The Bolsheviks Must Seize Power
Letter to the Central Committee, to the Petrograd Committee and to the Moscow Committee of the Social-Democratic Labour Party of Russia (Bolshevik)
(Written during the Democratic Conference)
THE Bolsheviks, who have obtained the majority of worker and soldier deputies in the Soviets of the two capitals,[1] can and must seize power. They can do it because the active majority of the revolutionary elements of the two capitals is sufficient to rally the masses, to vanquish and crush hostile resistance to conquer power and to hold it. For, by the immediate proposal of a democratic peace, the immediate gift of the land to the peasants and the restoration of the democratic institutions and the liberty that Kerensky mutilated, the Bolsheviks will found a government which no man on earth could overthrow.
The majority of the people is for us. The course of events since May 6 up to August 31 and September 12 has proved it: the majority won in the Soviets of the two capitals is the result of the people's evolution towards bolshevism. This is equally proved by the vacillations of the Social-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks and the strengthening of internationalists in the bosom of the two parties.
The Democratic Conference does not represent the majority of the people, but merely the acme of petty bourgeois class conciliation. The votes of this conference must not affect us, they prove nothing. Compare the elections of the Petrograd or Moscow municipal councils and the Soviet elections; compare the Moscow elections and the strike of August 12[2] and you will realise the true facts concerning the majority of the revolutionary elements that lead the masses.
The Democratic Conference deceives the peasant class by giving them neither peace nor the land.
A Bolshevik government alone will satisfy the peasants.
Why must the Bolsheviks seize power exactly now?
- ↑ On August 31 the Petrograd Soviet and on September 6 that of Moscow adopted for the first time the general Bolshevik political resolution.
- ↑ The general strike was started in Moscow by the trade unions and Bolsheviks, against the majority of the Soviet, against the re-union of the Democratic Conference, a screen for reaction.
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