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

THESES ON THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY383Social-Democrats are duty bound to warn all and sundryagainst this error, into which a few Bolshevik leaders,who have been unable to appreciate the significance of theOctober uprising and the tasks of the dictatorship of theproletariat, have strayed.18. The only chance of securing a painless solution to thecrisis which has arisen owing to the divergence between theelections to the Constituent Assembly, on the one hand, andthe will of the people and the interests of the working andexploited classes, on the other, is for the people to exerciseas broadly and as rapidly as possible the right to elect themembers of the Constituent Assembly anew, and for theConstituent Assembly to accept the law of the Central ExecutiveCommittee on these new elections, to proclaim thatit unreservedly recognises Soviet power, the Soviet revolution,and its policy on the questions of peace, the land andworkers’ control, and to resolutely join the camp of theenemies of the Cadet-Kaledin counter-revolution.19. Unless these conditions are fulfilled, the crisis in connectionwith the Constituent Assembly can be settled onlyin a revolutionary way, by Soviet power adopting the mostenergetic, speedy, firm and determined revolutionary measuresagainst the Cadet-Kaledin counter-revolution, nomatter behind what slogans and institutions (even participationin the Constituent Assembly) this counter-revolutionmay hide. Any attempt to tie the hands of Soviet power inthis struggle would be tantamount to aiding counterrevolution.Written on December 11 or 12Published according(24 or 25), 1917 to the manuscript verifiedPublished in Pravda No. 213,with a typewritten copyDecember 26 (13), 1917bearing Lenin’s corrections