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

LETTER TO THE BOLSHEVIK COMRADES185which we have repeated endlessly. The slogan is “All Powerto the Soviets”. There were periods, there were momentsduring the six months of the revolution, when this slogandid not mean insurrection. Perhaps those periods and thosemoments blinded some of our comrades and led them toforget that now, at least since the middle of September,this slogan for us too has become equivalent to a call forinsurrection.There can be no shadow of doubt on this score. DyeloNaroda recently explained this “in a popular way”, when itsaid “Kerensky will under no circumstances submit!” As ifhe could!The slogan “All Power to the Soviets” is nothing but acall for insurrection. And the blame will be wholly andundoubtedly ours, if we, who for months have been callingupon the people to revolt and repudiate compromise, failto lead them to revolt on the eve of the revolution’s collapse,after the people have expressed their confidence in us.The Cadets and compromisers are trying to scare us byciting the example of July 3-5, by pointing to the intensifiedagitation of the Black Hundreds, 78 and so forth. But ifany mistake was made on July 3-5, it was that we did nottake power. I do not think we made a mistake then, forat that time we were not yet in a majority. But now it wouldbe a fatal mistake, worse than a mistake. The spread of Black-Hundred agitation is understandable. It is an aggravationof extremes in an atmosphere of a developing proletarianand peasant revolution. But to use this as an argument againstan uprising is ridiculous, for the impotence of the BlackHundreds, hirelings of the capitalists, the impotence of theBlack Hundreds in the struggle, does not even require proof.In the struggle they are not worth considering. In the struggleKornilov and Kerensky can only rely on the SavageDivision and the Cossacks. And now demoralisation has setin even among the Cossacks; furthermore, the peasants arethreatening them with civil war within their Cossack regions.I am writing these lines on Sunday, October 8. You willread them not earlier than October 10. I have heard from acomrade who passed through here that people travelling onthe Warsaw railway say, “Kerensky is bringing Cossacksto Petrograd!” This is quite probable, and it will be entirely