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
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