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

17PREFACEVolume 26 contains the works V. I. Lenin wrote betweenSeptember 1917 and February 1918. A large part of themdeals with the Bolshevik Party’s preparation of the armeduprising in October 1917. They include “The BolsheviksMust Assume Power”, “Marxism and Insurrection”, “TheCrisis Has Matured”, “Can the Bolsheviks Retain StatePower?”, “Advice of an Onlooker”, directives to the CentralCommittee and the Petrograd and Moscow Party Committees,which Lenin wrote while in hiding. In them he elaborateson Marx’s ideas of insurrection as an art and sets outa concrete plan for the uprising.A considerable part of the volume consists of reportsand speeches at congresses of Soviets, meetings of Partyand local government workers, appeals and messages tothe people, which show Lenin as the leader of the Partyand the working masses, the organiser and head of theSoviet state in its first months.The volume also contains the drafts of the first decreesand the decrees issued by the Soviet Government whichwere written by Lenin and signed by him in his capacityof Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, namely,the Decree on Peace, the Decree on Land, the Draft Regulationson Workers’ Control, the Draft Decree on the Rightof Recall, the Draft Decree on the Nationalisation of theBanks and on Measures Necessary for Its Implementation,Draft Decree on the Dissolution of the Constituent Assembly,etc.Lenin’s struggle against the provocative and treacherouspolicy of the Trotskyites and “Left-wing Communists” over