V. I.

Lenin

Resolution of the Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P. (Bolsheviks) of April 20 (May 3), 1917 on the Crisis Caused by the Provisional Government’s Note of April 18 (May 1), 1917

The Provisional Government’s Note has fully demonstrated the
correctness of the position which our Party adopted in the
resolution of the Petrograd City Conference, namely, (1) that the Provisional Governmentis an out-and-out imperialist
government bound hand and foot by Anglo-French and Russian
capital; (2) that all the promises it has made or may make (as to
“ascertaining the will of the people for peace”, etc.) are
nothing but deceit; (3) that the Provisional Government, irrespective of its
composition, cannot renounce annexations, because in this war, and especially at this moment, the capitalist
class is tied by banking capital; (4) that the policy of the petty bourgeoisie pursued by the
Narodniks, Mensheviks and most of the leaders of the present
Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, a policy of encouraging false
hopes as to the possibility of “improving” the capitalists
(i.e., the Provisional Government) by “corrective measures”,
has once again been exposed by this Note.

In view of this, the Central Committee finds:

1) that any change in the composition of the present government
(the resignation of Milyukov, the recall of Kerensky, etc.)
would only be imitating the worst methods of bourgeois parliamentary republicanism, which substitutes for
the struggle of classes the rivalry of cliques and the reshuffling of individuals;

2) that the only means of salvation for the mass of the
petty-bourgeois population, which vacillates between the
capitalists and the working class, is to unreservedly join
the revolutionary proletariat, which is the only class capable of really breaking the fetters of finance capital and
the policy of annexation. Only by taking—with the support of the majority of the people—the whole power
of state into its own hands, will the revolutionary proletariat, together with the revolutionary soldiers,
create, in the shape of the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’
Deputies, a government which will be trusted by the workers
of all countries and which will alone be capable of quickly
putting an end to the war by means of a truly democratic
peace.

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