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The formation of a united or federal Central Committee by the Congress of Soviets and the Executive Committee of the Peasant Congress is due to take place in the next few days. This question is up for discussion and will be settled in a matter of days. The petty squabble between the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks over the forms in which the Central Committee should be constituted deserves no attention whatsoever, for this fight between two parties, both of which advocate defencism (i.e., support for the predatory war) and ministerialism, i.e., support for the government of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie, is much too petty.

Minister Skobelev has published an appeal to all workers of Russia. In the name of “our” (that is what it says: our) socialist ideal, in the name of the revolution, on behalf of revolutionary democrats, and so on, and so forth, he urges the workers to accept “courts of conciliation” and severely condemns all “unauthorised” actions.

How much they talk about control! And how little it all means. How they dodge the issue by resorting to general phrases, grandiloquent turns of speech, and solemn “projects” doomed for ever to remain projects only.

We are compelled to sound the alarm daily. All kinds of foolish people have accused us of being “too much in a hurry” to transfer all state power to the Soviets of Soldiers’, Workers and Peasants’ Deputies. They think it would be more “moderate and proper” to “wait” with dignity for a dignified Constituent Assembly.

Rabochaya Gazeta is disturbed about the political significance of the offensive. One of its contributors even reproaches another, saying that the latter’s evasive phrases ultimately amount to an admission that, objectively, the Russian revolutionary army is now shedding its blood for the annexationist plans of the Allied bourgeoisie rather than for peace without annexations (Rabochaya Gazeta No. 93, page 2, column 1).

It is known that when peasant deputies from all over Russia arrived in Petrograd for their All-Russia Congress, they were promised—by the Socialist-Revolutionaries and by the government—that the sale and purchase of land would be immediately prohibited.

Mr. N.Rostov quotes in the ministerial Rabochaya Gazeta several excerpts from soldiers’ letters which attest to the extreme ignorance of the peasants. The author, according to his own words, has at his disposal a bulky batch of letters sent to the Agitation Department of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies from every part of the country. He says that all the letters clamour for one and the same thing: Papers, send us papers!

The question arises quite naturally. To correctly meet events with definite tactics, we must understand them correctly. How, then, are we to understand the Cadet withdrawal?

A document by Lenin on the tasks of the working class in the 1917 Revolution. First published September 1917 as a pamphlet.

In an editorial on May 17 Finansovaya Gazeta writes:

Written by Lenin in May 31 (18), 1917.

"The principle of democracy—the right of the population at any time to recall each and every representative, each and every person holding elected office". Pravda No. 60, May 31 (18), 1917.