V. I.

Lenin

In a farewell talk to members of the Committee of Journalists
under the Provisional Government, Prince G. Y. Lvov, former head
of the Provisional Government, made some valuable admissions for
which the workers will certainly be grateful.

“ What strengthens my optimism above all else,” Lvov said. “are the events of the past few days inside the
country. I am convinced that our ’deep breach’ in the Lenin
front is incomparably more significant for Russia than the
German breach in our South-Western Front.”

How can the workers not be grateful to the prince for this sober
appraisal of the class struggle? They will be more than
grateful, they will take a lesson from Lvov.

What an endless flow of fine words and infinite hypocrisy all
the bourgeois people and landowners, as well as the
Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks trailing after them,
pour out while orating against “civil war”! But look at Prince Lvov’s valuable admission and you will see that
he very calmly appraises Russia’s internal situation from the
point of view of civil war. What the paltry truth of the
prince’s admissions amounts to is that the bourgeoisie, which
head the counter-revolution, have made a deep breach in the
revolutionary workers’ front. Two enemies, two hostile camps,
and one has made a breach in the front of the other—this
is how Prince Lvov sums up Russia’s internal situation. Let us,
then, give Prince Lvov our heartfelt thanks for his frankness!
After all, he is a thousand times more correct than those
sentimental Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik philistines
who imagine that the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and
the proletariat, which inevitably becomes exceedingly aggravated
during a revolution, is likely to disappear because of their curses and magic spells!

Two enemies, two hostile camps, and one has made a breach in the
front of the other—this is Prince Lvov’s correct philosophy of history. He is right in practically discounting
the third camp, the petty bourgeoisie, the
Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. This third camp
appears to be big, but, in fact, it cannot decide anything
independently. That is clear to the sober-minded prince, just as
it is clear to every Marxist who understands the economic
position of the petty bourgeoisie, and as it is clear, lastly,
to anyone who thinks about the lessons of the revolution’s
history, which have always revealed the impotence of the
petty-bourgeois parties whenever the struggle between the
bourgeoisie and the proletariat became acute.

Even in war-time, the internal class struggle is far more
Important than the struggle against the foreign enemy. What
savage abuse the big and petty bourgeoisie have hurled at the
Bolsheviks for recognising this truth! What efforts to deny it
have been made by the numerous lovers of alluring words about
“unity”, “revolutionary democracy”, and so on, and so forth!

But when a serious and decisive moment came, Prince Lvov at once
fully admitted this truth, openly declaring that a “victory” over the class enemy at home was more
important than the position in the struggle against the foreign
enemy. An incontestable truth. A useful truth. The workers will
be very grateful to Prince Lvov for admitting it, for reminding
them of it, for spreading it around. And to express their
gratitude to the prince, the workers will use their Party to see
that the greatest number of working and exploited people
understand and assimilate this truth as well as possible. Nothing is more useful to the working class in the
struggle for emancipation than this truth.

What is this “breach” in the civil war front which
Prince Lvov is so triumphant about? This question must be dealt
with very carefully if the workers are to learn well from Lvov.

The “breach in the front” of the internal war on this occasion came, firstly, from the fact that the bourgeoisie
had poured oceans of filth and slander on their class enemies,
the Bolsheviks, and had shown exceptional tenacity in this
really infamous and vile business of slandering their political
opponents. It was the “ideological preparation”, if we may call it that, for the “breach in the front of the
class struggle”.

Secondly, the material and really essential “breach” came from the arrest and outlawing of people of hostile
political trends, from the murder of some of them in the street
without trial (Voinov was murdered on July 6 for carrying
publications out of the Pravda printers’), from the closing down of their newspapers and the disarming of the
workers and revolutionary soldiers.

This is what the “breach in the front of the war against
the class enemy” means. Let the workers think this over
well so as to be able to apply it to the bourgeoisie when the
time is ripe.

The proletariat will never resort to slander. They will close
down the bourgeoisie’s newspapers after openly declaring by law,
by government decree, that the capitalists and their defenders
are enemies of the people. The bourgeoisie, in the shape of our
enemy, the government, and the petty bourgeoisie, in the shape
of the Soviets, are afraid to say a single open and frank word
about the ban on Pravda , about the reason for closing it down. The proletariat will tell the truth instead of
resorting to slander. They will tell the peasants and everyone
else the truth about the bourgeois newspapers and why they must
be closed down.

Unlike the petty-bourgeois—Socialist-Revolutionary and
Menshevik—windbags, the proletariat will know very well
what is actually meant by a “breach in the front” of the class struggle and by making the enemy, the exploiters,
harmless. Prince Lvov has helped the workers realise this
truth. Thank you, Prince Lvov.

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