falterers; they will be more useful to the cause of the revolution there, than in the camp of the resolute and devoted fighters.
We must compose a short declaration, in which we strongly and sharply emphasize the inopportuneness of long discussions and all discussions in the abstract, the necessity for immediate action for the salvation of the revolution, the absolute necessity of a complete rupture with the bourgeoisie, the dismissal of all the members of the present government, a complete break with the Anglo-French imperialists who are preparing to partition Russia by means of a separate peace, and finally the necessity for the immediate handing over of all the power to the revolutionary democracy led by the revolutionary proletariat.[1]
In our declaration we must formulate, in a manner as brief as it is vigorous, this conclusion which will remain on our prospective programme; peace to the peoples; land to the peasants, confiscation of the scandalous profits of the capitalists, strong measures to curb these latter and to prevent them from continuing to disorganise production.
The briefer and more trenchant the declaration the better. It remains to emphasize again two important points, namely: The people are tortured, reduced to despair by the faltering and indecision of the Social-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks; we must break definitively with these parties, because they have betrayed the revolution. Secondly, by proposing immediate peace without annexation, by breaking with the allied imperialists and with all the imperialists in general, we shall obtain at once either an armistice or the adoption of the defensive point of view by the revolutionary proletariat, under whose direction the revolutionary democracy will carry on a truly just and revolutionary war.
After having read this declaration, after having demanded a decision instead of idle words, action instead of written resolutions, we must delegate our fraction to the factories and barracks: its place is there, there lies the nerve centre, the salvation of the revolution, the power behind the Democratic Conference.
There, in ardent and impassioned speeches we must develop and expound our programme and thus formulate the question: either complete acceptance of this programme, or insurrection.
- ↑ On September 22 Riazanov, in the name of the Bolshevik fraction, made a declaration in this sense at the Conference.
