Date: 1917-05
Source: ru:PSS/v32

The “compromise” machine is in full swing. Narodniks and Mensheviks are toiling away, sweating profusely, as they compile lists of ministers. We stand on the eve of a “new” ministry…

Alas! There will be little that is truly new about it. The capitalist government will be buttressed by petty-bourgeois ministers—Narodniks and Mensheviks—who have allowed themselves to be swept up in the support of an imperialist war.

More empty rhetoric, fresh glitter, grandiose promises, and a colorful uproar over “peace without annexations”—yet no real resolve, not even the slightest willingness to list, clearly, straightforwardly, and truthfully, the actual annexations perpetrated by, say, three nations: Germany, Russia, and England.

To delude ourselves with the utopia of peasant support for capitalists (after all, the well‑to‑do peasants are hardly “peasantry”…), with the utopia of “offensives” on the front lines (in the name of “peace without annexations”…)—how long can such illusions sustain us, you old ministers and you new ministers?

“Pravda,” No. 49, May 18 (5), 1917

Printed according to the text of the newspaper “Pravda.”