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

LETTER TO COMRADES197ders and attacks by the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevikleaders, officers, deputies, etc., etc.Last, but not least, the most outstanding fact of presentdayRussian life is the revolt of the peasantry. This showsobjectively, not by words but by deeds, that the people aregoing over to the side of the Bolsheviks. But the fact remains,notwithstanding the lies of the bourgeois press andits miserable yes-men of the “vacillating” Novaya Zhizncrowd, who shout about riots and anarchy. The peasant movementin Tambov Gubernia 83 was an uprising both in the physicaland political sense, an uprising that has yielded suchsplendid political results as, in the first place, agreement totransfer the land to the peasants. It is not for nothing that theSocialist-Revolutionary rabble, including Dyelo Naroda,who are frightened by the uprising, now scream about theneed to transfer the land to the peasants. Here is a practicaldemonstration of the correctness of Bolshevism and of itssuccess. It proved to be impossible to “teach” the Bonapartistsand their lackeys in the Pre-parliament otherwise thanby an uprising.This is a fact and facts are stubborn things. And such afactual “argument” in favour of an uprising is stronger thanthousands of “pessimistic” evasions on the part of confusedand frightened politicians.If the peasant uprising were not an event of nation-widepolitical import, the Socialist-Revolutionary lackeys fromthe Pre-parliament would not be shouting about the need tohand over the land to the peasants.Another splendid political and revolutionary consequenceof the peasant uprising, as already noted in Rabochy Put,is the delivery of grain to the railway stations in TambovGubernia. Here is another “argument” for you, confusedgentlemen, an argument in favour of the uprising as the onlymeans to save the country from the famine that is knockingat our door and from a crisis of unheard-of dimensions.While the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik betrayersof the people are grumbling, threatening, writing resolutions,promising to feed the hungry by convening the ConstituentAssembly, the people are beginning to solve thebread problem Bolshevik-fashion, by rebelling against thelandowners, capitalists, and speculators.