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

LETTER TO THE BOLSHEVIK COMRADES183tion; we have not got freedom of assembly. We have not asingle Soviet of Workers’ or Soldiers’ Deputies. Our voicebarely reaches the real, broad mass of people. Yet we madean attempt at revolt, although our chance was only one in ahundred. But you Russian revolutionary internationalistshave behind you a half-year of free agitation, you have ascore of newspapers, you have a number of Soviets of Workers’and Soldiers’ Deputies, you have gained the upper handin the Soviets of Petrograd and Moscow, you have on yourside the entire Baltic fleet and all the Russian troops inFinland. And still you do not respond to our call for anuprising, you do not overthrow your imperialist, Kerensky,although the chances are a hundred to one that your uprisingwill be successful.Yes, we shall be real traitors to the International if, atsuch a moment and under such favourable conditions, werespond to this call from the German revolutionaries with... mere resolutions.Add to this, as we all perfectly well know, that the plottingand conspiracy of the international imperialists againstthe Russian revolution are rapidly growing. Internationalimperialism is coming closer to the idea of stifling the revolutionat all costs, stifling it both by military measures andby a peace made at the expense of Russia. It is this that ismaking the crisis in the world socialist revolution so acute,and is rendering our delay of the uprising particularlydangerous—I would almost say criminal.Take, further, Russia’s internal situation. The pettybourgeoiscompromising parties which expressed the naïveconfidence of the masses in Kerensky and in the imperialistsin general, are absolutely bankrupt. Their collapseis complete. The vote cast against coalition by the Sovietcuria at the Democratic Conference, the vote cast againstcoalition by a majority of the local Soviets of Peasants’Deputies (in spite of their central Soviet, where Avksentyevand other friends of Kerensky’s are installed), theelections in Moscow, where the working-class population hasthe closest ties with the peasants, and where over 49 per centvoted for the Bolsheviks (and among the soldiers fourteenthousand out of seventeen thousand)—does this not signifythat the confidence of the people in Kerensky and in those