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

195Comrades,LETTER TO COMRADESWe are living in a time that is so critical, events aremoving at such incredible speed that a publicist, placedby the will of fate somewhat aside from the mainstreamof history, constantly runs the risk either of being lateor proving uninformed, especially if some time elapsesbefore his writings appear in print. Although I fully realisethis, I must nevertheless address this letter to the Bolsheviks,even at the risk of its not being published at all, forthe vacillations against which I deem it my duty to warnin the most decisive manner are of an unprecedented natureand may have a disastrous effect on the Party, the movementof the international proletariat, and the revolution.As for the danger of being too late, I will prevent it by indicatingthe nature and date of the information I possess.It was not until Monday morning, October 16, that I sawa comrade who had on the previous day participated ina very important Bolshevik gathering in Petrograd, and whoinformed me in detail of the discussion. 82 The subject ofdiscussion was that same question of the uprising discussedby the Sunday papers of all political trends. The gatheringrepresented all that is most influential in all branchesof Bolshevik work in the capital. Only a most insignificantminority of the gathering, namely, all in all two comrades,took a negative stand. The arguments which thosecomrades advanced are so weak, they are a manifestation ofsuch an astounding confusion, timidity, and collapse ofall the fundamental ideas of Bolshevism and proletarian