Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 26 - From Marx to Mao

98V. I. LENINof twenty-three gubernias and four armies voted againsta coalition.So, the majority of the peasants are against a coalition!So much for the “isolation of the proletariat”.We should note, by the way, that the supporters of acoalition were three outlying gubernias, Samara, Taurida andthe Black Sea, where there is a relatively very large numberof rich peasants and big landowners who employ hired labour,and also four industrial gubernias (Vladimir, Ryazan,Kostroma and Moscow) in which the peasant bourgeoisieare also stronger than in the majority of the gubernias inRussia. It would be interesting to collect more detailedfigures on this question and to ascertain whether informationis available concerning the poor peasants in the guberniaswhere there are larger numbers of “rich” peasants.It is interesting, moreover, that the “non-Russian groups”revealed a considerable predominance of opponents of acoalition, namely, 40 votes against 15. The policy of annexationand open violence pursued by the BonapartistKerensky and Co. towards the non-sovereign nations ofRussia has borne fruit. Wide sections of the people of theoppressed nations (i.e., including the mass of the petty bourgeoisie)trust the proletariat of Russia more than they do thebourgeoisie, for here history has brought to the fore the strugglefor liberation of the oppressed nations against the oppressingnations. The bourgeoisie has despicably betrayedthe cause of freedom of the oppressed nations; the proletariatis faithful to the cause of freedom.At the present time the national and agrarian questionsare fundamental questions for the petty-bourgeois sections ofthe population of Russia. This is indisputable. And on boththese questions the proletariat is “not isolated”—fartherfrom it than ever. It has the majority of the people behindit. It alone is capable of pursuing such a determined, genuinely“revolutionary-democratic” policy on both questionswhich would immediately ensure the proletarian state powernot only the support of the majority of the population, butalso a real outburst of revolutionary enthusiasm among thepeople. This is because, for the first time, the people wouldnot see the ruthless oppression of peasants by landownersand of Ukrainians by Great Russians on the part of the