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ON THE ROAD

Doubt is no longer permissible. We are on the eve of the world proletarian revolution. And as we, the Russian Bolsheviks, amongst all the proletarian internationalists of all countries, alone enjoy an immense liberty; as we have at our disposal a legal party with twenty journals; as we have on our side the Soviets of workers' and soldiers' deputies of the big towns, and the majority of the popular masses in a revolutionary period, we shall see this motto justly applied to us: "Much to you has been given; much from you will be required."

II.

Russia has undoubtedly arrived at a turning point in the revolution.

In this essentially rural country, under a revolutionary republican government counting on the support of the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties, which even yesterday had a preponderance in the petit-bourgeois democracy—in this country a peasant insurrection is developing.

The fact seems incredible, but all the same it exists. It does not astonish us; for we Bolsheviks have always said that the government of "coalition" with the bourgeoisie is the government of the betrayal of democracy and the revolution; the government of imperialist carnage, the government protecting the capitalists and the great landed proprietors against the wrath of the people.

In republican Russia, thanks to the work of deceit of the S.R.'s and the Mensheviks, there still exists in the time of revolution, a government of capitalists and great landowners, alongside the soviets. Such is the bitter and menacing truth. Why be astonished if in Russia, where the people are succumbing beneath the burdens and scourges of the imperialists war, a peasant insurrection has broken out and is extending more and more?

What is there astonishing in the fact that the opponents of the Bolsheviks and the leaders of the official Socialist-Revolutionary party which has constantly supported the "coalition," which, until the last few days or the last few weeks had the majority of the people on its side; which is continuing to censure and molest the "new" S.R.'s who have arrived at the conviction that the policy of coalition is a betrayal of the peasants' interests—what is there astonishing, I