V. I.

Lenin

To the Rural Poor

An Explanation for the Peasants of What the Social-Democrats Want

1. The Struggle of the Urban Workers

Many peasants have probably already heard about the labour unrest in the
towns. Some of them have themselves been in the capitals and in the
factories, and have seen the riots, as the police call them. Others know
workers who were involved in the unrest and were deported to their
villages by the authorities. Others again must have seen the leaflets
issued by the workers, or pamphlets about the workers’ struggle. Still
others have only heard stories about what is going on in the towns from
people with first-hand experience.

Formerly, only students rebelled, but now thousands and tens of thousands
of workers have risen in all the big towns. In most cases they fight
against their employers, against the factory owners, against the
capitalists. The workers declare strikes, all of them stop work at a
factory at the same time and demand higher wages, demand that they should
be made to work not eleven or ten hours a day, but only eight hours. The
workers also demand other things that would make the working man’s life
easier. They want the workshops to be in better condition and the machines
to be protected by special devices so as to prevent them from maiming the
workers; they want their children to be able to go to school and the sick
to be given proper aid in the hospitals; they want the workers’ homes to
be like human dwellings instead of being like pigsties.

The police intervene in the workers’ struggle. The police seize workers,
throw them into prison, deport them without trial to their villages, or
even to Siberia. The government has passed laws banning strikes and
workers’ meetings. But the workers wage their fight against the police and
against the government. The workers say: We, millions of working people, have bent our backs long enough! We have
worked for the rich and remained paupers long enough! We have allowed them
to rob us long enough! We want to unite in unions, to unite all the
workers in one big workers’ union (a workers’ party ) and to
strive jointly for a better life. We want to achieve a new and better
order of society: in this new and better society there must be neither
rich nor poor; all will have to work. Not a handful of rich people, but
all the working people must enjoy the fruits of their common
labour. Machines and other improvements must serve to ease the work of all
and not to enable a few to grow rich at the expense of millions and tens
of millions of people. This new and better society is called socialist society . The teachings about this society are called
socialism . The workers’ unions which fight for this better order
of society are called Social-Democratic parties. Such parties
exist openly in nearly all countries (except Russia and Turkey), and our
workers, together with socialists from among the educated people, have
also formed such a party: the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party .

The government persecutes that Party, but it exists in secret, despite all
prohibitions; it publishes its news papers and pamphlets and organises
secret unions. The workers not only meet in secret but come out into the
streets in crowds and unfurl their banners bearing the inscriptions:
“Long live the eight-hour day! Long live freedom! Long live
socialism!” The government savagely persecutes the workers for this. It
even sends troops to shoot down the workers. Russian soldiers have killed
Russian workers in Yaroslavl, St. Petersburg, Riga, Rostov-on-Don, and
Zlatoust.

But the workers do not yield. They continue the fight. They say: neither
persecution, prison, deportation, penal servitude, nor death can frighten
us. Our cause is a just one. We are fighting for the freedom and the
happiness of all who work. We are fighting to free tens and hundreds of
millions of people from abuse of power, oppression and poverty. The
workers are becoming more and more class- conscious. The number of
Social-Democrats is growing fast in all countries. We shall win despite
all persecution.

The rural poor must clearly understand who these Social-Democrats are,
what they want, and what must be done in the countryside to help the
Social-Democrats to win happiness for the people.

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