Mr. Tsereteli is one of the most loquacious “socialist” ministers and leaders of the petty bourgeoisie. It is difficult to bring oneself to read even a single one of his countless speeches to the end—so devoid of content and so vulgar are these utterances, which say nothing of substance, commit to nothing, and carry absolutely no serious weight; they are, in truth, nothing more than “ministerial” rhetoric. What makes these eloquent “speeches”—which, precisely because of their emptiness, were bound to turn Tsereteli into a favorite of the bourgeoisie—especially unbearable is the orator’s endless self‑admiration; it is often hard to decide whether what lies behind those polished, smooth, and sweetly phrased words is sheer intellectual dullness or a cynical political opportunism cloaked in carefully crafted, honeyed phrases.

The more empty Tsereteli’s speeches are, the more energetically we must underscore the utterly incredible, truly exceptional event that occurred to this very orator during the plenary session of the Petrograd Soviet on August 18th{54}. Incredible—but a fact: Tsereteli let slip a simple, clear, practical, and truthful remark. He uttered a word that faithfully expressed a profound and serious political truth—not one of merely passing significance, but one that captures the essential, fundamental contours of the entire contemporary political situation, revealing its very foundations.

According to the report in “Retchi” (the reader, of course, will recall that Tsereteli had previously opposed the resolution calling for the abolition of the death penalty), Tsereteli said:

“…None of your resolutions will help. What is needed here are not paper resolutions, but real deeds…”

And indeed, there is truth in what he said. It is pleasant to listen to clever speeches…

Of course, by speaking this truth, Tsereteli strikes himself first and foremost—and hardest. For it was he, as one of the Soviet’s most prominent leaders, who helped prostitute this institution, reducing it to the pitiful role of some liberal assembly that leaves to the world nothing more than an archive of exemplary, utterly powerless good intentions. Who else but Tsereteli—having pushed through the Soviet, castrated by the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, hundreds of “paper resolutions”—would have had the least right, when the moment came to adopt a resolution that struck him so painfully, to cry out about “paper resolutions”? Tsereteli placed himself in an especially ludicrous position: a parliamentarian who had spent far more time fussing over “parliamentary” resolutions, extolling their importance to the heavens, laboring tirelessly over them—and then, when a resolution was passed against him, he cried out at the top of his lungs, “The grapes are green!” In truth, after all, the resolution was nothing more than a piece of paper.

And yet, though spoken by a false man, though delivered in a false tone, the truth remains the truth.

The resolution is “paper” not because the former minister Tsereteli declared it to be so—Tsereteli, who believes that, in order to defend the revolution (no joke!), the death penalty is necessary. The resolution is “paper” because it merely repeats a formulaic, well‑memorized—and senselessly reiterated—phrase dating back to March 1917: “The Soviet demands of the Provisional Government.” We have grown accustomed to “demanding,” and we repeat the phrase out of habit, without noticing that the balance of power has shifted, that force has receded, and that a “demand” unsupported by force is, quite simply, laughable.

What’s more, this formulaically repeated “demand” feeds the masses with the illusion that the situation has not changed—that the Soviet still wields power; that by simply voicing a “demand,” the Soviet has accomplished its task and can now go off to sleep, the weary but fulfilled slumber of a “revolutionary” (excuse me…) “democrat.”

A certain reader might ask: did the Bolsheviks—advocates of political sobriety, of sober assessments of power, and staunch opponents of empty rhetoric—really need to vote in favor of the resolution?

No. They should have voted in favor, if only because one paragraph of the resolution (§ 3) contained a brilliant, accurate insight—the core, the main, the decisive point—that the death penalty is a weapon directed against the masses (it would be another matter entirely if the target were landlords and capitalists). They should have voted in favor, even though the petty-bourgeois Socialist Revolutionaries had sullied Martov’s text, replacing the reference to “imperialist aims alien to the interests of the people” with a thoroughly false, deceptive phrase that sought to disguise the predatory nature of the war while claiming to “defend the motherland and the revolution.”

They should have voted in favor, while reserving their dissent on certain specific points and making this declaration: Workers! Do not think that the Soviet is now capable of demanding anything from the Provisional Government. Do not succumb to illusions. Know that the Soviet is no longer able to demand; the current government is a complete captive of the counterrevolutionary bourgeoisie. Think more seriously about this bitter truth. No one could have prevented the members of the Soviet from voting in favor, provided they made such reservations in one form or another.

Then the resolution would cease to be “paper.”

And then we would have sidestepped Tsereteli’s provocative question—asking the members of the Soviet whether they wished to “overthrow” the Provisional Government—exactly as Katkov had once asked liberals under Alexander III whether they wished to “overthrow” autocracy. We would have replied to the ex‑minister: “Dear citizen, you have just enacted a draconian law against those who ‘attempt’—or even merely ‘plot’—to overthrow the government (a government formed through collusion between landlords and capitalists and petty-bourgeois traitors to democracy). We fully understand that all the bourgeois would praise you even more if you were to ensnare a few Bolsheviks under this law—which is so pleasing to you. But do not be surprised if we do not make it our task to make it easier for you to find occasions to apply this ‘pleasant’ law.”

As the sun is reflected in a tiny drop of water, so the entire political order of Russia was mirrored in the incident of August 18. The Bonapartist government—capital punishment, the penal servitude law—was sweetened with precisely the same phrases that Louis-Napoleon had once scattered about: talk of equality, fraternity, freedom, honor and the dignity of the fatherland; of the traditions of the Great Revolution; of the suppression of anarchy.

The petty-bourgeois ministers and former ministers—so sweetly, almost cloyingly sweet—who beat their chests, insisting that they possess a soul, that they are sacrificing it by imposing and enforcing capital punishment upon the masses, who weep as they do so—these are but an improved edition of that “pedagogue” from the 1860s, who followed Pirogov’s precepts and flogged not simply, not in the ordinary way, not according to old habits, but rather by shedding “humanitarian” tears over the “legally” and “justly” punished son of some average citizen.

The peasants, deceived by their petty-bourgeois leaders and still clinging to the belief that the marriage between the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik bloc and the bourgeoisie might somehow give rise to… the abolition of private ownership of land without redemption.

As for the workers… well, let us remain silent about what the workers think—until the “humane” Tsereteli rescinds the new penal servitude law.

“Rabochiy,” No. 2, September 8 (August 26), 1917.

Printed according to the text of the newspaper “Rabochiy.”