V. I.   Lenin

The Petrograd City Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. (Bolsheviks)

APRIL 14–22 (APRIL 27–MAY 5), 1917

Considering:

(1) that the Provisional Government, by its class character, is the organ of landowner and bourgeois domination;

(2) that the Provisional Government and the classes it represents are bound with indissoluble economic and political ties to Russian and Anglo-French imperialism;

(3) that the Provisional Government is carrying out its proclaimed programme only partially, and only under pressure of the revolutionary proletariat and, to some extent, of the petty bourgeoisie;

(4) that the forces of bourgeois and landowner counter revolution, now being organised, have already, under cover of the Provisional Government and with the latter’s obvious connivance, launched an attack on revolutionary democracy;

(5) that the Provisional Government is avoiding fixing the date for the elections to the Constituent Assembly, preventing the arming of the people as a whole, opposing the transfer of all the land to the people, foisting upon it the landowners’ way of settling the agrarian question, obstructing the introduction of an eight-hour workday, condoning counter-revolutionary propaganda in the army (by Guchkov and Co.), rallying the high-ranking officers against the soldiers, etc.;

(6) that this government, at the same time, is relying at present on the confidence of, and, to a certain extent, on an actual agreement with, the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’   and Soldiers’ Deputies, which now unites an obvious majority of workers and soldiers, i.e., peasants;

(7) that every step of the Provisional Government, in both its domestic and foreign policies, is bound to open the eyes, not only of the proletarians in town and country and semi-proletarians, but also of the broad sections of the petty bourgeoisie, to the real nature of this government,

the Conference resolves that:

(1) in order to ensure all the state power passing into the hands of the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies or other bodies directly expressing the will of the people, prolonged work is necessary to develop proletarian class- consciousness and to unite the urban and rural proletarians against the vacillations of the petty bourgeoisie, for only work of this nature can guarantee real advance on the part of the whole revolutionary people;

(2) this calls for many-sided activity within the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, for work aimed at increasing the number of these Soviets, consolidating their power, and welding together our Party’s proletarian internationalist groups in the Soviets;

(3) we must organise our Social-Democratic forces more effectively, so as to be able to direct the new wave of the revolutionary movement under the banner of revolutionary Social-Democracy.

Notes