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

CAN THE BOLSHEVIKS RETAIN STATE POWER?121“We squeezed ‘them’ a bit; ‘they’ won’t dare to lord itover us as they did before. We’ll squeeze again—and chuckthem out altogether,” that’s how the worker thinks and feels.* **The sixth and last plea: the proletariat “will be incapableof resisting all the pressure by hostile forces that willsweep away not only the proletarian dictatorship, but theentire revolution into the bargain”.Don’t try to scare us, gentlemen, you won’t succeed. Wesaw these hostile forces and their pressure in Kornilovism(from which the Kerensky regime in no way differs).Everybody saw, and the people remember, how the proletariatand the poor peasants swept away the Kornilov gang,and how pitiful and helpless proved to be the position ofthe supporters of the bourgeoisie and of the few exceptionallywell-to-do local small landowners who were exceptionally“hostile” to the revolution. Dyelo Naroda of September30 urges the workers to “be patient and put up with”Kerensky (i.e., Kornilov) and the fake Tsereteli BulyginDuma until the convocation of the Constituent Assembly(convened under the protection of “military measures”against insurgent peasants!) and, with great gusto, itrepeats precisely Novaya Zhizn’s sixth plea and shouts untilit is hoarse: “The Kerensky government will under no circumstancessubmit” (to the rule of the Soviets, the rule ofthe workers and peasants, which Dyelo Naroda, not wishingto lag behind the pogrom-mongers and anti-Semites, monarchistsand Cadets, calls the rule of “Trotsky and Lenin”: theseare the lengths to which the Socialist-Revolutionaries go!).But neither Novaya Zhizn nor Dyelo Naroda can scare theclass-conscious workers. “The Kerensky government,” yousay, “will under no circumstances submit”, i.e., it will repeatthe Kornilov revolt, to put it more simply, bluntly andclearly. And the gentlemen of Dyelo Naroda dare to say thatthis will be “civil war”, that this is a “horrible prospect”!No, gentlemen, you will not fool the workers. It willnot be civil war but a hopeless revolt of a handful of Kornilovites.If they want to “refuse to submit” to the peopleand at all costs provoke a repetition on a wide scale of what