Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/239

 government, buffers against the indignation of the masses against the government, instruments of deception of the masses. It was so with Louis Blanc in 1848; so it has been dozens of times since then, in England and France, when Socialists participated in the ministry; so it has been with Chernov and Tseretelli; so it has been and so it will be as long as the bourgeois system remains and the old bureaucratic apparatus of government is preserved intact.

The Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Delegates are especially valuable in that they represent a new, immeasurably higher and incomparably more democratic type of government. Social-Revolutionists and Mensheviki have done all that was possible and impossible to turn the Soviets (especially the Petrograd Soviet and the Central Executive Committee of the All-Russian Soviets,) into empty talking machines, occupied under the guise of "control" in the promulgation of impotent resolutions and desires, which the government postpones until doomsday with a most courteous and polite smile.

But there was quite enough of the "fresh wind" of Kornilovism, promising a good storm, to blow away everything musty in the Soviet. The initiative of the revolutionary masses began to proclaim itself as something great, mighty and invincible. Let those of little faith learn from this historical example. Let those be ashamed who say: "We have not the means to change the old, oppressive government apparatus, which necessarily inclines to defend the bourgeoisie." The means exist—the Soviets. Don't be afraid of the initiative and independence of the masses. Trust yourself to the revolutionary organization of the masses, and you will behold in all fields of government activity an expression of the imposing power and invincible will of the workers and peasants. Distrust of the masses, fear of their initiative and independence, is directly counter-revolutionary.

"Power to the Soviets" alone can break the opposition of the landowners and capitalists; an opposition that also realizes itself in the government of Kerensky (a government, in fact, absolutely bourgeois and Bonapartist), and in the direct and indirect pressure of Russian and "allied" financial capital.

Audacity and resolution were lacking in our government through all its changes of personnel. Revolutionary democracy ought not to wait; it should itself take the initiative and act efficiently to end the economic chaos. If they are necessary anywhere, then firmness of course, audacity and decisive power are necessary here. The truth is the truth—these are golden words. But the question of