V. I.

Lenin

We have received the following telegram :

“ Yeniseisk . The Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’
Deputies has taken cognisance of Minister Lvov’s telegram to the
appointed Commissar of Yeniseisk Gubornia, Krutovsky, sent to
Yeniseisk for guidance.

“ We protest against the intention to reintroduce a bureaucracy. We declare, first, that we will not stand for being
ruled by appointed officials. Second, there can be no return for
officials who have been driven out by the peasants. Third, we
recognise only such local bodies as have been set up in
Yeniseisk Uyezd by the people themselves. Fourth, appointed
officials can rule here only over our dead bodies.

“Yeniseisk Soviet of Deputies”

And so the Provisional Government appoints “commissars” from
Petrograd to “direct” the activities of the Yeniseisk Soviet of
Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, or the Yeniseisk organ of
self-government. What is more, this appointment is made in such
a form as to evoke the protest of the Yeniseisk Soviet against
“the intention to reintroduce a bureaucracy”.

Moreover, the Yeniseisk Soviet declares that “appointed
officials can rule here only over our dead bodies”. The
behaviour of the Provisional Government has brought this remote
uyezd in Siberia, as represented by its popularly elected governing body, to a point when a direct threat of
armed resistance is made against the Provisional
Government.

The Provisional Government bosses have certainly asked for it!

Yet they will go on thundering denunciations against those
mischievous people who “preach” “civil war”!

What was the idea of appointing “commissars” from Petrograd or
from any other centre to “direct” the activities of the
elected local body? Are we to believe that a man from outside is more familiar with local needs, more capable of
“directing” the local population? What cause did the people of
Yeniseisk give for such an absurd measure? Even if the people of Yeniseisk did run counter to the decisions of a
majority of citizens in other localities, would it not have been
better to try, for a start, to obtain some information instead of giving occasion for talk about “bureaucracy”, and
provoking legitimate dissatisfaction and resentment on the part
of the local population?

To all these questions there can be only one answer. The
representatives of the landowners and capitalists sitting in the
Provisional Government are determined to preserve the old tsarist machinery of government: officials
“appointed” from above. That is what all bourgeois parliamentary
republics in the world have nearly always been doing, except for
brief periods of revolution in some countries. That is what was
done to prepare the ground for the return from a republic to a monarchy, for a return to the Napoleons, to the
military dictators. And that is what the Cadets are bent on
doing when they copy those unhappy examples.

This is a very serious matter. We should not deceive ourselves. By such measures the Provisional Government, whether
it means to or not, is preparing the ground for a restoration of the monarchy in Russia.

The entire responsibility for any possible—and to a certain
extent inevitable—attempt to restore the monarchy in Russia
rests with the Provisional Government, which is undertaking such
counter-revolutionary measures. Officials “appointed” from above
to “direct” the local population have always been a sure step
towards the restoration of the monarchy, in the same way as the
standing army and the police.

The Yeniseisk Soviet is a thousand times right, both practically
and in principle. The return of local officials who have been
driven out by the peasants should not be allowed. The introduction of “appointed” officials should not be
tolerated. Only such bodies in the local areas should be
recognised as have been set up by the people themselves.

The idea of “direction” by officials “appointed” from above is
essentially false and undemocratic, it is Caesarism, Blanquist
adventurism. Engels was quite right when, in criticising in 1891 the draft programme of the German
Social-Democrats who were badly Infected with bureaucratism, he
pressed the demand for no supervision from above over local
self-government. Engels was right when he quoted the experience
of France, which, governed between 1792 and 1798 by local
elective bodies without any supervision from above, did not
“fall apart”, did not “disintegrate”, but, on the contrary,
gained strength, became democratically consolidated and
organised. [1]

Foolish bureaucratic prejudices, tsarist red-tapism, reactionary
professorial ideas as to the indispensability of bureaucratism,
the counter-revolutionary tendencies and attempts of the
landowners and capitalists—this is the soil which nourishes
such measures of the Provisional Government as we have been
discussing.

The healthy democratic feeling of the workers and peasants,
roused by the insulting attempt of the Provisional Government to
“appoint” officials from above to “direct” the activities of the
adult local population, the overwhelming majority, who had
elected their own representatives—this is what the
Yeniseisk Soviet has revealed.

What the people need is a really democratic, workers’ and
peasants’ republic, whose authorities have been elected by the
people and are displaceable by the people any time they may wish
it. And it is for such a republic that the workers and peasants should fight, resisting all attempts of the
Provisional Government to restore the monarchist, tsarist
methods and machinery of government.

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Notes:
[1]
See Engels, “Zur Kritik des sozialdemokratischen
Programmentwurfes 1891”, Neue Zeit , Jg. 20, I. Bd., Stuttgart,
1902, S. 12.