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

530 NOTES4punitive expeditions against peasants who seized tracts of largeestates.At the end of November 1917, the Left wing formed a separateparty, which, in an effort to retain its influence among the peasants,went through the motions of recognising Soviet power andentered into an agreement with the Bolsheviks. Very soon, however,they began to fight against Soviet power.During the foreign armed intervention and Civil War theSocialist- Revolutionaries engaged in subversion and gave activesupport to the interventionists and whiteguards; they took partin counter- revolutionary plots, and staged terroristic acts againstSoviet Government and Communist Party leaders. After the CivilWar, they continued to engage in their hostile activity at homeand among the whiteguard émigrés abroad. p. 19The All- Russia Democratic Conference was called by the CentralExecutive Committee of the Soviets, which was dominated byMensheviks and Socialist- Revolutionaries, to decide on the questionof state power, but its actual purpose was to switch the attentionof the masses away from the mounting revolutionary movement.It was first set for September 12 (25), and later postponedto September 14- 22 (September 27- October 5), 1917, when it washeld in Petrograd and attended by more than 1,500 delegates.The Menshevik and Socialist- Revolutionary leaders did their utmostto reduce the number of workers’ and peasants’ delegatesand increase those of various petty- bourgeois and bourgeois groups,thereby securing a majority.The Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P.(B.) met on September3 (16) and decided to take part. It circulated a letter amonglocal Party organisations instructing them to “do their utmostto build up the largest possible well- knit group of delegates fromamong our Party members”. The Bolsheviks decided to attendin order to expose the Mensheviks and the Socialist- Revolutionaries.The tactics of the Bolsheviks in respect of the DemocraticConference were outlined by Lenin in two of his letters (see pp. 19-21 and 22-27.The Democratic Conference adopted a resolution on the establishmentof a Pre- parliament (Caretaker Council of the Republic),which was an attempt to create the impression that Russia nowhad a parliamentary system. Actually, according to the ProvisionalGovernment’s ordinance, the Pre- parliament was to be a consultativebody under the Government.A meeting of the Bolshevik delegates to the Democratic Conferencecalled by the Central Committee decided, by a vote of 77 to50, to take part in the Pre-parliament.In the articles on pp. 43-51, 52- 58 and 74-85, Lenin had some criticismto make of the Bolshevik tactics in respect of the DemocraticConference; he flatly demanded that the Bolsheviks should withdrawfrom the Pre- parliament and concentrate on preparing forthe insurrection. The Central Committee debated Lenin’s proposal