Page:Nikolai Lenin - On the Road to Insurrection (1926).pdf/53

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ON THE ROAD TO INSURRECTION
45

The Kornilov regime instructs the masses. It has already taught them a great deal.

It is impossible to say if the Soviets will now be able to remove their Social Revolutionary and Menshevik leaders and thus insure the peaceful development of the revolution; or whether they will continue to mark time and thus render the insurrection of the proletariat inevitable.

We must do our best to insure an eleventh hour peaceful development to the revolution; and for this we must expound our programme, bring its popular character to light and prove that it corresponds entirely with the interests and demands of the vast majority of the population.

The following lines are an attempt to explain this programme.

Let us forge ahead with it; draw nearer to the masses. Let us go not only to the employés, the workers and peasants who are on our side, but to those who follow the Social Revolutionaries; to the Non-party people, and to the elements as yet unconscious. Let us endeavour to teach them to judge for themselves, to draw up their own resolution and send their own delegates to the Conference, to the Soviets and to the Government. Thus our labours will not be in vain whatever may be the result of the Conference. It will be useful both for the Conference, for the Constituent Assembly elections and also for all political action in general.

Experience proves for us the validity of the programme and tactics of the Bolsheviks. The time between April 20 and the Kornilov insurrection is very brief, but how full of incident.

The experience of the masses and the oppressed classes has given them, during this short lapse of time, an immense amount of instruction. Meanwhile the leaders of the Social Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks are completely detached from the masses whose interests they have not supported. It is the point of our practical programme that it will clearly show to the masses the measures by which we will secure their participation in its discussion.

1.—The Fatal Consequences of the Policy of Compromise with Capitalism

To have the power in the hands of the representatives of the bourgeoisie, however small the number, to leave it to the avowed Kornilovians like the generals Alexeiev, Klembovsky, Bragation,