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

306V. I. LENINComrades, do not believe these lies. The comrades whohave resigned have acted as deserters, since they not onlyquitted the posts entrusted to them, but violated the directdecision of the Central Committee of our Party binding themto delay their resignation at least until a decision was takenby the Petrograd and Moscow Party organisations. Westrongly condemn this desertion. We are profoundly convincedthat all class-conscious workers, soldiers and peasantswho belong to or sympathise with our Party will condemnthe actions of the deserters with equal severity.But we declare that the desertion of a few individualsbelonging to the leading group of our Party cannot for amoment or in the slightest way shake the unity of themasses who follow our Party and that it therefore will notshake our Party.You must recall, comrades, that two of the deserters,Kamenev and Zinoviev, acted as deserters and blacklegseven before the Petrograd uprising; for they not only votedagainst the uprising at the decisive meeting of the CentralCommittee on October 10, 1917, but, even after the decisionhad been taken by the Central Committee, agitated amongthe Party workers against the uprising. It is common knowledgethat newspapers which fear to take the side of theworkers and are more inclined to side with the bourgeoisie(e.g., Novaya Zhizn), raised at that time, in common withthe whole bourgeois press, a hue and cry about the “disintegration”of our Party, about “the collapse of the uprising”and so on. Events, however, swiftly refuted the lies andslanders of some and the doubts, waverings and cowardiceof others: The “storm” they tried to raise over the effortsof Kamenev and Zinoviev to thwart the Petrograd uprisingproved to be a storm in a teacup, while the great enthusiasmof the people, the great heroism of millions of workers,soldiers, and peasants in Petrograd, in Moscow, at the front,in the trenches and in the villages, pushed the deserters outof the way as easily as a railway train pushes aside splintersof wood.Shame on all the faint-hearted, all the waverers anddoubters, on all those who allowed themselves to be intimidatedby the bourgeoisie or who have succumbed tothe outcries of their direct and indirect supporters! There