V. I.

Lenin

ON FREEDOM OF THE PRESS

In early April, setting out the Bolsheviks’ attitude to the
question of whether the Constituent Assembly should be convened, I
wrote:

“ Yes, and as soon as possible. But there is only one way to
assure its convocation and success, and that is by increasing the
number and strength of the Soviets and organising and arming the
working-class masses. This is the only guarantee” ( Political Parties in Russia and the Tasks of the Proletariat , Cheap Library
of
Zhizn i Znaniye , Book III, pp. 9 and
29). [1]

Five months have passed since then and these words have been
proved correct by several delays in and postponements of the
convocation through the fault of the Cadets. And they have been
well borne out by the Kornilov affair.

Now, in connection with the calling of the Democratic
Conference on September 12, I should like to dwell on another
aspect of the matter.

Both the Menshevik
Rabochaya Gazeta and
Dyelo Naroda have deplored the fact that very little is being done for campaigning
among the peasants to enlighten this real mass of the Russian
people, their real majority. Everyone realises and admits that the
success of the Constituent Assembly depends on the enlightenment
of the peasants, but ridiculously little is being done about
it. The peasants are being deceived, fooled and intimidated by the
utterly deceitful and counter-revolutionary bourgeois and
“yellow” press, in comparison with which the press of the
Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries (not to speak of the
Bolsheviks) is very, very weak.

Why is that so?

Because the ruling S.R. and Menshevik parties are weak,
hesitant and inactive, because, disagreeing that all power should
be taken over by the Soviets, they leave the peasants in ignorance
and solitude, a prey to the capitalists, to their press and
their propaganda.

While boastfully calling our revolution great and shouting to
the right and left high-sounding, bombastic phrases about
“revolutionary democracy”, the Mensheviks and S.R.s in effect
leave Russia in.the conditions of a most ordinary, most
petty-bourgeois revolution which, having overthrown the tsar,
leaves everything else unchanged and does nothing, absolutely
nothing, effective to enlighten the peasants politically and to
end the peasants’ ignorance, that last (and strongest) bulwark,
the bulwark of the exploiters and oppressors of the people.

This is the time to recall that. It is now, with the Democratic
Conference before us, two months ahead of the “appointed”
convocation of the Constituent Assembly (to be further postponed),
that we must show how easily matters could be put right, how much
could be done for the political education of the peasants, if
only—if only our “revolutionary democrats” in inverted commas were really revolutionary, i.e., capable of acting in a
revolutionary way, and really democratic, i.e., reckoning with the
will and interests of the majority of the people, and not of the
capitalist minority, which continues to hold power (the Kerensky
government) and with which, either directly or indirectly, in a
new or old form, the S.R.s and Mensheviks are still eager to
compromise.

The capitalists (followed, either from stupidity or from
inertia, by many S.R.s and Mensheviks) call “freedom of the
press” a situation in which censorship has been abolished and
all parties freely publish all kinds of papers.

In reality it is not freedom of the press, but freedom for the
rich, for the bourgeoisie, to deceive the oppressed and exploited
mass of the people.

Indeed, take, say, the Petrograd and Moscow newspapers. You
will see at once that it is the bourgeois papers— Rech ,
Birzherka , Novoye Vrernya , Russkoye Slovo [2] , and so on, and so
forth (for there are a great many papers of this sort)—that
have by far the largest circulation. What makes for this
prevalence? Not at all the will of the majority, for the elections
have shown that in both capitals the majority (a gigantic
majority, too) favours the democrats, i.e., the S.R.s, Mensheviks
and Bolsheviks. These three parties command from three-quarters to
four-fifths of the votes, while the circulation of the newspapers
they publish is certainly less than a quarter, or even less than
one-fifth, that of the whole bourgeois press (which, as we know
and see now, supported the Kornilov affair directly and
indirectly).

Why is that so?

Everyone knows very well why. Because the publication of a
newspaper is a big and profitable capitalist undertaking in which
the rich invest millions upon millions of rubles. “Freedom of
the press” in bourgeois society means freedom for the rich
systematically, unremittingly, daily, in millions of copies, to
deceive, corrupt and fool the exploited and oppressed mass of the
people, the poor.

This is the simple, generally known, obvious truth which
everyone sees and realises but which “almost everyone” “bashfully” passes over in silence, timidly evades.

The question is whether and how this crying evil can be
fought.

First of all, there is a very simple, good and lawful means
which I pointed out in
Pravda long ago, which it is particularly opportune to recall now, before September 12, and which workers
should always bear in mind, for they will hardly be able to do
without it when they have won political power.

That means is a state monopoly on private press advertising.

Look at
Russkoye Slovo , Novoye Vremya , Birzhevka , Rech , etc.—you will see a multitude of private advertisements, which
yield a tremendous income, in fact the principal income, to their
capitalist publishers. This is how bourgeois papers hold sway, how
they get rich, and how they deal in poison for the people all over
the world.

In Europe there are newspapers which have a circulation as
large as one-third the number of inhabitants of the town (for
instance, 12,000 copies in a town with a population of 40,000) and
are delivered free to every home , and yet yield their owners a
sizable income. These papers live by advertisements paid by
private people, while the free delivery of the paper to every home
ensures the best circulation of the advertisements.

Then why cannot democrats who call themselves revolutionary
carry out a measure like declaring private press advertising a
state monopoly, or banning advertisements anywhere outside the
newspapers published by the Soviets in the provincial towns and
cities and by the central Soviet in Petrograd for the whole of
Russia? Why must “revolutionary” democrats tolerate such a
thing as the enrichment, through private advertising, of rich men,
Kornilov backers, and spreaders of lies and slander against the
Soviets?

Such a measure would be absolutely just. It would greatly
benefit both those who published private advertisements and the
whole people, particularly the most oppressed and ignorant class,
the peasants, who would be able to have
Soviet papers, with supplements for the peasants, at a very low price or even free of
charge.

Why not do that? Only because private property and hereditary
rights (to profits from advertising) are sacred to the capitalist
gentlemen. But how can anyone calling himself a revolutionary
democrat in the twentieth century, in the second Russian
revolution, recognise such rights as “sacred”?!

Some may say it would mean infringing freedom of the press.

That is not true. It would mean extending and restoring freedom
of the press, for freedom of the press means that all opinions of
all citizens may be freely published.

What do we have now? Now, the rich alone have this monopoly,
and also the big parties. Yet if large
Soviet newspapers were to be published, with all advertisements, it would be perfectly
feasible to guarantee the expression of their opinion to a much
greater number of citizens—say to every group having collected
a certain number of signatures. Freedom of the press would
in practice become much more democratic, would become incomparably
more complete as a result.

But some may ask: where would we get printing presses and
newsprint?

There we have it!!! The issue is not “freedom of the press’
but the exploiters’ sacrosanct ownership of the printing presses
and stocks of newsprint they have seized!

Just why should we workers and peasants recognise that sacred
right? How is that “right” to publish false information
better than the “right” to own serfs?

Why is it that in war-time all sorts of requisitioning—of
houses, flats, vehicles, horses, grain and metals—are allowed
and practised everywhere, while the requisitioning of printing
presses and newsprint is impermissible?

The workers and peasants may in fact be deceived for a while if
such measures are made out to be unjust or hard to realise, but
the truth will win through in the end.

State power in the shape of the Soviets takes all the printing
presses and all the newsprint and distributes them equitably : the
state should come first—in the interests of the majority of the
people, the majority of the poor, particularly the majority of the
peasants, who for centuries have been tormented, crushed and
stultified by the landowners and capitalists.

The big parties should come second—say, those that have
polled one or two hundred thousand votes in both capitals.

The smaller parties should come third, and then any group of
citizens which has a certain number of members or has collected a
certain number of signatures.

This is the distribution of newsprint and printing presses that
would be just and, with the Soviets in power, could be effected
easily enough.

Then, two months before the Constituent Assembly, we could
really help the peasants by ensuring the delivery to every village
of half a dozen pamphlets (or newspaper issues, or special
supplements) in millions of copies from every big party.

That would truly he a " revolutionary democratic " preparation for
the elections to the Constituent Assembly; it would be aid to the
countryside on the part of the advanced workers and soldiers. it
would be state aid to the people’s enlightenment, and not to
their stultification and deception; it would be real freedom of
the press for all , and not for the rich. It would be a break with
that accursed, slavish past which compels us to suffer the
usurpation by the rich of the great cause of informing and
teaching the peasants.

---
Notes:
[1]
See present edition, Vol. 24, p. 99.— Ed .

[2]
Russkoye Slovo (The Russian Word)—a daily newspaper published
in Moscow from 1895 (the first, trial, issue appeared in 1894) by
I. D. Sytin. Nominally non-partisan, it upheld the interests of
the Russian bourgeoisie from a moderately liberal point of view.

In 1917 it fully supported the bourgeois Provisional Government
and campaigned against Lenin and the Bolshevik Party.

The paper was closed down in November 1917 for carrying
slanderous anti-Soviet reports. From January 1918 on, it was
published for a period under the titles of Novoye Slovo and Nashe Slovo . It was suppressed altogether in July 1918.