Date: 1917
Source: ru:PSS/v32

Source: CW vol 32

In criticizing other parties, we must also criticize ourselves. The published lists of candidates for the district dumas of Petrograd have revealed two deficiencies in our party organization and work.

The first deficiency. In the Liteiny district, our list contains only 33 candidates, compared to 63 for the Cadets and for the bloc of Mensheviks with "Edinstvo" and the Narodniks. Clearly, in a wealthy district, our party workers could not find more than 33 candidates for the proletarian party. But this is a clear deficiency in our work, a clear indication that we have not sufficiently descended to the "lower strata" of the working and exploited. We must break with established customs; we must go especially energetically "to the people" in the wealthy quarters, raising new layers of the working and exploited to conscious life. It would be necessary to involve non-party proletarian elements—especially, for example, from among the domestic servants—in the elections and without fear to include the most reliable of them in the proletarian list. Why should we fear a minority of non-party proletarian elements if the majority belongs to conscious, internationalist proletarians?…[12].

Written between May 23 and 27 (June 5 and 9), 1917

First published in 1928 in Lenin Miscellany VII

Printed from the manuscript