V. I.

Lenin

The bourgeois and chauvinistic Dyen , an organ of “socialist thought”
(don’t laugh!), returns in issue No. 91 to Rech’s really interesting editorial of June 18. Dyen has
completely failed to understand that editorial, in which a historian speaks out alongside an
embittered counter-revolutionary bourgeois. Dyen reads into the editorial
“the Cadets’ intention—which has become a firm resolve—to with
draw from the coalition government”.

That is nonsense. The Cadets threaten so as to frighten the
Tseretelis and Chernovs. That is not serious.

What is serious and interesting is how the Rech editorial on June 18 posed the question of power from a
historian’s standpoint.

“ Whereas,” he wrote, “with the previous government composition it was possible, at least to some extent, to direct
the course of the Russian revolution, from now on it is
apparently destined to develop in accordance with the spontaneous laws of all revolutions.... The inadvisability of
the further existence of a government arrangement that has not
justified itself is a question already being put not only by the
Bolsheviks [note this: not only by the Bolsheviks!]
...
and not only by the majority in the Soviet.... It is a question
which the capitalist Ministers themselves must raise.”

The historian is correct in admitting that not only the
Bolsheviks, but the entire interrelation of classes, the life of
society as a whole, has brought to the fore the question of
“the inadvisability of the further existence of a government arrangement that has not justified
itself”. What we actually have is vacillation. The offensive is a possible road
to victory for the imperialist bourgeoisie. Is there any other
possible road?

The historian in Rech answers this question as follows:

“ Once they have got ‘all power’ the Soviets will soon see that
they have very little power. And they will have to make up for
lack of power by resorting to the historically tested methods of
the Young
Turks [1] or the Jacobins... Will they, once the whole issue has again been
raised, be willing to stoop to Jacobinism and terrorism, or will
they make an attempt to wash their hands of it? This is the
pressing question that will be answered in a few days.”

The historian is right. In a few days or not in a few days, that
is the question that will soon be answered. Either the offensive, a turn to counter-revolution, a success (for how
long?) for the cause of the imperialist bourgeoisie, “a
washing of hands” by the Chernovs and Tseretelis, or “Jacobinism”.

Bourgeois historians see Jacobinism as a fall ("to stoop"). Proletarian historians see Jacobinism as one of the
highest peaks in the emancipation struggle of an oppressed class. The Jacobins gave France the best models of a
democratic revolution and of resistance to a coalition of
monarchs against a republic. The Jacobins were not destined to
win complete victory, chiefly because eighteenth-century France
was surrounded on the continent by much too backward countries,
and because France herself lacked the material basis for
socialism, there being no banks, no capitalist syndicates, no
machine industry and no railways.

“ Jacobinism” in Europe or on the boundary line between Europe and Asia in the twentieth century would be the
rule of the revolutionary class, of the proletariat, which,
supported by the peasant poor and taking advantage of the
existing material basis for advancing to socialism, could not
only provide all the great, ineradicable, unforgettable things
provided by the Jacobins in the eighteenth century, but bring
about a lasting world-wide victory for the working people.

It is natural for the bourgeoisie to hate Jacobinism. It is
natural for the petty bourgeoisie to dread it. The class-conscious workers and working people generally put their
trust in the transfer of power to the revolutionary, oppressed class for
that is the essence of Jacobinism, the only way out of the present crisis, and the only remedy for economic dislocation
and the war.

---
Notes:
[1]
Young Turks —European name of the members of Unity and
Progress, a Turkish bourgeois and landowner nationalist party founded
in Istanbul in 1889. They strove to restrict the sultan’s absolute
power, transform the feudal empire into a bourgeois constitutional
monarchy and thereby enhance the role of the Turkish bourgeoisie
in the country’s economic and political life. In July 1908 they took
power as a result of a revolution accomplished by the top section
of the bourgeoisie, with support from the armed forces. The
government they formed preserved the monarchy and pursued a
reactionary policy. After Turkey had been defeated in the First World War
(autumn 1918) the Young Turk Party dissolved itself.