Russian Revolution

Published in Pravda No. 53, May 23 (10), 1917.

'Soldiers and workers! You are told that you are defending “freedom” and the “revolution”! In reality you are defending the shady treaties of the tsar, which are concealed from you as one conceals a secret disease.'

We republish here Trotsky's speech on the occasion of Mikhail Frunze's death. It was published in lzvestlya on November 13, 1925. Trotsky was at the time the subject of a virulent witch hunt by the rising Stalinist bureaucracy. He had been forced to vacate his post as Commissar of War to Frunze, the choice of the Zinoviev-Kamenev-Stalin triumvirate. Frunze was politically close to Zinoviev, but Trotsky still pays tribute to the genuine Bolshevik qualities embodied by Frunze.

Published in Pravda No. 52, May 22 (9), 1917.

Novaya Zhizn for May 7 publishes interviews with ministers of the ''new'' government. Prime Minister Lvov has declared that ''the country must have its weighty say and send its army into battle''.

This is the sum and substance of the new government’s ''programme''. An offensive, an offensive, an offensive!

Published in Pravda No. 50, May 19 (6), 1917.

That is how history puts the issue—and not history in general, but the economic and political history of the Russia of today.

The Narodniks and Mensheviks, Chernov and Tsereteli, have transferred the Contact Commission from the room adjacent to the one the ministers used to meet in to the ministerial chamber itself. This, and this alone, is the purely political significance of the “new” cabinet.

Published in Pravda No. 49, May 18 (5), 1917.

Elections to the district councils being close at hand, the two petty-bourgeois democratic parties, the Narodniks and the Mensheviks, have come out with high-sounding platforms.

Published in Pravda No. 47, May 16 (3), 1917.

That is what the proclamation of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet to the socialists of the world, published in today’s papers, amounts to. It has a lot to say against imperialism, but all these words are nullified by a single little phrase which reads:

“The Provisional Government of revolutionary Russia has adopted this platform” (i.e., peace without annexations and indemnities on the basis of self-determination of nations).

Published in Pravda No. 44, May 12 (April 29), 1917.

In connection with the report that several ex-ministers had accepted directorships of big banks, Pravda asked:

“In how many banks do the present ministers, Guchkov, Tereshchenko, and Konovalov—have an interest (in the capacity of directors, shareholders, or actual owners)?”

Published in Pravda No. 43, May 11 (April 28), 1917.

The capitalists either sneer at the fraternisation of the soldiers at the front or savagely attack it. By lies and slander they try to make out that the whole thing is “deception” of the Russians by the Germans, and threaten—through their generals and officers—punishment for fraternisation.

Published in Pravda No. 40, May 8 (April 25), 1917.

Rabochaya Gazeta gloats and crows over the recent resolution of the Central Committee which has revealed (in connection, be it noted, with the now published declaration of the representatives of the Bolshevik group in the Soviet) certain disagreements within our Party.

"We have to speak to the millions; we must draw fresh forces from among the masses, we must call for more developed class-conscious workers who would popularise our theses in a way the masses would understand."

Pravda No. 38, May 5 (April 22), 1917.

Events in Petrograd during the last few days, especially yesterday, illustrate how right we were in speaking of the “honest” defencism of the mass as distinguished from the defencism of the leaders and parties.

A brief note by Lenin on his April Theses.

(1) Economic debacle is imminent. Therefore removal of the bourgeoisie is a mistake.

(This is the conclusion of the bourgeoisie. The more imminent the debacle, the more essential is it that the bourgeoisie be removed.)

(2) Proletariat is unorganised, weak, lacking class-consciousness.