Yesterday, May 5th, two major morning newspapers, *Delo Naroda* and *Rech'*{26}, carried on their front pages an announcement, repeated in the evening in the Guchkov-Suvorin *Vechernee Vremya*{27}, which deserves considerable attention.

The announcement reports the formation in Petrograd, "by agreement of the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies with the union of engineers and by authorization of the Provisional Government," of a "Central Committee for the Restoration and Maintenance of the Normal Course of Work in Industrial Enterprises."

"The Central Committee," we read in the announcement, "sets as its principal tasks the elaboration and coordination of all measures for the restoration and maintenance of the normal course of work in industrial enterprises and the organization of permanent active *public control* over all industrial enterprises."

These last two words are emphasized in the announcement.

They recall the senatorial and other bureaucratic commissions of the "good old" tsarist times. As soon as some scoundrel among the tsar's ministers, governors, leaders of the nobility, and so forth would get caught red-handed, as soon as some institution directly or indirectly dependent on the tsarist government would bring shame upon itself, especially so notorious as to embarrass all of Russia and all of Europe—immediately there followed the "appeasement of public opinion" through the appointment of a commission composed of the most illustrious and most illustrious, the highest-ranking and highest-ranking, the wealthy and wealthiest "persons."

And these persons always "appeased" public opinion with the greatest success. They buried—invariably with great pomp—every form of "public control" all the more thoroughly, the more grandiose were the phrases about the appeasement of our wise tsar of "public conscience"…

Thus it was, thus it will be—one wants to say when reading the high-flown announcement of the new Central Committee.

Gentlemen capitalists have gone to head them off. In workers' circles there grows an awareness of the necessity for proletarian control over factories and syndicates. And to the "brilliant" magnates of the business world from ministerial and quasi-ministerial circles came the "brilliant" thought: let us go to head them off. Let us draw behind us the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies in our wake—this is not difficult to achieve as long as the Populists and Mensheviks hold sway in it. Let us organize "public control": it will look so important, so statesmanlike and wise, so ministerial, so respectable… and it will bury every genuine control and every proletarian control so effectively, so silently… A brilliant thought! Complete "appeasement" of "public conscience"!

—How is the new "Central Committee" to be constituted?

Oh, of course, democratically. After all, we are all "revolutionary democrats." If someone were to think that democracy requires sending twenty representatives from 200,000 workers and one representative from 10,000 engineers, capitalists, and so forth, that would of course be an "anarchistic" delusion. No, true democratism consists in imitating the way "revolutionary democracy" constituted its "new" government: let workers and peasants be "represented" by 6 Mensheviks and Populists, while 8 Cadets and Octobrists{28} represent the landowners and capitalists: do not the latest statistical investigations, being completed in the new Ministry of Labor in agreement with the old Ministry of Industry, prove that the majority of Russia's population belongs to the number of landowners and capitalists?

Would you not like to hear the complete list of "representatives" of those institutions which have united in the new Central Committee by agreement of "revolutionary democracy" with the government:

The Central Committee is composed of representatives from:

1) The Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies; 2) The Provisional Committee of the State Duma; 3) The All-Russian Union of Zemstvos; 4) The All-Russian Union of Cities; 5) The Petrograd City Public Administration; 6) The Union of Engineers; 7) The Council of Officers' Deputies; 8) The Council of Congresses of Representatives of Industry and Trade; 9) The Petrograd Society of Factory and Plant Owners; 10) The Central Military-Industrial Committee; 11) Zemgor; 12) The Committee of Military-Technical Assistance; 13) The Free Economic Society{29}…

—All?

—All.

Is this not sufficient for a respectable appeasement of public conscience?

—Well, but if one and the same large bank or one and the same syndicate of capitalists is represented five or ten times over among these ten or twelve institutions through its shareholders?

—Oh, do not carp at "particulars" when the whole point is to ensure "permanent active public control"!

Written on (19) May 1917

Published 20 (7) May 1917 in the newspaper *Pravda* No. 51

Printed according to the newspaper text