Page:Nikolai Lenin - On the Road to Insurrection (1926).pdf/52



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USSIA is a country dominated by the petty bourgeoisie. The vast majority of the population belong to this class. It is inevitable that it fluctuates between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. It is only by this class joining the proletariat that the victory of the revolution, that is to say peace, freedom, the re-division of the land among the workers, can be peacefully brought about with ease and speed, and without hardship.

The whole course of our revolution reveals the hesitations of the petty bourgeois class. Let us have no illusion about the Social Revolutionary and Menshevik parties, but hold fast to our proletarian track. The poverty of the poor peasants, the horrors of the war and famine clearly reveal to the masses the rightness of our policy, and the necessity of supporting the proletarian revolution.

The progress of the revolution mercilessly destroys the "pacifist" petty bourgeois trust in any "coalition" with the bourgeoisie, or in any agreement with them, and in the possibility of waiting "quietly" for the "next" convocation of the Constituent Assembly, &c. Kornilov's insurrection was the last important and cruel lesson which completed the thousands and thousands of daily lessons given to the workers and peasants by the capitalists and the landed gentry, and to the soldiers by their officers.

Discontent, indignation, exasperation continued to grow in the army, and among the peasants and workers. The "coalition" of the Social Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks with the bourgeoisie, a coalition which makes ceaseless promises only to break them, irritates the masses, opens their eyes and urges them to insurrection.

Among the Social Revolutionaries of the Left (Spiridonova and others), as among the Mensheviks (Martov and his group), opposition is increasing. It has already reached 40 per cent. of the Council and the Congress of these parties. And below, in the proletarian and peasant class, particularly among the poor peasants, the majority of the Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks are Left Wing.