The Stalin school of falsification - Marxists Internet Archive

Stalin School of Falsification - Chapter 14
Provisiona! Government there is not a single supporter of the Constituent Assembly with the exception
of Kerensky -- but notwithstanding this, it organizes the Constituent Assembly. While being
counter-revolutionary to the core, being counter-revolutionary in all respects -- in the program of the
parties represented in it, and in their aims -- it is never theless revolutionary in its activities. The
contradicticn between its counter-revolutionary nature and its revolution ary activities is a basic
contradiction. The reporter has called our attention to the support of Anglo-French capital ism. But that is
absolutely wrong. Recall the almost threat ening tone of Buchanan's speech: We will support you only to
the extent that you fulfill the promises of the Czarist gov ernment. Recall the speeches of Bonar Law and
others in the House of Commons. Anglo-French capitalism is protest ing, of course, not against Miliukov
and not against the Government but against its activities. They are in sympathy with the Government but
they are opposed to its activities and they demand that "an end be put to agitation," in the guise of the
Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. All the sympathies of the parties that have formed the Provi
sional Government were inclined not to the side of participat ing in the revolution but of resisting it. The
Octorbists and the Cadets took no part in the revolution, remaining counter-revolutionists, till the
moment when the revolution con quered. The Provisional Government received the power from the
hands of the people. The Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies could have refused to recognize it -and
it would never have come into existence. But I ask, why then are the counter-revolutionary forces
fulfilling the work of the revolution? Why didn't the revolutionary democracy take power into its own
hands instead of passing it into the hands of the moderate and liberal bourgeoisie? The answer to the
second question will at the same time provide an answer to the first.
It is as clear as noonday that to take the power into our own hands at the moment when it was possible to
realize the dictatorship of the democracy would have meant to ruin the bourgeois democratic revolution.
The proletariat would have been unable to cope with the anarchy. The revolutionary proletariat halted at
the threshold and transferred the power into other hands. We had no revolutionary democratic bourgeois
parties in our country. It was impossible for the social ists to take the power into their own hands. Only
one thing remained -- to hand the power over to the moderate elements, but on the condition that they
fulfill a revolutionary program inimical to themselves. The Cadet-Monarchists were attached to the
republican Government. They are fulfilling, with hatred towards us, and without disguising their hatred,
our revolutionary program. It was thus that there arose this incongruity between the activities and the
inner essence of the Provisional Government which we are now witnessing. The Government is in its
majonty comprised of moderate bour geois layers, but it received the power from the hands of the
revolutionary people, after it had pledged to the latter to fulfill the revolutionary program of the people -to
destroy the monarchy, to convene the Constituent Assembly, to democratize autonomous local rule,
etc. But precisely because of this internal contradiction there must be control on the part of the Soviet of
Workers' Deputies. So long as this control exists, it [the Government] will put the program into effect. It
[the Government] does not want to solve, but under the control of the revolutionary democracy it is able
to solve problems of the revolution. The Cadets and the Octobrists turned to the Soviet of Workers'
Deputies with the request: "Give us Ministers." It is objectively inevitable for the power to pass from the
less revolutionary into the more revolutionary hands, but this transfer will be effected grad ua]ly, through
the resignation of the more moderate Ministers and their replacement by more radical ones, but not in a
revolutionary way through their violent overthrow. I ask you to consider attentively the following detail:
Miliukov came with the slate of Ministers to the Soviet of Workers' Deputies for confirmation; the threat
of resignation was likewise submitted to the Soviet, that is to say, they turned to the Soviet in very much
the same way as is usually done in the case of monarchs in the countries of constitutional monarchy. It is
not true that the Soviet is an embryo of power. The Soviet is the power, dictating its own terms, while the
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