V. I.

Lenin

The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution (Draft Platform for the Proletarian Party)

The moment of history through which Russia is now passing is
marked by the following main characteristics:

THE CLASS CHARACTER OF THE REVOLUTLON THAT HAS TAKEN PLACE

1. The old tsarist power, which represented only a handful of
feudalist landowners who commanded the entire state machinery
(the army, the police, and the bureaucracy), has been overthrown and removed, but not completely destroyed. The
monarchy has not been formally abolished; the Romanov gang
continues to hatch monarchist intrigues. The vast landed
possessions of the feudalist squirearchy have not been abolished.

2. State power in Russia has passed into the hands of a new
class , namely, the bourgeoisie and landowners who had become bourgeois. To this extent the
bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia is completed.

Having come to power, the bourgeoisie has formed a bloc (an
alliance) with the overt monarchists, who are notorious for
their exceptionally ardent support of Nicholas the Bloody and
Stolypin the Hangman in 1906-14 (Guchkov and other politicians
to the right of the
Cadets [1] ).
The new bourgeois government of Lvov and Co. has attempted and
has begun to negotiate with the Romanovs for the restoration of
the monarchy in Russia. Behind a screen of revolutionary
phrases, this government is appointing partisans of the old
regime to key positions. It is striving to reform the whole
machinery of state (the army, the police, and the bureaucracy)
as little as possible, and has turned it over to the bourgeoisie. The new government has already begun to hinder in
every way the revolutionary initiative of mass action and the
seizure of power by the people from below , which is the
sole guarantee of the real success of the revolution.

Up to now this government has not even fixed a date for the
convocation of the Constituent Assembly. It is not laying a
finger on the landed estates, which form the material foundation
of feudal tsarism. This government does not even contemplate
starting an investigation into, and making public, the activities of the monopolist financial organisations, the big
banks, the syndicates and cartels of the capitalists, etc., or
instituting control over them.

The key positions, the decisive ministerial posts in the new
government (the Ministry of the Interior and the War Ministry,
i.e., the command over the army, the police, the bureaucracy –
the entire apparatus for oppressing the people) are held by
outright monarchists and supporters of the system of big landed
estates. The Cadets, those day-old republicans, republicans
against their own will, have been assigned minor posts, having
no direct relation to the command over the people or to
the apparatus of state power. A. Kerensky, a
Trudovik [2] and “would-be socialist”, has no function whatsoever, except to
lull the vigilance and attention of the people with sonorous
phrases.

For all these reasons, the new bourgeois government does not
deserve the confidence of the proletariat even in the sphere of
internal policy, and no support of this government by the
proletariat is admissible.