Page:Nikolai Lenin - On the Road to Insurrection (1926).pdf/128

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120
ON THE ROAD

those who have lost their heads and those who have given way to their fears.

Hunger does not wait. The peasant insurrection did not wait. War does not wait. The vanished admirals did not wait.

Or perhaps because we, the Bolsheviks, proclaim our faith in the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, hunger will kindly consent to wait? Would the vanished admirals agree to wait? Would the Maklakovs and Rodziankos agree to give up the lock-out, stop interfering with grain arrivals, and cease their secret negotiations with English and German imperialists?

This, in fact, is what seems to stand out from the point of view of the champions of "constitutional illusions" and of Parliamentary feeble-mindedness. These people do not wish to see and cannot see anything of real life: for them the only realities are the paper announcing the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, and the elections.

And these sightless ones are still astonished that a starving people, a soldiery betrayed by their generals and their admirals, can be indifferent to the election! O wise men!


"… If the Kornilovians begin again, we will show them what we are made of. But as for beginning ourselves; what's the good of running the risk of failure? …"

This is in the highest degree convincing and revolutionary. History does not repeat itself, but if we turn our back on it, and, considering the first Kornilov insurrection, say to ourselves: "Aha! if only the Kornilovians begin again": What wonderful revolutionary strategy this is! Exactly like "go where you are pushed!"

Perhaps, we say, the Kornilovians will once more choose a bad time to begin. Isn't this a powerful "argument"? What a serious foundation for proletarian tactics?

Just suppose that the Kornilovians may have learnt something?Suppose that they wait for famine riots, the breaking of the front, the surrender of Petrograd, and only begin at that time? What then?

It is suggested that we base the tactics of the proletarian party on the chance of the eventual repetition by the Kornilovians of their old mistakes!

Let us forget what the Bolsheviks have shown hundreds of