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

34V. I. LENINsupported by the Guchkovs, Milyukovs, Ryabushinskysand Co., has succeeded in creating a mass movement!!Kaledin marched towards civil war much more “directly”,much more forthrightly than did the Bolsheviks. Kaledinwent specifically “to rouse the Don”, and still he has notaroused a mass movement in his “home” region, in a Cossackregion far removed from Russian democracy in general.On the part of the proletariat, on the contrary, we observespontaneous outbursts of the movement in the very centreof the influence and power of anti-Bolshevik, all-Russiademocracy.Objective data on the attitude of various strata andeconomic groups of the Cossacks towards democracy andtowards the Kornilov revolt are lacking. There are onlyindications to the effect that the majority of the poor andmiddle Cossacks are rather inclined towards democracyand that only the officers and the top layer of the well-to-doCossacks are entirely in favour of Kornilov.However that may be, the extreme weakness of a massCossack movement in favour of a bourgeois counter-revolutionhas been historically proved since the experience ofAugust 26-31.There remains the last question, that of the tenacityof the movement. As far as the Bolshevik, proletarianrevolutionary movement is concerned, we have proof thatthe struggle against Bolshevism has been conducted duringthe six months’ existence of a republic in Russia bothideologically, with a gigantic preponderance of press organsand propaganda forces on the side of the opponents of Bolshevism(even if we risk classing the campaign of slanderas “ideological” struggle), and by means of repressions,which include hundreds of people arrested, our main printing-plantdemolished, and the chief newspaper and a numberof other papers suppressed. The result can be seen in thefacts—a tremendous growth of support for the Bolsheviksin the August Petrograd elections, and in both theSocialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties, a strengtheningof the internationalist and Left trends that are drawingclose to Bolshevism. This means that the tenacity of theproletarian revolutionary movement in republican Russiais very great. The facts tell us that the combined efforts