# To the Workers of Petrograd
Source: PSS, Volume 36

Dear Comrades! I am taking advantage of Comrade Kayurov’s visit to Petrograd—my old acquaintance, well known to the workers of Petrograd—to write you a few words.

Comrade Kayurov has been in Simbirsk Governorate and has seen firsthand how the kulaks treat the poor peasants and our Soviet power. He has come to a profound understanding of something that should leave no doubt for any Marxist, for any conscious worker: namely, that the kulaks hate Soviet power—the power of the workers—and that they will inevitably overthrow it unless the workers immediately marshal all their forces to forestall the kulaks’ offensive against the Soviets, to crush the kulaks utterly before they have had time to unite.

At this very moment, conscious workers can accomplish this task; they can rally the rural poor around themselves, they can defeat the kulaks and shatter them once and for all—if the vanguard detachments of workers recognize their duty, summon every ounce of their strength, and launch a mass campaign into the countryside.

There is no one else who can do this but the workers of Petrograd, for nowhere else in Russia are there workers as conscious as those in Petrograd. To sit idly in Petrograd, to starve, to loiter about empty factories, to indulge in the absurd dream of restoring Petrograd’s industry or of defending Petrograd—that is both foolish and criminal. It spells the doom of our entire revolution. The workers of Petrograd must break with this folly, cast out the fools who defend it, and, by the tens of thousands, march eastward to the Urals, to the Volga, to the South—places where grain abounds, where they can feed themselves and their families, where they can help organize the poor, and where the workers of Petrograd are needed as organizers, leaders, and guides.

Kayurov will share his personal observations and, I am confident, will convince all those who still hesitate. The revolution is in peril. Only a mass mobilization of the workers of Petrograd can save it. We will provide them with as much arms and funds as they need.

12 July 1918

First published in 1924 in the journal “Proletarian Revolution,” No. 3

Printed from manuscript