Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

The Third Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.

April 12 (25)-April 27 (May 10), 1905

11

Draft Resolution on the Participation of the Social-Democrats in a Provisional Revolutionary Government

1. Whereas a really free and open mass struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie requires the widest possible political liberty and, consequently, the fullest possible realisation of republican forms of government;

2. Whereas various bourgeois and petty-bourgeois sections of the population,the peasantry, etc., are, now coming out in increasing numbers withrevolutionary-democratic slogans, which are the natural and inevitableexpression of the basic needs of the masses, the satisfaction of which—impossible under the autocracy—has been made imperative by theobjective development of the entire socio-economic life of Russia;

3. Whereas international revolutionary Social-Democracy has always recognisedthat the proletariat must render most energetic support to the revolutionarybourgeoisie in its struggle against all reactionary classes andinstitutions, provided that the party of the proletariat maintain absoluteindependence and a strictly critical attitude towards its temporary allies;

4. Whereas the overthrow of the autocratic government in Russia is inconceivablewithout its replacement by a provisional revolutionary government, andwhereas only such a change can ensure real freedom and a true expression ofthe will of the whole people during the inauguration of the new politicalsystem in Russia and guarantee the realisation of our programme of immediateand direct political and economic changes;

5. Whereas without the replacement of the autocratic government by a provisionalrevolutionary government sup ported by all revolutionary-democratic classesand class elements in Russia, it will be impossible to achieve a republicanform of government and win over to the revolution the backward andundeveloped sections of the proletariat and particularly of thepeasantry—those sections whose interests are completely opposed to theabsolutist, serf-holding order and which cling to the autocracy or standapart from the struggle against it largely on account of the oppressivestupefying atmosphere; and

6. Whereas with the existence in Russia of a Social-Democratic party of theworking class, which, though only in the initial stage of its development, isnevertheless already organised and capable, particularly under conditions ofpolitical freedom, of controlling and directing the actions of its delegatesin a provisional revolutionary government, the danger that these delegatesmay deviate from the correct class line is notinsurmountable;—

Therefore, the Third Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. holds that representatives of the Party may participate in the provisional revolutionary government for the purpose of relentlessly combating, together with the revolutionary bourgeois democrats, all attempts at counter-revolution, and of defending the independent class interests of the proletariat, provided that the Party maintain strict control over its representatives and firmly safeguard the independence of the Social-Democratic Labour Party, which aims at the complete socialist revolution and is in this respect hostile to all bourgeois-democratic parties and classes.