalists in the cities and Petrograd and Moscow. There is no other way to get grain from the rich, or to transport it despite their sabotage, or to break the resistance of the corrupt employees and the capitalist profiteers, or to establish strict accounting. The history of the supply organisations and of the food difficulties of the ‘democracy’ with its millions of complaints against the sabotage of the capitalists, with its whimpering and supplication, is proof of this.

There is no power on earth apart from the power of a victorious proletarian revolution that would advance from complaints and begging and tears to revolutionary action. And the longer the proletarian revolution is delayed, the longer it is put off by events or by the vacillations of the wavering and confused, the more victims it will claim and the more difficult it will be to organise the transportation and distribution of food.

“In insurrection delay is fatal” this is our answer to those having the sad ‘courage’ to look at the growing economic ruin, at the approaching famine, and still dissuade the workers from the uprising (that is, persuade them to wait and place confidence in the bourgeoisie for some further time).

* * *

There is not yet any danger at the front either. Even if the soldiers conclude an armistice themselves, it is still not a calamity.

But the soldiers will not conclude an armistice. For this state power is necessary and that cannot be obtained without an uprising. The soldiers will simply desert. Reports from the front tell that. We must not wait because of the risk of aiding collusion between Rodzianko and Wilhelm and the risk of complete economic ruin, with the soldiers deserting in masses, once they (being already close to desperation) sink into absolute despair and leave everything to the mercy of fate.

* * *

But if we take power, and obtain neither an armistice nor a democratic peace, the soldiers may not be willing to fight a revolutionary war. What then?

An argument which brings to mind the saying: one fool can ask ten times more questions than ten wise men can answer.

We have never denied the difficulties of those in power during an imperialist war. Nevertheless, we have always preached the dictatorship of the proletariat and the poor peasantry. Shall we renounce this, when the moment to act has arrived?

We have always said that the dictatorship of the proletariat in one country creates gigantic changes in the international situation, in the economic life of the country, in the condition of the army and in its mood – shall we now ‘forget’ all this, and allow ourselves to be frightened by the ‘difficulties’ of the revolution?

* * *

As everybody reports, the masses are not in a mood that would drive them into the streets. Among the signs justifying pessimism may be mentioned the greatly increasing circulation of the pogromist and Black-Hundred press.

When people allow themselves to be frightened by the bourgeoisie, all objects and phenomena naturally appear yellow to them. First, they substitute an impressionist, intellectualist criterion for the Marxist criterion of the movement; they substitute subjective impressions of moods for a political analysis of the development of the class struggle and of the course of events in the entire country against the entire international background. They ‘conveniently’ forget, of course, that a firm party line, its unyielding resolve, is also a mood-creating factor, particularly at the sharpest revolutionary moments. It is sometimes very ‘convenient’ for people to forget that the responsible leaders, by their vacillations and by their readiness to burn their yesterday’s idols, cause the most unbecoming vacillations in the mood of certain strata of the masses.

Secondly – and this is at present the main thing – in speaking about the mood of the masses, the spineless people forget to add:

• That ‘everybody’ reports it as a tense and expectant mood;
• That ‘everybody’ agrees that, called upon by the Soviets for the defence of the Soviets, the workers will rise to a man;
• That ‘everybody’ agrees that the workers are greatly dissatisfied with the indecision of the centres concerning the ‘last decisive struggle’, the inevitability of which they clearly recognise;
• That ‘everybody’ unanimously characterises the mood of the broadest masses as close to desperation and points to the anarchy developing therefrom;
• That ‘everybody’ also recognises that there is among the class-conscious workers a definite unwillingness to go out into the streets only for demonstrations, only for partial struggles, since a general and not a partial struggle is in the air, while the hopelessness of individual strikes, demonstrations and acts to influence the authorities has been seen and is fully realised.

And so forth.

If we approach this characterisation of the mass mood from the point of view of the entire development of the class and political struggle and of the entire course of events during the six months of our revolution, it will become clear to us how people frightened by the bourgeoisie are distorting the question. Things are not as they were before 20-21 April, 9 June, 3 July, for then it was a matter of spontaneous excitement which we, as a party, either failed to comprehend (20 April) or held back and shaped into a peaceful demonstration (9 June and 3 July), for we knew very well at that time that the Soviets were not yet ours, that the peasants still trusted the Liberdan-Chernov and not the Bolshevik course (uprising), that consequently we could not have the majority of the people behind us, and that consequently the uprising would be premature.

At that time the majority of the class-conscious workers did not raise the question of the last decisive struggle at all; not one of all our Party units would have raised it at that time. As for the unenlightened and very broad masses, there was neither a concerted effort nor the resolve born out of despair; there was only a spontaneous excitement with the naive hope of ‘influencing’ Kerensky and the bourgeoisie by ‘action’, by a demonstration pure and simple.

What is needed for an uprising is not this, but, on the one hand, a conscious, firm and unswerving resolve on the part of the class-conscious elements to fight to the end; and on the other, a mood of despair among the broad masses who feel that nothing can now be saved by half-measures; that you cannot ‘influence’ anybody; that the hungry will ‘smash everything, destroy everything, even anarchically’, if the Bolsheviks are not able to lead them in a decisive battle.

The development of the revolution has in practice brought both the workers and the peasantry to precisely this combination of a tense mood resulting from experience among the class-conscious and a mood of hatred towards those using the lockout weapon and the capitalists that is close to despair among the broadest masses.

We can also understand the ‘success’ on this very soil of the scoundrels of the reactionary press who imitate Bolshevism. The malicious glee of the reactionaries at the approach of a decisive battle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat has been observed in all revolutions without exception; it has always been so, and it is absolutely unavoidable. And if you allow yourselves to be frightened by this circumstance, then you have to renounce not only the uprising but the proletarian revolution in general. For in a capitalist society this revolution cannot mature without being accompanied by malicious glee on the part of the reactionaries and by hopes that they would be able to feather their nest in this way.

The class-conscious workers know perfectly well that the Black Hundreds work hand in hand with the bourgeoisie, and that a decisive victory of the workers (in which the petty bourgeoisie do not believe, which the capitalists are afraid of, which the Black Hundreds sometimes wish for out of sheer malice, convinced as they are that the Bolsheviks cannot retain power) – that this victory will completely crush the Black Hundreds, that the Bolsheviks will be able to retain power firmly and to the greatest advantage of all humanity tortured and tormented by the war.

Indeed, is there anybody in his senses who can doubt that the Rodziankos and Suvorins are acting in concert, that the roles have been distributed among them?^[10]

Has it not been proved by facts that Kerensky acts on Rodzianko’s orders, while the State Printing Press of the Russian Republic (don’t laugh!) prints the Black-Hundred speeches of reactionaries in the ‘Duma’ at the expense of the state. Has not this fact been exposed even by the lackeys from Dyelo Naroda, who serve ‘their own mannikin’? Has not the experience of all elections proved that the Cadet lists were fully supported by Novoye Vremya, which is a venal paper controlled by the ‘interests’ of the tsarist landowners?

Did we not read yesterday that commercial and industrial capitalists (non-partisan capitalists, of course; oh, non-partisan capitalists, to be sure, for the Vikhlayevs and Rakitnikovs, the Gvozdevs and Nikitins are not in coalition with the Cadets – God forbid – but with non-partisan commercial and industrial circles!) have donated the goodly sum of 300,000 roubles to the Cadets?

The whole Black-Hundred press, if we look at things from a class and not a sentimental point of view, is a branch of the firm ‘Ryabushinsky, Milyukov and co.’. Capitalists buy, on the one hand, the Milyukovs, Zaslavskys, Potresovs and so on; on the other, the Black Hundreds.

The victory of the proletariat is the only means of putting an end to this most hideous poisoning of the people by the cheap Black-Hundred venom.

Is it any wonder that the crowd, tired out and made wretched by hunger and the prolongation of the war, clutches at the Black-Hundred poison? Can one imagine a capitalist society on the eve of collapse in which the oppressed masses are not desperate? Is there any doubt that the desperation of the masses, a large part of whom are still ignorant, will express itself in the increased consumption of all sorts of poison?

Those who, in arguing about the mood of the masses, blame the masses for their own personal spinelessness, are in a hopeless position. The masses are divided into those who are consciously biding their time and those who unconsciously are ready to sink into despair; but the masses of the oppressed and the hungry are not spineless.

* * *

On the other hand, the Marxist party cannot reduce the question of an uprising to that of a military conspiracy…

Marxism is an extremely profound and many-sided doctrine. It is, therefore, no wonder that scraps of quotations from Marx – especially when the quotations are made inappropriately – can always be found among the ‘arguments’ of those who break with Marxism. Military conspiracy is Blanquism, if it is organised not by a party of a definite class, if its organisers have not analysed the political moment in general and the international situation in particular, if the party has not on its side the sympathy of the majority of the people, as proved by objective facts, if the development of revolutionary events has not brought about a practical refutation of the conciliatory illusions of the petty bourgeoisie, if the majority of the Soviet-type organs of revolutionary struggle that have been recognised as authoritative or have shown themselves to be such in practice have not been won over, if there has not matured a sentiment in the army (if in war-time) against the government that protracts the unjust war against the will of the whole people, if the slogans of the uprising (like ‘All power to the Soviets’ ‘Land to the peasants’, or ‘Immediate offer of a democratic peace to all the belligerent nations, with an immediate abrogation of all secret treaties and secret diplomacy’, etc.) have not become widely known and popular, if the advanced workers are not sure of the desperate situation of the masses and of the support of the countryside, a support proved by a serious peasant movement or by an uprising against the landowners and the government that defends the landowners, if the country’s economic situation inspires earnest hopes for a favourable solution of the crisis by peaceable and parliamentary means.

This is probably enough.

In my pamphlet entitled: Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power? (I hope it will appear in a day or two), there is a quotation from Marx which really bears upon the question of insurrection and which enumerates the features of insurrection as an ‘art’.

I am ready to wager that if we were to propose to all those chatterers in Russia who are now shouting against a military conspiracy, to open their mouths and explain the difference between the ‘art’ of an insurrection and a military conspiracy that deserves condemnation, they would either repeat what was quoted above or would cover themselves, with shame and would call forth the general ridicule of the workers. Why not try, my dear would-be Marxists! Sing us a song against ‘military conspiracy’!

Postscript

The above lines had been written when I received, at eight o’clock Tuesday evening, the morning Petrograd papers; there was an article by Mr. V Bazarov in Novaya Zhizn. Mr. V Bazarov asserts that “a handwritten manifesto was distributed in the city, in which arguments were presented in the name of two eminent Bolsheviks, against immediate action.”

If this is true, I beg the comrades, whom this letter cannot reach earlier than Wednesday noon, to publish it as quickly as possible.

I did not write it for the press; I wanted to talk to the members of our Party by letter. But we cannot remain silent when the heroes of Novaya Zhizn, who do not belong to the Party and who have been ridiculed by it a thousand times for their contemptible spinelessness (they voted for the Bolsheviks the day before yesterday, for the Mensheviks yesterday, and who almost united them at the world-famous unity congress) – when such individuals receive a manifesto from members of our Party in which they carry on propaganda against an uprising.

We must agitate also in favour of an uprising. Let the anonymous individuals come right out into the light of day, and let them bear the punishment they deserve for their shameful vacillations, even if it be only the ridicule of all class-conscious workers. I have at my disposal only one hour before I send the present letter to Petrograd, and I therefore can say only a word or two about one of the ‘methods’ of the sad heroes of the brainless Novaya Zhizn trend. Mr. V Bazarov attempts to polemise against Comrade Ryazanov, who has said, and who is a thousand times correct in saying, that “all those who create in the masses a mood of despair and indifference are preparing an uprising”.

The sad hero of a sad cause ‘rejoins’ as follows: “Have despair and indifference ever conquered?”

O contemptible fools from Novaya Zhizn! Do they know such examples of uprising in history, in which the masses of the oppressed classes were victorious in a desperate battle without having been reduced to despair by long sufferings and by an extreme sharpening of all sorts of crises, in which those masses had not been seized by indifference towards various lackey-like pre-parliaments, towards idle playing at revolution, towards the Liberdans’ reduction of the Soviets from organs of power and uprising to empty talking shops?

Or have the contemptible little fools from Novaya Zhizn perhaps discovered among the masses an indifference – to the question of bread, to the prolongation of the war, to and for the peasants?

Letter to Bolshevik Party Members

Written 18 (31) October 1917

Comrades,

I have not yet been able to obtain the Petrograd papers for Wednesday 18 (31) October. When the full text of Kamenev’s and Zinoviev’s statement in the non-Party paper Novaya Zhizn was transmitted to me by telephone, I refused to believe it. But, as it has turned out, there can be no doubt about it and I have to avail myself of this opportunity to get a letter to Party members by Thursday evening or Friday morning; for to remain silent in the face of such unheard-of strikebreaking would be a crime.

The more serious the practical problem, and the more responsible and ‘prominent’ the persons guilty of strikebreaking, the more dangerous it is, the more resolutely must the strikebreakers be kicked out, and the more unpardonable would it be to stop even to consider the past ‘services’ of the strikebreakers.

Just think of it! It has been known in Party circles that the Party has been discussing the question of an insurrection since September. Nobody has ever heard of a single letter or manifesto by either of the persons named! Now, on the eve, one might say, of the Congress of Soviets, two prominent Bolsheviks come out against the majority, and, obviously, against the Central Committee. It is not said plainly, but the harm done to the cause is all the greater, for to speak in hints is even more dangerous.

It is perfectly clear from the text of Kamenev’s and Zinoviev’s statement that they have gone against the Central Committee, for otherwise their statement would be meaningless. But they do not say what specific decision of the Central Committee they are disputing.

Why?

The reason is obvious: because it has not been published by the Central Committee.

What does this boil down to?

On a burning question of supreme importance, on the eve of the critical day of 20 October (2 November), two ‘prominent Bolsheviks’ attack an unpublished decision of the Party centre and attack it in the non-Party press and, furthermore, in a paper which on this very question is hand in glove with the bourgeoisie against the workers’ party!

This is a thousand times more despicable and a million times more harmful than all the statements Plekhanov, for example, made in the non-Party press in 1906-07, and which the Party so sharply condemned! At that time it was only a question of elections, whereas now it is a question of an insurrection for the conquest of power!

On such a question, after a decision has been taken by the centre, to dispute this unpublished decision in front of the Rodziankos and Kerenskys in a non-Party paper – can you imagine an act more treacherous, or blacklegging any worse?

I should consider it disgraceful on my part if I were to hesitate to condemn these former comrades because of my earlier close relations with them. I declare outright that I no longer consider either of them comrades and that I will fight with all my might, both in the Central Committee and at the Congress, to secure the expulsion of both of them from the Party.

A workers’ party, which the course of events is confronting more and more frequently with the need for an insurrection, is unable to accomplish that difficult task if, after their adoption, unpublished decisions of the centre are disputed in the non-Party press, and vacillation and confusion are brought into the ranks of the fighters.

Let Mr. Zinoviev and Mr. Kamenev found their own party with the dozens of perplexed people or with candidates for election to the Constituent Assembly. The workers will not join such a party, for its first slogan will be:

Members of the Central Committee who are defeated at a meeting of the Central Committee on the question of a decisive fight are permitted to resort to the non-Party press for the purpose of attacking the unpublished decisions of the Party.

Let them build themselves such a party; our workers’ Bolshevik Party will only gain from it.

When all the documents are published, the strikebreaking act of Zinoviev and Kamenev will stand out even more glaringly. Meanwhile, let the workers consider the following question:

‘Let us assume that the Executive Committee of an all-Russia trade union had decided, after a month of deliberation and by a majority of over 80 per cent, that preparations must be made for a strike, but that for the time being neither the date nor any other details should be divulged. Let us assume that, after the decision had been taken, two members, under the false pretext of a ‘dissenting opinion’, not only began to write to local groups urging a reconsideration of the decision, but also permitted their letters to be communicated to non-Party newspapers. Let us assume, finally, that they themselves attacked the decision in non-Party papers, although it had not yet been published, and began to vilify the strike in front of the capitalists.

‘We ask, would the workers hesitate to expel such blacklegs from their midst?’

* * *

As to the situation with regard to an insurrection now, when 20 October is so close at hand, I cannot judge from afar to what exact extent the cause has been damaged by the strikebreaking statement in the non-Party press. There is no doubt that very great practical damage has been done. In order to remedy the situation, it is necessary first of all to restore unity in the Bolshevik front by expelling the blacklegs.

The weakness of the ideological arguments against an insurrection will become clearer, the more we drag them into the light of day. I recently sent an article on this subject to Rabochy Put, and if the editors do not find it possible to print it, Party members will probably acquaint themselves with it in the manuscript.

There are basically two so-called ‘ideological’ arguments. First, that it is necessary to ‘wait’ for the Constituent Assembly. Let us wait, perhaps we can hold on until then – that is the whole argument. Perhaps, despite famine, despite economic chaos, despite the fact that the patience of the soldiers is exhausted, despite Rodzianko’s steps to surrender Petrograd to the Germans, despite the lockouts, perhaps we can hold on.

Perhaps and maybe – that is the whole point of the argument.

The second is noisy pessimism. Everything is fine with the bourgeoisie and Kerensky; everything is wrong with us. The capitalists have prepared everything wonderfully; everything is wrong with the workers. The ‘pessimists’ are shouting at the top of their voices about the military side of the matter, but the ‘optimists’ are silent, for to disclose certain things to Rodzianko and Kerensky is hardly pleasant to anybody but blacklegs.

* * *

Difficult times. A hard task. A grave betrayal.

Nevertheless, the task will be accomplished; the workers will consolidate their ranks, the peasant revolt and the extreme impatience of the soldiers at the front will do their work! Let us close our ranks – the proletariat must win!

N Lenin

Letter to the CC of the RSDLP(B)

Written 19 October (1 November) 1917

Dear Comrades,

No self-respecting party can tolerate strikebreaking and blacklegs in its midst. That is obvious. The more we reflect upon Zinoviev’s and Kamenev’s statement in the non-Party press, the more self-evident it becomes that their action is strikebreaking in the full sense of the term.

Kamenev’s evasion at the meeting of the Petrograd Soviet is something really despicable. He is, don’t you see, in full agreement with Trotsky. But is it so difficult to understand that in the face of the enemy, Trotsky could not have said, he had no right to say, and should not have said more than he did? Is it so difficult to understand that it is a duty to the Party which has concealed its decision from the enemy (on the necessity for an armed uprising, on the fact that the time for it is fully ripe, on the thorough preparations to be made for it, etc.), and it is this decision that makes it obligatory in public statements to fasten not only the ‘blame’, but also the initiative upon the adversary? Only a child could fail to understand that.

Kamenev’s evasion is a sheer fraud. The same must be said of Zinoviev’s evasion, at least of his letter of ‘justification’ (written, I think, to the Central Organ), which is the only document I have seen (for, as to a dissenting opinion, ‘an alleged dissenting opinion’, which has been trumpeted in the bourgeois press, I, a member of the Central Committee, have to this very day seen nothing of it). Among Zinoviev’s ‘arguments’ there is this: Lenin, he says, sent out his letters “before any decisions were adopted”, and you did not protest. That is literally what Zinoviev wrote, himself underlining the word before four times. Is it really so difficult to understand that before a decision has been taken on a strike by the centre, it is permissible to agitate for and against it; but that after a decision in favour of a strike (with the additional decision to conceal this from the enemy), to carry on agitation against the strike is strikebreaking?

Any worker will understand that. The question of insurrection has been discussed in the centre since September. That is when Zinoviev and Kamenev could and should have come out in writing, so that everybody, upon seeing their arguments, would have realised that they had completely lost their heads. To conceal one’s views from the Party for a whole month before a decision is taken, and to send out a dissenting opinion after a decision is taken – that is strikebreaking.

Zinoviev pretends not to understand this difference, he pretends not to understand that after a decision to strike has been taken by the centre, only blacklegs can carry on agitation among the lower bodies against that decision. Any worker will understand that.

And Zinoviev did agitate and attempted to defeat the centre’s decision, both at Sunday’s meeting, where he and Kamenev secured not a single vote, and in his present letter. For Zinoviev has the effrontery to assert that “the opinion of the Party has not been canvassed” and that such questions “cannot be decided by ten men”. Just think! Every member of the Central Committee knows that more than ten CC members were present at the decisive meeting, that a majority of the plenary meeting were present, that Kamenev himself declared at the meeting that “this meeting is decisive”, that it was known with absolute certainty that the majority of the absent members of the Central Committee were not in agreement with Zinoviev and Kamenev. And now, after the Central Committee has adopted a decision at a meeting which Kamenev himself admitted to be decisive, a member of the Central Committee has the audacity to write that “the opinion of the Party has not been canvassed”, and that such questions “cannot be decided by ten men”. That is strikebreaking in the full sense of the term. Between Party congresses, the Central Committee decides. The Central Committee has decided. Kamenev and Zinoviev, who did not come out in writing before the decision was taken, began to dispute the Central Committee’s decision after it had been taken.

That is strikebreaking in the full sense of the term. After a decision has been taken, any dispute is impermissible when it concerns immediate and secret preparations for a strike. Now Zinoviev has the insolence to blame us for “warning the enemy”. Is there any limit to his brazenness? Who is it that has damaged the cause, frustrated the strike by “warning the enemy”, if not those who came out in the non-Party press?

How can one come out against a “decisive” resolution of the Party in a paper which on this question is hand in glove with the entire bourgeoisie?

If that is tolerated, the Party will become impossible, the Party will be destroyed.

It is ridiculing the Party to give the name of ‘dissenting opinion’ to that which Bazarov learns about and publishes in a non-Party paper.

Kamenev’s and Zinoviev’s statement in the non-Party press was especially despicable for the additional reason that the Party is not in a position to refute their slanderous lie openly. I know of no decisions regarding the date, Kamenev writes and publishes his writings in his own name and in the name of Zinoviev. (After such a statement, Zinoviev bears full responsibility for Kamenev’s conduct and statements.)

How can the Central Committee refute this?

We cannot tell the capitalists the truth, namely, that we have decided on a strike and have decided to conceal the moment chosen for it.

We cannot refute the slanderous lie of Zinoviev and Kamenev without doing even greater damage to the cause. And the utter baseness, the real treachery of these two individuals is precisely in their having revealed the strikers’ plan to the capitalists, for, since we remain silent in the press, everybody will guess how things stand.

Kamenev and Zinoviev have betrayed to Rodzianko and Kerensky the decision of the Central Committee of their Party on insurrection and the decision to conceal from the enemy preparations for insurrection and the date appointed for it. That is a fact and no evasions can refute it. Two members of the Central Committee have by a slanderous lie betrayed the decision of the workers to the capitalists. There can and must be only one answer to that: an immediate decision of the Central Committee:

‘The Central Committee, regarding Zinoviev’s and Kamenev’s statement in the non-Party press as strikebreaking in the full sense of the term, expels both of them from the Party.’

It is not easy for me to write in this way about former close comrades. But I should regard any hesitation in this respect as a crime, for otherwise a party of revolutionaries which does not punish prominent blacklegs would perish.

The question of insurrection, even if the blacklegs have now delayed it for a long time by betraying it to Rodzianko and Kerensky, has not been removed from the agenda, it has not been removed by the Party. But how can we prepare ourselves for insurrection and lay plans for it, if we tolerate ‘prominent’ strikebreakers in our midst? The more prominent, the more dangerous they are, and the less deserving of ‘forgiveness’. On n’est trahi que par les siens, the French say. Only your own people can betray you.

The more ‘prominent’ the strikebreakers are, the more imperative it is to punish them by immediate expulsion.

That is the only way for the workers’ party to recuperate, rid itself of a dozen or so spineless intellectuals, rally the ranks of the revolutionaries, and advance to meet great and momentous difficulties hand in hand with the revolutionary workers.

We cannot publish the truth, namely, that after the decisive meeting of the Central Committee, Zinoviev and Kamenev at Sunday’s meeting had the audacity to demand a revision, that Kamenev had the effrontery to shout: “The Central Committee has collapsed, for it has done nothing for a whole week” (I could not refute that because to say what really had been done was impossible), while Zinoviev with an air of innocence proposed this resolution, which was rejected by the meeting: “No action shall be taken before consulting with the Bolsheviks who are to arrive on 20 October (2 November) for the Congress of Soviets.”

Just imagine! After the centre has taken a decision to call a strike, it is proposed at a meeting of the rank and file that it be postponed (until 20 October, when the Congress was to convene. The Congress was subsequently postponed – the Zinovievs trust the Liberdans) and be referred to a body such as the Party Rules do not provide for, that has no authority over the Central Committee, and that does not know Petrograd.

And after this Zinoviev still has the insolence to write: “This is hardly the way to strengthen the unity of the Party.”

What else can you call it but a threat to effect a split?

My answer to this threat is that I shall go the limit, I shall win freedom of speech for myself before the workers, and I shall, at whatever cost, brand the blackleg Zinoviev as a blackleg. My answer to the threat of a split is to declare war to a finish, war for the expulsion of both blacklegs from the Party.

The Executive Committee of a trade union, after a month of deliberation, decides that a strike is inevitable, that the time is ripe, but that the date is to be concealed from the employers. After that, two members of the Executive Committee appeal to the rank and file, disputing the decision, and are defeated. Thereupon these two come out in the press and with a slanderous lie betray the decision of the Executive Committee to the capitalists, thus more than half wrecking the strike, or delaying it to a less favourable time by warning the enemy.

Here we have strikebreaking in the full sense of the term. And that is why I demand the expulsion of both the blacklegs, reserving for myself the right (in view of their threat of a split) to publish everything when publication becomes possible.

Letter to CC Members

Written 24 October (6 November) 1917

Comrades,

I am writing these lines on the evening of the 24th. The situation is critical in the extreme. In fact it is now absolutely clear that to delay the uprising would be fatal.

With all my might I urge comrades to realise that everything now hangs by a thread; that we are confronted by problems which are not to be solved by conferences or congresses (even congresses of Soviets), but exclusively by peoples, by the masses, by the struggle of the armed people.

The bourgeois onslaught of the Kornilovites and the removal of Verkhovsky show that we must not wait.^[11] We must at all costs, this very evening, this very night, arrest the government, having first disarmed the officer cadets (defeating them, if they resist) and so on.

We must not wait! We may lose everything!

The value of the immediate seizure of power will be the defence of the people (not of the congress, but of the people, the army and the peasants in the first place) from the Kornilovite government, which has driven out Verkhovsky and has hatched a second Kornilov plot.

Who must take power?

That is not important at present. Let the Revolutionary Military Committee^[12] do it, or ‘some other institution’ which will declare that it will relinquish power only to the true representatives of the interests of the people, the interests of the army (the immediate proposal of peace), the interests of the peasants (the land to be taken immediately and private property abolished), the interests of the starving.

All districts, all regiments, all forces must be mobilised at once and must immediately send their delegations to the Revolutionary Military Committee and to the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks with the insistent demand that under no circumstances should power be left in the hands of Kerensky and co. until the 25th – not under any circumstances; the matter must be decided without fail this very evening, or this very night.

History will not forgive revolutionaries for procrastinating when they could be victorious today (and they certainly will be victorious today), while they risk losing much tomorrow, in fact, they risk losing everything.

If we seize power today, we seize it not in opposition to the Soviets but on their behalf.

The seizure of power is the business of the uprising; its political purpose will become clear after the seizure.

It would be a disaster, or a sheer formality, to await the wavering vote of 25 October (7 November). The people have the right and are in duty bound to decide such questions not by a vote, but by force; in critical moments of revolution, the people have the right and are in duty bound to give directions to their representatives, even their best representatives, and not to wait for them.

This is proved by the history of all revolutions; and it would be an infinite crime on the part of the revolutionaries were they to let the chance slip, knowing that the salvation of the revolution, the offer of peace, the salvation of Petrograd, salvation from famine, the transfer of the land to the peasants depend upon them.

The government is tottering. It must be given the death-blow at all costs.

To delay action is fatal.

To the Citizens of Russia!

Written 25 October (7 November) 1917

Editor’s note:

On the night of the 24th, the insurrection Lenin had been calling for since the July Days began. Leon Trotsky, as leader of the Revolutionary Military Committee, spent the entire night co-ordinating the movement of battalions of workers from the Smolny Institute. One by one, the telephone interchange, the railway terminals, and finally, during the next day, the Winter Palace itself – all the important points in the city were handed over to the workers and soldiers with little resistance.

That morning, a few hours before the Winter Palace was seized, Lenin penned this statement on behalf of the Revolutionary Military Committee.

* * *

The Provisional Government has been deposed. State power has passed into the hands of the organ of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies – the Revolutionary Military Committee, which heads the Petrograd proletariat and the garrison.

The cause for which the people have fought, namely, the immediate offer of a democratic peace, the abolition of landed proprietorship, workers’ control over production and the establishment of Soviet power – this cause has been secured.

Long live the revolution of workers, soldiers and peasants!

Revolutionary Military Committee of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies,

10 am, 25 October (7 November) 1917

Meeting of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies

25 October (7 November) 1917

Editor’s note:

The meeting opened at 2:35 pm on 25 October (7 November) and heard a report of the Revolutionary Military Committee on the overthrow of the Provisional Government and the triumph of the revolution. Lenin gave a report on the tasks facing Soviet power. The resolution motioned by Lenin was adopted by an overwhelming majority.

* * *

Report on the Tasks of the Soviet Power

Newspaper Report

Comrades, the workers’ and peasants’ revolution, about the necessity of which the Bolsheviks have always spoken, has been accomplished.

What is the significance of this workers’ and peasants’ revolution? Its significance is, first of all, that we shall have a Soviet government, our own organ of power, in which the bourgeoisie will have no share whatsoever. The oppressed masses will themselves create a power. The old state apparatus will be shattered to its foundations and a new administrative apparatus set up in the form of the Soviet organisations.

From now on, a new phase in the history of Russia begins, and this, the third Russian revolution, should in the end lead to the victory of socialism.

One of our urgent tasks is to put an immediate end to the war. It is clear to everybody that in order to end this war, which is closely bound up with the present capitalist system, capital itself must be fought.

We shall be helped in this by the world working-class movement, which is already beginning to develop in Italy, Britain and Germany.

The proposal we make to international democracy for a just and immediate peace will everywhere awaken an ardent response among the international proletarian masses. All the secret treaties must be immediately published in order to strengthen the confidence of the proletariat.^[13]

Within Russia a huge section of the peasantry have said that they have played long enough with the capitalists, and will now march with the workers. A single decree putting an end to landed proprietorship will win us the confidence of the peasants. The peasants will understand that the salvation of the peasantry lies only in an alliance with the workers. We shall institute genuine workers’ control over production.

We have now learned to make a concerted effort. The revolution that has just been accomplished is evidence of this. We possess the strength of mass organisation, which will overcome everything and lead the proletariat to the world revolution.

We must now set about building a proletarian socialist state in Russia.

Long live the world socialist revolution! (Stormy applause.)

* * *

Resolution

The Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies hails the victorious revolution of the proletariat and the garrison of Petrograd. The Soviet particularly emphasises the solidarity, organisation, discipline and complete unanimity displayed by the masses in this unusually bloodless and unusually successful uprising.

It is the unshakable conviction of the Soviet that the workers’ and peasants’ government which will be created by the revolution, as a Soviet government, and which will ensure the urban proletariat the support of the whole mass of the poor peasantry, will firmly advance towards socialism, the only means of saving the country from the untold miseries and horrors of war.

The new workers’ and peasants’ government will immediately propose a just and democratic peace to all belligerent nations.

It will immediately abolish landed proprietorship and hand over the land to the peasants. It will institute workers’ control over the production and distribution of goods and establish national control over the banks, at the same time transforming them into a single state enterprise.

The Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies calls on all workers and all peasants to support the workers’ and peasants’ revolution devotedly and with all their energy. The Soviet expresses the conviction that the urban workers, in alliance with the poor peasants, will display strict, comradely discipline and establish the strictest revolutionary order, which is essential for the victory of socialism.

The Soviet is convinced that the proletariat of the West European countries will help us to achieve a complete and lasting victory for the cause of socialism.

Endnotes

[1] “Audacity, audacity, more audacity!”

Engels, Friedrich (in close collaboration with Marx and originally published under Marx’s name), Revolution and Counter-revolution in Germany, MECW, Vol. 11, pp. 85-6.

[2] Reference to the words of Molchalin, a character from Alexander Griboyedov’s comedy Wit Works Woe, who became a symbol of sycophancy and toadyism.

[3] A quotation from Nikolai Sukhanov’s article ‘Another Thunderbolt’ in Novaya Zhizn (New Life). From August 1917, the Smolny Institute was the headquarters of the Bolshevik groups of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee, and the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. The Revolutionary Military Committee also had its premises there from October.

[4] Engels, Friedrich (in close collaboration with Marx and originally published under Marx’s name), Revolution and Counter-revolution in Germany, MECW, Vol. 11, p. 85.

[5] Ibid., p. 86.

[6] The reference is to Yakov Sverdlov’s report to the Central Committee on 10 (23) October 1917, on the third item of the agenda: ‘Minsk and the Northern Front’. He said that there was a technical possibility of staging an armed uprising in Minsk, and that Minsk had offered to send a revolutionary corps to help Petrograd.

[7] A reference to the enlarged Central Committee meeting on 16 (29) October 1917. Lenin was in fact at the meeting, but for security reasons he has here claimed otherwise and has given an incorrect date of the meeting.

[8] The peasant movement in Tambov Gubernia in September 1917 assumed great proportions: the peasants seized tracts of landed estates, destroyed and burned landowners’ mansions and confiscated grain stocks. The commanding officer of the Moscow Military District sent military units to Tambov Gubernia to crush the peasant uprising, and imposed martial law, but the peasants’ revolutionary struggle for land continued to grow in scope.

[9] Anton Planson was a Popular Socialist, and member of the Central Executive Committee (First Convocation). A leader of Vikzhel – the All-Russia Executive Committee of the Railwaymen’s Trade Union, an organisation run by the compromisers.

[10] Mikhail Rodzianko was a landowner and a leading Octobrist, who supported Kornilov’s revolt. A Suvorin Jr. published the reactionary Black Hundred newspaper Malenkaya Gazeta, which, speculating on the people’s sympathy for socialism, from May 1917 carried the subheading: “The paper of the non-party socialists.”

[11] Aleksandr Verkhovsky was at this time the Minister of War and Major General of the General Staff. He was temporarily dismissed on 21 October (3 November) for advocating concluding peace with Germany.

[12] The Revolutionary Military Committee was established by the Petrograd Soviet in October 1917 on the instigation of Trotsky, who was its President. It was renamed from the ‘Committee of Revolutionary Defence’ and formed the General Staff of the October Insurrection.

[13] The reference is to secret diplomatic documents, such as the secret treaties concluded by the tsarist and later by the bourgeois Provisional Government of Russia with the governments of Britain, France, Germany, Japan and other imperialist powers. From 10 (23) November 1917, these documents were published in Pravda and Izvestia, and in December were put out in a series entitled Collection of Secret Documents from the Archives of the Former Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Seven volumes were published from December 1917 to February 1918. By publishing the secret treaties, the Soviet Government’s revolutionary propaganda struck a great blow for a general democratic peace, without annexations and indemnities, and exposed the imperialist nature of the First World War.