Page:Nikolai Lenin - On the Road to Insurrection (1926).pdf/74

 the Cadets by the coalition with the big-wigs of commerce and industry, with Riabouchinsky, Boublikov, Terestchenko and Co.

Truly one may demand an explanation of this extraordinary blindness of the Mensheviks and S.R.'s. Must they be considered as inexperienced babes in politics, who do not know what they are doing and are genuinely self-deluded? Or rather is this peculiar political blindness due to their possession of such a wealth of posts as Ministers and Secretaries, governors and commissars and so on …?

But, it will be asked, are not the measures of control things exceedingly complicated, difficult, untried and even quite unthought-of? Is not this the reason for the delays of the Government—that the statesmen of the Cadet party, of the commercial and industrial classes, the S.R. and Menshevist parties, have indeed been labouring for six months to discover, investigate and study these measures, but that the problem appears to be a terribly difficult one and not to be so settled so quickly?

Alas! this is how the poor ignorant resigned peasants are put on the wrong scent, as well as the public that does not penetrate to the essence of things and can be made to believe anything. In reality, Tsarism, the ancien régime itself, which created the "Committees for the War-Industries," knew the fundamental measure, the chief means and essential method of control the organisation of the population by trades, by branches of industry, &c. But Tsarism was afraid of such organisation and, therefore, restricted it as much as possible, and artificially hindered the application of this known, easy, perfectly practicable method of control.

Crushed by the cost and the scourge of the war, more or less the prey to disorganisation and famine, each of the belligerent