"Speech to a Street crowd"
Spring 1917
Vladmir Lenin

"Comrades, the revolution is on. The workers' revolution is on, and you are not working. The workers' and peasants' revolution means work, comrades; it does not mean idleness and leisure. That is a bourgeois ideal. The workers' revolution, a workers' government, means work, that all shall work; and here you are not working. You are only talking.

Oh, I can understand how you, the people of Russia, having been suppressed so long, should want, now that you have won to power, to talk and to listen to orators. But some day, soon, you -- we all -- must go to work and do things, act, produce results -- food and socialism. And I can understand how you like and trust and put your hope in Kerensky. You want to give him time, a chance, to act. He means well, you say. He means socialism. But I warn you he will not make socialism. He may think socialism, he may mean socialism. But, comrades -- I tell you Kerensky is an intellectual: he cannot act; he can talk; he cannot act. But you will not believe this yet. You will take time to give him time, and meanwhile, like Kerensky, you will not work. Very well, take your time. But when the hour strikes, when you are ready to go back yourselves to work and you want a government that will go to work and not only think socialism and talk socialism and mean socialism -- when you want a government that will do socialism, then -- come to the Bolsheviki."