None of these possibilities should be left out of account. Facts have proved that the bourgeois cossack party in Russia has already knocked at three doors and tried to open them.
What then? Why then, it is our duty not to wait till the bourgeoisie will throttle the revolution.
We must not despise Rodzianko's intentions, for experience has tested him. Rodzianko is a man of action. It is incontestable that capital is on his side. Now capital is an enormous force so long as the proletariat has not possession of power. For decades Rodzianko has shown unbounded devotion to the political ends of capital.
To hesitate, then, on the question of insurrection, to hesitate to recognise that insurrection is the only way of saving the revolution, is to hand oneself entirely to the bourgeoisie, to sink into that cowardly state of confidence which characterises revolutionary socialism, Menshevism and the apathy of the "moujik," and against which the Bolsheviks have directed their most violent attacks.
Either let us fold our arms and, uttering professions of "faith" in the Constituent Assembly, wait till Rodzianko and his henchman betray Petrograd and the whole revolution—or let us decide on insurrection. There is no middle course.
But even the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, if that is all, does not alter the situation; for no constitution, no vote by an assembly, even the most sovereign body, would be able to conquer famine and Wilhelm. The convocation of the Constituent Assembly and its efficacy depend on the seizure of power by the soviets: this is an ancient Bolshevik truism, which events are confirming more and more ruthlessly and irrevocably.
"… We are getting stronger every day, we can form a powerful opposition in the Constituent Assembly; why risk everything on one throw? …"
This is the logic of a Philistine, who has read that the Constituent Assembly was to be called together, and who trusts implicitly in the ability of legal and constitutional methods to resolve the situation.
Unfortunately, the question of famine can no longer be solved, nor can that of the surrender of Petrograd, by waiting for the Constituent Assembly. This is what is forgotten by the simpletons,
