1. The entire half-year of Bolshevik work in the revolution, all the criticism directed by them against the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries for "conciliationism" and for these parties' transformation of the Soviets into talk-shops, demand from the Bolsheviks an honest, Marxistically rigorous observance of this slogan; unfortunately, waverings are evident in the upper ranks of the party, something like a "fear" of struggle for power, a tendency to replace this struggle with resolutions, protests, and congresses.

2. The entire experience of both revolutions, both 1905 and 1917, as well as all the decisions of the Bolshevik party, all its political declarations over many years, amount to this: that a Soviet of workers' and soldiers' deputies is real only as an organ of insurrection, only as an organ of revolutionary power. Outside of this task, Soviets are an empty toy, inevitably leading to the apathy, indifference, and disillusionment of the masses, to whom it is entirely legitimate that endless repetitions of resolutions and protests have become repugnant.

3. Particularly now, when a peasant uprising is spreading throughout the country, suppressed by Kerensky with the aid of hand-picked troops, when even military measures in the countryside plainly threaten to falsify and rig the elections to the Constituent Assembly, when in Germany it has come to an uprising in the fleet—now the refusal of the Bolsheviks to transform the Soviets into an organ of insurrection would be a betrayal both of the peasants and of the cause of the international socialist revolution.

4. The task of the Soviets taking power is the task of a successful insurrection. Therefore, all the best forces of the party must be directed to the factories and barracks in order to explain to the masses their task and in order, correctly taking account of their mood, to choose the correct moment for the overthrow of Kerensky's government.

To tie this task necessarily to a Congress of Soviets, to subordinate it to this congress—means to play at insurrection, fixing its date in advance, facilitating the preparation of troops by the government, confusing the masses with the illusion that the question, which can only be solved by the rising proletariat through its own strength, can be decided by a "resolution" of a Congress of Soviets.

5. One must struggle against constitutional illusions and hopes placed in a Congress of Soviets, abandon the preconceived notion of necessarily "waiting for" it, concentrate all forces on explaining to the masses the inevitability of insurrection and on its preparation. Having in their hands both capital Soviets and refusing to undertake this task, reconciling themselves with the convocation of the Constituent Assembly (that is, with the rigging of the Constituent Assembly) by Kerensky's government, the Bolsheviks would reduce their propaganda of the slogan "power to the Soviets" to an empty phrase and would bring political disgrace upon themselves as a party of the revolutionary proletariat.

6. This is especially true now, when the elections in Moscow gave 49½ percent of the votes to the Bolsheviks and when the Bolsheviks, with the support of the Left Social Revolutionaries—a support long already realized in practice—have an undoubted majority in the country.

Not all of the theses on "power to the Soviets" need to be published, but if the party refuses discussion and clarification to the masses of such urgent and most important questions, for the discussion of which there is no full freedom of the press, or which cannot be raised before the enemy, then this is equivalent to a loss of the party's connection with the vanguard of the proletariat.