On the Road to Insurrection/Letter to the Central Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour (Bolshevik) Party

by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

ON THE ROAD TO
INSURRECTION

Letter to the Central Committee of the Russian
Social-Democratic Labour (Bolshevik) Party

End of August, 1917.^[1]

MAYBE these lines will arrive too late, for events are developing at a really giddy speed. However, I am taking the risk of writing them, for I consider it to be a duty.

The Kornilov rising^[2] is (at such a moment and in such a form) a formidable and, one might say, a really unbelievable dramatic stroke.

Like every sudden and complete change in the political outlook it demands a revision of our tactics. And, as in every revision, we must be more than careful not to fail our principles.

To admit the point of view of those who advocate national defence or even (like certain Bolsheviks) would go to the extent of coalition with the Social-Revolutionaries, in support of the provisional Government, would be, I am deeply convinced, to fall into the grossest error and at the same time to prove an absolute lack of principle. We will not become partisans of national defence until after the seizure of power by the proletariat, until after the offer of peace, until after the secret treaties have been cancelled and relations with the banks broken. Neither the capture of Riga,^[3] nor the capture of Petrograd will make us partisans of national defence. Until the moment of the seizure of power by the proletariat, we are for the proletarian revolution, we are against the war, we are against the "defencists."

Even now, we must not support the revolution of Kerensky. It would be a failure of principle. How then, it will be said, must Kornilov not be fought ?—Certainly, yes. But between fighting Kornilov and supporting Kerensky there is a difference; there is a limit to all things, and that limit is passed by a few Bolsheviks when they fall for conciliation, and let themselves be carried away by the torrents of events.

We wage and shall continue to wage war on Kornilov, but we do not support Kerensky; we unveil his feebleness. There there is a difference. That difference is subtle enough, but most essential, and it must not be forgotten.

In what, then, does our change of tactics following on the Kornilov rising consist?

In this: that we modify the form of our struggle against Kerensky. Without diminishing, the least bit in the world, our hostility, without withdrawing a single one of the words we have pronounced against him, without renouncing our intention to beat him, we declare that consideration must be given to the circumstances of the moment, that we will not concern ourselves at the present with overthrowing Kerensky, that we will now conduct the struggle against him in another way by emphasising to the people (and it is the people who are engaged in fighting Kornilov) the weakness and vacillations of Kerensky. That we were already doing previously. But now it is this which comes to the forefront of our plan of campaign, and therein lies the change.

Another change: at this moment we place equally in the forefront of our plan of campaign the reinforcing of our agitation for what might be called "partial demands": Arrest Miliukoff, we say to Kerensky; arm the Petrograd workers; bring the troops from Cronstadt, from Vyborg and from Helsingfors to Petrograd; dissolve the Duma^[4]; arrest Rodzianko; legalise the handing over of the big estates to the peasants; establish working-class control of cereals and manufactured products, &c. And it is not only to Kerensky that we should put these claims; it is not so much to Kerensky as to the workers, soldiers and peasants who have been carried away by the struggle against Kornilov. They must be carried further, they must be encouraged to demand the arrest of the generals and officers who side with Kornilov; we must insist that they immediately claim the land for the peasants, and we must suggest to them the necessity of arresting Rodzianko and Miliukoff, of dissolving the Imperial Duma, of closing down the Rietch and other bourgeois newspapers and bringing them before the courts. It is particularly the Left Social-Revolutionaries^[5] who must be pushed in this direction.

It would be erroneous to believe that we are turning away from our principle objective: the conquest of power by the proletariat. We have, on the contrary, got considerably nearer to it, but indirectly, by a flanking movement. And we must at the very same moment agitate against Kerensky—but let the agitation be indirect rather than direct—by insisting on an active war against Kornilov. Only the active development of that war can lead us to power, but of that we must speak as little as possible in our agitation (we keep it well in mind that even to-morow events may compel us to take power, and that then we will not let it go). In my opinion, these points should be communicated in a letter (a private one) to our agitators, to our propagandists' training groups and schools, and to the members of the Party in general. As to the phrases about the defence of the country, about the single revoluntionary battle line of revolutionary democracy, about support of the Provisional Government, &c., they must be mercilessly combated because they are nothing but phrases. Now is the time for action: these phrases, gentlemen of the Social-Revolutionary and the Menshevik parties, have already been too much depreciated by your use of them. Now is the time for action, we must wage the war against Kornilov as revolutionaries, carying the masses with us, awakening them, inflaming them (and Kerensky is afraid of the masses, he is afraid of the people). It is precisely in the war against the Germans that action is now necessary: it is necessary immediately and unreservedly to propose peace to them on definite terms. If that is done, there will either be an early peace or else a revolutionary war^[6]; if not all the Mensheviks and Social-Revolutionaries will remain the lackeys of imperialism.

1. Old Russian calendar throughout.
2. Terminated, September 1, 1917, by the arrest of the principal participants at G.H.Q.
3. By the Germans, on August 21. The entire bourgeoisie drew therefrom arguments as to the need for a strong government, for the re-establishment of discipline in the army, &c., &c.
4. This demand was satisfied on October 6, but the others not until the October revolution.
5. Not then in existence as a separate Party, but as a tendency inside the Social-Revolutionary Party.
6. The Bolsheviks always opposed peace at any price. Lenin's thesis was exactly upheld by Kerensky's last Minister for War, Verkhovsky, whose resignation was demanded by the Allies.