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

48V. I. LENINsitting and listening to the Zarudnys! And the Zarudnysare not the least sincere of them!The Bolsheviks should have walked out of the meetingin protest and not allowed themselves to be caught by theconference trap set to divert the people’s attention fromserious questions. The Bolsheviks should have left two orthree of their 136 delegates for “liaison work”, that is, toreport by telephone the moment the idiotic babbling cameto an end and the voting began. They should not have allowedthemselves to be kept busy with obvious nonsense for theobvious purpose of deceiving the people with the obviousaim of extinguishing the growing revolution by wastingtime on trivial matters.Ninety-nine per cent of the Bolshevik delegation oughtto have gone to the factories and barracks; that was theproper place for delegates who had come from all endsof Russia and who, after Zarudny’s speech, could see thefull depth of the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevikrottenness. There, closer to the masses, at hundreds andthousands of meetings and talks, they ought to have discussedthe lessons of this farcical conference whose obviouspurpose was only to give a respite to the KorniloviteKerensky and make it easier for him to try new variationsof the “ministerial leapfrog” game.The Bolsheviks, it turned out, had a wrong attitude toparliamentarism in moments of revolutionary (and notconstitutional) crises, an incorrect attitude to the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks.How it happened can be understood—history made a verysharp turn at the time of the Kornilov revolt. The Partyfailed to keep pace with the incredibly fast tempo of historyat this turning-point. The Party allowed itself to bediverted, for the time being, into the trap of a despicabletalking-shop.They should have left one hundredth of their forces forthat talking-shop and devoted ninety-nine hundredthsto the masses.If the turn taken by history called for a compromise withthe Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks (personallyI believe it did) the Bolsheviks should have proposed itclearly, openly and speedily, so that they could immediate-