V. I.

Lenin

On April 14 our paper [Pravda] published a report from a correspondent in Kanavino,
Nizhni-Novgorod Gubernia, to the effect that “ a workers’ militia paid for by the factory managements has been introduced at practically all the factories ”.

Kanavino district, our correspondent reports, has sixteen
factories and about thirty thousand workers, not counting
railway employees. The organisation of a workers’ militia paid
for by the capitalists therefore embraces a considerable number
of the largest enterprises in the locality.

The organisation of a workers’ militia to be paid for by the
capitalists is a measure of tremendous—it will be no exaggeration to say, gigantic and decisive—importance,
both practically and in principle. The revolution cannot be made
safe, its gains cannot be assured, its further development is
impossible ,until this measure has become general, until
it is carried through all over the country.

The bourgeois and landowner republicans, who turned republican
after they saw that it was impossible to rule the people
otherwise, are trying to establish a republic that would be as monarchical as possible; something like that in
France, which Shchedrin called a republic without republicans. [1]

At the present time, when the landowners and capitalists have
come to realise the strength of the revolutionary masses, the
most important thing for them is to safeguard the most essential institutions of the old regime, to safeguard the old
instruments of oppression: the police, the bureaucracy, the
standing army. They are trying to reduce the “civil militia” to
an institution of the old type, i.e., to small detachments of
armed men standing apart from the people and as close as
possible to the bourgeoisie and under the command of men from
among the bourgeoisie.

The minimum programme of the Social-Democrats calls for the
replacement of the standing army by a universal arming of the
people. Most of the official Social-Democrats in Europe and most
of our own Menshevik leaders, however, have “forgotten” or put
aside the Party’s programme, substituting chauvinism (“defencism”) for internationalism, reformism
for revolutionary tactics.

Yet now of all times, at the present revolutionary moment, it is
most urgent and essential that there be a universal arming of
the people. To assert that, while we have a revolutionary army,
there is no need to arm the proletariat, or that there would
“not be enough” arms to go round, is mere deception and
trickery. The thing is to begin organising a universal militia
straight away, so that everyone should learn the use of arms
even if there is “not enough” to go round, for it is not at all
necessary that the people have enough weapons to arm everybody. The people must learn, one and all, how to use arms,
they must belong, one and all, to the militia which is to
replace the police and the standing army.

The workers do not want an army standing apart from the people;
what they want is that the workers and soldiers should merge into a single militia consisting of all the
people.

Failing this, the apparatus of oppression will remain in force,
ready today to serve Guchkov and his friends, the counter-revolutionary generals, and tomorrow Radko Dmitriev or
some pretender to the throne and builder of a plebiscite
monarchy.

The capitalists need a republic now, because they cannot
“manage” the people otherwise. But what they need is a “parliamentary” republic, i.e., one where democracy would be
limited to democratic elections , to the right of sending to parliament individuals who, as Marx aptly remarked,
represent the people and oppress the people. [2]

The opportunists of contemporary Social-Democracy, who have
substituted Scheidemann for Marx, have memorised the rule that
parliamentarism “should be utilised” (which is absolutely
correct), but have forgotten what Marx taught concerning
proletarian democracy as distinguished from bourgeois parliamentarism.

The people need a republic in order to educate the masses in the
methods of democracy. We need not only representation along democratic lines, but the building of the entire state
administration from the bottom up by the masses themselves,
their effective participation in all of life’s steps, their
active role in the administration. Replacement of the old organs of oppression, the police, the bureaucracy, the
standing army, by a universal arming of the people, by a really
universal militia, is the only way to guarantee the country a
maximum of security against the restoration of the monarchy and
to enable it to go forward firmly, systematically and resolutely towards socialism, not by “introducing” it from
above, but by raising the vast mass of proletarians and
semi-proletarians to the art of state administration, to the use
of the whole state power.

Public service through a police standing above the people,
through bureaucrats, who are the most faithful servants of the
bourgeoisie, and through a standing army under the command of
landowners and capitalists—that is the ideal of the bourgeois parliamentary republic, which is out to perpetuate the
rule of Capital.

Public service through a really universal people’s militia,
composed of men and women, a militia capable partly of replacing
the bureaucrats—this, combined with the principle of elective office and displaceability of all public officers, with
payment for their work according to proletarian, not “master-class”, bourgeois standards, is the ideal of the working
class.

This ideal has not only become a part of our programme, it has
not only won a place in the history of the labour movement in
the West, namely, in the experience of the Paris Commune ; it has not only been evaluated, stressed, explained
and recommended by Marx, but it was actually put into practice
by the Russian workers in the years 1905 and 1917.

The Soviets of Workers’ Deputies, in point of significance, in
point of the type of government they create, are institutions of
precisely that kind of democracy which does away with the old
organs of oppression, and takes the road of a universal militia.

But how can the militia be made universal when the proletarians
and semi-proletarians are herded in the factories, crushed by
unbearable labour for the landowners and the capitalists?

There is only one way: the workers’ militia must be paid for by
the capitalists.

The capitalists must pay the workers for the hours and days
which they give to public service.

This reliable method is being adopted by the working masses
themselves. The example of the Nizhni-Novgorod workers should
become a model for all Russia.

Comrade workers, make the peasants and the rest of the people
see the need for a universal militia in place of the police and
the old bureaucracy! Introduce such and only such a militia!
Introduce it through the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies, through
the Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies, through the organs of local
self-government that fall into the hands of the working
class. Do not under any circumstances be content with a
bourgeois militia. Draw the women into public service on an
equal footing with the men. See to it that the capitalists pay
the workers for days devoted to public service in the militia!

Learn the methods of democracy by actual practice, right now, on
your own, from the bottom up—rouse the masses to effective,
immediate, universal participation in government—this and
this alone will assure the full triumph of the revolution and
its unswerving, purposeful and systematic advance.

---
Notes:
[1]
The reference is to Saltykov-Shchedrin’s comments on France
contained in his sketches Abroad.

This interview was published in the “Correspondence” column of the Finnish
Social-Democratic newspaper Työmies (Worker) No. 122, for May 8, 1917, under the heading “Interview
with Russian Revolutionaries”, to which the correspondent
supplied the following introduction:

“ I found Comrade Lenin, of whom so much has been spoken lately
in Russia, in the editorial office of
Pravda .
Pressed for time, Lenin agreed to speak only briefly. Nevertheless, he
answered my questions with the following statement.”

Työmies was published in Helsingfors from March 1895 to 1918.

[2]
See Marx and Engels, Selected Works , Vol. I, Moscow, 1962,
pp. 520–21.