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

LETTER TO COMRADES205vanquished by voting, provided Kerensky and Rodzyankoconscientiously convene the Constituent Assembly. Have weany right to doubt the honesty of Kerensky and Rodzyanko?“But ‘everyone’ is against us! We are isolated; the Central ExecutiveCommittee, the Menshevik internationalists, the Novaya Zhiznpeople, and the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries have been issuing andwill continue to issue appeals against us!”A crushing argument. Up to now we have been mercilesslyscourging the vacillators for their vacillations. Byso doing, we have won the sympathies of the people. By sodoing, we have won over the Soviets, without which theuprising could not be safe, quick, and sure. Now let us usethe Soviets which we have won over in order to move intothe camp of the vacillators. What a splendid career for Bolshevism!The whole essence of the policy of the Lieberdans andChernovs, and also of the Left Socialist-Revolutionariesand Mensheviks, consists in vacillations. The Left Socialist-Revolutionariesand Menshevik internationalists havetremendous political importance as an indication of the factthat the masses are moving to the left. Two such facts asthe passing of some 40 per cent of both Mensheviks andSocialist-Revolutionaries into the camp of the Left, on theone hand, and the peasant uprising, on the other, areclearly and obviously interconnected.But it is the very character of this connection that revealsthe abysmal spinelessness of those who have now undertakento whimper over the fact that the Central ExecutiveCommittee, which has rotted away, or the vacillatingLeft Socialist-Revolutionaries and Co., have come outagainst us. For these vacillations of the petty-bourgeoisleaders—the Martovs, Kamkovs, Sukhanovs and Co.—haveto be compared to the uprising of the peasants. Here is arealistic political comparison. With whom shall we go?Should it be with the vacillating handfuls of Petrograd leaders,who have expressed indirectly the leftward swing ofthe masses, but who, at every political turn, have shamefullywhimpered, vacillated, run to ask forgiveness of the