War Brings Revolution to Russia

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (1870–1924), better known by his nom de guerre Lenin, was a central intellectual and political force behind the uprisings that made up the Russian Revolution (1905–1917). Following years of exile and a triumphant return to Russia with the assistance of the German government, Lenin capitalized on the fall of the tsar by pushing for further revolution under the guidance of his Bolshevik faction of what would become the Russian Communist Party. In the months leading to the October 1917 revolution and Bolshevik power, Lenin took control of the popular newspaper Pravda (Truth) and used its editorial pages to powerful effect. The speech reproduced here demonstrates both the political infighting that marked the Russian Revolution and Lenin’s relentless use of propaganda to outmaneuver his opponents.

“Drive nature out of the door and she will rush back through the window.” It seems that the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties4 have to “learn” this simple truth time and again by their own experience. They under took to be “revolutionary democrats” and found themselves in the shoes of revolutionary democrats — they are now forced to draw the conclusions which every revolutionary democrat must draw.

Democracy is the rule of the majority. As long as the will of the majority was not clear, as long as it was possible to make it out to be unclear, at least with a grain of plausibility, the people were offered a counter-revolutionary bourgeois government disguised as “democratic.” But this delay could not last long. During the several months that have passed since February 275 the will of the majority of the workers and peasants, of the overwhelming majority of the country’s population, has become clear in more than a general sense. Their will has found expression in mass organizations — the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies.

How, then, can anyone oppose the transfer of all power in the state to the Soviets? Such opposition means nothing but renouncing democracy! It means no more no less than imposing on the people a government which admittedly can neither come into being nor hold its ground democratically, i.e., as a result of truly free, truly popular elections.

It is a fact, strange as it may seem at first sight, that the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks have forgotten this perfectly simple, perfectly obvious and palpable truth. Their position is so false, and they are so badly confused and bewildered, that they are unable to “recover” this truth they have lost. Following the elections in Petrograd6 and in Moscow, the convocation of the All-Russia Peasant Congress, and the Congress of Soviets,7 the classes and parties throughout Russia have shown what they stand for so clearly and specifically that people who have not gone mad or deliberately got themselves into a mess simply cannot have any illusions on this score.

To tolerate the Cadet Ministers or the Cadet government or Cadet policies8 means challenging democrats and democracy. This is the source of the political crises since February 27, and this also the source of the shakiness and vacillation of our government system. At every turn, daily and even hourly, appeals are being made to the people’s revolutionary spirit and to their democracy on behalf of the most authoritative government institutions and congresses. Yet the government’s policies in particular, are all departures from revolutionary principles, and breaches in democracy.

This sort of thing will not do.

It is inevitable that a situation like the present should show elements of instability now for one reason, now for another. And it is not exactly a clever policy of jib. Things are moving by fits and starts towards a point where power will be transferred to the Soviets, which is what our Party called for long ago.

“All Power to the Soviets!” Pravda, no. 99 (July 18, 1917). Republished in Lenin Collected Works, 45 vols. (Moscow: Progress, 1977), 25:155–156.

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