I fully subscribe to the opinion expressed: the workers must take upon themselves a share of the labour of guarding the city. In this joint work, the soldiers will teach the workers to handle weapons. Our task, which we must not lose sight of for a single minute, is the universal arming of the people and the abolition of the standing army. If the working population is drawn in, the work will be easier. The comrades’ proposal to meet every day is practical. It is true that the Russian revolution is producing much that is new, which no revolution has had before. There has never been such an organ as the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. You must merge with the workers; they will give you everything that the bourgeoisie has so far provided badly. Each unit must, together with the workers’ organisation, see to it that everything needed for this, your war, is stocked up, without waiting for instructions from above. We must set about this task independently, starting tonight. Let them not wait for orders from headquarters; let the unit itself put forward proposals. You have a means such as the bourgeoisie never had: they have only one means – to buy, while you can get in touch with the very workers who produce all this.

*Pravda* No. 174, November 13 (October 31), 1917. Printed according to the text of the newspaper *Pravda*.