V. I.

Lenin

Theuprising in Odessa and the siding of the armoured cruiser Potemkin
with the revolution marked a further big step forward in the development of the
revolutionary movement against the autocracy. Events have confirmed with
amazing rapidity the timeliness of the calls to insurrection and to the
formation of a provisional revolutionary government, which were addressed to
the people by the class-conscious spokesmen of the proletariat as represented
by the Third Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party. The new
outbreak of the revolutionary conflagration throws light on the practical
significance of these calls and makes us determine more precisely the tasks of
the revolutionary fighters in the present situation in Russia.

Thearmed uprising of the people is maturing and is organising itself before
our very eyes under the impact of the spontaneous course of events. It was not
so very long ago that the only manifestation of the people’s struggle against
the autocracy was revolts –unconscious, unorganised, spontaneous, sometimes wild
outbreaks. But the labour movement, as the movement of the most advanced class,
the proletariat, rapidly outgrew this initial stage. The goal-conscious
propaganda and agitation carried on by the Social-Democrats had their
effect. Disturbances gave way to organised strike struggles and political demonstrations against the autocracy. The brutal military reprisals of the
past few years have “educated” the proletariat and the common people
of the towns, and have prepared them for higher forms of revolutionary
struggle. The criminal and ignominious war into which the autocracy has plunged
the

people filled the cup of their endurance to overflowing. The crowds began to
offer armed resistance to the tsarist troops. Real street fighting, barricade battles , started between the people and the troops. Quite
recently the Caucasus, Lodz, Odessa, and Libau have shown us examples of
proletarian heroism and popular enthusiasm. The struggle grew into an
insurrection. Even the tsar’s troops gradually began to see that they were being
made to play the shameful role of executioners of freedom, of henchmen of the
police. And the army began to waver. At first isolated cases of
insubordination, outbreaks among reservists, protests from officers, propaganda
among the soldiers, refusal of some companies and regiments to shoot at their
own brothers, the workers. Then—the siding of part of the army with the uprising .

Thetremendous significance of the recent events in Odessa lies precisely in the
fact that, for the first time, an important unit of the armed force of
tsarism—a battle ship—has openly gone over to the side of the
revolution. The government made frantic efforts and resorted to all possible
tricks to conceal this event from the people, to stifle the mutiny of the
sailors from the outset. But to no avail. The warships sent against the
revolutionary armoured cruiser “Potemkin” refused to fight
against their comrades. By spreading throughout Europe the report that the
Potemkin had surrendered and that the tsar had ordered the
revolutionary armoured cruiser to be sunk, the autocratic government only
completed its disgrace in the eyes of the entire world. The squadron has
returned to Sevastopol, and the government is hastening to disband the crews and
to disarm the warships; reports are current of wholesale resignations of
officers of the Black Sea Fleet; a fresh mutiny broke out on the armoured
cruiser Georgi Pobedonosets , which had surrendered. The sailors are
also rising in Libau and in Kronstadt; clashes with the troops are becoming more
frequent; sailors and workers are fighting the troops on the barricades (in
Libau). The foreign press reports mutinies on a number of other warships (the
Minin , the Alexander II , and others). The tsarist government
finds itself without a navy. The most that it has been able to achieve
so far is to hold back the fleet from actively going over to the side of the revolution. Meanwhile, the armoured cruiser Potemkin remains an
unconquered territory of the revolution, and what ever its fate may be, the
undoubted fact and the point of highest significance is that here we have
the attempt to form the nucleus of a revolutionary army .

Noreprisals, no partial victories over the revolution can diminish the
importance of this event. The first step has been taken. The Rubicon has been
crossed. The siding of the army with the revolution has impressed itself as a
fact upon the whole of Russia and the entire world. The events in the Black Sea
Fleet will inevitably be followed by further and still more energetic attempts
to form a revolutionary army. It is our task now to give the utmost support to
these efforts, to explain to the broadest masses of the proletariat and the
peasantry the nation-wide significance of a revolutionary army in the struggle
for freedom, to assist various units of this army to unfurl the popular
banner of freedom , the banner capable of attracting the masses and
rallying the forces that will crush the tsarist autocracy.

Outbreaks—demonstrations—street fighting—units of a revolutionary army—such are the stages in the development of the popular
uprising. Now at last we have reached the final stage. This does not mean, of
course, that the movement in its entirety has advanced to this new and higher
stage. No, there is still a good deal of backwardness in the movement; in the
Odessa events there are unmistakable signs of old-time rioting. But it does mean
that the advance waves of the elemental flood have already reached the very
threshold of the absolutist “stronghold”. It does mean that the
advanced representatives of the popular masses have themselves arrived, not as
a result of theoretical reasoning, but under the impact of the growing movement,
at new and higher tasks of the struggle, the final struggle against the enemy of
the Russian people. The autocracy has done everything to prepare this
struggle. For years it has provoked the people to an armed struggle with its
troops, and now it is reaping what it sowed. The units of the revolutionary army
are springing up out of the army itself.

Thetask of these units is to proclaim the insurrection, to give the masses
military leadership , as essential in civil war as in any other war; to
create strong points for the open mass struggle; to spread the uprising to neighbouring districts; to establish
complete political freedom, if only at first in a small part of the country; to
embark on the revolutionary transformation of the decayed absolutist system;
and to give full scope to the revolutionary creative activity of the masses, who
participate but little in this activity in time of peace, but who come to the
forefront in revolutionary epochs. Only by clearly understanding these new
tasks, only by posing them boldly and broadly, can the units of the
revolutionary army win complete victory and become the strong points of a
revolutionary government. And a revolutionary government is as vitally
essential at the present stage of the popular uprising as a revolutionary
army. The revolutionary army is needed for military struggle and for military
leadership of the masses against the remnants of the military forces of the
autocracy. The revolutionary army is needed because great historical issues can
be re solved only by force , and, in modern struggle, the
organisation of force means military organisation. Besides
the remnants of the autocracy’s military forces there are the military forces of the neighbouring
states for whose support the tottering Russian Government is already begging, of
which

later. [1]

Therevolutionary government is needed for the political leadership of the
masses, at first in that part of the country which has been wrested from tsarism
by the revolutionary army, and later in the country at large. The revolutionary
government is needed for the immediate launching of the political reforms, for
the sake of which the revolution is being made—the establishment of a
revolutionary self-government of the people, the convocation of a
truly popular and truly Constituent Assembly, and the introduction of
“liberties” without which there can be no true expression of the
people’s will. The revolutionary government is necessary for the political
unification and the political organisation of the insurgent section of the
people ,which has actually and finally broken away from the autocracy. Of
course, that political organisation can only be provisional, just as the
revolutionary government, which has taken power in the name of the people in order to enforce the will of the people and to act
through the instrumentality of the people, can only be provisional. But
this work of organisation must start immediately , and it must be
indissolubly combined with every successful step of the uprising; for
political consolidation and political leadership cannot be delayed for a
single moment. Immediate political leadership of the insurgent people is no
less essential for the complete victory of the people over tsarism than the
military leadership of its forces.

Noone who is at all capable of forming a judgement can doubt the eventual
outcome of the struggle between the supporters of the autocracy and the masses
of the people. Yet we must not shut our eyes to the fact that the serious
struggle is only beginning, that there are great trials in store for us. Both
the revolutionary army and the revolutionary government are
“organisms” of so high a type, they demand institutions so
complicated and a civic consciousness so developed, that it would be a mistake
to expect a simple, immediate, and perfect fulfilment of these tasks from the
outset. No, we do not expect that; we are able to appreciate the importance of
the slow, steady, and often imperceptible work of political education which
Social-Democrats have always conducted and always will conduct. But we must not
allow what in the present circumstances would be still more dangerous—a
lack of faith in the powers of the people. We must remember what a tremendous
educational and organising power the revolution has, when mighty historical
events force the man in the street out of his remote corner, garret, or basement
and make a citizen out of him. Months of revolution sometimes educate
citizens more quickly and fully than decades of political stagnation. The task
of the class-conscious leaders of the revolutionary class is always to march
ahead of it in the matter of education, to explain to it the meaning of the new
tasks, and to urge it forward towards our great ultimate goal. The failures
inevitably involved in our further attempts to form a revolutionary army and a
provisional revolutionary government will only teach us to meet these tasks
in practice ; they will serve to draw the new and fresh forces of the
people, now lying dormant, to the work of solving them.

Totake the military aspect. No Social-Democrat at all familiar with history,
who has studied Engels, the great expert on this subject, has ever doubted the
tremendous importance of military knowledge, of military technique, and of
military organisation as an instrument which the masses of the people, and
classes of the people, use in resolving great historical
conflicts. Social-Democracy never stooped to playing at military conspiracies;
it never gave prominence to military questions until the actual conditions of
civil war had arisen. [2]

But now all Social-Democrats have advanced the military questions, if not to the first place, at least to one of the first
places, and they are putting great stress on studying these questions and
bringing them to the knowledge of the masses. The revolutionary army must apply
the military knowledge and the military means on the practical plane for the
determination of the further destiny of the Russian people, for the
determination of the most vital and pressing question—the question of
freedom.

Social-Democracyhas never taken a sentimental view of war. It unreservedly
condemns war as a bestial means of settling conflicts in human society. But
Social-Democracy knows that so long as society is divided into classes, so long
as there is exploitation of man by man, wars are inevitable. This exploitation
cannot be destroyed without war, and war is always and everywhere begun by the
exploiters themselves, by the ruling and oppressing classes. There are wars and
wars. There are adventurist wars, fought to further dynastic interests, to
satisfy the appetite of a band of freebooters, or to attain the objects of the
knights of capitalist profit. And there is another kind of war—the only
war that is legitimate in capitalist society—war against the
people’s oppressors and enslavers. Only utopians and philistines can condemn
such a war on principle. Only the bourgeois betrayers of freedom can stand aloof
from such a war in Russia today, the war for the people’s freedom. The
proletariat in Russia has started that great war of liberation, and it will, go on with it, forming units of a
revolutionary army, reinforcing the units of the soldiers or sailors that
have come over to its side, enlisting the peasants, imbuing the new
citizens of Russia, formed and steeled in the fire of civil war,
with the heroism and enthusiasm of fighters for the freedom and happiness of
all mankind.

Thetask of establishing a revolutionary government is as new, as difficult, and
as complicated as the task of the military organisation of the revolutionary
forces. But this task, too, can and must be fulfilled by the people. In this
matter, too, every partial failure will lead to an improvement in methods and
means, to the consolidation and extension of the results. The Third Congress of
the R.S.D.L.P. outlined in its resolution the general conditions for dealing
with this new task; it is now time to consider and prepare the conditions for
its practical realisation. Our Party has a minimum programme, a complete
programme of the changes that are immediately achievable within the framework of
the democratic (i.e., bourgeois) revolution, and which the proletariat needs in
its further struggle for the triumph of the socialist revolution. But this
programme contains basic demands, as well as partial demands that follow from
the basic ones or are assumed. In every attempt to establish a provisional
revolutionary government it is important to advance precisely the basic demands
in order to show to the whole of the people, even to the most unenlightened
masses, in brief formulation, in sharp and clear outline, the aims of this
government and its tasks that are of significance to the entire people.

Thereare, in our view, six such fundamental points that must become
the political banner and the immediate programme of any revolutionary
government. They should enlist the sympathy of the people for that government
and should be regarded as the most urgent task, upon the accomplishment of
which the whole revolutionary energy of the people must be concentrated.

Thesix points are:

(1) a Constituent. Assembly of all the people, (2) arming of
the people, (3) political freedom, (4) complete freedom for the oppressed and
disfranchised nationalities, (5) the eight-hour day, and (6) peasant
revolutionary committees. Of course, this is only a tentative list, representing the
headings , the designations, of a series of changes that are required
immediately for winning the democratic republic. We do not claim that the list
is complete. We merely want to stress the importance of certain basic
tasks. The revolutionary government must strive to secure the support of the
masses, of the mass of the working class and of the peasantry; short of doing
this, it will not be able to maintain itself; without the revolutionary activity
of the people it will be a mere nothing, worse than nothing. It is our duty to
warn the people against the adventurism of high-sounding but absurd promises
(like immediate “socialisation”, which even its advocates do not
under stand), while at the same time we must propose changes that are really
practicable at the present moment and really necessary for strengthening the
cause of the revolution. The revolutionary government must rouse the
“people” and organise its revolutionary activity. Complete
freedom for the oppressed nationalities, i. e., the recognition, not only of
their cultural, but of their political, self-determination; the introduction of
urgent measures for the protection of the working class (the eight-hour day as
the first in a series of such measures), and lastly, the guarantee of serious
measures, without regard for the egotistic interests of the land lords, in
favour of the mass of the peasantry—such, in our opinion, are the chief
points that every revolutionary government must especially emphasise. We shall
not discuss the first three points, which are too obvious to require
comment. Nor shall we discuss the need for practically implementing reforms even
in a small territory, one, for instance, that has been wrested from tsarism;
practical implementation is a thousand times more important than manifestos,
and, of course, a thousand times more difficult. We merely wish to draw
attention to the fact that it is necessary now, without delay, to spread by
every possible means a correct idea of our general and immediate tasks. We must
know how to appeal to the people—in the true sense of the word—not
only with a general call to struggle (this suffices in the period preceding the
formation of the revolutionary government), but with a direct call for the
immediate implementation of the most essential democratic reforms, for their independent
realisation without delay.

Therevolutionary army and the revolutionary government are two sides of the
same medal. They are two institutions equally necessary for the success of the
uprising and for the consolidation of its results. They are two slogans which
must be advanced and explained as· the only consistent revolutionary
slogans. There are many people today who call themselves democrats; however,
many are called, but few are chosen. There are many spokesmen of the
“Constitutional-Democratic Party”; but in so-called “society”, in the would-be democratic Zemstvos, there are few
true democrats, men who are sincerely in favour of the complete
sovereignty of the people and are capable of waging a life-and-death struggle
against the enemies of that sovereignty, the defenders of the tsarist
autocracy.

Theworking class is free of the cowardice, the hypocritical half-heartedness
that is characteristic of the bourgeoisie as a class. The working class can and
must be fully and consistently democratic. The working class has proved its
right to the role of vanguard in the democratic revolution by the blood it has
shed on the streets of St. Petersburg, Riga, Libau, Warsaw, Lodz, Odessa, Baku,
and many other cities. It must prove equal to this great role at the present
decisive moment too. While never for a moment forgetting their socialist goal,
their class and Party independence, the class-conscious representatives of the
proletariat, the members of the R.S.D.L.P., must come forward before the whole
of the people with the advanced democratic slogans. For us, for the proletariat,
the democratic revolution is only the first step on the road to the complete
emancipation of labour from all exploitation, to the great socialist goal. All
the more quickly, therefore, must we pass this first stage; all the more
decisively must we settle accounts with the enemies of the people’s freedom; all
the louder must we proclaim the slogans of consistent democracy: a
revolutionary army and a revolutionary government.

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Notes:
[1]
See pp. 568-72 of this volume— Ed .

[2]
Cf. Lenin, “The Tasks of the Russian Social-Democrats”, p.23, on the
untimeliness (in 1897) of the question concerning the methods of decisive
attack upon tsarism. (First published in pamphlet form, Geneva, 1898. See
present edition, Vol. 2, pp. 342-43.— Ed .)— Lenin