V. I. Lenin

Russia is a country of the petty bourgeoisie, by far the greater
part of the population belonging to this class. Its vacillations
between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are inevitable, and
only when it joins the proletariat is the victory of the
revolution, of the cause of peace, freedom, and land for the
working people assured easily, peacefully, quickly, and
smoothly.

The course of our revolution shows us these vacillations in
practice. Let us then not harbour any illusions about the
Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties; let us stick
firmly to the path of our proletarian class. The poverty of the
poor peasants, the horrors of the war, the horrors of hunger—all these are showing the masses more and more
clearly the correctness of the proletarian path, the need to
support the proletarian revolution.

The "peaceful" hopes of the petty bourgeoisie that there might
be a "coalition" with the bourgeoisie and agreements with them,
that it will be possible to wait "calmly" for the "speedy"
convocation of the Constituent Assembly, etc., have been
mercilessly, cruelly, implacably destroyed by the course of the
revolution. The Kornilov revolt was the last cruel lesson, a
lesson on a grand scale, supplementing thousands upon thousands
of small lessons in which workers and peasants were deceived by
local capitalists and landowners, in which soldiers were
deceived by the officers etc., etc.

Discontent, indignation and wrath are growing in the army, among
the peasantry and among the workers. The "coalition" of the
Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks with the bourgeoisie,
promising everything and fulfilling nothing, is irritating the
masses, is opening their eyes, is pushing them towards insurrection.

There is a growing Left opposition among the
Socialist-Revolutionaries (Spiridonova and others) and among the
Mensheviks (Martov and others), and has already reached forty
per cent of the Council and Congress of those parties. And down
below , among the proletariat and the peasantry, particularly the poorest sections, the majority of the
Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks belong to the
Lefts.

The Kornilov revolt is instructive and has proved a good lesson.

It is impossible to know whether the Soviets will be able to go
farther than the leaders of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and
Mensheviks, and thus ensure a peaceful development of the
revolution, or whether they will continue to mark time, thus
making a proletarian uprising inevitable.

We cannot know this.

Our business is to help get everything possible done to make
sure the "last" chance for a peaceful development of the
revolution, to help by the presentation of our programme, by
making clear its national character, its absolute accord with
the interests and demands of a vast majority of the population.

The following lines are an essay in the presentation of such a programme.

Let us take it more to those down below, to the masses, to the
office employees, to the workers, to the peasants, not only to
our supporters, but particularly to those who follow the
Socialist-Revolutionaries, to the non-party elements, to the
ignorant. Let us lift them up so that they can pass an independent judgment, make their own decisions, send their own delegations to the Conference, to the Soviets, to the
government and our work will not have been in vain, no matter what the outcome of the Conference. This will then
prove useful for the Conference, for the elections to the
Constituent Assembly, and for all other political activity in
general.

Experience teaches us that the Bolshevik programme and tactics
are correct. So little time passed, so much happened from April
20 to the Kornilov revolt.

The experience of the masses , the experience of oppressed classes taught them very, very much in that
time; the leaders of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and
Mensheviks have completely cut adrift from the masses. This will
most certainly be revealed in the discussion of our concrete
programme insofar as we are able to bring it to the notice of
the masses.

Agreements With the Capitalists are Disastrous

1. To leave in power the representatives of the bourgeoisie, even
a small number of them, to leave in power such notorious
Kornilovites as Generals Alexeyev, Klembovsky, Bagration,
Gagarin, and others, or such as have proved their complete
powerlessness in face of the bourgeoisie, and their ability of
acting Bonaparte-fashion like Kerensky, is, on the one hand,
merely opening the door wide to famine and the inevitable
economic catastrophe which the capitalists are purposely
accelerating and intensifying; on the other hand, it will lead
to a military catastrophe, since the army hates the General
Staff and cannot enthusiastically participate in the imperialist war. Besides, there is no doubt that Kornilovite
generals and officers remaining in power will deliberately open the front to the Germans , as they have done in
Galicia and Riga. This can be prevented only by the formation
of a new government on a new basis, as expounded below. To
continue any kind of agreements with the bourgeoisie after all
that we have gone through since April 20 would be, on the part
of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, not only an
error but a direct betrayal of the people and of the revolution.

2. All power in the country must pass exclusively to the
representatives of the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and
Peasants' Deputies on the basis of a definite programme and
under the condition of the government being fully responsible
to the Soviets. New elections to the Soviets must be held
immediately, both to record the experience of the people
during the recent weeks of the revolution, which have been
particularly eventful, and to eliminate crying injustices
(lack of proportional representation, unequal elections, etc.)
which in some cases still remain.

All power locally, wherever there are not yet any democratically
elected institutions, and also in the army, must be taken over
exclusively by the local Soviets and by commissars and other
institutions elected by them, but only those that have been
properly elected.

Workers and revolutionary troops, i.e., those who have in practice shown their ability to suppress the
Kornilovites, must everywhere be armed, and this must be done
with the full support of the state.

Peace to the Peoples

3. The Soviet Government must straight away offer to
all the belligerent peoples (i.e., simultaneously both to their governments and to the worker and peasant
masses) to conclude an immediate general peace on democratic
terms, and also to conclude an immediate armistice (even if
only for three months).

The main condition for a democratic peace is the renunciation of
annexations (seizures)—not in the incorrect sense that all
powers get back what they have lost, but in the only correct
sense that every nationality without any exception, both in Europe and in the colonies, shall obtain its freedom and
the possibility to decide for itself whether it is to form a
separate state or whether it is to enter into the composition of some other state.

In offering the peace terms, the Soviet Government must itself
immediately take steps towards their fulfillment, i.e., it must
publish and repudiate the secret treaties by which we have been
bound up to the present time, those which were concluded by the
tsar and which give Russian capitalists the promise of the
pillaging of Turkey, Austria, etc. Then we must immediately
satisfy the demands of the Ukrainians and the Finns, ensure
them, as well as all other non-Russian nationalities in Russia,
full freedom, including freedom of secession, applying the same
to all Armenia, undertaking to evacuate that country as
well as the Turkish lands occupied by us, etc.

Such peace terms will not meet with the approval of the
capitalists, but they will meet with such tremendous sympathy on
the part of all the peoples and will cause such a great
world-wide outburst of enthusiasm and of general indignation
against the continuation of the predatory war that it is
extremely probable that we shall at once obtain a truce and a
consent to open peace negotiations. For the workers' revolution
against the war is irresistibly growing everywhere, and it can
be spurred on, not by phrases about peace (with which the
workers and peasants have been deceived by all the imperialist governments including our own Kerensky government),
but by a break with the capitalists and by the offer of peace.

If the least probable thing happens, i.e., if not a single
belligerent state accepts even a truce, then as far as we are
concerned the war becomes truly forced upon us, it becomes a
truly just war of defence. If this is understood by the
proletariat and the poor peasantry Russia will become many times
stronger even in the military sense, especially after a complete
break with the capitalists who are robbing the people; furthermore, under such conditions it would, as far as we are
concerned, be a war in league with the oppressed classes of all
countries, a war in league with the oppressed peoples of the
whole world, not in word, but in deed.

The people must be particularly cautioned against the capitalists' assertion which sometimes influences the petty
bourgeoisie and others who are frightened, namely, that the
British and other capitalists are capable of doing serious
damage to the Russian revolution if we break the present
predatory alliance with them. Such an assertion is false through
and through, for "Allied financial aid" enriches the bankers and
"supports" the Russian workers and peasants in exactly the same
way as a rope supports a man who has been hanged. There is
plenty of bread, coal, oil and iron in Russia; for these
products to be properly distributed it is only necessary for us
to rid ourselves of the landowners and capitalists who are
robbing the people. As to the possibility of the Russian people
being threatened with war by their present Allies, it is
obviously absurd to assume that the French and Italians could
unite their armies with those of the Germans and move them
against Russia who offers a just peace. As to Britain, America,
and Japan, even if they were to declare war against Russia
(which for them is extremely difficult, both because of the
extreme unpopularity of such a war among the masses and because
of the divergence of material interests of the capitalists of
those countries over the partitioning of Asia, especially over
the plunder of China), they could not cause Russia one-hundredth
part of the damage and misery which the war with Germany,
Austria, and Turkey is causing her.

Land to Those Who Till it

4. The Soviet Government must immediately declare the abolition
of private landed estates without compensation and place all
these estates under the management of the peasant committees
pending the solution of the problem by the Constituent
Assembly. These peasant committees are also to take over all
the landowners' stock and implements, with the proviso that
they be placed primarily at the disposal of the poor peasants
for their use free of charge.

Such measures, which have long been demanded by an immense
majority of the peasantry, both in the resolutions of congresses
and in hundreds of mandates from local peasants (as may be
seen, for instance, from a summary of 242 mandates published by
Izvestia Soveta Krestyanskikh Deputatov , are absolutely and
urgently necessary. There must be no further procrastination
like that from which the peasantry suffered so much at the time
of the "coalition" government.

Any government that hesitates to introduce these measures should
be regarded as a government hostile to the people that should be overthrown and crushed by an uprising of the workers
and peasants. On the other hand, only a government that realises
these measures will be a government of all the people.

Struggle Against Famine and Economic Ruin

5. The Soviet Government must immediately introduce workers'
control of production and distribution on a nation-wide
scale. Experience since May 6 has shown that in the absence of
such control all the promises of reforms and attempts to
introduce them are powerless, and famine, accompanied by
unprecedented catastrophe is becoming a greater menace to the
whole country week by week.

It is necessary to nationalise the banks and the insurance
business immediately, and also the most important branches of
industry (oil, coal, metallurgy, sugar, etc.), and at the same
time, to abolish commercial secrets and to establish unrelaxing
supervision by the workers and peasants over the negligible
minority of capitalists who wax rich on government contracts and
evade accounting and just taxation of their profits and
property.

Such measures, which do not deprive either the middle peasants,
the Cossacks or the small handicraftsmen of a single kopek, are
urgently needed for the struggle against famine and are
absolutely just because they distribute the burdens of the war
equitably. Only after capitalist plunder has been curbed and the
deliberate sabotage of production has been stopped will it be
possible to work for an improvement in labour productivity,
introduce universal labour conscription and the proper exchange
of grain for manufactured goods, and return to the Treasury
thousands of millions in paper money now being hoarded by the
rich.

Without such measures, the abolition of the landed estates
without compensation is also impossible, for the major part of
the estates is mortgaged to the banks, so that the interests of
the landowners and capitalists are inseparably linked up.

The latest resolution of the Economic Department of the
All-Russia Central Executive Committee of Soviets of Workers'
and Soldiers' Deputies ( Rabochaya Gazeta No. 152)
recognises not only the " harm " caused by the government's measures (like the raising of grain prices for the
enrichment of the landowners and kulaks), not only "the fact of
the complete inactivity on the part of the central organs set up by the government for the regulation of economic
life", but even the "contravention of the laws" by this
government. This admission on the part of the ruling parties,
the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, proves once more
the criminal nature of the policy of conciliation with the
bourgeoisie.

Struggle Against the Counter-Revolution of the Landowners and Capitalists

6. The Kornilov and Kaledin revolt was supported by the entire
class of the landowners and capitalists, with the party of the
Cadets ("people's freedom" party) at their head. This has
already been fully proved by the facts published in
Izvestia of the Central Executive Committee.

However, nothing has been done either to suppress this counter-revolution completely or even to investigate it, and
nothing serious can be done without the transfer of power to the
Soviets. No commission can conduct a full investigation, or
arrest the guilty, etc., unless it holds state power. Only a
Soviet government can do this, and must do it. Only a Soviet
government can make Russia secure against the otherwise
inevitable repetition of "Kornilov" attempts by arresting the
Kornilovite generals and the ringleaders of the bourgeois
counter-revolution (Guchkov, Milyukov, Ryabushinsky, Maklakov
and Co.), by disbanding the counter-revolutionary associations
(the State Duma, the officers' unions, etc.), by placing their
members under the surveillance of the local Soviets and by
disbanding counter-revolutionary armed units.

This government alone can set up a commission to make a full and
public investigation of the Kornilov case and all the other
cases, even those started by the bourgeoisie; and the party of
the Bolsheviks, in its turn, would appeal to the workers to give
full co-operation and to submit only to such a commission.

Only a Soviet government could successfully combat such a
flagrant injustice as the capitalists' seizure of the largest
printing presses and most of the papers with the aid of millions
squeezed out of the people. It is necessary to suppress the
bourgeois counter-revolutionary papers ( Rech , Russkoye Slovo , presses, to declare private advertisements in
the papers a state monopoly, to transfer them to the paper
published by the Soviets, the paper that tells the peasants the
truth. Only in this way can and must the bourgeoisie be deprived
of its powerful weapon of lying and slandering, deceiving the
people with impunity, misleading the peasantry, and preparing a
counter-revolution.

Peaceful Development of the Revolution

7. A possibility very seldom to be met with in the history of
revolutions now faces the democracy of Russia, the Soviets and
the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties—the possibility of convening the Constituent Assembly at the
appointed date without further delays, of making the country
secure against a military and economic catastrophe, and of
ensuring the peaceful development of the revolution.

If the Soviets now take full state power exclusively into their
own hands for the purpose of carrying out the programme set
forth above, they will not only obtain the support of nine-tenths of the population of Russia, the working class and
an overwhelming majority of the peasantry; they will also be
assured of the greatest revolutionary enthusiasm on the part of
the army and the majority of the people, an enthusiasm without
which victory over famine and war is impossible.

There could be no question of any resistance to the Soviets if
the Soviets themselves did not waver. No class will dare start
an uprising against the Soviets, and the landowners and
capitalists, taught a lesson by the experience of the Kornilov
revolt, will give up their power peacefully and yield to the
ultimatum of the Soviets. To overcome the capitalists' resistance to the programme of the Soviets, supervision over the
exploiters by workers and peasants and such measures of
punishing the recalcitrants as confiscation of their entire
property coupled with a short term of arrest will be sufficient.

By seizing full power, the Soviets could still today—and
this is probably their last chance—ensure the peaceful development of the revolution, peaceful elections of deputies by
the people, and a peaceful struggle of parties inside the
Soviets; they could test the programmes of the various parties
in practice and power could pass peacefully from one party to
another.

The entire course of development of the revolution, from the
movement of April 20 to the Kornilov revolt, shows that there is
bound to be the bitterest civil war between the bourgeoisie and
the proletariat if this opportunity is missed. Inevitable
catastrophe will bring this war nearer. It must end, as all data
and considerations accessible to human reason go to prove, in
the full victory of the working class, in that class, supported
by the poor peasantry, carrying out the above programme; it may,
however, prove very difficult and bloody, and may cost the lives
of tens of thousands of landowners, capitalists, and officers
who sympathise with them. The proletariat will not hesitate to
make every sacrifice to save the revolution, which is possible
only by implementing the programme set forth above. On the other
hand, the proletariat would support the Soviets in every way if
they were to make use of their last chance to secure a peaceful
development of the revolution.