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

440V. I. LENINtain “dictators”, are responsible for the revolt of the workingpeople. They are given the lie by the split that is occurringamong the people themselves at congresses, meetings, conferences,and so forth. The people have not yet fully understandthe October Revolution. This revolution has shown inpractice how the people must take into their own hands,the hands of the workers’ and peasants’ state, the land, thenatural resources, and the means of transport and production.Our cry was, All power to the Soviets; it is for this we arefighting. The people wanted the Constituent Assembly summoned,and we summoned it. But they sensed immediatelywhat this famous Constituent Assembly really was. Andnow we have carried out the will of the people, which is—All power to the Soviets. As for the saboteurs, we shallcrush them. When I came from Smolny, that fount of lifeand vigour, to the Taurida Palace, I felt as though I werein the company of corpses and lifeless mummies. Theydrew on all their available resources in order to fight socialism,they resorted to violence and sabotage, they even turnedknowledge—the great pride of humanity—into a meansof exploiting the working people. But although they managedto hinder somewhat the advance towards the socialistrevolution, they could not stop it and will never be able to.Indeed the Soviets that have begun to smash the old, outwornfoundations of the bourgeois system, not in gentlemanly,but in a blunt proletarian and peasant fashion,are much too strong.To hand over power to the Constituent Assembly wouldagain be compromising with the malignant bourgeoisie.The Russian Soviets place the interests of the working peoplefar above the interests of a treacherous policy of compromisedisguised in a new garb. The speeches of those outdatedpoliticians, Chernov and Tsereteli, who continue whiningtediously for the cessation of civil war, give off the staleand musty odour of antiquity. But as long as Kaledin exists,and as long as the slogan “All power to the ConstituentAssembly” conceals the slogan “Down with Soviet power”,civil war is inevitable. For nothing in the world will makeus give up Soviet power! (Stormy applause.) And when theConstituent Assembly again revealed its readiness to postponeall the painfully urgent problems and tasks that were