V. I.

Lenin

Mr. N. Rostov quotes in the ministerial Rabochaya Gazeta several excerpts from soldiers’ letters which attest
to the extreme ignorance of the peasants. The author, according
to his own words, has at his disposal a bulky batch of letters
sent to the Agitation Department of the Executive Committee of
the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies from every part of
the country. He says that all the letters clamour for one and
the same thing: Papers, send us papers!

The Menshevik writer suddenly exclaims in alarm: “If the
revolution does not get through to them [the peasants] as a
clear fact of great usefulness, they will rise against the
revolution....” The peasants are “as ignorant as ever”.

The Menshevik and ministerial official was a bit late in
becoming alarmed over his batch of letters. More than seven
weeks have passed since May 6, when the Mensheviks began to
serve the capitalists, and in all this time bourgeois counter-revolutionary lies and slander against the revolution
have been pouring freely into the countryside through the bourgeois
papers, which have become dominant, through the direct and
indirect servants and supporters of the capitalist government
backed by the Mensheviks.

If the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries had not been
betraying the revolution and supporting the counter revolutionary Cadets, power would have been in the hands of the
Executive Committee since early May. The Executive Committee
could immediately have established a state monopoly over
private advertising in the press, and could thus have obtained
tens of millions of newspaper copies for free distribution in the countryside. The large printing presses and
stocks of newsprint would have been used by the

Executive Committee to enlighten the peasants and not to befog
them through a dozen or so bourgeois, counter-revolutionary
newspapers which have virtually seized the key role in the newspaper business.

The Executive Committee could then have disbanded the Duma, and,
having saved the people’s money on this—not to speak of
many other things—it could have spent that money on sending a thousand agitators, or even thousands of them, to the
countryside.

In times of revolution, procrastination is often equivalent to
a complete betrayal of the revolution. Responsibility for the
delay in the transfer of power to the workers, soldiers and
peasants, for the delay in carrying through revolutionary
measures to enlighten the ignorant peasants, rests wholly on the
Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks.

They have betrayed the revolution on this matter. They bear the blame for the fact that the
workers and soldiers are forced to limit themselves to primitive
means in the fight against the counter-revolutionary bourgeois
press and agitation, whereas they could and should have had
nation-wide means for the purpose.

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