Page:Vladimir Ilyich Lenin - Lessons of the Revolution (1918).djvu/39

 due to the vaccillating policy of the Essers and Mensheviks. And this policy was in the last instance determined by the class standard of the petty bourgeoisie, by its economic instability in the struggle between labor and capital.

The question now is, whether or mot the petty-bourgeois-democracy has learned a lesson during this great half-year, so unusually rich in historical content. If not, then the revolution is lost, and only the victorious uprising of the proletariat can save it. If so, then it is imperative to begin at once tho construction of a stable, unfaltering power. Now, during a popular revolution—a revolution that has aroused the masses, the majority of the workmen and peasants—only that power can be stable which avowedly and unconditionally rests upon the  of the population. Hitherto the governing power in Russia has been  in the hands of the bourgeoisie, which is forced now and then, to make partial concessions (only to withdraw them at the first opportunity), to dish out promises (only to cheat the people with the complexion of an «honest» coalition), etc., etc. In word—a popular, democratic, revolutionary gevornment; in deed—an antipopular, antidemiocratic, counter-revolutionary, bourgeois government. This is the fatal contradiction that has heretofore been the source of the instability and fluctuation of power, of the «Ministerial leap-frog» so sedulously played by the Essers and Mensheviks to the detriment of the people.