page 188

    Comrade Lenin maintains that a sort of indifference to the question of insurrection has been noticeable since the beginning of September. But this is impermissible if we are issuing the slogan of the seizure of power by the Soviets in all seriousness. It is therefore high time to pay attention to the technical aspect of the question. Apparently a lot of time has already been lost.

    Nevertheless the question is an urgent one, and the decisive moment is near.

    The international situation is such that we must take the initiative.

    What is being done to surrender territory as far as Narva, and to surrender Petrograd makes it still more imperative for us to take decisive action.

    The political situation is also working impressively in this direction. Decisive action on our part on July 3, 4 and 5 would have failed because we did not have the majority behind us. Since then we have made tremendous progress.

    Absenteeism and indifference on the part of the masses is due to their being tired of words and resolutions.

    We now have the majority behind us. Politically, the situation is fully ripe for taking power.

page 189

    The agrarian movement is also developing in that direction, for it is obvious that extreme effort would be needed to stem that movement. The slogan of the transfer of all land has become the general slogan of the peasants. The political situation, therefore, is mature. We must speak of the technical aspect. That is the crux of the matter. Nevertheless we, like the defencists, are inclined to regard the systematic preparation of an uprising as something in the nature of a political sin.

    It is senseless to wait for the Constituent Assembly that will obviously not be on our side, for this will only make our task more involved.

    The regional congress and the proposal from Minsk[79] must be used for the beginning of decisive action.

First published in the magazine Proletarskaya Revolutsia No. 10, 1922

Published according to the handwritten copy of the Minutes

page 190

  [78] The Meeting of the Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P. on October 10 (23), 1917, was the first one Lenin attended after his return to Petrograd from Vyborg. Sverdlov was in the chair. Lenin gave a report on the current situation. The Central Committee adopted the resolution motioned by Lenin who proposed immediate preparations for an armed uprising. Only Zinoviev and Kamenev voted against the proposal. Trotsky abstained, but he held that it had to be postponed until the Second Congress of Soviets, which in practice meant bungling the insurrection and allowing the Provisional Government to pull up its forces to crush the uprising on the day the Congress opened. The Central Committee rebuffed the capitulants. The October 10 meeting of the Central Committee is of tremendous historical importance. The resolution on the uprising adopted by 10 to 2 became the Bolshevik Party's directive in starting immediate preparations for an insurrection. To direct the insurrection, the Central Committee set up a Political Bureau headed by Lenin.    [p. 188]

  ^[79] The reference is to Sverdlov's report to the Central Committee on October 10 (23),1917, on the third item of the agenda: "Minsk and the Northern Front". He said that there was a technical possibility of staging an armed uprising in Minsk, and that Minsk bad offered to send a revolutionary corps to help Petrograd.    [p. 189]