A Mote in the Eye¶
Core Argument¶
In a series of articles written during the turbulent spring of 1917, Lenin dissects the political hypocrisy and strategic retreats of the Russian Revolution. He begins by turning the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik ministers’ own accusations against them. When the newspaper Dyelo Naroda criticised Allied ministers for a ‘sleight of hand’ regarding the ‘liberation of territories’, citing Ireland and Algeria, Lenin seizes the logic: annexation applies not only to wartime seizures but to older colonial conquests. He demands to know why Kerensky, Chernov, Tsereteli and Skobelev do not raise the question of ‘Russian Ireland and Russian Algeria’—Turkestan, Armenia, Ukraine, Finland—before their own bourgeois government. The defence that Russia is undergoing a revolution is dismissed; the revolution has merely brought the bourgeoisie to power with ‘tamed socialist’ ministers, as in France and Britain.
Lenin contrasts the Jacobins of 1793, who fought monarchs and landowners, with the twentieth-century revolutionary class of workers and semi-proletarians. The latter should proclaim as enemies of the people the capitalists profiting from the imperialist war, arrest financial magnates, expose their frauds, and place banks and syndicates under workers’ control. The formation of the coalition government on 6 May 1917 is characterised not as a withdrawal of the bourgeoisie from government, but as a withdrawal of the Menshevik and Narodnik leaders from the revolution. This is a classic bourgeois manoeuvre, perfected in France, to make near-socialist ministers harmless appendages who shield the bourgeois government and implement its counter-revolutionary policies—continuing the imperialist war, preserving landed estates, and safeguarding capitalist war profits—while using socialist phrases to influence the Soviets.
When the Bolsheviks called a peaceful demonstration for 10 June, the Congress of Soviets banned it. Tsereteli declared there were no counter-revolutionaries except the Bolsheviks. The proletariat must respond with maximum calm and restraint, giving no pretext for attack. The imperialists, through Tsereteli and Chernov, are trying to destroy the workers’ party with the charge of conspiracy. The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, despite renouncing annexations, are actively cooperating with Russian and foreign imperialism, putting the army at the disposal of the Allies and secret treaties. They have placed the people’s fate in the hands of the counter-revolutionary Cadets, deserting the revolution on power, land, and national questions. The 18 June demonstration revealed that the vanguard of workers and soldiers overwhelmingly supports Bolshevik slogans: ‘All power to the Soviets’, ‘Down with the ten capitalist Ministers’, and rejection of secret treaties. The petty-bourgeois masses vacillate between bourgeoisie and proletariat; the SRs and Mensheviks have induced them to submit to the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie. This phase of petty-bourgeois illusions must be ended. The task is to help the masses learn from this experience, leading to the political downfall of these parties and the transfer of power to the revolutionary proletariat. Only the revolutionary proletariat can prevent disaster.