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

EXTRAORDINARY ALL-RUSSIA RAILWAYMEN’S CONGRESS4972REPLIES TO NOTESComrades, the notes lying before me fall into two groups:one raises the question of the Constituent Assembly, theother, of the famine and the economic chaos. I shall replyon these two points, putting those notes together that moreor less refer to the same topic. About the Constituent Assemblywe are being asked: Was it fair to dissolve it, andshouldn’t another one be convened? Or wouldn’t it have beenmore correct to refer the question to a popular referendumbefore dissolving the Constituent Assembly? No, comrades,neither a referendum nor a new constituent assembly canhelp matters. That is how the parties in Russia have takenshape. We have seen where the sympathies of the capitalists,and where those of the workers and peasants lie. Sovietpower was not established by decree or party resolution,because it is above parties, and is the outcome of revolutionaryexperience, the experience of millions of men: it wasno accident at all that the Soviets first emerged in 1905,and in 1917 grew to full stature and established a new republic,the likes of which do not exist in any European country,and will not exist in any of them so long as they are ruledby capital. But the Soviet Republic will triumph everywhere,and that is when the decisive blow will be dealt at capital.I must point out that the Constituent Assembly and thereferendum are based on the old bourgeois parliamentarypattern and because capital holds sway, any popular pollhas to reckon and bargain with it. Soviet power does notproduce men who fence in parliament and exchange brilliantspeeches, the while consolidating the rule of capital andthe bureaucracy. Soviet power springs from the working