Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/301



The class-political groupings in the Russian Revolution have come out with unparalleled clearness, but equally unparalleled is the confusion which prevails in the field of our. ideology. The belated character of Russia's historical development permitted the petit bourgeois intelligentsia to adorn itself with the peacock's feathers of the loveliest Socialist theory. Yet these fine feathers will answer no other purpose than to cover its withered nakedness. The fact that the Social-Revolutionists and Mensheviki did not assume power early in March, nor on May 16th, nor on July 16tlh, has nothing at all to do with the "bourgeois" character of our Revolution and the impossibility of putting it over "without the bourgeoisie," is due to the fact that the petit bourgeois "Socialists," being completely enveloped in the meshes of Imperialism, are not yet capable of performing one-tenth of the work that the Jacobins accomplished a century and a quarter ago. Chattering about the defense of the Revolution and of the country, they will nevertheless surrender to the bourgeois reaction one position after the other. The struggle for power, therefore, becomes the first and the foremost problem of the working class, and we shall find the Revolution simultaneously divesting itself completely of its "national" and its bourgeois raiment.

Either, we shall see a tremendous backward sweep, in the direction of a strong imperialistic regime, most probably culminating in a monarchy; the Soviets, the land committees, the army organizations, as well as many other things, will go to pieces, and the Kerenskys and Tseretellis will pass into the discard. Or, the proletariat, dragging with it the semi-proletarian masses and pushing aside its leaders of yesterday (in this case also the Kerenskys and Tseretellis go into the discard), will establish the regime of the workers' democracy. The further successes of the proletariat will then depend first and foremost on the European, particularly of the German, Revolution.