V. I. Lenin

I am writing these lines on October 8 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 October
10. 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 ".

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 of 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 ". [1]

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
"Vendee 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:

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 ; 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.