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

92V. I. LENINcrats with hatred of the coalition, promising them all sorts of benefitsas soon as ‘compromise’ was abandoned, and attributing to the latterall the country’s misfortunes.“If they were aware of what they were doing by their agitation,if they were not deceiving the people, it is their duty to redeem thepromissory notes they have been handing out right and left.“The question is clear.“Let them not make futile attempts to hide behind hastily concoctedtheory that it is impossible for them to take power.“The democracy will not accept these theories.“At the same time, the advocates of coalition must guarantee themfull support. These are the three combinations, the three ways, opento us—there are no others!” (The italics are those of Dyelo Naroda.)This is the way the Socialist-Revolutionaries reason.And here, finally, is the “position” (if attempts to sit betweentwo stools can be called a position) of the Novaya Zhizn“quarter-Bolsheviks”, taken from the editorial in NovayaZhizn of September 23.“If a coalition with Konovalov and Kishkin is formed again, itwill mean nothing but a new capitulation by the democracy and theabrogation of the Conference resolution on the formation of a responsiblegovernment on the platform of August 14....“A homogeneous ministry of Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionarieswill be able to feel its responsibility as little as the responsiblesocialist ministers felt it in the coalition cabinet.... This governmentwould not only be incapable of rallying the ‘live forces’ of the revolutionaround itself, but would not even be able to count on any activesupport from its vanguard—the proletariat.“But the formation of another type of homogeneous cabinet,a government of the ‘proletariat and poor peasants’, would be, nota better, but an even worse way out of the situation, in fact it wouldnot be a way out at all, but sheer bankruptcy. True, nobody is advancingsuch a slogan except in casual, timid and later systematically‘explained away’ comments in Rabochy Put.”(This glaring untruth is “boldly” written by responsiblejournalists who have forgotten even the Dyelo Narodaeditorial of September 21.)“Formally, the Bolsheviks have now revived the slogan ‘All Powerto the Soviets’. It was withdrawn after the July days, when theSoviets, represented by the Central Executive Committee, definitelyadopted an active anti-Bolshevik policy. Now, however, not onlycan the ‘Soviet line’ be regarded as straightened out, but there isevery ground to assume that at the proposed Congress of Soviets theBolsheviks will have a majority. Under such circumstances the slogan‘All Power to the Soviets’, resurrected by the Bolsheviks, isa ‘tactical line’ for achieving precisely the dictatorship of the prole-