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

THE CRISIS HAS MATURED79ment of the Socialist-Revolutionary Kerensky, the MensheviksNikitin and Gvozdyov, and other ministers who representcapital and the interests of the landowners! Thecrushing of this revolt by military measures by a republicangovernment!In the face of such facts, can one remain a conscientiouschampion of the proletariat and yet deny that a crisis hasmatured, that the revolution is passing through an extremelycritical moment, that the government’s victory overthe peasant revolt would now sound the death knell of therevolution, would be the final triumph of the Kornilovrevolt?IIIIt is obvious that if in a peasant country, after sevenmonths of a democratic republic, matters could come toa peasant revolt, it irrefutably proves that the revolutionis suffering nation-wide collapse, that it is experiencing acrisis of unprecedented severity, and that the forces ofcounter-revolution have gone the limit.That is obvious. In the face of such a fact as a peasantrevolt all other political symptoms, even were they to contradictthe fact that a nation-wide crisis is maturing, wouldhave no significance whatsoever.But on the contrary, all the symptoms do indicate thata nation-wide crisis has matured.Next to the agrarian question, the most important questionin Russia’s state affairs is the national question, particularlyfor the petty-bourgeois masses of the population.And at the “Democratic” Conference, which was fixed byMr. Tsereteli and Co., we find that the “national” curia takessecond place for radicalism, yielding only to the tradeunions, and exceeding the curia of the Soviets of Workers’and Soldiers’ Deputies in the percentage of votes cast againstthe coalition (40 out of 55). The Kerensky government—agovernment suppressing the peasant revolt—is withdrawingthe revolutionary troops from Finland in order tostrengthen the reactionary Finnish bourgeoisie. In theUkraine, the conflicts of the Ukrainians in general, and ofthe Ukrainian troops in particular, with the governmentare becoming more and more frequent.