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

94V. I. LENINfact that all these parties have admitted that the questionof the Bolsheviks taking full state power alone is not onlyfeasible, but also urgent.Let us now proceed to examine the arguments which convince“everybody”, from the Cadets to the Novaya Zhiznpeople, that the Bolsheviks will not be able to retain power.The respectable Rech advances no arguments whatsoever.It merely pours out upon the Bolsheviks a flood of thechoicest and most irate abuse. The extract we quoted shows,among other things, how utterly wrong it would be to say,“Watch out, comrades, for what the enemy advises mustcertainly be bad”, thinking that Rech is “provoking” theBolsheviks to take power. If, instead of weighing up thegeneral and concrete considerations in a practical way,we allow ourselves to be “persuaded” by the plea that thebourgeoisie are “provoking” us to take power, we shallbe fooled by the bourgeoisie, for the latter will of coursealways maliciously prophesy millions of disasters that willresult from the Bolsheviks taking power and will alwaysmaliciously shout, “It would be better to get rid of theBolsheviks at one blow and ‘for many a year’ by allowingthem to take power and then crushing them.” These criesare also “provocation”, if you will, but from a differentangle. The Cadets and the bourgeoisie do not by any means“advise”, and have never “advised”, us to take power; theyare only trying to frighten us with the allegedly insolubleproblems of government.No. We must not allow ourselves to be frightened bythe screams of the frightened bourgeoisie. We must bearfirmly in mind that we have never set ourselves “insoluble”social problems, and as for the perfectly soluble problemof taking immediate steps towards socialism, whichis the only way out of the exceedingly difficult situation,that will be solved only by the dictatorship of the proletariatand poor peasants. Victory, and lasting victory, isnow more than ever, more than anywhere else, assured for theproletariat in Russia if it takes power.We shall in a purely practical manner discuss the concretecircumstances that make a certain moment unfavourable;but we shall not for a moment allow ourselves to bescared by the savage howls of the bourgeoisie; and we shall