V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:PSS/v40; en:CW/CW30
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

The author’s survey covered almost all the gubernias of European Russia and Siberia. The gubernias not included are: Olonets, Estland, Kaluga, Bessarabia, Podolsk, Orenburg, Yakutsk and the Don Region.

We shall first cite the principal results published by N. V. Svyatitsky, and then examine the political conclusions that follow from these data.

I

A total of 36,262,560 votes were cast in 54 constituencies in November 1917. The author gives the figure 36,257,960, distributed among seven regions (plus the army and navy), but the total of the figures he gives for the individual parties yields exactly the figure I have indicated.

The distribution among the parties is as follows: the Russian Socialist-Revolutionaries obtained 16.5 million votes, and if the Socialist-Revolutionaries of other nationalities (Ukrainian, Moslem, etc.) are added, 20.9 million, i.e., 58 per cent.

The Mensheviks obtained 668,064 votes, and if we add the analogous groups of “Popular Socialists” (312,000), “Yedinstvo” (25,000), Co-operators (51,000), Ukrainian Social-Democrats (95,000), Ukrainian Socialists (507,000), German Socialists (44,000) and Finnish Socialists (14,000), we get a total of 1.7 million.

The Bolsheviks obtained 9,023,963 votes.

The Cadets obtained 1,856,639 votes. Adding to them the “Union of Landowners and Farmers” (215,000), the “Right Groups” (292,000), the Old Believers (73,000), the Nationalists: Jewish (550,000), Moslem (576,000), Bashkir (195,000), Latvian (67,000), Polish (155,000), Cossack (79,000), German (130,000), Byelorussian (12,000) and “Lists of Various Groups and Organisations” (418,000), we get a total of 4.6 million for the landlord and bourgeois parties.

It is known that the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks were in a bloc throughout the period of the revolution from February to October 1917. Moreover, the whole development of events both during that period and after it has definitely proved that both these parties together represent the petty-bourgeois democracy which erroneously imagines and calls itself socialist, as do all the parties of the Second International.

Combining the three main groups of parties in the elections to the Constituent Assembly, we get the following total:

Let us now cite the data given by N. V. Svyatitsky by regions:

* The author’s division of Russia into areas is somewhat unusual: Northern Area: Archangel, Vologda, Petrograd, Novgorod, Pskov, Livonia. – Central Industrial Area: Vladimir, Kostroma, Moscow, Nizhni-Novgorod, Ryazan, Tula, Tver, Yaroslavl. – Volga-Black Earth Area: Astrakhan, Voronezh, Kursk, Orel, Penza, Samara, Saratov, Simbirsk, Tambov. – Western Area: Vitebsk, Minsk, Mogilev, Smolensk. – East Urals Area: Vyatka, Kazan, Perm, Ufa. – Siberian Area: Tobolsk, Tomsk, Altai, Yeniseisk, Irkutsk, Transbaikalia, Amur. – Ukraine: Volhynia, Yekaterinoslav, Kiev, Poltava, Taurida, Kharkov, Kherson, Chernigov.

** The figure in brackets, 62 per cent, is obtained by Svyatitsky by adding the Moslem and Chuvash Socialist-Revolutionaries.

*** The figure in brackets, 77 per cent, is given by me, adding the Ukrainian Socialist-Revolutionaries.

These data show that at the time of the elections to the Constituent Assembly the Bolsheviks were the party of the proletariat, and the Socialist-Revolutionaries the party of the peasantry. In the purely peasant areas, the Great Russian (Volga-Black Earth, Siberia, East Urals) and the Ukrainian, the Socialist-Revolutionaries had 62-77 per cent of the votes. In the industrial centres the Bolsheviks predominated over the Socialist-Revolutionaries. This predominance is minimised in the regional data cited by N. V. Svyatitsky, because he combines the most industrial constituencies with those that are little industrial or not industrial at all. The data by gubernias, cited by Svyatitsky for the Socialist-Revolutionary, Bolshevik and Cadet parties and then for the “national and other groups”, show, for example, the following: in the Northern Area the Bolshevik predominance appears insignificant: 40 per cent against 38 per cent. But this area combines non-industrial constituencies (the gubernias of Archangel, Vologda, Novgorod, Pskov), where the Socialist-Revolutionaries predominated, and industrial ones: Petrograd (capital) – 45 per cent Bolsheviks (by number of votes), 16 per cent Socialist-Revolutionaries; Petrograd Gubernia – 50 per cent Bolsheviks, 26 per cent Socialist-Revolutionaries; Livonia – 72 per cent Bolsheviks, 0 per cent Socialist-Revolutionaries.

Of the gubernias of the Central Industrial Area, Moscow gave 56 per cent Bolsheviks, 25 per cent Socialist-Revolutionaries; the Moscow capital constituency – 50 per cent Bolsheviks, 8 per cent Socialist-Revolutionaries; Tver Gubernia – 54 per cent Bolsheviks, 39 per cent Socialist-Revolutionaries; Vladimir – 56 per cent Bolsheviks, 32 per cent Socialist-Revolutionaries.

Let us note in passing how ridiculous, in face of such facts, are the statements that the Bolsheviks had and have “a minority” of the proletariat on their side! And we hear these statements both from the Mensheviks (668,000 votes, and with the addition of Transcaucasia another 700,000-800,000, as against 9,000,000 for the Bolsheviks) and from the social-patriots of the Second International.

II

How could such a miracle happen as the victory of the Bolsheviks, who had only one-quarter of the votes, over the petty-bourgeois democrats, who were in alliance (coalition) with the bourgeoisie and together with them had three-quarters of the votes?

For to deny the fact of victory now, after two years of assistance by the Entente{1} – the all-powerful Entente – to all the opponents of Bolshevism, is simply ridiculous.

The point is that the frantic political hatred of the defeated, including all the supporters of the Second International, prevents them even from seriously posing the highly interesting historical and political question of the causes of the Bolshevik victory. The point is that the “miracle” is such only from the standpoint of vulgar petty-bourgeois democracy, the full depth of whose ignorance and prejudice is exposed by this question and the answer to it.

From the standpoint of the class struggle and socialism, a standpoint abandoned by the Second International, the question is indisputably solved.

The Bolsheviks were victorious, first of all, because they had the overwhelming majority of the proletariat on their side, and among it the most conscious, energetic and revolutionary section, the real vanguard of that advanced class.

Take the two capitals, Petrograd and Moscow. A total of 1,765,100 votes were cast in them for the Constituent Assembly. Of these the following were obtained:

However much the petty-bourgeois democrats who call themselves socialists and social-democrats (Chernovs, Martovs, Kautskys, Longuets, MacDonalds and Co.) may beat their heads against the goddesses of “equality”, “universal suffrage”, “democracy”, “pure democracy” or “consistent democracy”, the economic and political fact of the inequality of town and country will not disappear.

This is an inevitable fact under capitalism in general, and particularly during the transition from capitalism to communism.

The town cannot be equal to the country. The country cannot be equal to the town under the historical conditions of this epoch. The town inevitably leads the country. The country inevitably follows the town. The only question is which class among the “urban” classes will be able to lead the country, will cope with this task, and what forms the leadership of the town will assume.

In November 1917 the Bolsheviks had the gigantic majority of the proletariat on their side. The party that competed with them among the proletariat, the Menshevik party, had by that time been utterly defeated (9,000,000 votes against 1,400,000, if we add the 668,000 and the 700,000-800,000 of Transcaucasia). Moreover, this party had been defeated in a fifteen-year struggle (1903-17), which tempered, enlightened and organised the vanguard of the proletariat, forging it into a really revolutionary vanguard. Moreover, the first revolution, that of 1905, prepared the way for further development, determined in practice the mutual relations of the two parties, and served as a dress rehearsal for the great events of 1917-19.

The petty-bourgeois democrats who call themselves “socialists” of the Second International like to evade the most serious historical question by sugary phrases about the usefulness of “unity” of the proletariat. Behind this sugary phrase-mongering they forget the historical fact of the accumulation of opportunism in the working-class movement of 1871-1914; they forget (or are unwilling) to think about the causes of the collapse of opportunism in August 1914, about the causes of the split in international socialism in 1914-17.

Without the most serious and all-round preparation of the revolutionary section of the proletariat for the expulsion and suppression of opportunism, it is absurd even to think of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The leaders of the German “Independent” Social-Democratic Party,{2} of French socialism, and the like, who now want to wriggle out by a verbal recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat, should take this lesson of the Russian revolution to heart.

Further. The Bolsheviks had on their side not only the majority of the proletariat, not only the revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat, which had been steeled in a long and stubborn struggle against opportunism. They also had, if we may use a military term, a powerful “shock force” in the capitals.

To have a preponderance of forces at the decisive moment at the decisive point—this “law” of military success is also a law of political success, especially in that fierce, seething class war which is called revolution.

The capitals, or, in general, the biggest commercial and industrial centres (in Russia these concepts coincided, but they do not always coincide), to a considerable extent decide the political fate of the people—provided, of course, the centres are supported by sufficient local, rural forces, even if this support is not immediate.

In both capitals, in both the principal commercial and industrial centres of Russia, the Bolsheviks had a decisive, overwhelming preponderance of forces. We had almost four times as many votes as the Socialist-Revolutionaries. We had more than the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Cadets combined. Moreover, our opponents were split, for the “coalition” of the Cadets with the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks (the Mensheviks had only 3 per cent of the votes in both Petrograd and Moscow) was utterly discredited among the working masses. There could be no question of any real unity of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks with the Cadets against us at that moment.[1] As is known, in November 1917 even the leaders of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, who were a hundred times more inclined to the idea of a bloc with the Cadets than the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik workers and peasants, even these leaders were thinking (and bargaining with us) about a coalition with the Bolsheviks without the Cadets!{3}

We captured the capitals in October-November 1917 with certainty, having an overwhelming preponderance of forces and the most thorough political preparation, both in the sense of mustering, concentrating, training, testing and steeling the Bolshevik “armies”, and in the sense of disintegrating, weakening, disuniting and demoralising the “armies” of the “enemy”.

And having the opportunity to capture both capitals, both centres of the entire capitalist machine of the state (both economically and politically), with certainty by a swift, decisive blow, we were able, despite the furious resistance of the bureaucracy and the “intelligentsia”, sabotage, etc., by means of the central apparatus of state power, to prove by deeds to the non-proletarian working masses that the proletariat is their only reliable ally, friend and leader.

III

But before passing to this, the most important question—the question of the attitude of the proletariat to the non-proletarian working masses—we must dwell on the army.

During the imperialist war the army absorbed all the flower of the nation’s manhood, and if the opportunist scum of the Second International (not only the social-chauvinists, i.e., those who directly went over to the side of “defence of the fatherland”—the Scheidemanns and Renaudels—but also the “Centrists”{4}) by their words and deeds strengthened the subordination of the army to the leadership of the imperialist brigands of both the German and the Anglo-French groups, the true proletarian revolutionaries never forgot the words of Marx uttered in 1870: “the bourgeoisie will teach the proletariat the use of arms!”{5} Only the Austro-German and Anglo-Franco-Russian traitors to socialism could talk about “defence of the fatherland” in the imperialist war, i.e., a war that was predatory on both sides; the proletarian revolutionaries, on the other hand (beginning with August 1914), directed all their attention to revolutionising the army, to using it against the imperialist brigands of the bourgeoisie, to converting the unjust and predatory war between the two groups of imperialist predators into a just and legitimate war of the proletarians and oppressed working masses of each country against “their own”, “national” bourgeoisie.

The traitors to socialism did not, in 1914-17, prepare the use of the armies against the imperialist governments of each nation.

The Bolsheviks prepared this by all their propaganda, agitation and illegal organisational work from August 1914 onward. Of course, the traitors to socialism, the Scheidemanns and Kautskys of all nations, got out of this by phrases about the demoralisation of the army by Bolshevik agitation, but we are proud that we did our duty by demoralising the forces of our class enemy, by wresting from him the armed masses of workers and peasants for the struggle against the exploiters.

The results of our work were reflected, among other things, in the voting in the elections to the Constituent Assembly in November 1917, in which the army in Russia also took part.

Here are the main results of this voting, as given by N. V. Svyatitsky:

* No information is given as to which party received the 19,500 votes from the Black Sea Fleet. The remaining figures in this column apparently refer almost entirely to the Ukrainian Socialists, since 10 Ukrainian Socialists and 1 Social-Democrat (i.e., Menshevik) were elected.

** Approximate figure: 2 Bolsheviks were elected. N. V. Svyatitsky estimates an average of 60,000 votes per elected candidate. I therefore take the figure 120,000.

The total gives: for the Socialist-Revolutionaries, 1,885,100 votes; for the Bolsheviks, 1,671,300. And if we add to the latter the 120,000 (approximately) from the Baltic Fleet, we get 1,791,300 votes for the Bolsheviks.

Consequently, the Bolsheviks obtained only slightly fewer votes than the Socialist-Revolutionaries.

Thus, by October-November 1917 the army was already half Bolshevik.

Without this we could not have been victorious.

But, having nearly half the votes in the army as a whole, we had an overwhelming preponderance on the fronts nearest the capitals and, in general, not too far away. If we exclude the Caucasian front, the Bolsheviks as a whole had a preponderance over the Socialist-Revolutionaries. And if we take the Northern and Western fronts, the Bolsheviks had over 1,000,000 votes as against 420,000 for the Socialist-Revolutionaries.

Consequently, in the army, too, by November 1917 the Bolsheviks already had a political “shock force” which ensured their overwhelming preponderance of forces at the decisive point at the decisive moment. There could be no question of any resistance on the part of the army to the October Revolution of the proletariat, to the conquest of political power by the proletariat, when on the Northern and Western fronts the Bolsheviks had a gigantic preponderance, while on the other fronts, which were remote from the centre, the Bolsheviks had time and opportunity to win the peasants away from the Socialist-Revolutionary party, as will be discussed below.

IV

On the basis of the data on the elections to the Constituent Assembly we have studied three conditions for the victory of Bolshevism: (1) the overwhelming majority among the proletariat; (2) nearly half the votes in the army; (3) an overwhelming preponderance of forces at the decisive moment at the decisive points, namely, in the capitals and on the army fronts near the centre.

But these conditions could have yielded only a very short-lived and unstable victory if the Bolsheviks had not been able to win over to their side the majority of the non-proletarian working masses, to win them away from the Socialist-Revolutionaries and other petty-bourgeois parties.

This is the main point.

And the main source of the failure of the “socialists” (read: petty-bourgeois democrats) of the Second International to understand the dictatorship of the proletariat is that they do not understand that state power in the hands of one class, the proletariat, can and must become an instrument for winning the non-proletarian working masses to the side of the proletariat, an instrument for wresting these masses from the bourgeoisie and the petty-bourgeois parties.

Full of petty-bourgeois prejudices, having forgotten the most important thing in Marx’s teaching on the state, the gentlemen “socialists” of the Second International regard state power as a sort of holy of holies, an idol, or the resultant of formal voting, an absolute of “consistent democracy” (or whatever other similar nonsense it is called). They do not see in state power simply an instrument which different classes can and must use (and know how to use) for their class purposes.

The bourgeoisie used state power as an instrument of the capitalist class against the proletariat, against all working people. This was the case under the most democratic bourgeois republics. Only traitors to Marxism “forgot” this.

The proletariat must (having mustered sufficiently strong political and military “shock forces”) overthrow the bourgeoisie, wrest state power from it, in order to use this instrument for its own class purposes.

And what are the class purposes of the proletariat?

To suppress the resistance of the bourgeoisie.

To “neutralise” the peasantry and, if possible, win it over—at all events, the majority of its working, non-exploiting section—to its side.

To organise large-scale machine production on the factories and means of production in general expropriated from the bourgeoisie.

To organise socialism on the ruins of capitalism.

The opportunist gentlemen, including the Kautskyans, “teach” the people, in mockery of Marx’s teaching: the proletariat must first win a majority by means of universal suffrage, then, on the basis of such a majority vote, obtain state power, and then, on this basis of “consistent” (some say: “pure”) democracy, organise socialism.

But we say, on the basis of Marx’s teaching and the experience of the Russian revolution: the proletariat must first overthrow the bourgeoisie and win state power for itself, and then use that state power, i.e., the dictatorship of the proletariat, as an instrument of its class for the purpose of winning the sympathy of the majority of the working people.

How can state power in the hands of the proletariat become an instrument of its class struggle for influence over the non-proletarian working masses? for winning them over to the side of the proletariat? for tearing them away, wresting them from the bourgeoisie?

First, the proletariat achieves this by putting into operation not the old apparatus of state power, but by smashing it to atoms, leaving no stone of it standing (despite the howls of frightened philistines and the threats of saboteurs), and by creating a new state apparatus. This new state apparatus is adapted to the dictatorship of the proletariat and to its struggle against the bourgeoisie for the non-proletarian working masses. This new apparatus is not invented by anyone, but grows out of the class struggle of the proletariat, out of its extension and deepening. This new apparatus of state power, the new type of state power, is Soviet power.

Having won state power, the Russian proletariat immediately, within a few hours, declared the old state apparatus (which, as Marx showed, had been adapted for centuries to serve the class interests of the bourgeoisie, even under the most democratic republic{6}) dissolved, and transferred all power to the Soviets. And only working and exploited people were admitted to the Soviets, all exploiters of every kind being excluded.

In this way, at one stroke, immediately after the conquest of state power by the proletariat, the proletariat wrests from the bourgeoisie a huge mass of its supporters from the petty-bourgeois and “socialist” parties, because this mass consists of working and exploited people, who were deceived by the bourgeoisie (including its hangers-on, the Chernovs, Kautskys, Martovs and Co.) and who, on receiving Soviet power, for the first time obtain an instrument of mass struggle for their interests against the bourgeoisie.

Second, the proletariat can and must at once, or at all events very quickly, wrest from the bourgeoisie and the petty-bourgeois democracy “their” masses, i.e., the masses that followed them—wrest them by revolutionarily satisfying their most pressing economic needs at the expense of the expropriation of the landlords and bourgeoisie.

The bourgeoisie cannot do this, no matter how “powerful” a state power it may possess.

The proletariat can do this the day after it wins state power, because it has both the apparatus (the Soviets) and the economic means (the expropriation of the landlords and bourgeoisie) for it.

It was precisely in this way that the Russian proletariat wrested the peasantry from the Socialist-Revolutionaries, and wrested it literally within a few hours after the proletariat won state power. For within a few hours after the victory over the bourgeoisie in Petrograd, the victorious proletariat issued the “Decree on Land”,[2] and in this decree it fully and immediately, with revolutionary speed, energy and self-sacrifice, carried out all the most pressing economic needs of the majority of the peasants, and completely expropriated the landlords without compensation.

In order to prove to the peasants that the proletarians did not want to outvote them, to lord it over them, but to help them and be their friends, the victorious Bolsheviks did not insert a single word of their own in the “Decree on Land”, but copied it word for word from those peasant mandates (the most revolutionary, of course) which had been published by the Socialist-Revolutionaries in the Socialist-Revolutionary newspaper.{7}

The Socialist-Revolutionaries fumed, raged, were indignant, and shouted that “the Bolsheviks had stolen their programme”, but they were only laughed at for this: a fine party it must be that has to be defeated and driven out of the government in order to have all the revolutionary and useful things for the working people in its programme carried out!

This dialectics the traitors, blockheads and pedants of the Second International have never been able to understand: the proletariat cannot be victorious unless it wins the majority of the population to its side. But to limit or condition this winning to the acquisition of a majority of votes in elections under the rule of the bourgeoisie is the height of stupidity, or sheer deception of the workers. In order to win the majority of the population to its side, the proletariat must, first, overthrow the bourgeoisie and seize state power; it must, second, introduce Soviet power, smashing the old state apparatus to atoms, thereby at one stroke undermining the rule, authority and influence of the bourgeoisie and the petty-bourgeois compromisers among the non-proletarian working masses. It must, third, completely destroy the influence of the bourgeoisie and the petty-bourgeois compromisers among the majority of the non-proletarian working masses by revolutionarily carrying out their economic needs at the expense of the exploiters.

The possibility of all this is, of course, given only by a certain level of capitalist development. Without this basic condition, neither the separation of the proletariat into a special class, nor the success of its long preparation, education, training and testing in struggle over long years of strikes, demonstrations, and the exposure and expulsion of opportunists, is possible. Without this basic condition, there can be no such role, economic and political, of the centres, by capturing which the proletariat captures the whole of state power, or, more correctly, its vital nerve, core, pivot. Without this basic condition, there can be no such kinship, closeness, connection between the position of the proletariat and the position of the non-proletarian working masses as is necessary for the influence of the proletariat over these masses, for the success of its impact upon them.

V

Let us go further.

The proletariat can win state power, introduce the Soviet system, and economically satisfy the majority of the working people at the expense of the exploiters.

Is this sufficient for complete and final victory?

No.

Only the illusion of the petty-bourgeois democrats, the “socialists” and “social-democrats”, as their principal modern representatives, can imagine that under capitalism the working masses are capable of acquiring such a high degree of consciousness, firmness of character, penetration and breadth of political outlook as to be able to decide by one vote, or in general to decide in advance in any way, without a long experience of struggle, that they will follow such and such a class or such and such a party.

This is an illusion. It is a saccharine fable of pedants and saccharine socialists of the type of the Kautskys, Longuets and MacDonalds.

Capitalism would not be capitalism if it did not, on the one hand, doom the masses to a state of downtroddenness, oppression, intimidation, disunity (the countryside!) and ignorance; and if it (capitalism) did not, on the other hand, place in the hands of the bourgeoisie a gigantic apparatus of lies and deception, of mass hoodwinking of the workers and peasants, of stultifying them, etc.

Therefore, only the proletariat is capable of leading the working people out of capitalism to communism. There can be no question of the petty-bourgeois or semi-petty-bourgeois mass of working people deciding in advance the most complex political question: “to be together with the working class or with the bourgeoisie”. The non-proletarian working strata are bound to vacillate; they are bound to have their own practical experience enabling them to compare the leadership of the bourgeoisie with the leadership of the proletariat.

This circumstance is constantly lost sight of by the worshippers of “consistent democracy”, who imagine that the most serious political questions can be decided by votes. In reality, when these questions are acute and sharpened by struggle, they are decided by civil war, and in this war the experience of the non-proletarian working masses (the peasantry in the first place), the experience of their comparison, of their contrasting the power of the proletariat with the power of the bourgeoisie, is of enormous importance.

The elections to the Constituent Assembly in Russia in November 1917, compared with the two years of civil war, 1917-19, are extremely instructive in this respect.

Look at the areas that proved to be least Bolshevik. First, the East Urals and Siberia: 12 per cent and 10 per cent of the votes for the Bolsheviks. Second, the Ukraine: 10 per cent of the votes for the Bolsheviks. Of the remaining areas, the peasant area of Great Russia, the Volga-Black Earth area, gives the smallest percentage of votes for the Bolsheviks, but even there 16 per cent of the votes were cast for the Bolsheviks.

And it is precisely in those areas where the percentage of Bolshevik votes in November 1917 was smallest that we observe the greatest success of the counter-revolutionary movements, revolts and organisation of counter-revolutionary forces. It was precisely in these areas that the power of Kolchak and Denikin held out for months and months.

The vacillations of the petty-bourgeois population in those areas where the influence of the proletariat was weakest manifested themselves with particular clarity: first, for the Bolsheviks, when they gave the land and the demobilised soldiers brought news of peace. Then, against the Bolsheviks, when they, in the interests of the international development of the revolution and of preserving its centre in Russia, concluded the Brest Peace,{8} “offending” the deepest petty-bourgeois, patriotic sentiments. The dictatorship of the proletariat was disliked by the peasants especially in those areas where there were the greatest surpluses of grain, when the Bolsheviks showed that they would strictly and authoritatively insist on the transfer of these surpluses to the state at fixed prices. The peasantry of the Urals, Siberia and the Ukraine turned to Kolchak and Denikin.

Further, the experience of Kolchak’s and Denikin’s “democracy”, which every newspaper scribbler in Kolchakia and Denikinia shouted about in every issue of the Whiteguard newspapers, showed the peasants that the phrases about democracy and the “Constituent Assembly” in reality served only as a cover for the dictatorship of the landlord and the capitalist.

A new turn towards Bolshevism begins: peasant revolts in the rear of Kolchak and Denikin spread. The Red troops are greeted by the peasants as liberators.

In the last analysis, it was these vacillations of the peasantry, as the principal representative of the petty-bourgeois mass of working people, that decided the fate of Soviet power and the power of Kolchak-Denikin. But before this “last analysis” a rather long period of severe struggle and painful trials had to pass, which have not been completed in Russia in two years, and have not been completed precisely in Siberia and the Ukraine. And there is no guarantee that they will be finally completed in, say, another year or so.

The supporters of “consistent” democracy have not pondered over the significance of this historical fact. They have pictured and still picture to themselves a childish fairy-tale to the effect that under capitalism the proletariat can “convince” the majority of the working people and firmly win them over to its side by votes. But reality shows that only in a long and cruel struggle does the severe experience of the vacillating petty bourgeoisie bring it, after comparing the dictatorship of the proletariat with the dictatorship of the capitalists, to the conclusion that the former is better than the latter.

Theoretically, all socialists who have studied Marxism and who wish to take into account the experience of the political history of the advanced countries during the nineteenth century recognise the inevitability of the vacillations of the petty bourgeoisie between the proletariat and the class of capitalists. The economic roots of these vacillations are clearly revealed by economic science, the truths of which have been repeated millions of times in the newspapers, leaflets and pamphlets of the socialists of the Second International.

But people do not know how to apply these truths to the specific epoch of the dictatorship of the proletariat. They substitute petty-bourgeois-democratic prejudices and illusions (about the “equality” of classes, about “consistent” or “pure” democracy, about the solution of great historical questions by votes, etc.) for the class struggle. They do not want to understand that the proletariat, having won state power, does not thereby cease its class struggle, but continues it in a different form, by different means. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the class struggle of the proletariat with the aid of such an instrument as state power—a class struggle one of whose tasks is to demonstrate by long experience, by a long series of practical examples, to the non-proletarian working strata that it is more advantageous for them to be for the dictatorship of the proletariat than for the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, and that there can be no third course.

The data on the elections to the Constituent Assembly in November 1917 give us the basic background of the picture that the development of the civil war during the two years following has shown. The main forces in this war are already clearly seen in the elections to the Constituent Assembly: the role of the “shock force” of the proletarian army is seen, the role of the vacillating peasantry is seen, the role of the bourgeoisie is seen. “The Cadets,” writes N. V. Svyatitsky in his article, “had their greatest success in the same areas as the Bolsheviks: in the Northern and Central Industrial areas” (p. 116). Naturally, in the most developed capitalist centres the intermediate elements standing between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie were weakest. Naturally, in these centres the class struggle was sharpest. It was here that the main forces of the bourgeoisie were concentrated; it was here, and only here, that the proletariat could defeat the bourgeoisie. And only the proletariat could defeat it utterly. And only after defeating it utterly could the proletariat, using such an instrument as state power, finally win the sympathy and support of the petty-bourgeois sections of the population.

The data on the elections to the Constituent Assembly, if one knows how to use them, how to read them, show us again and again the fundamental truths of the Marxist teaching on the class struggle.

Incidentally. These data also show the role and significance of the national question. Take the Ukraine. The writer of these lines was accused by some comrades at recent conferences on the Ukrainian question of excessively “pushing forward” the national question in the Ukraine. The data on the elections to the Constituent Assembly show that as early as November 1917 the Ukrainian Socialist-Revolutionaries and Socialists obtained a majority in the Ukraine (3,400,000 votes + 500,000 = 3,900,000 as against 1,900,000 for the Russian Socialist-Revolutionaries, the total number of votes in the whole of the Ukraine being 7,600,000). On the South-Western and Rumanian fronts in the army the Ukrainian Socialists obtained 30 per cent and 34 per cent of all the votes (as against 40 per cent and 59 per cent for the Russian Socialist-Revolutionaries).

In such a situation, to ignore the significance of the national question in the Ukraine—a sin very often committed by Great Russians (and perhaps not much less often by Jews than by Great Russians)—is to commit a profound and dangerous error. It cannot be accidental that the Russian and Ukrainian Socialist-Revolutionaries split in the Ukraine as early as 1917. And as internationalists, we must, first, fight particularly energetically against the remnants (sometimes unconscious) of Great-Russian imperialism and chauvinism among “Russian” Communists; second, it is precisely on the national question (which is of relatively minor importance for an internationalist—the question of state boundaries is a secondary, if not a tenth-rate, question) that we must make concessions. Other questions are important, the fundamental interests of the proletarian dictatorship are important, the interests of the unity and discipline of the Red Army fighting Denikin are important, the leading role of the proletariat in relation to the peasantry is important; the question whether the Ukraine will be a separate state or not is far less important. We cannot be in the least surprised—nor should we be frightened—even by the prospect that the Ukrainian workers and peasants will try out various systems and in the course of, say, several years test in practice both fusion with the RSFSR and separation from it as an independent Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and various forms of their close alliance, and so on and so forth.

To try to decide this question in advance, once and for all, “firmly” and “irrevocably”, would be narrow-mindedness or simply stupidity, for the vacillations of the non-proletarian working masses on such a question are quite natural, even inevitable, but are by no means dangerous for the proletariat. A representative of the proletariat who is really capable of being an internationalist must treat such vacillations with the greatest caution and tolerance; he must allow the non-proletarian working masses themselves to overcome these vacillations by their own experience. We must be intolerant and ruthless, irreconcilable and unbending on other, more fundamental questions, some of which I have already indicated above.

VI

A comparison of the elections to the Constituent Assembly in November 1917 with the development of the proletarian revolution in Russia from October 1917 to December 1919 makes it possible to draw conclusions relating to bourgeois parliamentarism and the proletarian revolution in every capitalist country. Let us try briefly to expound, or at least to outline, the main of these conclusions.

1. Universal suffrage is an index of the maturity of the understanding of their tasks by the various classes. It shows how the various classes are inclined to solve their tasks. The actual solution of these tasks is given not by voting, but by all forms of the class struggle