V. I. Lenin

Theses for a Report at the October 8 Conference of the Petrograd Organisation,
Also for a Resolution and Instructions to Those Elected to the
Party Congress

On the Question of the Party’s Participation
In the Pre-Parliament

1. The participation of our Party in the Pre-parliament, in the
Democratic Council, or in the Council of the Republic is an
obvious error and a deviation from the proletarian revolutionary
path.

2. The objective situation is such that a revolution against
Kerensky’s Bonapartist government is undoubtedly fomenting in
the country (peasant uprising, increasing dissatisfaction and
conflicts with the government in the army and among non-Russian
groups, conflict with railway and postal employees, the resounding
defeat of the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary conciliators
at the elections, etc.).

At a time when there is such an upsurge of the revolution, to
go to a sham parliament decked out to deceive the people is to
facilitate this deception, make the preparation for the revolution
more difficult, and distract the attention of the people
and the forces of the Party from the urgent task of the struggle
for power and for the overthrow of the government.

3. The Party congress, therefore, must recall Party members
from the Pre-parliament, declare a boycott of it, appeal to the
people to prepare forces for dispersing this “Bulygin
Duma’ of Tsereteli’s.

On The Slogan “All Power To The Soviets”

1. All the six months’ work of the Bolsheviks in the
revolution, all the criticism levelled by them against the
Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries for their “conciliationism’ and for their having turned the
Soviets into talking-shops, demand on the part of the
Bolsheviks a loyal adherence to this slogan in a straightforward Marxist way. Unfortunately, vacillations are
to be noted at the top levels of our Party, a “fear’, as it were, of the struggle for power, a
tendency to substitute resolutions, protests, and congresses
for this struggle.

2. All the experience of both revolutions, that of 1905 and that of
and that of 1917, and all the decisions of the Bolshevik Party,
all its political declarations for many years, may be reduced to
the concept that the Soviet of Workers; and Soldiers' Deputies
is a reality only as an organ of insurrection, as an organ of
revolutionary power. Apart from this, the Soviets are a
meaningless plaything that can only produce apathy, indifference
and disillusion among the masses, who are legitimately disgusted
at the endless repetition of resolutions and protests.

3. Particularly today, when a peasant uprising is sweeping
the country and is being suppressed by Kerensky with the aid of picked
troops, when even the military measures in the rural areas constitute
an obvious threat that the elections to the Constituent Assembly will
be rigged, when even in Germany there has been a mutiny in the fleet,
a refusal on the part of the Bolsheviks to transform the Soviets into
organs of insurrection would be a betrayal both of the peasants and of
the cause of the world socialist revolution.

4. The problem of the seizure of power by the Soviets is that of
a successful uprising. That is why all the best forces of the
Party must be sent to the factories and barracks to explain to
the masses their task and, taking their mood correctly in
account, choose the proper moment for overthrowing the Kerensky
government.

To insist on connecting this task with the Congress of Soviets,
to subordinate it to this Congress, means to be merely playing at insurrection by setting a definite date beforehand, by
making it easier for the government to prepare troops, by
confusing the masses with the illusion that a “resolution’ of the Congress of Soviets can solve a task
which only the insurrectionary proletariat is capable of solving
by force.

5. It is necessary to fight against constitutional illusions
and hopes placed in the Congress of Soviets, to discard the
preconceived idea that we absolutely must “wait’ for it,
to concentrate all efforts on explaining to the masses the
inevitability of an uprising, and on preparing it. With the
Soviets of both capital cities in their hands the Bolsheviks would
be reducing all their propaganda for the Power-to-the-Soviets
slogan to empty phrases and, politically, would be covering
themselves with shame as a party of the revolutionary proletariat
if they refused to carry out this task, and if they became
reconciled to the convocation of the Constituent Assembly (which
means a faked Constituent Assembly) by the Kerensky government.

6. This is particularly true now, when the Moscow elections
have given the Bolsheviks 49.5 per cent of the votes and when the
Bolsheviks, with the support of the Left
Socialist-Revolutionaries,which has long existed in reality, have
an undoubted majority in the country.

Note To The Resolution On Power To The Soviets

Not everything in the Theses on Power to the Soviets should be
published, but it is tantamount to the Party’s losing its
connections with the vanguard of the proletariat, if we refuse
to discuss within the Party and to make clear to the masses
those most urgent and important problems that cannot be
discussed in the open due to the absence of full freedom of the
press, or that cannot be brought out openly before the enemy.