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

333ALLIANCE BETWEEN THE WORKERSAND THE WORKING AND EXPLOITED PEASANTSA LETTER TO PRAVDAToday, Saturday, November 18, in the course of a speechI made at the Peasants’ Congress, I was publicly askeda question to which I forthwith replied. It is essential thatthis question and my reply should immediately be madeknown to all the reading public, for while formally speakingonly in my own name, I was actually speaking in the nameof the whole Bolshevik Party.The matter was the following.Touching on the question of an alliance between theBolshevik workers and the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries,whom many peasants at present trust, I argued in my speechthat this alliance can be an “honest coalition”, an honestalliance, for there is no radical divergence of interestsbetween the wage-workers and the working and exploitedpeasants. Socialism is fully able to meet the interests ofboth. Only socialism can meet their interests. Hence thepossibility and necessity for an “honest coalition” betweenthe proletarians and the working and exploited peasantry.On the contrary, a “coalition” (alliance) between the workingand exploited classes, on the one hand, and the bourgeoisie,on the other, cannot be an “honest coalition” because ofthe radical divergence of interests between these classes.Imagine, I said, that there is a majority of Bolsheviksand a minority of Left Socialist-Revolutionaries in thegovernment, or even, let us assume, only one Left Socialist-Revolutionary—the Commissar of Agriculture. Could theBolsheviks practise an honest coalition under such circumstances?