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

LETTER TO COMRADES207economic life of the unions of postal and telegraph employeesand railwaymen is characterised by the very separation of theproletarian elements of the masses from the petty-bourgeoisand bourgeois upper layer. It is not absolutely necessaryto secure “connections” with one or the other union beforehand;what matters is that only a victory of a proletarianand peasant uprising can satisfy the masses both of thearmy of railwaymen and of postal and telegraph employees.“There is only enough broad in Petrograd for two or three days.Can we give bread to the insurrectionists?”This is one of a thousand sceptical remarks (the scepticscan always “doubt” and cannot be refuted by anything butexperience), one of those remarks that put the blame on thewrong shoulders.It is Rodzyanko and Co., it is the bourgeoisie that arepreparing the famine and speculating on strangling the revolutionby famine. There is no escaping the famine and therecan be none except by an uprising of the peasants againstthe landowners in the countryside and by a victory of theworkers over the capitalists in the cities and Petrogradand Moscow. There is no other way to get grain fromthe rich, or to transport it despite their sabotage, or tobreak the resistance of the corrupt employees and thecapitalist profiteers, or to establish strict accounting. Thehistory of the supply organisations and of the food difficultiesof the “democracy” with its millions of complaints againstthe sabotage of the capitalists, with its whimpering andsupplication is proof of this.There is no power on earth apart from the power ofa victorious proletarian revolution that would advance fromcomplaints and begging and tears to revolutionary action.And the longer the proletarian revolution is delayed, thelonger it is put off by events or by the vacillations of thewavering and confused, the more victims it will claim andthe more difficult it will be to organise the transportationand distribution of food.“In insurrection delay is fatal” this is our answer to thosehaving the sad “courage” to look at the growing economicruin, at the approaching famine, and still dissuade the