1

Question from the floor. Control over syndicates and banks – are these measures recommended only on an all-state scale, or do they also include such measures as control of private enterprises, etc.?

Yes, this is not here, since this living practice has found its place in another resolution, where it is in a better perspective[71]. And this resolution speaks of a different theme – the implementation of steps toward socialism.

2

Solovyev proposes an amendment: a few words on the characterization of the state of this transitional period – this is very essential, since it determines the general direction of the work of the Soviets of workers' and soldiers' deputies…

Lenin against comrade Solovyev's amendment:

In individual resolutions we constantly run up against concrete definitions. The Soviets of workers' and soldiers' deputies can act without police, since they have armed soldiers. The Soviets of workers' and soldiers' deputies – these are institutions which can replace the old bureaucracy.

The old agrarian program…[72] did not succeed, but to say: "the party demands a peasant-proletarian republic, without police, standing army, bureaucracy." So the conference has already settled this question[73], and now we only need to formulate it.

First published in 1925 in the book "The Petrograd City-Wide and All-Russian Conferences of the RSDLP(b) in April 1917"

Printed from the handwritten copy of the protocol record