V. I.

Lenin

Comrade soldiers! The question of the state system is now on the
order of the day. The capitalists, in whose hands the state
power now rests, desire a parliamentary bourgeois republic, that
is, a state system where there is no tsar, but where power
remains in the hands of the capitalists who govern the country
by means of the old institutions, namely: the police, the
bureaucracy, and the standing army.

We desire a different republic, one more in keeping with the
interests of the people, more democratic. The revolutionary
workers and soldiers of Petrograd have overthrown tsarism, and
have cleaned out all the police from the capital. The workers of
all the world look with pride and hope to the revolutionary
’workers and soldiers of Russia as the vanguard of the world’s
liberating army of the working class. The revolution, once
begun, must be strengthened and carried on. We shall not allow
the police to be re-established! All power in the state, from
the bottom up, from the remotest little village to every street
block of Petrograd, must belong to the Soviets of Workers’,
Soldiers’, Agricultural Labourers’, Peasants’ and other
Deputies. The central state power uniting these local Soviets
must be the Constituent Assembly, National Assembly, or Council
of Soviets—no matter by what name you call it.

Not the police, not the bureaucracy, who are unanswerable to the
people and placed above the people, not the standing army,
separated from the people, but the people themselves, universally armed and united in the Soviets, must run the
state. It is they who will establish the necessary order, it is
they whose authority will not only be obeyed, but also respected, by the workers and peasants.

Only this power, only the Soviets of Soldiers’ and Peasants’
Deputies, can solve the great question of the land in a
non-bureaucratic way and not in the interests of the land
owners. The land must not belong to the landowners. The peasant
committees must take the land away at once from the landowners,
while carefully guarding all the property against damage, and
seeing to it that grain production is increased in order that the soldiers at the front be better supplied. All the
land must belong to the whole nation, and its disposal must be
the concern of the local Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies. In order
that the rich peasants—who are themselves capitalists—may
not wrong and deceive the agricultural labourers and the poor
peasants, it will be necessary for the latter either to confer,
to combine, to unite separately, or to set up Soviets of
Agricultural Labourers’ Deputies of their own.

Do not allow the police to be re-established, do not let the
state power or the administration of the state pass into the
hands of the bureaucracy, who are non-elective, undisplaceable,
and paid on a bourgeois scale; get together, unite, organise
yourselves, trusting no one, depending only on your own
intelligence and experience—and Russia will be able to move
with a firm, measured, unerring tread toward the liberation of
both our own country and of all humanity from the yoke of
capital as well as from the horrors of war.

Our government, a government of the capitalists, is continuing
the war in the interests of the capitalists. Like the German
capitalists, headed by their crowned brigand Wilhelm, the
capitalists of all the other countries are carrying on the war only for a division of capitalist profits, for
domination over the world. Hundreds of millions of people,
almost all the countries in the world, have been dragged into
this criminal war. Hundreds of billions of capital have been
invested in “profitable” undertakings, bringing death, hunger,
ruin, and barbarism to the peoples and staggering, scandalously
high profits to the capitalists. There is only one way to get
out of this frightful war and conclude a truly democratic peace
not imposed by force, and that is by transferring all the state
power to the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. The
workers and poor peasants, who are not interested in preserving
the profits of the capitalists and robbing the weaker nations,
will be able to do effectively what the capitalists only
promise, namely, end the war by concluding a lasting peace that
will assure liberty to all peoples without exception.

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