Vladimir Lenin
The Tasks of the Proletariat in our Revolution
The Class Character of the Revolutlon that has taken place
The moment of history through which Russia is now passing is marked by the
following main characteristics:
1. The old tsarist power, which represented only a handful of feudalist
landowners who commanded the entire state machinery (the army, the police, and
the bureaucracy), has been overthrown and removed, but not completely destroyed.
The monarchy has not been formally abolished; the Romanov gang continues to
hatch monarchist intrigues. The vast landed possessions of the feudalist
squirearchy have not been abolished.
2. State power in Russia has passed into the hands of a new class, namely, the
bourgeoisie and landowners who had become bourgeois. To this extent the
bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia is completed.
Having come to power, the bourgeoisie has formed a bloc (an alliance) with the
overt monarchists, who are notorious for their exceptionally ardent support of
Nicholas the Bloody and Stolypin the Hangman in 1906-14 (Guchkov and other
politicians to the right of the Cadets). The new bourgeois government of Lvov
and Co. has attempted and has begun to negotiate with the Romanovs for the
restoration of the monarchy in Russia. Behind a screen of revolutionary phrases,
this government is appointing partisans of the old regime to key positions. It
is striving to reform the whole machinery of state (the army, the police, and
the bureaucracy) as little as possible, and has turned it over to the
bourgeoisie. The new government has already begun to hinder in every way the
revolutionary initiative of mass action and the seizure of power by the people
from below, which is the soleguarantee of the real success of the revolution.
Up to now this government has not even fixed a date for the convocation of the
Constituent Assembly. It is not laying a finger on the landed estates, which
form the material foundation of feudal tsarism. This government does not even
contemplate starting an investigation into, and making public, the activities of
the monopolist financial organisations, the big banks, the syndicates and
cartels of the capitalists, etc., or instituting control over them.
The key positions, the decisive ministerial posts in the new government (the
Ministry of the Interior and the War Ministry, i.e., the command over the army,
the police, the bureaucracy -- the entire apparatus for oppressing the people)
are held by outright monarchists and supporters of the system of big landed
estates. The Cadets, those day-old republicans, republicans against their own
will, have been assigned minor posts, having no direct relation to the
commandover the people or to the apparatus of state power. A. Kerensky, a
Trudovik and "would-be socialist", has no function whatsoever, except to lull
the vigilance and attention of the people with sonorous phrases.
For all these reasons, the new bourgeois government does not deserve the
confidence of the proletariat even in the sphere of internal policy, and no
support of this government by the proletariat is admissible.
The Foreign Policy Of The New Government
3. In the field of foreign policy, which has now been brought to the forefront
by objective circumstances, the new government is a government for the
continuation of the imperialist war, a war that is being waged in alliance with
the imperialist powers -- Britain, France, and others -- for division of the
capitalist spoils and for subjugating small and weak nations.
Subordinated to the interests of Russian capitalism and its powerful protector
and master -- Anglo-French imperialist capitalism, the wealthiest in the world,
the new government, notwithstanding the wishes expressed in no uncertain fashion
on behalf of the obvious majority of the peoples of Russia through the Soviet of
Soldiers' and Workers' Deputies, has taken no real steps to put an end to the
slaughter of peoples for the interests of the capitalists. It has not even
published the secret treaties of an obviously predatory character (for the
partition of Persia, the plunder of China, the plunder of Turkey, the partition
of Austria, the annexation of Eastern Prussia, the annexation of the German
colonies, etc.), which, as everybody knows, bind Russia to Anglo-French
predatory imperialist capital. It has confirmed these treaties concluded by
tsarism, which for centuries robbed and oppressed more nations than other
tyrants and despots, and which not only oppressed, but also disgraced and
demoralised the Great-Russian nation by making it an executioner of other
nations.
The new government has confirmed these shameful depredatory treaties and has not
proposed an immediate armistice to all the belligerent nations, in spite of the
clearly expressed demand of the majority of the peoples of Russia, voiced
through the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. It has evaded the issue
with the help of solemn, sonorous, bombastic, but absolutely empty declarations
and phrases, which, in the mouths of bourgeois diplomats, have always served,
and still serve, to deceive the trustful and naïve masses of the oppressed
people.
4. Not only, therefore, is the new government unworthy of the slightest
confidence in the field of foreign policy, but to go on demanding that it should
proclaim the will of the peoples of Russia for peace, that it should renounce
annexations, and so on and so forth, is in practice merely to deceive the
people, to inspire them with false hopes and to retard the clarification of
their minds. It is indirectly to reconcile them to the continuation of a war the
true social character of which is determined not by pious wishes, but by the
class character of the government that wages the war, by the connection between
the class represented by this government and the imperialist finance capital of
Russia, Britain, France, etc., by the real and actual policywhich that class is
pursuing.
The Peculiar Nature of the Dual Power and its Class Significance
5. The main feature of our revolution, a feature that most imperatively demands
thoughtful consideration, is the dual power which arose in the very first days
after the triumph of the revolution.
This dual power is evident in the existence of twogovernments: one is the main,
the real, the actual government of the bourgeoisie, the "Provisional Government"
of Lvov and Co., which holds in its hands all the organs of power; the other is
a supplementary and parallel government, a "controlling" government in the shape
of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, which holds no
organs of state power, but directly rests on the support of an obvious and
indisputable majority of the people, on the armed workers and soldiers.
The class origin and the class significance of this dual power is the following:
the Russian revolution of March 1917 not only swept away the whole tsarist
monarchy, not only transferred the entire power to the bourgeoisie, but also
moved close towards a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat
and the peasantry. The Petrograd and the other, the local, Soviets constitute
precisely such a dictatorship (that is, a power resting not on the law but
directly on the force of armed masses of the population), a dictatorship
precisely of the above-mentioned classes.
6. The second highly important feature of the Russian revolution is the fact
that the Petrograd Soviet of Soldiers' and Workers' Deputies, which, as
everything goes to show, enjoys the confidence of most of the local Soviets, is
voluntarilytransferring state power to the bourgeoisie and itsProvisional
Government, is voluntarily cedingsupremacy to the latter, having entered into an
agreement to support it, and is limiting its own role to that of an observer, a
supervisor of the convocation of the Constituent Assembly (the date for which
has not even been announced as yet by the Provisional Government).
This remarkable feature, unparalleled in history in such a form, has led to the
interlocking of twodictatorships: the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie (for the
government of Lvov and Co. is a dictatorship, i.e., a power based not on the
law, not on the previously expressed will of the people, but on seizure by
force, accomplished by a definite class, namely, the bourgeoisie) and the
dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry (the Soviet of Workers' and
Soldiers' Deputies).
There is not the slightest doubt that such an "interlocking" cannot last long.
Two powers cannot existin a state. One of them is bound to pass away; and the
entire Russian bourgeoisie is already trying its hardest everywhere and in every
way to keep out and weaken the Soviets, to reduce them to nought, and to
establish the undivided power of the bourgeoisie.
The dual power merely expresses a transitionalphase in the revolution's
development, when it has gone farther than the ordinary bourgeois-democratic
revolution, but has not yet reacheda "pure" dictatorship of the proletariat and
the peasantry.
The class significance (and the class explanation) of this transitional and
unstable situation is this: like all revolutions, our revolution required the
greatest heroism and self-sacrifice on the part of the people for the struggle
against ...
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