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

LETTER TO THE PETROGRAD CITY CONFERENCE147“First, the conviction has long been growing and strengtheningin the army that it was betrayed by the tsaristgenerals and is also being betrayed by the generals ofKornilov and Kerensky (particularly in the surrender ofRiga);“Second, the Anglo-French bourgeois press does not concealits fierce, even frenzied hatred for the Soviets and itsreadiness to drown them in any quantity of blood;“Third, Kerensky, the Cadets, Breshkovskaya, Plekhanovand similar politicians are conscious or unconscious toolsin the hands of Anglo-French imperialism, as six months’history of the Russian revolution has proved in full;“Fourth, the vague but persistent rumours of a separatepeace between Britain and Germany ‘at the expense ofRussia’ could not have arisen without cause;“Fifth, all the circumstances of the Kornilov conspiracy,as admitted even by Dyelo Naroda and Izvestia, papersthat on the whole sympathise with Kerensky, have provedthat Kerensky was to a very large extent mixed up in theKornilov affair, that Kerensky was and is the most dangerousKornilovite; Kerensky, in fact, has shielded such leadersof the Kornilov revolt as Rodzyanko, Klembovsky,Maklakov, and others.“The Conference, therefore, recognises that all the shoutingby Kerensky and the bourgeois papers that supporthim about the defence of Petrograd is sheer deception andhypocrisy, and the soldiers’ section of the Petrograd Sovietwas perfectly right when it sharply condemned the plan tomove from Petrograd; furthermore, that Petrograd cannotbe defended and the revolution saved unless the tired armyis absolutely and urgently convinced of the sincerity of thegovernment and is given bread, clothing and footwear atthe cost of revolutionary measures against the capitalists,who hitherto have sabotaged the struggle against economicruin (as admitted even by the Economic Department of theMenshevik-Socialist-Revolutionary Central Executive Committee).“The Conference therefore declares that only the overthrowof the Kerensky government with its packed Council ofthe Republic, and the substitution for it of a workers’ andpeasants revolutionary government, can ensure: