Vladimir Lenin 



The Proletarian Party at the District Council Elections 



Written: ~ 13 May, 1917 
First Published: Pravda No. 56, May 13 (26), 1917 



 
Our Party is going to the polls with its own lists of candidates. According to 
preliminary reports received by the Secretariat of the Central Committee these 
lists have been made up without any blocs in 4 out of 12 districts (Moskovsky, 
Rozhdestvenskoye, Kolpino, and Porokhovo districts). In all the other districts 
we are forming blocs only with the internationalists, specifically, in 6 
districts (Vtoroi Gorodskoi, Narvsky, Petrogradkaya Storona, Moskovsky, Pervy 
Goredskoi and Vasilyevsky Ostrov districts) with the "Inter-District" 
Organisation (who, as we know, have most emphatically condemned the Narodniks 
and Mensheviks for joining the capitalist cabinet); in 4 districts (Vyborgsky, 
Nevsky, Pervy Gorodskoi and Vasilyevsky Ostrov districts) with the 
internationalist Mensheviks opposed to "socialist" ministerialism; and in 1 
district (Nevsky) with internationalists from the Socialist- Revolutionary 
Party, who condemn their party's ministerialism".
This co-operation with internationalists from other parties is fully in keeping 
with the decisions of our conferences (the Petrograd and the All-Russia 
conferences) and with the basic policy of the proletarian party aimed against 
petty-bourgeois defencism and Menshevik and Narodnik in misterialism.
The "Left bloc" propaganda, carried on, among others, by Novaya Zhizn, obviously 
could not alter our Party's decision. The view that the municipal elections "are 
not of such a pronounced political character" (as the elections to the 
Constituent Assembly) is wrong, basically wrong. It is just as wrong to maintain 
that "the municipal programmes of the different socialist [?] parties differ 
very little from one an other". To repeat such odd statements without answering 
Pravda's arguments is to dodge an important issue or simply to haul down the 
flag.
To narrow the elections in the capital down to a purely (or even predominantly) 
"municipal" programme at a time of revolution is grotesquely ridiculous. It 
flies in the face of all revolutionary experience. It is an insult to the common 
sense of the workers, who know only too well that Petrograd's is a leading role, 
sometimes a decisive one.
The Cadets unite all the Rights, the whole counter-revolution, all the 
landowners and capitalists. They support the government and want to see 
revolutionary Petrograd playing second fiddle to the government of the 
capitalists, who have ten ministers to the Narodniks' and Mensheviks' six.
Opposed to the Cadets, the chauvinists, the supporters of war for the Straits, 
there is the party of the proletariat, which, definitely hostile as it is to 
imperialism, is the only party capable of breaking with the interests of Capital 
and implementing serious revolutionary measures, without which it is impossible 
to help the working masses at a moment of imminent catastrophe of gigantic 
proportions. Without revolutionary measures there can be no salvation. Without a 
workers' militia as a step towards the immediate creation of a people's militia, 
it is impossible, even with the best will in the world, to carry out such 
measures, in particular to do away with queues and the disorganisation in the 
matter of food supply.
As for the middle-of-the-road line taken by the petty bourgeoisie, the 
Mensheviks and the Narodniks, who proclaim good intentions and weaken themselves 
by making a deal with and submitting to the capitalists (6 ministers against 
10!)-this line is a dead thing. The masses will soon learn this from experience, 
even if they do, for a time, believe in 'agreements" with the capitalists.
All those who really stand for the interests of the working masses, for doing 
away with the police and having it replaced by a people's militia, all those who 
stand for serious revolutionary measures to cope with the crisis and save the 
country from an unprecedented debacle, should vote for the lists of candidates 
of the proletarian party-the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party 
(Bolsheviks).
 



Transcription/Markup: David Walters and Brian Basgen 
Online Version: Lenin Internet Archive (marxists.org) 1999 



