(Loud, prolonged applause and shouts of “Hurrah!”.) Comrades, it seems to me that our present situation, for all its contradictoriness, may be expressed, firstly, in that we have never been so close to the international proletarian revolution as now, and, secondly, we have never been in a more dangerous position than now. It is on these two points, particularly the second of them, that I would like to dwell in more detail today. I think that the broad masses hardly realise the full extent of the danger that is bearing down upon us, and, since we can act only by relying on the broad masses, the chief task of the representatives of Soviet power is to convey to these masses the whole truth of the present situation, however hard it may be at times. As regards our being close to the international socialist revolution, this has been spoken of more than once, and I shall be brief. In actual fact, one of the principal reproaches hurled against the Soviet power, not only by the bourgeoisie but also by petty-bourgeois strata who had lost all faith in socialism, as well as by many so-called socialists, who were accustomed to times of peace and did not believe in socialism – all of them reproached the Soviet power with the fact that, in carrying out the socialist revolution in Russia, we were doing it at random, for in the West the revolution had not yet matured.

Comrades, now, in the fifth year of the war, the universal collapse of imperialism is an obvious fact; it is now becoming clear to all that revolution is inevitable in all the belligerent countries. We, whose existence was at first reckoned in days or weeks, have in this year of revolution done as much as no proletarian party in the world has ever done. Our revolution has proved to be a world phenomenon. Even the entire bourgeoisie says that Bolshevism is now a world phenomenon, and from this recognition it becomes obvious that our revolution has crept from the East to the West and there meets ever more prepared soil. You know that revolution has broken out in Bulgaria. Bulgarian soldiers have begun to form Soviets. Now reports are coming that Soviets are being formed in Serbia too. Although the Anglo-French Entente promises the peoples a thousand boons if they rise up and break away from Germany, although the richest in the world and the mightiest capitalists of America, Britain and France promise much, it becomes obvious that the bourgeoisie of the various small states into which Austria is now disintegrating, that this bourgeoisie will in no case hold on, that its domination, its power in these states will be a very short, transient phenomenon, because everywhere the workers’ revolution is knocking at the door.

The bourgeoisie of particular countries realises that it will have to hold on in its own states with the help of foreign bayonets. And not only in Austria, but also in Germany, whose position only recently seemed firm – we see, revolution has begun. We are receiving reports from there, the German press is already talking of the Kaiser’s abdication, and the press of the Independent Social-Democratic Party has already received from the Chancellor permission to speak of a German republic. This means something. We know that the disintegration of the troops has intensified, that direct calls for insurrection are spreading among the soldiers. We know that in eastern Germany military-revolutionary committees have been formed, they put out revolutionary publications which are revolutionising the soldiers. Therefore it is possible to speak with complete certainty that the revolution is ripening not by the day but by the hour, and it is not only we who say this – no, it is precisely all Germans from the war party and the bourgeoisie who say this, who feel that the ministers are tottering, that the people do not trust them, that they will not hold out in their government for very long. This is said by all who know the state of affairs: how inevitable is a people’s revolution in Germany, and perhaps even a proletarian revolution.

We know perfectly well what a huge proletarian movement has arisen in other countries too. We have seen how Gompers appeared in Italy and, with the money of the Entente powers, with the help of the whole Italian bourgeoisie and the social-patriots, toured all the cities of Italy, preaching to the Italian workers to continue the imperialist war. We have seen how, at that time, the Italian socialist press carried reports about this, in which only the name of Gompers remained, while everything else was struck out by the censor, or carried reports which mocked: “Gompers attends banquets and babbles.” And the bourgeois press admitted that Gompers was everywhere howled down. The bourgeois press wrote: “The Italian workers behave in such a way that it seems they would allow only Lenin and Trotsky to travel about Italy.” The Italian Socialist Party has, during the war, made a huge step forward, that is to say, to the left. We know that in France there were too great a number of patriots among the workers; they were told that Paris and French territory were threatened by a gigantic danger. But there, too, the line of conduct of the proletariat is changing. At the last congress, when the letter was read out about what the allies, the Anglo-French imperialists, were doing, cries rang out: Long live the socialist republic! And yesterday there was news that a meeting was held in Paris, attended by 2,000 metalworkers, which greeted the Soviet republic in Russia. We see that out of the three socialist parties in Britain only one, the Independent Labour Party, does not openly become an ally of the Bolsheviks, while the British Socialist Party and the Socialist Labour Party of Scotland definitely declare themselves supporters of the Bolsheviks. In Britain, too, Bolshevism is beginning to spread, while the Spanish parties which took the side of Anglo-French imperialism, among whom at the beginning of the war one could find one or two persons who had a remote notion of internationalists, all these parties at their congress greeted the Russian Bolsheviks. Bolshevism has become the world theory and tactic of the international proletariat! (Applause.) Bolshevism has brought it about that a harmonious socialist revolution has unfolded before the whole world, that in actual fact, a split is occurring among the socialists on the question of for or against the Bolsheviks. Bolshevism has brought it about that the programme of creating a proletarian state is being put forward. Workers who did not know how matters stood in Russia, since they read only the bourgeois newspapers full of lies and slander, have begun to take stock of the situation, seeing that the proletarian government is gaining victory after victory over its counter-revolutionaries, seeing that there is no other way out of this war than our tactics, the revolutionary mode of action of our workers’ government. And if, last Wednesday, there was a demonstration in Berlin, and the workers expressed their indignation towards the Kaiser, trying to march past his palace, then later they proceeded to the Russian embassy, endeavouring to express their solidarity with the actions of the Russian government.

That is what Europe has come to in the fifth year of the war! That is why we say that never have we been so close to world revolution, never has it been so obvious that the Russian proletariat has established its might, and it is clear that millions and tens of millions of the world proletariat will follow us. That is why, I repeat, we have never been so close to the international revolution, and never has our position been so dangerous, because formerly Bolshevism was never taken into account as a world force. It seemed that it was merely a consequence of the weariness of the Russian soldiers, that it was an outburst of discontent of the Russian soldiers exhausted by war, and that as soon as this discontent passed and even the most forcible peace was established, all steps towards state construction and towards socialist reforms would be crushed. Everyone was sure of this, but it turned out that as soon as we passed from the imperialist war, which ended in the most forcible peace, to the first steps of state construction, as soon as we passed to the possibility of enabling the peasants in practice to live without landlords and to establish their own relations against the landlords, to convince themselves in practice that they were building their life on the expropriated land not for the kulaks nor for the new capitalists, but truly for the working people themselves, as soon as the workers saw that they had obtained the possibility of building their life without capitalists, of learning that difficult but great task without which they would never escape exploitation – then it became clear to everyone, and in practice it proved, that no forces, no counter-revolution would overthrow Soviet power.

In order for us in Russia to arrive at this conviction, we needed whole months. They say that in the countryside only in the summer of 1918 and only by autumn did the peasants sort out the meaning and significance of our revolution. In the town this consciousness had existed long before, but in order that it should reach every uyezd, every remote volost and village, in order that the peasant should see, not from books and speeches but from his own life, that the toiler must receive the land, but not the kulak, and that a struggle must be waged against the kulak, that the kulak must be defeated by one’s own organisation, that the wave of insurrection which swept through the whole country in the summer of this year was supported by landlords, kulaks and White Guards, in order to test by their own experience, by the sweat of their brows, the power of the Constituent Assembly – for this, long, long months were needed, and today the countryside is emerging tempered, and the masses of the peasant poor, who do not seize the labour of others, only now have seen, not from books, from which the toiling masses will never derive firm convictions, but from their own experience, that Soviet power is the power of the exploited toilers and that it is possible for every village to begin laying the foundations of a new, socialist Russia. Long months were needed before in the rest of Russia, after 1918, we could say with certainty, relying on the reports of people proceeding from actual experience, that there is not a remote spot in the countryside where they would not know what Soviet power is, and would not defend it, because the countryside has seen all the danger threatening from the side of capitalists and landlords, has seen also the difficulty of the socialist transformation, and has not taken fright, but has said to itself: we will draw tens of millions of hands to this work, we have learned much in a year and we will learn still more. This is now said in Russia with full conviction, on the basis of their own experience, by tens and tens of millions.

Only now does it become clear to the West European bourgeoisie, which until now did not take the Bolsheviks seriously, only now does it become clear to them that here, among us, there has been created the one solid power, which marches with the toiling masses and which can evoke in them genuine heroism and self-sacrifice. And when this proletarian power began to infect Europe, when it turned out that this is by no means some peculiarity of Russia and that throughout the world the four-year war has caused the disintegration of the army – whereas formerly it was said that only Russia, by its backwardness and lack of preparedness, had gone so far as to see its army run away in the fourth year of the war – could that have been possible in the civilised parliamentary countries?

But everyone now sees that after four years of world war, when millions of people have been killed and maimed so that the capitalists could enrich themselves, when there are tens of thousands of deserters – this extraordinary phenomenon is observed not only in Russia and Austria, but also in Germany, which boasted of its order – when this has come about, the world bourgeoisie saw that it had to reckon with a more serious foe, and began to rally, and the closer we have approached the international proletarian revolution, the more tightly has the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie rallied.

In certain countries they still wave the revolution aside, just as the coalition ministers waved the Bolsheviks aside in October and said that in Russia things would not go so far as Bolshevik power. In France, for example, they say that the Bolsheviks are a gang of traitors who are selling their people to the Germans. That French bourgeois say this is more excusable than if Left Socialist-Revolutionaries do so, since they are bourgeois precisely so as to spend millions on lying fabrications. But when the French bourgeoisie saw the development of Bolshevism in France and that even parties which had not been revolutionary came out on the side of the Bolsheviks with a revolutionary slogan, it saw that it was faced with a more formidable foe: the collapse of imperialism and the preponderance of the workers in the revolutionary struggle. Everyone knows that for the proletarian revolution, because of the imperialist war, the danger is particularly great at the present time, for the proletarian revolution is growing unevenly in all countries, since all countries stand in different conditions of political life, and in one country the proletariat is too weakened, while in another it is stronger. If in one country the top layer of the proletariat is weak, in other countries it happens that the bourgeoisie temporarily succeeds in splitting the workers, as happened in Britain and France – that is why the proletarian revolution is developing unevenly, and that is why the bourgeoisie saw that its strongest enemy is the revolutionary proletariat. It is rallying, in order to retard the collapse of world imperialism.

Now the situation has changed for us, and events are unfolding with gigantic rapidity. At first there were two groups of imperialist predators, which strove to destroy each other, but now they have noticed, especially from the example of German imperialism, which until recently considered itself equal to Britain and France, that their main enemy is the revolutionary proletariat. Now, when Germany is being decomposed from within by the revolutionary movement, Anglo-French imperialism considers itself master of the world. There they are convinced that its chief enemy is the Bolsheviks and the world revolution. The more strongly the revolution develops, the more strongly the bourgeoisie rallies. Therefore some of us, especially many of the broad masses who, having now convinced themselves that they can vanquish our counter-revolutionaries, the Cossacks, the officers and the Czechoslovaks, think that the matter is done – do not give themselves a clear account of the fact that this is now not enough for us – there is a new enemy, who is far more terrible: this enemy is Anglo-French imperialism. Until now it has not had very many successes in Russia – for example, in landing at Arkhangelsk. One of the French writers, who published a newspaper and called it “La Victoire”, said that a victory over the Germans was not enough for France, that she also needed to vanquish Bolshevism and that the campaign against Russia is not an offensive against Germany, but a campaign against the Bolshevik revolutionary proletariat and the contagion that is spreading throughout the world.

That is why there now appears for us a new danger, which has not yet fully unfolded and is not yet fully visible, which the Anglo-French imperialists are secretly preparing, which we must realise more clearly, so that through the leaders of the masses the consciousness of this danger may be carried into the masses, because the British and French have had no great success either in Siberia or in Arkhangelsk – on the contrary, they have suffered a series of defeats – but they are now directing their efforts towards attacking Russia from the south, either from the Dardanelles, or from the Black Sea, or overland through Bulgaria and Rumania. Since these people act with the observance of military secrets, we cannot indicate how far this campaign has been prepared, and which of these two plans, or perhaps a third, they have chosen; the danger lies precisely in the fact that we cannot know for certain. But we know quite definitely that it is being prepared, that the press of these countries sometimes writes not very cautiously, some journalist openly declares the main aims, casting aside all lying words about a league of nations.

In German ruling circles we now clearly see two currents, two plans of salvation, if salvation is still possible. Some say: let us gain time, spin it out till the spring, perhaps on the line of fortifications we may still be able to offer military resistance; others see their main salvation in Britain and France, they direct all their attention towards reaching agreement with Britain and France against the Bolsheviks – all their attention is directed to this. And if Wilson is now replying to the offer of peace with a rude and disdainful refusal, this still does not compel the party of the German capitalists, who seek agreement with Britain, to abandon their plans. They know that an agreement can sometimes be tacit, that if they render services to the British and French capitalists against the Bolsheviks, they may perhaps receive compensation for these services. In capitalist society this is how it is – services are paid for. They assume: perhaps we will help the British and French capitalists to plunder something, then they will leave us something from the loot. To pay and to be paid – such is the morality of the capitalist world. And it seems to me that in laying claim to a certain share of Anglo-French capital, these people are able to count and are calculating not less than in billions. A section of these gentlemen understands such calculations.

It is hardly possible that such a tacit deal between the German bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie of the Entente powers has not already taken place. Its essence is that the Anglo-French say: we will come into the Ukraine, but while our occupation forces are not yet there, you, Germans, do not withdraw your troops, or else the workers will take power in the Ukraine and Soviet power will triumph there as well. That is how they reason, because they understand that the bourgeoisie of all the occupied countries: Finland, Ukraine and Poland, know that this national bourgeoisie cannot hold on a single day if the German occupation troops leave, and therefore the bourgeoisie of these countries, which yesterday was selling itself to the Germans, went to bow down to the German imperialists and concluded an alliance with them against their own workers, as the Ukrainian Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries did in Tiflis – it is now re-selling its fatherland to everyone. Yesterday it sold it to the Germans, and today it is selling it to the British and French. That is what is going on behind the scenes, what haggling is going on. Seeing that the Anglo-French bourgeoisie is winning, they all go over to its side and prepare deals with Anglo-French imperialism against us, at our expense.

When they tell their future Anglo-French billionaire master that they are taking his side, they say: your honoured self will defeat the Bolsheviks, you must help us, because the Germans will not save us. This conspiracy of the bourgeoisie of all countries against the revolutionary workers and Bolsheviks is emerging more and more clearly and becoming impudently open. And our direct duty is to point out this danger to the workers and peasants of all the belligerent countries.

I shall take the Ukraine as an example. Think of its situation, think of how the workers and class-conscious Communists are to act in the present situation. On the one hand, they see indignation against the German imperialists, against the terrible plunder of the Ukraine; on the other, they see that a part of the German troops, and perhaps the greater part, has withdrawn. They may perhaps entertain the thought of giving expression to the accumulated hatred and spite and immediately, disregarding everything, attacking the German imperialists. While others say: we are internationalists, we must look at things from the point of view of both Russia and Germany; even from the point of view of Germany we know that the power there will not hold out, we know firmly that if a Ukrainian victory of the workers and peasants proceeds side by side with the consolidation of power in Russia and with its successes, then socialist proletarian Ukraine will not only triumph, but will be invincible! Such class-conscious Ukrainian Communists say to themselves: we must be very cautious; perhaps tomorrow we shall be required to exert all our forces and to stake everything on the struggle against imperialism and the German troops. Perhaps it will be so tomorrow, but not today, and today we know that the troops of the German imperialists are disintegrating of their own accord; they know that alongside the Ukrainian troops, East Prussian and German troops are issuing revolutionary publications. At the same time our main task is propaganda in the interests of the Ukrainian insurrection. This is from the international point of view, the point of view of international revolution, because the main link in this chain is the German link, because the German revolution is already ripening and on it, more than on anything else, depends the success of the world revolution.

We shall see to it that our intervention does not harm their revolution. We must understand the changes and the growth of every revolution. In every country – we have seen this and lived through it, and know it better than others – in every country revolution proceeds along its own path, and these paths are so varied that it may be delayed by a year or two. The world revolution is not arranged so smoothly as to go everywhere, in all countries, by one path – otherwise we would have triumphed long ago. Every country has to go through definite political stages. Everywhere we see the same striving of the compromisers, their attempts together with the bourgeoisie to “save the people from the bourgeoisie”, as Tsereteli and Chernov did with us, as the Scheidemannites are doing in Germany; in France they are doing it in their own way. And now, when the revolution has approached Germany, that country of the mightiest labour movement, distinguished by its organisation and steadfastness, where the workers have endured longer but have perhaps accumulated more revolutionary hatred and will know better how to settle accounts with their enemies, interference in these events by people who do not know the tempo of the growth of the revolution may harm those class-conscious Communists who say: I first of all direct my attention to making this process a conscious one. Now, when the German soldier has convinced himself that he is being driven to the slaughter, told that he is defending his fatherland while in reality he is defending the German imperialists – now the time is approaching when the German revolution will burst out with such force and organisation that it will settle a hundred international questions. That is why class-conscious Ukrainian Communists say: we must give everything for the victory of the international revolution, but we must realise that we possess the future and must march step in step with the German revolution.

Such are the difficulties I wanted to illustrate by the example of the reasoning of the Ukrainian Communists. These difficulties are reflected also in the position of Soviet Russia. Now we must say that at the present moment the international proletariat has awakened and is making gigantic strides, but our position is all the more difficult because our yesterday’s “ally” is rising against us as against his chief enemy. Now he is going to fight not against the foe’s armies, but against international Bolshevism. Now, when Krasnov’s forces are massing on the Southern Front, and we know that they obtained shells from the Germans – we, who have exposed imperialism before all peoples, people who accused us over the Brest Peace, who sent Krasnov to get shells from the Germans and showered them upon the Russian workers and peasants, now receive them from the Anglo-French imperialists, obtaining them, they re-sell and sell Russia to the millionaire who gives the most. That is why the general confidence which has grown among us that a turning-point has been reached is now not enough. We have our old enemies, but besides them, right now a new aid is gathering behind their backs for them. We all know and observe this. In, say, February or March, only half a year ago, we had no army. The army could not fight. The army that had endured the four-year imperialist war, when it did not know what it was fighting for and dimly felt that it was fighting for alien interests – that army took to its heels, and no forces in the world could hold it.

Any revolution is worth something only if it is able to defend itself, but revolution does not learn to defend itself at once. The revolution was the awakening to a new life of millions. In February and March these millions did not know what they were to go and continue that slaughter, into which they had been driven by the tsars and Kerenskys and whose purpose was exposed only in December by the Bolshevik government. They clearly understood that this was not their war, and nearly half a year was needed before a turning-point set in. This turning-point has set in; it alters the strength of the revolution. The masses, worn out and tormented by the four-year war, in February and March threw up everything and said that peace must come and the war be ended. They were not in a position to raise the question of what the war was for. If these masses have now created a new discipline in the Red Army, not the discipline of the stick and of the landlords, but the discipline of the Soviets of Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies; if they are now going to the greatest self-sacrifice; if a new cohesion has formed among them, it is because for the first time in the consciousness and experience of tens of millions a new, socialist discipline is being born and has been born, the Red Army has been born. It was born only when these tens of millions of people saw from their own experience that they themselves had thrown off the landlords and capitalists, that a new life was being built, that they had themselves begun to build it, and that they would build this life unless a foreign invasion prevented it.

When the peasants saw their main enemy and began the struggle against the village kulaks, when the workers threw off the factory owner and began to build the factories according to the proletarian principle of national economy, they saw all the difficulty of the reconstruction, but they coped with it; months were needed to get the work going. Those months have passed, and the turning-point has set in; the period when we were powerless has passed, and we have moved forward with gigantic strides; the period when we had no army, when there was no discipline, has passed; a new discipline has been created, and into the army have come new people, who give their lives by the thousand.

This means that the new discipline, the comradely union, has re-educated us in the struggle at the front and in the village struggle against the kulak. This turning-point that we are living through has been difficult, but now we feel that things are improving, and we are passing from an unorganised, decreed socialism to genuine socialism. Before us stands the main task – the struggle against imperialism, and in this struggle we must win. We point out the full difficulty and danger of this struggle. We know that a turning-point has set in in the consciousness of the Red Army, it has begun to win, it is throwing up from its midst thousands of officers who have done a course in the new proletarian military schools, and thousands of other officers who have done no courses except the stern course of war. Therefore we do not in the least exaggerate when we realise the danger, but now we say that we have an army; and this army has created discipline and has become capable of fighting. Our Southern Front is not an isolated front – it is the front against the whole of Anglo-French imperialism, against the mightiest enemy in the world, but we are not afraid of him, since we know that he himself will not succeed in coping with his own internal enemy.

Three months ago people laughed when we said that a revolution might occur in Germany; we were told that only half-mad Bolsheviks could believe in a German revolution. Not only the whole bourgeoisie, but also the Mensheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, called the Bolsheviks traitors to patriotism and said that there could be no revolution in Germany. But we knew that our help was needed there, and for this help we had to sacrifice everything, even the hard conditions of peace. Several months ago we were told this and it was proved to us, but in a few months Germany has turned from a mighty empire into a rotton tree. That force which has destroyed it is also acting in America and in Britain today it is weak, but with every step that the Anglo-French may try to make in Russia, try to occupy the Ukraine as the Germans did – with every step that force will surge up more and more and will be even more terrible than the Spanish influenza.

That, comrades, is why the main task now, I repeat, of every class-conscious worker is to conceal nothing from the broad masses, who may not know the full acuteness of the situation, but, on the contrary, to reveal the whole truth. The workers have matured enough to know this truth. We must defeat not only the White Guards, but also world imperialism. We must defeat, and shall defeat, not only this, but a still more terrible enemy. For this the Red Army is needed more than anything else. Let every organisation of Soviet Russia never cease to put the question of the army in the first place. At the present time, when everything has been consolidated, the question of war, of strengthening the army, is on the first plane. We have full confidence that we shall cope with the counter-revolution. We know that we have forces, but we also know that Anglo-French imperialism is stronger than we are, and we want the masses of the workers to realise this clearly. We say: it is necessary to strengthen the army tenfold and more, to speak of strengthening discipline still more, and that the class-conscious, enlightened, organised genuine leaders should devote ten times more attention and care to this, and then the growth of the international revolution, this growth will not be confined to those countries which have already suffered defeat. Now revolution is beginning even in those countries which have proved to be victors. Our forces must grow with every day, and this constant growth is, for us, as before, the main and full guarantee that international socialism will triumph! (Comrade Lenin’s speech was repeatedly interrupted by loud applause and concluded with an ovation. The whole hall rose as one man and hailed the leader of the world revolution.)