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

432V. I. LENINIn reply to that came a torrent of over-smooth, emptyphrases from Chernov and Tsereteli that carefully avoidedonly (only!) one question—that of Soviet power, of the OctoberRevolution. “Let there be no civil war, let there be nosabotage,” said Chernov, invoking the revolution in thename of the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries. And the latterwho for six months, from June 1917 to January 1918, hadbeen sleeping like corpses in their coffins, stood up andclapped furiously and persistently. It is really so easy and sopleasant to settle the problems of the revolution by an incantation.“Let there be no civil war, let there be no sabotage, leteverybody recognise the Constituent Assembly.” In what waydoes that differ, in essence, from the invocation: “Let theworkers and capitalists make peace”? Not in any way. TheKaledins and Ryabushinskys together with their imperialistfriends in all countries will not disappear or change theirpolicy because of the invocations of the mealy-mouthedChernov or because of Tsereteli’s boring precepts that seemto have been taken from a misunderstood, poorly read andmisinterpreted book.Either conquer the Kaledins and Ryabushinskys or giveup the revolution. Either victory over the exploiters in thecivil war, or the collapse of the revolution. Such has beenthe issue in all revolutions, in the English revolution in theseventeenth century, in the French in the eighteenth centuryand in the German in the nineteenth century. Howcould it be thought that the Russian revolution in the twentiethcentury would not face that issue? How can wolvesbecome lambs?Tsereteli and Chernov do not show a grain of an idea,not the slightest desire to accept the fact of the class strugglethat has become civil war, not by chance, not suddenly,not because of somebody’s caprice or ill will, but inevitably,in the long process of revolutionary development.It was a hard, boring and irksome day in the elegant roomsof the Taurida Palace, whose very aspect differs from thatof Smolny approximately in the same way as elegant, butmoribund bourgeois parliamentarism differs from the plain,proletarian Soviet apparatus that is in many ways stilldisorderly and imperfect but is living and vital. There, inthat old world of bourgeois parliamentarism, the leaders