The political situation is becoming clarified with astounding rapidity.

A few months ago one could not say with certainty whether the State Duma would convene and what it would turn out to be. A few weeks ago it was not yet evident, at least for the broad masses of the people, on what arena and in what form the next stage of the struggle for freedom would unfold. The simple-hearted peasant believed in the Duma, who could not permit himself to think that the fervent petitions and declarations of all the people's delegations would remain without consequences; the bourgeois liberal believed in the Duma, attempting to induce the government to make concessions "peacefully." It would be no exaggeration to say that in a matter of days this faith crumbles before our eyes—the faith of the popular masses, of people whose every interest nourished and strengthened this faith. They believed because they wished to believe, they believed because the immediate political future was still unclear, they believed because political twilight left room for all manner of ambiguities, all manner of wavering, all manner of despondency.

Now everything again becomes clear. The foresight of people who seemed like some sort of eccentric pessimists during the Duma elections or in the first days of the Duma is being vindicated. The Duma has been in session five or six weeks, and already people who have striven with all their souls to develop and elaborate activity in the Duma and around the Duma are acknowledging openly and honestly a great fact: "How the people have grown weary of waiting."

He did not grow weary of waiting for decades, but he has grown weary now in a matter of weeks; he did not grow weary of waiting while he slept or vegetated, while in the external circumstances of his life there were no circumstances immediately turning his existence, his mood, his consciousness, his will upside down; he has grown weary of waiting in a matter of weeks, when there awakened within him with incredible rapidity a thirst for action, and the most ardent, sympathetic words, even from so lofty a tribune as the Duma, began to seem dull, tedious, uninteresting; the workers have grown weary of waiting—a wave of strikes has been rising higher and higher; the peasants have grown weary of waiting, no persecutions and torments, surpassing the horrors of medieval inquisition, will stop their struggle for land, for freedom; the sailors in Kronstadt and Sevastopol have grown weary of waiting, the infantrymen in Kursk, Poltava, Tula, Moscow, the guardsmen in Krasnoe Selo, even the Cossacks have grown weary of waiting. All now see where and how the new great struggle is igniting, all understand its inevitability, all feel the paramount necessity of endurance, steadfastness, preparation, simultaneity and coordination of the actions of the proletariat and peasantry. They feel that for this it is necessary to wait... We stand on the eve of the greatest historical events, we stand on the eve of the second great stage of the Russian revolution. Social-Democracy, the conscious exponent of the class struggle of the proletariat, will stand at its post as one man, and will fulfill its duty to the end.

"Rabotnік" No. 1, June 8, 1906. Signed: N. Lenin

Reproduced from the text of the newspaper "Rabotnik"