V. I.

Lenin

Our Party is going to the polls with its own lists of candidates. According to preliminary reports received by the
Secretariat of the Central Committee these lists have been made
up without any blocs in 4 out of 12 districts (Moskovsky,
Rozhdestvenskoye, Kolpino, and Porokhovo districts). In all the
other districts we are forming blocs only with the internationalists, specifically, in 6 districts (Vtoroi
Gorodskoi, Narvsky, Petrogradkaya Storona, Moskovsky, Pervy
Goredskoi and Vasilyevsky Ostrov districts) with the “Inter-District” Organisation [1] (who, as we know, have most emphatically
condemned the Narodniks and Mensheviks for joining the capitalist cabinet); in 4 districts (Vyborgsky, Nevsky, Pervy
Gorodskoi and Vasilyevsky Ostrov districts) with the internationalist Mensheviks opposed to “socialist” ministerialism [2] ; and in 1 district (Nevsky) with
internationalists from the Socialist—Revolutionary Party,
who condemn their party’s “ministerialism”.

This co-operation with internationalists from other parties is
fully in keeping with the decisions of our conferences (the
Petrograd and the All-Russia conferences) and with the basic
policy of the proletarian party aimed against petty-bourgeois
defencism and Menshevik and Narodnik in misterialism.

The “Left bloc” propaganda, carried on, among others, by
Novaya Zhizn , obviously could not alter our Party’s decision. The view that the municipal elections “are not of such
a pronounced political character” (as the elections to the

Constituent Assembly) is wrong, basically wrong. It is just as
wrong to maintain that “the municipal programmes of the
different socialist [?] parties differ very little from one an
other”. To repeat such odd statements without answering
Pravda’s arguments is to dodge an important issue or simply to haul down the flag.

To narrow the elections in the capital down to a purely (or even
predominantly) “municipal” programme at a time of revolution is
grotesquely ridiculous. It flies in the face of all revolutionary experience. It is an insult to the common sense of
the workers, who know only too well that Petrograd’s is a
leading role, sometimes a decisive one.

The Cadets unite all the Rights, the whole counter-revolution,
all the landowners and capitalists. They support the government
and want to see revolutionary Petrograd playing second fiddle to
the government of the capitalists, who have ten ministers to the
Narodniks’ and Mensheviks’ six.

Opposed to the Cadets, the chauvinists, the supporters of war
for the Straits, there is the party of the proletariat, which,
definitely hostile as it is to imperialism, is the only party
capable of breaking with the interests of Capital and implementing serious revolutionary measures, without which it is
impossible to help the working masses at a moment of imminent catastrophe of gigantic proportions. Without
revolutionary measures there can be no salvation. Without a workers’ militia as a step towards the
immediate creation of a people’s militia, it is impossible , even with the best will in the world, to
carry out such measures, in particular to do away with queues
and the disorganisation in the matter of food supply.

As for the middle-of-the-road line taken by the petty bourgeoisie, the Mensheviks and the Narodniks, who proclaim good
intentions and weaken themselves by making a deal with and
submitting to the capitalists (6 ministers against
10!)—this line is a dead thing. The masses will soon learn
this from experience, even if they do, for a time, believe in
“agreements” with the capitalists.

All those who really stand for the interests of the working
masses, for doing away with the police and having it replaced by
a people’s militia, all those who stand for serious revolutionary measures to cope with the crisis and save the
country from an unprecedented debacle, should vote for the lists
of candidates of the proletarian party—the Russian
Social-Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks).

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Notes:
[1]



[2]