BolshevismBourgeoisieSocialismSovietWorking Class

318 THE CLASS STRUGGLE APPEAL BY THE COMMISSARY 319 Both these ideas were not of the people. But the masses were won over in spite of as yet feeble warnings of the only party which had grasped the meaning of events their future force the hidden hopes of the soul of the people.
The Intelligentsia, grouped into defensive parties, hand in hand with the counter revolutionary bourgeoisie, led the country along a road which brought Russia to the brink of ruin. The masses made a convulsive effort to save themselves to save Russia and the Revolution. Yet it was not only the knowledge of the ruinous situation thus created that impelled the masses toward the third Revolution, the uprising of the 25th of October, which led to the fall of the coalition government, but also the intense desire for social justice as expressed in the wish for basic social reforms the immediate introduction of certain beginnings of the graduated Socialist program, In Russia for the first time the masses came out independently with their own program, and the desire to take the government into their own hands.
And how did the Intelligentsia meet the heroic attempt of the proletariat to create on the brink of destruction, a strong government of the people the attempt to organize the country, to put an end to the war?
It met this attempt with hatred. It not only refused all help to the proletariat, but it rejoiced in every conspiracy against it. It was embittered each time the young hero crushed with his triumphant heel the serpent head. With venomous malevolence it proclaimed the weakness of the military staff of the downtrodden class and its want of officers in so many spheres.
With impatience it awaits misery. Together with Milukoff it is ready to prefer defeat to the continuance of the Revolution, and with Ryaboushinski it impatiently yearns for the gaunt hand of hunger which already grasps the throat of the people. At one time loving mankind, revolutionary, socialist, it now calls for autocracy. Look, it exclaims, the Great Revolution half of Russia has been delivered by the wicked Bolsheviki into the hands of the Soviets. The Bolsheviki are traitors, provocateurs, demagogues.
And the Bolsheviki are alone with the proletariat. The heavy burden of being the intellectual representatives of the new people regime lies alone upon their shoulders. And of course they make mistakes and why, if they make mistakes, do you not come forward to correct them and help the country? You do not agree with the policies of the proletariat.
Then criticise them. It is not true that you have been deprived of the freedom of propaganda. The social patriotic newspapers openly called for armed struggle against the enlightenment of the people and yet they still continue to appear. There never was a newspaper of the Black Hundred which was so full of venom as those of the Socialists of the Right. Only men who lack all sincerity proclaim that moderate and helpful criticism is, under present conditions, impossible.
But let it pass, if in the sphere of politics the Intelligentsia can only obstruct and censure harshly and give nothing more to the proletariat and its government. What is the meaning: however, of the boycott of the country food supply and financial mechanism?
Only to overthrow the Bolsheviks. Let the whole world perish if in its ruins will be buried the hated demagogues.
But we have well learnt to translate into the language of classes such antipathies. The Intelligentsia, which in neutral spheres worked together with the hangmen Romanoffs which led the country to ruin hand in hand with the capitalists through a protracted war, and bourgeois speculations, proved powerless to work together with the proletariat.
Is it possible that you could give your labor, thought and life for the people only so long as you acted as its guardians and could find nothing but rancorous sophisms for the proletariat when in a fateful and dangerous hour it was forced to the first revolt in Russia and the approach to power?