Letter to the Petrograd Committee of the RSDLP(b), November 15, 1917

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Author(s) Lenin
Written 15 November 1917


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Written on November 2 (15), 1917
Published: First published in part in 1960 in the journal Voprosy Istorii KPSS No. 2. Published in full in 1965 in Collected Works, Fifth Ed., Vol. 50. Printed from the original.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1975, Moscow, Volume 44, page 43b.
Collection(s): Voprosy Istorii KPSS
Keywords : Bolshevism, Letter, Saint Petersburg, RSDLP

I earnestly request the Petrograd Committee immediately to pass a decision against conciliation and to put it before the CC[1]

Lenin

  1. ↑ This refers to a resolution of the Petrograd Committee of the RSDLP(b) on the question of setting up a “homogeneous socialist government” of representatives from various parties and organisations “from the Bolsheviks to the Popular Socialists”. The demand for such a government came from the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, who counted on playing the leading role in it. Their proposal had the support of some of the members of the CC of the RSDLP(b)—L. B. Kamenev, G. Y. Zinoviev, A. I. Rykov and their few adherents. The CC of the Bolshevik Party at a sitting held on November 2(15), 1917, strongly condemned the Right-opportunist, conciliatory attitude of the capitulators (see present edition, Vol. 26, pp. 277–79). Apparently, this note of Lenin’s was written daring the sitting of the Central Committee.
    The note was read out at a sitting of the Petrograd Committee of the Party. In a resolution on the current situation, the Petrograd Committee stated that the government in the proletarian republic had to be a government of the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, that the task of Soviet power was to put into effect the revolutionary programme advanced by the Bolsheviks, and that any departure from it was impermissible. This resolution was sent to the Party Central Committee.
    On November 3 (16), the Central Committee presented an ultimatum to the opposition minority demanding complete subordination to the decisions of the Central Committee (see present edition, Vol. 26, pp. 280–82). The conciliators, however, refused to submit to Party discipline, and resigned from the Central Committee and the Council of People’s Commissars. The Central Committee branded them as saboteurs (see present edition, Vol. 26, pp. 301–02). New people, loyal to the cause of the Party, were brought into the government.
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