Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/227



Blood has flowed in the streets of Petrograd. A tragic chapter has been added to the Russian Revolution. Who is to blame? "The Bolsheviki," says the man in the street, repeating what his newspapers tell him. The sum total of these tragic happenings is exhausted, as far as the bourgeoisie and the time-serving politicians are concerned, in the words: Arrest the ringleaders and disarm the masses. And the object of this action is to establish "revolutionary order." The Social-Revolutionists and the Mensheviki, in arresting and disarming the Bolsheviki, are prepared to establish "order." There is only one question: What kind of order, and for whom?

The Revolution aroused great hopes in the masses. Among the masses of Petrograd, who played a leading role in the Revolution, these hopes and expectations were cherished with exceptional earnestness. It was the task of the Social-Democratic Party to transform these hopes and expectations into clearly-defined political programs, to direct the revolutionary impatience of the masses in the channel of a planful political action. The Revolution was brought face to face with the question of state power. We, as well as the Bolshevist organization, stood for a handing over of all power to the Central Committee of the Council of Workers', Soldiers and Peasants' Delegates. The upper classes, and among them we must include the Social-Revolutionists and the Mensheviki, exhorted the masses to support the Milyukov-Guchkov government. Up to the last moment, that is, up to the time when these more distinctly imperialistic figures of the first Provisional Government resigned, both the above mentioned parties were firmly united with the government all along the line. Only after the reconstruction of the government did the masses learn from their own newspapers that they had not been told the whole truth, that they had been deceived. They were then told that they must trust the new "coalition" gov-