V. I. Lenin

Report on the Results of the Seventh (April) All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P.(B.) at a Meeting of the Petrograd Organisation

May 8 (21), 1917 {1}

Comrade Lenin begins by saying that the conference met at
an extraordinary time: there is now a revolution in Russia and an
unprecedented war all over the world.

Consequently,if we are to understand the decisions of our conference
we must first of all understand the kind of war we are waging and who began
it, what kind of revolution we have carried out and the kind of revolution
that lies ahead of us.

Thewar was not started by the workers and peasants:
neither the Russian, the German, the French, the Italian the Belgian, nor
the British workers and peasants started this war. The war was started and
is being continued by the capitalists of the world: the British capitalists
and their friends, the French, the Russian and the Italian capitalists,
against the German capitalists and their friends, the Austrian capitalists.

Whatis this war being fought for?

Isit being fought for the emancipation or for the interests of the
workers and peasants? No, it is not.

Thepurpose of the war is plunder and a division of foreign
lands—that is what makes the capitalists shout about the war to a
victorious end.

Tsar Nicholas, as big a brigand as Wilhelm, concluded secret predatory
treaties with the British and French capitalists; these treaties are not
being published as otherwise the whole people would realise the fraud, and
the war would quickly be over. That is why our resolution on the war flatly
calls this war a predatory imperialist war.

How,then, can an end be put to this world-wide slaughter? Can it be
ended by someone pulling out of it?

No,it cannot. It cannot because the war is being fought not by two
states but by many, and because the capitalists can end the war only for a
time in order to prepare for a new one. That is the kind of peace no worker
or peasant wants, whoever he may be, a German, a Frenchman or a Russian.

Who,then, can end the war?

Thewar can be ended only by the workers and peasants, not of Russia
alone, but of the whole world. The workers and peasants of the world have
the same interests: struggle against the capitalists and the
landowners. That is why, only by uniting, the workers and peasants of the
world can put an end to this war. That is why we Bolsheviks are against a
separate peace, i.e., against a peace only between Russia and Germany. A
separate peace is a stupidity, because it fails to settle the basic issue,
the struggle against the capitalists and the landowners.

How,then, are the workers and peasants of the whole world to unite?
The war is in their way.

The Russian revolution has toppled the autocracy and has given the
Russian people unprecedented freedom, which is unmatched among any people
of the world. But has it settled the basic question of Russian life, the
question of land? No, because the land is still in the hands of the land
owners. Why is that so? Because the people who overthrew the tsar handed
over power not only into the hands of their elected representatives—peasants and workers, the Soviets of Workers’ and
Soldiers’ Deputies, but also into the hands of the Provisional Government.

The Provisional Government, let us note, consists of capitalists,
landowners and those who sincerely or hypocritically say that Russia can be
saved only hand in hand with the landowners.

Butthe landowners refuse to give land to the peasants, the capitalists
refuse to give up their profits from the war and the plunder of foreign
lands.

Thatis why we Bolsheviks do not support the Provisional Government,
and do not advise socialists to take ministerial office.

Socialistministers can do no more than lend their names to cover up
plunder and conquest. And they are already doing so. They have entered the
government and have joined the capitalists in saying: this war is not only
a defensive, but also an offensive one, and the peasants will not get their
land now, but after the convocation of the Constituent Assembly.

Thatis why we are against the Provisional Government and recognise
only our own government: the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’
Deputies. There is no better government, the people have not yet created
one, and you can’t invent one.

Why,in that case, has this government of ours decided to give support
to the Provisional Government consisting of capitalists, landowners and
socialists, who do not want to give land to the people now and preach an
offensive? Because we now have in the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’
Deputies a majority of peasant-soldiers who do not understand what each of
the parties wants in practice .

Hence,our task is patiently to explain to the workers and peasants
that everything—the end of the war, land for the peasants, and real
struggle against the capitalists, not in words, but in deeds—will be
secured only when the whole people comes to realise not from books, but
from its own experience that only full power for the workers and peasants,
only the power of the Soviets of Workers’, Peasants’ and Soldiers’ Deputies
can help to start a resolute struggle for peace, for land and for
socialism.

Youcannot disregard the people. Only dreamers and plotters believed
that a minority could impose their will on a majority. That was what the
French revolutionary Blanqui thought, and he was wrong. When the majority
of the people refuse, because they do not yet understand, to take power
into their own hands, the minority, however revolutionary and clever,
cannot impose their desire on the majority of the people.

Fromthis flow our actions.

We Bolsheviks must patiently and perseveringly explain our views to the
workers and peasants. Each of us must forget our old view of our work,
each, without waiting for the arrival of an agitator, a propagandist, a
more knowledgeable comrade who will explain everything—each of us must
become all in one: agitator, propagandist and Party organiser.

Thatis the only way we can get the people to understand our doctrine,
to think over their experience and really take power into their own hands.

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Notes:
{1}
This is a short record of Lenin’s report about the results of the
Seventh (April) All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P.(B.) at a city
meeting of the Petrograd Party organisation held at the Naval Cadet Corps
building and attended by 5,000–6,000 Party members. It was made by
V. I. Nevsky and was to be published in the papers, but was not. The report
was first published in 1927 in the first book of Zapiski Instituta Lenina (Transactions of the Lenin Institute).

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