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

MEETING OF THE ALL-RUSSIA C.E.C., NOVEMBER 4 (17)293could not predict the day and hour. We now see the samepicture in Germany. There, too, there is a swelling undercurrentof dissatisfaction which will inevitably take theforms of a popular movement. We cannot decree a revolution,but we can help it along. We shall conduct organisedfraternisation in the trenches and help the peoples of theWest to start an invincible socialist revolution. ComradeZaks further spoke about decreeing socialism. But doesn’tthe present government urge the masses to create betterforms of life themselves? You have the beginnings ofsocialism in the exchange of manufactured goods for grain,and the strict control and accounting of production. We aresure we are going to have a republic of labour. He who willnot work, will have to go without food.But to continue: what is the sign of our Party’s isolation?It is the breakaway of a few intellectuals. But we dailyfind more and more support among the peasants. Victorywill belong only to those who have faith in the people, thosewho are immersed in the life-giving spring of popularcreativity.Comrade Lenin then proposes to the Central ExecutiveCommittee the following resolution:The Central Executive Committee authorises the Councilof People’s Commissars to nominate, by the next sitting,candidates for the People’s Commissars of the Interior, andTrade and Industry, and invites Comrade Kolegayev to fillthe post of People’s Commissar of Agriculture.Izvestia No. 218,November 7 , 1917Published according to the Izvestiatext; Resolution on the resignation,according to the text of Minutesof the All-Russia Central ExecutiveCommittee of Soviets of Workers’,Soldiers’, Peasants’ and Cossacks’Deputies, Second Convocation,Moscow, 1918