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

FROM THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE R.S.D.L.P.(B.)305comrades refused; we regard their refusal as impermissibleon the part of revolutionaries and champions of the workingpeople. We are ready at any moment to include Left Socialist-Revolutionaries in the government, but we declare that,as the majority party at the Second All-Russia Congressof Soviets, we are entitled to form the government, and itis our duty to the people to do so.Everybody knows that the Central Committee of ourParty submitted a purely Bolshevik list of People’s Commissarsto the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets, andthat the Congress approved this list of a purely Bolshevikgovernment.The statements to the effect that the Bolshevik governmentis not a Soviet Government are therefore pure lies, andcome, and can come, only from the enemies of the people,from the enemies of Soviet power. On the contrary, now,after the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets, and untilthe Third Congress meets, or until new elections to the Sovietsare held, or until a new government is formed by theCentral Executive Committee, only a Bolshevik governmentcan be regarded as the Soviet Government.* **Comrades, yesterday, November 4, several members ofthe Central Committee of our Party and of the Council ofPeople’s Commissars—Kamenev, Zinoviev, Nogin, Rykov,Milyutin and a few others—resigned from the Central Committeeof our Party, and the three last named from the Councilof People’s Commissars. In a large party like ours, notwithstandingthe proletarian and revolutionary line of ourpolicy, it was inevitable that individual comrades shouldhave proved to be insufficiently staunch and firm in thestruggle against the enemies of the people. The tasks thatnow face our Party are really immense, the difficulties areenormous, and several members of our Party who formerlyheld posts of responsibility have flinched in face of theonslaught of the bourgeoisie and fled from our ranks. Thebourgeoisie and all its helpers are jubilant over this fact andare maliciously rejoicing, clamouring about disintegrationand predicting the fall of the Bolshevik government.