Page:Vladimir Ilyich Lenin - The Chief Task of Our Times.djvu/7

 this case we have but one plan—a single and united front. When we are offered the chimera of a single democratic front, I always ask myself—at least, when I have the pleasure of reading or even casually glancing through such papers as "Naart Viek," "Diels Naroda," etc.—"What else do you want for a single democratic front? You have here the completest unity." And we cannot but rejoice at it, considering that this unity of front, from Miliukoff to Martoff, would deserve to receive on the 1st of May a testimonial for its splendid Bolshevik propaganda.

Comrdes, let us examine now another and an opposite camp; we shall find there none but our own Party: the Party of Communist Bolsheviki. Owing to the trend of events, it has come to pass that during the greater part of the post-October period our allies, the social revolutionaries of the Left, have at present ceased to take an active part in the Government. Their recent Congress has brought to the surface more clearly than ever the waverings and indecisions of the party.

If, taking the period before the split of the Socialist Revolutionaries into a Right and Left wing, you were to analyse month by month, beginning with February, 1917, with whom this party was siding—the proletariat or the bourgeoisie—you would come to the sad conclusion that the Socialist Revolutionary Party was subject to the fluctuations in temperature of a fever patient.

Assuredly, hardly any other Party in the history of the revolution has vacillated to such an extent.

When we study these three fundamental currents, we see quite clearly that this is not an accidental grouping, but that it fully bears out what already in 1915 we Bolsheviki pointed out from abroad, when we received the first news that the revolutionary movement in Russia was growing—that the revolution was inevitable,and when we had to explain the attitude of our Party in the event of it coming to power whilst the war was still going on. We said then: "It is possible for the revolution to be completely victorious if, at the decisive moment, the leading elements in the lower middle class should side with the proletariat." This has actually happened. Such was and is the trend of the Russian Revolution. In these waverings of the lower middle class there is no reason for pessimism or despair. But it is inevitable that in the country which has been the first to rise against the imperialist war; in the country which, mainly owing to its backwardness, has been placed by events for a short period ahead of the other more advanced countries, the Revolution must in the near future live through most trying and painful times. It would be preposterous to expect that in such times it would have no waverers in its ranks. To expect it would only prove that neither the class struggle nor the nature of parties and political groups had been taken into account.

When we consider all the political currents in Russia from the point of view of the immediate tasks of organisation, discipline, finance, and control, we perceive a very definite grouping; and we see that the group which constitutes the single democratic front, from Miliukoff to Martoff, does not make the least attempt to appreciate the opportunity to accomplish this task. There exists in this group a malicious desire, the more malicious the more complimentary to us, to find even some vestige of a possibility of overthrowing the Soviet Power.

Unfortunately, it is just those representatives of the Social Revolutionaries of the Left who had shown the greatest energy, initiative, and devotion to the revolution who were the first to waver on this question of the immediate tasks of the present moment; the tasks of proletarian discipline, finance, organisation, and control; those tasks which became essential to Socialists as soon as the workers and peasants had assumed power, and had repulsed the military attacks of the Kerenskis, Krassnoffs, Korniloffs, Gueguetcoris, and Alexieffs. Now, when we have reached the very core of the Revolution, the question is: Will proletarian discipline and organisation gain the upper hand, or will the power be seized by lower middle-class capitalists, who are particularly strong in Russia?

Our lower middle-class opponents will, wage their chief battle against us on the field of home politics and economic reconstruction; their weapon is sabotage in connection with everything which the proletariat ordains and