V. I.

Lenin

In criticising other parties we should not forget to criticise
ourselves. The published lists of candidates for members of the
Petrograd District Councils have revealed two short comings in
our Party organisation and Party work.

The first shortcoming is this. Our list for Liteiny District has
only 33 candidates as against the 63 of the Cadets and the
Menshevik bloc with Yedinstvo and the
Narodniks. Apparently, our Party workers have not been able to
find more than 33 candidates of the proletarian party in this
wealthy district. But this is an obvious shortcoming in our
work, an obvious indication that we have not gone down far
enough into the midst of the working and exploited people. We
must break with established custom. In the wealthy districts we
must “go among the people” more energetically than ever, and
waken more and more strata of the working and exploited people
to political consciousness. We should get the non-party
proletarian elements—especially the domestic servants for instance—to take an active part in the
elections and not hesitate to put the most reliable of them into
our proletarian list. Why should we fear a minority of non-party
proletarian elements, when the majority are class-conscious internationalist
proletarians?... [1]

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Notes:
[1]

[ [ The manuscript breaks off here. ]— Ed .