the Planson the next: But have the masses displayed the slightest confidence in these people? Have we not kept on pointing out that these leaders are betraying the masses? Have not the masses detached themselves from these chiefs and come over to us, in the Moscow elections as well as in the soviet elections? Or is it by any chance that the rank and file of railwaymen and post-office workers are not suffering from the famine? Are they not on strike against the Kerensky government? And, before February 28 did we have a contact with these Trade Unions? This was the question which a comrade asked the "pessimist." The latter replied alleging that it was impossible to compare the two revolutions. But this answer only reinforces the position of the questioner. For the Bolsheviks have spoken thousands of times (and not so that it should be forgotten just before the decisive moment) of the long preparation of the proletarian revolution against the bourgeoisie. The main feature of the political and economic life of post-office and railway Trades Unions has been precisely the separation of the proletarian elements of the rank and file away from the petit-bourgeois and the bourgeois upper strata. The important fact is not that we should get "contact" in advance with these two Trade Unions; it is that only the victory of the proletarian and peasant revolution can give satisfaction to the rank and file of the railwaymen and post-office workers.
"… At Petrograd we have two or three days' bread supply. Can we give bread to the insurgents?"
This is one of the innumerable remarks of the sceptics (who may always "doubt," for they cannot be refuted in any other way than by experience). It is one of those remarks by which blame is laid on the innocent.
As a matter of fact it is Rodzianko and company, as a matter of fact it is the bourgeoisie, who are preparing the famine and speculating upon the stifling of the revolution by famine. There is not and there cannot be another means of escaping the famine than by the insurrection of the peasants against the great landowners in the country, and the victory of the workers over the capitalists in the towns and cities.
Otherwise, it is impossible to take the cereals from the rich, to transport them despite the sabotage of the rich, to break the resistance of the corrupt officials and of the profiteers, and to establish
