1. Speech on the Attitude Toward the Provisional Government. June 4 (17)

Comrades, in the brief span of time allotted to me, I believe it is more appropriate—and indeed necessary—to focus solely on the fundamental, principled questions raised by the rapporteur of the Executive Committee and by the subsequent speakers.

The first and most crucial question before us is this: where do we stand? What, precisely, are these Soviets that have now convened for the All-Russian Congress? What, indeed, is this revolutionary democracy—about which so much is spoken here, yet which is so utterly misunderstood and from which there is such complete estrangement? For to speak of revolutionary democracy before the All-Russian Congress of Soviets while simultaneously obscuring the true nature of this institution, its class composition, its role in the revolution, and to say not a single word about these matters—while at the same time claiming to be democrats—is nothing short of absurd. We are presented with the program of a bourgeois parliamentary republic, as has existed throughout Western Europe; we are shown the reform programs now universally endorsed by bourgeois governments—including our own—and yet, at the same time, we are told of “revolutionary democracy.” But whom are they speaking to? The Soviets. And I ask you: is there any country in Europe—any bourgeois, democratic, republican state—where anything remotely resembling these Soviets actually exists? You must answer: no. Nowhere does such an institution exist, nor could it ever exist—because the choice is one of two: either a bourgeois government, with those “plans” of reform that are endlessly touted to us, reforms that have been proposed countless times across every nation only to remain forever on paper; or else the very type of new “government” that is now being invoked—a government born of revolution, whose only precedents lie in the great upsurges of revolutionary history, such as in France in 1792, again in France in 1871, and once more in Russia in 1905. The Soviets are an institution that does not exist in any conventional bourgeois-parliamentary state—and cannot coexist alongside a bourgeois government. They represent a new, more democratic form of state, which we have termed, in our party resolutions, the peasant–proletarian democratic republic—a republic in which sole power would belong to the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. It is in vain to think that this is merely a theoretical question; it is in vain to attempt to treat it as something that can be sidestepped; it is in vain to argue that various institutions already exist side by side with the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. Yes, they do exist together—but it is precisely this coexistence that gives rise to an unprecedented number of misunderstandings, conflicts, and frictions. It is this very fact that has led the Russian Revolution, after its initial surge and first forward movement, into stagnation—and into the steps backward that we now witness in our coalition government, in both domestic and foreign policy, as the imperialist offensive looms on the horizon.

There are but two possibilities: either the ordinary bourgeois government prevails—and then the peasant, worker, soldier, and other Soviets are superfluous; they will either be dispersed by those generals, counterrevolutionary generals who hold the army in their hands, paying no heed whatsoever to the eloquence of Minister Kerensky, or they will perish in ignominious obscurity. There is no other path for these institutions: they cannot retreat, nor can they remain stagnant—they can only survive by moving forward. This is the kind of state that was not invented by the Russians; it was brought forth by the revolution itself, for without it, the revolution cannot prevail. Within the depths of the All-Russian Soviet, friction and the struggle among parties for power are inevitable. Yet this will be the process of overcoming possible errors and illusions through the masses’ own political experience (a noisy process)—not through the reports delivered by ministers, who rely on what they said yesterday, what they will write tomorrow, and what they promise the day after. From the standpoint of the institution created by the Russian Revolution—and facing today the question of whether it shall endure or cease to exist—such a course of action is simply laughable. The Soviets cannot continue to exist as they do now. Adult men and women, workers and peasants, must gather, adopt resolutions, and listen to reports that cannot possibly withstand even the most rigorous documentary scrutiny! Such institutions mark the transition toward a republic that will establish firm power—not through police, not through a standing army, not in words alone, but in deeds; a power that still cannot exist in Western Europe—a power without which the Russian Revolution cannot achieve victory over the landed gentry, nor can it triumph over imperialism.

Without this power, there can be no question of our achieving such a victory on our own. The more we delve into the program that is being proposed to us here—and the more we confront the facts that lie before us—the more glaringly apparent becomes the fundamental contradiction. As the rapporteur and other speakers have pointed out, we are told that the First Provisional Government was a failure! Yet when the Bolsheviks—those ill‑fated Bolsheviks—declared, “No support, no trust for this government,” how many accusations of “anarchism” were hurled at us! Now everyone agrees that the previous government was flawed—but what, then, distinguishes the coalition government, with its ministers who are almost socialist, from the old regime? Are we not already tired of endless talk about programs and blueprints? Is it not time to move beyond words and actually get down to business? A full month has passed since the coalition government was formed on May 6. Look at the state of affairs; look at the devastation that reigns in Russia and throughout the nations drawn into the imperialist war. What accounts for this ruin? The predatory greed of the capitalists. This is where true anarchy resides. And according to the very admissions published not by our own newspaper—not by some Bolshevik rag, heaven forbid—but by the ministerial “Workers’ Gazette”: industrial prices for coal deliveries were raised by the “revolutionary” government!! And the coalition government has changed nothing in this regard. To tell us whether socialism can be introduced in Russia, or whether radical transformations can be carried out all at once—these are mere empty excuses, comrades. As Marx and Engels always explained, the doctrine of Marxism consists precisely in this: “Our doctrine is not a dogma, but a guide to action.”{100} There is no pure capitalism that simply transitions into pure socialism anywhere in the world—and certainly not during wartime; what exists instead is something in between, something new, unprecedented, because hundreds of millions of people are perishing in this criminal war waged by the capitalists against one another. The question is not whether to promise reforms—such talk is empty rhetoric; the real question is whether we can take the step that we need to take right now.

If you wish to speak of “revolutionary” democracy, then distinguish this concept from reformist democracy under a capitalist ministry—for it is high time we moved beyond mere phrases about “revolutionary democracy,” beyond congratulating one another on “revolutionary democracy,” and instead turned to the class-based analysis that Marxism—and scientific socialism as a whole—has taught us. What is being offered to us is nothing more than a transition to reformist democracy under a capitalist ministry. To be sure, this may seem splendid from the standpoint of the conventional models of Western Europe. But today, a whole host of nations stand on the brink of collapse, and those practical measures that are supposedly so complex they are difficult to implement, that—as the previous speaker, the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, put it—require special elaboration, are in fact perfectly clear. He stated that there is no political party in Russia that has declared itself ready to assume full power. I reply: “There is! No party can afford to turn away from this task—and our party has never shied away from it: every minute, we are ready to seize power in its entirety.” (Applause, laughter.) You may laugh as much as you like—but if the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs were to pose this question to us side by side with the Right Party, he would receive a fitting answer. No party can afford to refuse this responsibility. And as long as freedom still exists—if the threat of arrest and exile to Siberia—threats emanating from counter‑revolutionaries, among whom our nearly socialist ministers also sit—remain only threats, then at such a moment every party must say: “Trust us, and we will present you with our program.”

Our conference on April 29 laid out this very program.{101} Unfortunately, it is neither taken seriously nor followed. Clearly, it needs to be explained in a way that is accessible to the masses. I shall endeavor to offer the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs a popular exposition of our resolution, of our program. In addressing the economic crisis, our program calls for nothing less than this: without delay—there is no need for any further procrastination—to demand the publication of all those unheard‑of profits, reaching 500–800 percent, which capitalists reap not as capitalists in a free market, in “pure” capitalism, but through military contracts. It is here, indeed, that workers’ control becomes both necessary and feasible. This is the measure that, if you call yourselves “revolutionary” democrats, you must implement in the name of the Soviets—and it can be implemented overnight. This is not socialism. Rather, it is a wake‑up call to the people, a stark revelation of the true anarchy and the true game being played with imperialism—a game that pits the people’s wealth against the lives of hundreds of thousands, lives that will be lost tomorrow because we continue to strangle Greece. Publish the profits of the capitalist lords; arrest fifty or a hundred of the wealthiest millionaires. It would suffice to hold them in custody for just a few weeks—perhaps even under the same preferential conditions that currently sustain Nicholas Romanov—with the sole purpose of forcing them to reveal the hidden threads, the deceptive schemes, the corruption, the self‑interest that, even under the new government, cost our country tens of thousands, even millions, of lives every single day. This is the root cause of anarchy and devastation—and this is why we say: everything remains as it was; the coalition ministry has changed nothing—it has merely added a heap of declarations, grandiose pronouncements. No matter how sincere the individuals may be, no matter how earnest their desire to do good for the working people, the situation has not changed—the same class remains in power. The policy that is being pursued is far from democratic.

We are told of “the democratization of central and local authority.” Do you not know that these words are nothing new for Russia? In other countries, dozens of nearly socialist ministers have already addressed their nations with similar promises. What, then, do these words mean when we are confronted with a living, concrete reality: the local population elects its own authorities, yet the very ABCs of democracy are violated by the central government’s pretense to appoint or approve local officials? The plundering of the people’s wealth by capitalists continues unabated. The imperialist war rages on. And yet we are promised reforms—reforms, reforms, and more reforms—reforms that simply cannot be realized within these very same confines, because war subdues everything, determines everything. Why do you refuse to agree with those who say that the war is not being waged for the sake of capitalist profits? What is the criterion? Above all, it is this: which class holds power; which class remains the master; which class continues to amass hundreds of billions through banking and financial operations? It is still the same capitalist class—and that is why the war remains an imperialist war. Neither the First Provisional Government nor the government with its nearly socialist ministers changed anything: the secret treaties remain secret, and Russia continues to fight for control of the straits, for the continuation of the Lyakhov policy in Persia and beyond.

I know that you do not want this—that most of you do not want it, and that the ministers themselves do not want it, because one cannot will such a thing, since it would amount to the beating of hundreds of millions of people. But take that offensive about which the Milukovs and Maklakovs now speak so much. They understand perfectly well what is at stake; they know that this issue is bound up with the question of power, with the question of revolution. We are told that we must distinguish between political questions and strategic ones. To even pose such a distinction is laughable. The Cadets understand full well that what is at issue here is a political question.

To claim that the revolutionary struggle for peace, initiated from below, might lead to a separate peace is pure slander. Our first step—if only we had the power—would be to arrest the largest capitalists and to sever all the threads of their intrigues. Without that, all talk of a peace without annexations and contributions is nothing but empty rhetoric. Our second step would be to declare to the peoples, independently of their governments, that we regard all capitalists as bandits—and Tereščenko is no better than Milukov; he is merely a bit less clever—but also the French and British capitalists, and all the rest.

Your own Izvestia have become muddled, proposing instead of a peace without annexations and contributions that we should simply leave the status quo intact.[18] No, that is not how we understand “peace without annexations.” Even the Peasants’ Congress comes closer to the truth when it speaks of a “federal” republic{102}, thereby expressing the idea that the Russian republic does not wish to oppress any people—neither in the old way nor in the new—whether it be the Finns, the Ukrainians, or any other nation toward which the War Minister so relentlessly hounds them, creating conflicts that are both intolerable and unacceptable. We do not wish to live by the principles of violence. We seek a unified, indivisible Russian republic, governed by firm authority—but firm authority is granted only through the voluntary consent of the peoples. “Revolutionary democracy”—these are grand words, yet they are applied to a government that complicates the question of Ukraine and Finland with petty quibbles, a government that has not even been willing to allow these two nations to secede, but instead insists: do not delay the application of the ABCs of democracy until the Constituent Assembly!

A peace without annexations and contributions cannot be achieved unless you renounce your own annexations. After all, isn’t it absurd—indeed, a farce—that every worker in Europe laughs at this charade? They speak eloquently of calling upon the peoples to overthrow the bankers, yet they themselves send domestic bankers into the ministry. Arrest them, expose their schemes, trace the threads of their conspiracies—but you do not do any of this, even though you possess powerful institutions that cannot be resisted. You have lived through 1905 and 1917; you know that revolutions are never made to order. Revolutions in other countries have unfolded through bloody, arduous uprisings, while in Russia there is no group, no class capable of resisting the power of the Soviets. In Russia, this revolution is possible—in an exceptional case—as a peaceful revolution. If this revolution were to offer peace to all peoples today or tomorrow, by breaking with all classes of capitalists—and if, within the shortest possible time, both France and Germany, through their respective peoples, were to reach a consensus, then it would be possible: for these countries are dying; for Germany’s situation is hopeless, for it cannot be saved; and for France… (Presiding Officer: “Your time is up.”)

I will conclude in half a minute… (Noise, calls from the floor to continue, protests, applause.)

(Presiding Officer: “I report to the Congress that the Presidium proposes to extend the speaker’s allotted time. Who objects? A majority votes in favor of extending the speech.”)

I have argued that if revolutionary democracy in Russia were democracy not in words alone but in deed, it would move the revolution forward—not toward compromise with the capitalists, not toward idle talk of a peace without annexations and contributions, but toward the abolition of annexations within Russia and toward the straightforward declaration that every annexation is regarded by it as criminal and bandit-like. Then it would have been possible to avert the imperialist offensive that threatened the destruction of thousands upon thousands, even millions of lives, in the struggle over Persia and the Balkans. Then the road to peace would have been open—a road that is by no means easy—though we do not pretend otherwise—a road that does not exclude the possibility of truly revolutionary warfare.

We do not pose the question as Bazarov does today in “New Life”{103}; we merely state that Russia has been placed in circumstances where, at the end of the imperialist war, its tasks are easier than they might seem. Moreover, it finds itself situated in geographical conditions such that any power which would dare to rely on capital and its predatory interests—and to rise up against the Russian working class and the semi‑proletariat that stands alongside it, namely the poorest peasantry—would, if it were to attempt such a course, face an exceedingly arduous challenge. Germany stands on the brink of ruin; and after America’s intervention—America, which seeks to devour Mexico and which will likely enter into conflict with Japan tomorrow—after this development, Germany’s position is hopeless; it will be destroyed. France, geographically positioned in such a way that it suffers more than any other nation and whose exhaustion has reached its peak—though less hungry than Germany—has nonetheless lost an incomparably greater share of human life than Germany. Now, if from the very first step one were to rein in the profits of Russian capitalists and strip them of every possibility to amass hundreds of millions in ill-gotten gains; if one were to offer all nations peace with the capitalists of every country, making clear that you will engage in no negotiations or dealings whatsoever with German capitalists—or with those who, directly or indirectly, indulge their interests, or who become entangled with them; if you refuse to speak with French and British capitalists—then you would be stepping forward to denounce them before the workers. You would not regard the issuance of a passport to MacDonald{104} as a victory, for he has never waged a revolutionary struggle against capital, and he is allowed to pass only because he has expressed neither the ideas nor the principles, nor the practices, nor the experience of that revolutionary struggle against British capitalists—a struggle for which our comrade McLennan and hundreds of other British socialists are imprisoned, and for which our comrade Liebknecht is serving time in hard labor, having been sentenced to prison for saying: “German soldiers, shoot your own Kaiser!”

Would it not have been far more fitting to send the imperialist capitalists to the very same penal labor that most members of the Provisional Government, in the Third Duma specially reconstituted for this purpose—though I am not sure whether it was the third or fourth Duma—daily prepare and promise, and about which new draft laws are already being formulated by the Ministry of Justice? McLennan and Liebknecht—these are the names of the socialists who are putting the idea of a revolutionary struggle against imperialism into practice. This is what must be said to all governments if we are to fight for peace: we must bring them to account before the peoples. In doing so, you will place all imperialist governments in a deeply precarious position. Yet now you find yourselves in a quandary when, on March 14{105}, you turned to the people with a call for peace, proclaiming: “Overthrow your tsars, your kings, and your bankers”—while we, armed with an organization unparalleled in scale, in experience, and in material strength—the Council of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies—we form a bloc with our bankers, establish a coalition government, almost socialist in character, and draft reforms that have been debated in Europe for decades upon decades. Over there in Europe, they laugh at this kind of peace movement. They will only come to understand it once the Soviets seize power and launch a revolutionary offensive.

Only one country in the world can take steps toward ending the imperialist war—not through bloody revolution, but on a class-based scale—and that country is Russia. And it will remain so as long as the Council of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies exists. It cannot endure for long alongside a Provisional Government of the conventional type. Nor will it remain in its present form unless and until this transition to the offensive is accomplished. The transition to the offensive marks a fundamental turning point in the entire policy of the Russian Revolution—that is, the shift from waiting, from preparing for peace through a revolutionary uprising from below, to resuming the war. The transition from fraternization on a single front to fraternization on all fronts—from spontaneous fraternization, when people exchanged a crust of bread with a starving German proletarian in exchange for a pocketknife—punishable by hard labor—to conscious fraternization—such was the path that had been mapped out.

When we seize power into our own hands, we will bring the capitalists to heel—and then this will no longer be the kind of war being waged today, for war is defined not by what is written on paper, but by which class wages it. One can write whatever one likes in the official documents; but as long as the capitalist class remains in the majority within the government, no matter what you put on paper, no matter how eloquent your pronouncements, and no matter how “almost socialist” your cabinet may be, the war will remain imperialist. Everyone knows this—and everyone can see it. Take the example of Albania, or Greece, or Persia{106}: these cases have demonstrated so clearly and vividly that I am astonished why everyone attacks our written declaration on the onset of war{107}, yet no one says a single word about concrete examples! It is easy to promise grand projects—but when it comes to actual measures, everyone keeps putting them off. It is easy to draft a declaration for peace without annexations, but the very examples of Albania, Greece, and Persia occurred after the formation of coalition governments. Even “Delo Naroda,” a publication not of our party but rather a government organ—a ministerial mouthpiece—wrote that Russian democracy was being subjected to such mockery, that Greece was being strangled. And even Miliukov, whom you imagine to be who knows what—he is merely an ordinary member of his own party—while Tereshchenko is in no way different from him—both wrote that Allied diplomacy was exerting pressure on Greece. The war remains imperialist, and no matter how much you may desire peace, no matter how sincere your sympathy for the working people, and no matter how earnest your wish for peace—I am fully convinced that, in the vast majority of cases, your intentions are indeed sincere—you are powerless, because there is no way to end the war except through the further development of the revolution. When the revolution began in Russia, a revolutionary struggle for peace also broke out from below. If you had seized power into your own hands—if power had passed to revolutionary organizations tasked with fighting against the Russian capitalists—then the workers of other nations would have trusted you, and you could have offered peace. At that point, our peace would have been secured, at least on two fronts: on the side of two peoples whose blood was flowing freely and whose cause seemed hopeless—the German and French peoples. And if, at that time, circumstances should place us in a position of revolutionary war—which no one can predict, though we do not rule it out—then we would say: “We are not pacifists; we do not renounce war. For when the revolutionary class is in power, when it has truly removed the capitalists from all influence over the conduct of affairs, from the perpetuation of the very devastation that allows them to amass hundreds of millions”—we would explain to all peoples without exception that every nation must be free; just as the German people have no right to wage war in order to retain Alsace and Lorraine, so too the French people have no right to fight for their colonies. For if France fights for its colonies, then Russia possesses Khiva and Bukhara—these, too, are something akin to colonies—and then the scramble for colonies would begin. But how are they to be divided? According to what standard? By force. And the balance of power has shifted; the position of the capitalists is such that there is no alternative to war. Once you assume revolutionary power, you will have a revolutionary path to peace: a call to the peoples, issuing a revolutionary appeal and explaining your tactics through your own example. Then, before you will open, with the greatest likelihood, the road to a world won through revolutionary means—and you will avoid the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives. You can be certain that the German and French peoples will speak out in your favor. As for the English, American, and Japanese capitalists—if they were even to desire war against the revolutionary working class—whose strength would increase tenfold once the capitalists are brought to heel, eliminated, and control passes into the hands of the working class—even if American, British, and Japanese capitalists did want war, 99 percent of 100 would agree that they simply cannot wage it. It would be enough for you to declare that you are not pacifists—that you will defend your republic, your workers’ republic, your proletarian democracy, from the German, French, and other capitalist powers—and that alone would suffice to secure peace.

This is why we attached such fundamental importance to our declaration on the onset of war. The time has come for a turning point in the entire history of the Russian Revolution. The Russian Revolution began with the support of Britain’s imperialist bourgeoisie, which had imagined Russia to be something like China or India. Instead, alongside the government—now dominated by landowners and capitalists—there arose the Soviets: an unprecedented, world‑renowned representative institution of immense power, which you are now undermining through your participation in a bourgeois coalition government. Instead, the Russian Revolution achieved something remarkable: the revolutionary struggle from below against the capitalist government began to meet with three times more sympathy everywhere, in every country. The question now is this: shall we move forward, or shall we retreat? In revolutionary times, it is impossible to stand still. That is why the onset of war marks a turning point not in the strategic sense of the term, but in the political and economic realms. The onset of war is now a continuation of the imperialist slaughter and the death of hundreds of thousands, even millions of people—objectively, regardless of the will or consciousness of any particular minister, due to the strangulation of Persia and other weak nations. The transfer of power to the revolutionary proletariat, supported by the poorest peasantry, represents a transition to revolutionary struggle for peace in the most secure, the most painless forms known to humanity—a transition toward ensuring that power and victory will belong to the revolutionary workers, both in Russia and throughout the world. (Applause from part of the assembly.)

“Pravda,” Nos. 82 and 83, June 28 (15) and 29 (16), 1917

Printed according to the text of the newspaper “Pravda,” verified against the stenographic record as corrected by V. I. Lenin.

2. On the Question of War. June 9 (22)

Comrades, allow me, in order to introduce our discussion of the question of war, to recall two passages from the appeal addressed to all nations, published on March 14 by the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. “The time has come,” the appeal stated, “to launch a resolute struggle against the imperialist ambitions of the governments of all countries; the time has come for the peoples to take into their own hands the task of deciding the question of war and peace.” Another passage in the same appeal was directed to the proletarians of the Austro-German coalition, where it read: “Refuse to serve as instruments of conquest and violence in the hands of kings, landowners, and bankers.” These two passages—repeated in various formulations in dozens, hundreds, indeed, I would venture to say, thousands of resolutions adopted by workers and peasants throughout Russia—speak volumes about the contradictory, almost hopelessly tangled predicament into which revolutionary workers and peasants have been thrust by the current policies of the Mensheviks and Narodniks.

In my view, these two passages best reveal the profoundly paradoxical, inexorably convoluted situation in which revolutionary workers and peasants find themselves. On the one hand, they support the war; on the other, they belong to classes whose interests are not aligned with the imperialist ambitions of the governments of all countries—and yet they cannot help but recognize this fact. This psychology and ideology, however vague it may be, is deeply ingrained in nearly every worker and peasant. It is the consciousness that war is waged in pursuit of the imperialist aims of the governments of all nations. Yet alongside this, there exists an exceedingly hazy understanding—or, in many cases, outright misunderstanding—of the fundamental truth that any government, regardless of its form of rule, invariably represents the interests of specific classes. To oppose the government to the people, as the first quotation I cited so vividly illustrates, is nothing short of the greatest theoretical confusion, the most profound political impotence, and a self‑condemnation that dooms both one’s own politics and one’s very existence to the most precarious, unstable footing. Similarly, the concluding words of the second quotation I read—this masterful exhortation: “Refuse to serve as instruments of conquest and violence in the hands of kings, landowners, and bankers”—are splendid in theory, but utterly hollow in practice. For if you, Russian workers and peasants, turn to the workers and peasants of Austria and Germany—whose governments and ruling classes are waging a war of plunder and banditry no less savage than that waged by Russian capitalists and bankers, or by their British and French counterparts—then to declare, “Refuse to serve as instruments in the hands of your own bankers,” while simultaneously welcoming your own bankers into the cabinet and seating them side by side with socialist ministers, is to render all your appeals meaningless, to effectively negate your entire political program. In practice, it is as if your noble aspirations and high-minded ideals never existed at all—because in reality, you are helping to carry out, from the Russian side, the very same imperialist war, the very same predatory conflict. You end up contradicting the very masses you claim to represent, for those masses will never adopt the stance openly espoused by Milyukov, Maklakov, and others—the stance that declares: “There is no idea more criminal than the notion that war is waged in the interests of capital.”

I do not know whether this idea is truly criminal; I have no doubt that, from the perspective of those who exist today only to fade away tomorrow—perhaps never to exist again—it is a criminal notion. But it is the only truly correct conception of this war; it alone captures the interests of the oppressed classes as a struggle against their oppressors. And when we speak of war as capitalist and predatory, let us dispel any illusions: there is not the slightest hint that the crimes of individual persons, of individual kings, could possibly give rise to such a war.

Imperialism marks a distinct stage in the development of world capital; capitalism, long in the making over decades, has culminated in the emergence of a small group of extraordinarily wealthy nations—no more than four in number: England, France, Germany, and America—which have amassed fortunes measured in the hundreds of billions, concentrating immense power in the hands of giant banks and major capitalists—two or half a dozen at most in each of these countries—a power so colossal that it has come to encompass the entire globe, dividing the earth itself, quite literally in territorial terms, in terms of colonial possessions. The colonies of these great powers have come into contact with one another across every corner of the planet. These states have also divided the globe economically, for there is not a single patch of land on Earth that has remained untouched by concessionary agreements, by the tendrils of financial capital. Such are the foundations of annexation. Annexations are not mere inventions; they did not arise because lovers of freedom suddenly turned reactionary. Annexations are nothing more than the political expression and political form of the domination exercised by giant banks—a domination that emerged inevitably from capitalism, not through anyone’s fault, for shares are the very foundation of banking, and the accumulation of shares is the very basis of imperialism. And the great banks, which wield hundreds of billions in capital across the entire world and link entire industrial sectors with alliances of capitalists and monopolists—such is the essence of imperialism, which has cleaved the entire globe into three great groups of predatory, immensely wealthy predators.

At the head of one, the foremost group—those closest to us in Europe—stands England; at the head of the other two are Germany and America. The remaining accomplices are compelled to lend their support as long as capitalist relations endure. Therefore, if you clearly grasp the essence of this matter—something that every oppressed person instinctively perceives, something that the vast majority of Russian workers and peasants instinctively understand—and if you can visualize it with clarity, you will see just how laughable the notion is of combating war through words, manifestos, proclamations, or socialist congresses. These ideas are laughable because no matter how many such declarations you issue, no matter how many political upheavals you orchestrate—even after you overthrew Nicholas Romanov in Russia and, to a certain extent, established a republic—Russia took a giant step forward, perhaps even catching up almost immediately with France, a country that, under different circumstances, had taken a full century to achieve the same and yet remained a capitalist nation—while the banks still wield absolute power. The capitalists remain in control. They may have been pushed back somewhat in 1905, but did that truly undermine them? If this is new to the Russians, then in Europe every revolution has shown that with each surge of revolutionary fervor, workers secure a bit more—but the power of the capitalists remains unshaken. The struggle against imperialist war is possible only through the revolutionary classes’ fight against the ruling classes on a global scale. It is not the landed gentry per se—though landowners do exist in Russia and play a far greater role there than in any other country—but it is not the class that gave birth to imperialism. It is the capitalist class, led by the greatest financial magnates and banking institutions. As long as this class—the very same class that dominates the oppressed proletariat and its allies, the poorest peasants, those whom we refer to in our program as “semi-proletarians”—as long as this class remains in power, there is no way out of this war. To harbor illusions that you might unite the working people of all nations through proclamations and appeals to other peoples is possible only from a narrow Russian perspective, one unfamiliar with the realities of Western European press, where workers and peasants have grown accustomed to political upheavals—having witnessed dozens of them—and where the press laughs at such empty phrases and appeals. They do not know that in Russia, a mass of workers has indeed risen up, and that, in their overwhelming majority, they sincerely believe in and condemn the predatory ambitions of capitalists across all countries, yearning for the liberation of nations from the grip of the bankers. Yet Europeans fail to understand why, despite your organizations—organizations that no other nation in the world possesses, such as the Soviets of Workers’, Peasants’, and Soldiers’ Deputies, armed and organized—you send your socialists into ministerial posts. You still hand power over to these very same bankers. Abroad, you are accused not only of naivety—though that alone would be nothing; Europeans have long since lost the ability to recognize naivety in politics, to comprehend that in Russia, tens of millions of people are awakening to life for the first time, that in Russia, people have never known what it means for classes to be linked to government, or what it means for government to be bound to war. War is nothing more than a continuation of bourgeois politics—and nothing less. The class that rules determines policy, even in times of war. War is, at its core, politics—a continuation, by other means, of the same goals pursued by these classes. Thus, when you write in your appeals to workers and peasants: “Overthrow your bankers”—every conscious worker in a European country either laughs at you or, with bitter tears in his eyes, says to himself: “What can we do? We’ve already toppled a half‑wild idiot and a monstrous monarch—monarchs we’d long since cast aside—and now, alongside our ‘quasi‑socialists,’ we’re supporting Russian bankers as ministers?!” The bankers remain in power, pursuing foreign policy through imperialist war, fully upholding the treaties that Nicholas II concluded in Russia. This is especially evident in our own case. The foundations of Russia’s imperialist foreign policy were laid not by today’s capitalists, but by the previous government under Nicholas Romanov—whom we overthrew. He was the one who signed those treaties; they remain secret, inaccessible to publication by the capitalists themselves, for the simple reason that they are capitalists. But no worker or peasant can make sense of this tangled web, for he thinks to himself: if we call upon others to overthrow capitalists in foreign lands, then first and foremost we must rid ourselves of our own bankers—otherwise, no one will believe us, no one will take us seriously. They’ll say we’re naive Russian savages, writing fine-sounding words that lack real political substance—or worse yet, they’ll think we’re hypocrites. You might encounter such sentiments in the foreign press, if only it could freely cross Russia’s borders, unimpeded by the British and French authorities in Tornio. A mere selection of quotations from foreign newspapers would reveal the glaring contradictions you find yourself in, would show just how absurd and misguided the idea is of fighting this war through socialist conferences or agreements with socialists at party congresses. If imperialism were the fault or crime of individual persons, then socialism could still remain socialism. Imperialism is the final stage in the development of capitalism—when capitalism has reached the point where it has divided the entire world, and two gigantic blocs have locked horns in a deadly struggle. Either serve one side or the other—or overthrow both of these blocs; there is no other path. When you justify your refusal of a separate peace by saying that you do not wish to serve German imperialism, that is perfectly true—and that is precisely why we oppose a separate peace. But in fact, regardless of your intentions, you continue to serve Anglo‑French imperialism, with the same predatory, plundering ambitions that Russian capitalists, with the help of Nicholas Romanov, had enshrined in treaty form. We do not know the exact text of these treaties, but anyone who has followed political literature, anyone who has read even a single book on economics and diplomacy, knows the content of these agreements. And as far as I recall, Miliukov himself wrote in his books about these treaties and promises—promises to plunder Galicia, to seize the Straits and Armenia, to preserve old annexations and gain countless other spoils. Everyone knows this—but the treaties remain hidden, while we are told that if you cancel them, it will mean breaking with your allies.

On the question of a separate peace, I have already stated that there can be no separate peace for us—and there is not the slightest doubt, according to our party’s resolution, that we reject it as any agreement with the capitalists. For us, a separate peace is an accord with German bandits, for they plunder just as do all others. Yet such a separate peace is also an agreement with Russian capital, embodied in the Russian Provisional Government. The tsarist treaties remain in force; these same capitalists continue to pillage and strangle other nations. When people speak of “peace without annexations or contributions,” as every Russian worker and peasant ought to do—because life itself teaches them this, because they have no stake in bank profits, because they simply want to live—I reply to them that your leaders in the present Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, drawn from the ranks of the Populists and Mensheviks, have become thoroughly confused over this slogan. In their “Izvestiya,” they declared that “peace without annexations” means “status quo”—that is, a return to the prewar order. Is that not a capitalist peace? And what a capitalist peace it is! If you advance such a slogan, know that the course of events may one day bring your parties to power; during a revolution, this is quite possible. You will then be obliged to do exactly what you preach—but if you were to propose a peace without annexations now, the Germans would accept it, while the British would reject it, for the British capitalists have lost not a single inch of land, having instead amassed vast fortunes across the globe. The Germans, to be sure, have plundered much—but they have also lost much, and not only have they lost heavily, they have found themselves confronted by America, the most formidable adversary of all. If you, who advocate peace without annexations, understand that term to mean “status quo,” you are in fact sliding toward the very kind of separate peace with the capitalists that you accuse us of pursuing—because if you were to put forward such a proposal, the German capitalists, seeing before them America and Italy, with whom they had previously concluded treaties, would say: “Yes, we will accept this peace without annexations. To us, it is not a defeat—it is a victory over America and Italy.” Objectively speaking, you are heading straight toward that very separate peace with the capitalists whom you so readily denounce—because in practice, in your actual policy and in your concrete actions, you have never fundamentally broken with those very bankers, the representatives of imperialist domination throughout the world, whom you and your “socialist” ministers in the Provisional Government have consistently supported.

In doing so, you create for yourselves a contradictory and precarious position, one in which the masses do not truly understand you. The masses, who have no interest in annexations, declare: “We do not wish to fight on behalf of any capitalists whatsoever.” When we are told that such a policy might be brought to an end through congresses and agreements among socialists of all countries, we reply: “If imperialism were merely the work of individual criminals—well, perhaps that might be so; but imperialism is the unfolding of global capitalism, and the workers’ movement is inextricably bound up with it.”

The victory of imperialism marks the beginning of an inevitable, ineluctable split among socialists across all countries into two distinct camps. Anyone who still speaks of socialists as a unified whole—of socialism as something that can remain whole—is deceiving themselves and others. The very course of the war, the entire two-and-a-half-year span of hostilities, has been driving this schism ever since the Basel Manifesto, unanimously adopted, declared that this war was waged on the basis of imperialist capitalism. In that manifesto, not a single word is uttered about “defense of the fatherland.” No other manifesto could have been drafted before the outbreak of war—just as no socialist today would dare to propose a manifesto on “defense of the fatherland” in a conflict between Japan and America, when the stakes do not concern their own skin, their own capitalists, or their own ministers. Draft a resolution for international congresses! You know full well that the war between Japan and America is already in the making; it has been decades in the planning—it is by no means accidental. Tactics are irrelevant when it comes to determining who fires the first shot: that’s laughable. You know perfectly well that Japanese and American capitalism are equally predatory. On both sides, talk of “defense of the fatherland” will inevitably arise—and whether such talk is criminal or merely the result of a terrible weakness, driven by the desire to “protect” the interests of our capitalist adversaries. This is why we assert that socialism has irrevocably fractured. Socialists have entirely abandoned socialism—those who have sided with their own governments, with their own bankers, with their own capitalists, no matter how much they may disavow these alliances, no matter how loudly they may denounce them. The issue is not one of condemnation—but at times, condemning the Germans for supporting their capitalists ends up shielding the very same “sin” committed by the Russians! If you accuse German social-chauvinists—those who, while professing to be socialists—perhaps many of them are socialists at heart—yet in practice are chauvinists, defending not the German people but rather the sordid, self‑seeking, predatory German capitalists, then do not spare the capitalists of England, France, or Russia. The German social-chauvinists are no worse than those in our own ministry who continue the same policy of secret treaties and plunder, cloaking it in pious, innocent-sounding aspirations—sacred promises that, while containing much that is good and, from the standpoint of the masses, I acknowledge to be utterly sincere, I cannot and will not recognize as containing a single word of political truth. These are nothing more than your own wishes; yet the war remains just as imperialist—and just as driven by secret treaties! You call upon other nations to overthrow the bankers, while you yourself support your own! When you speak of peace, you fail to specify what kind of peace you mean. When we pointed out this glaring contradiction, no one in the world responded to our plea for peace based on the status quo. In your resolution, where you advocate for peace without annexations, you cannot claim that this is anything other than the status quo. Nor can you assert that it is the status quo—that is, the restoration of the prewar order. So what, then? Should we strip England of its German colonies? Try negotiating peace agreements—everyone will only laugh at you. Attempt to reclaim Kiaochao and the Pacific Islands plundered by Japan without revolution!

You are mired in insoluble contradictions. When we say “without annexations,” we mean that, for us, this slogan is but a subordinate component in the struggle against global imperialism. We declare that we seek to liberate all peoples—and to begin with our own. You speak of war against annexations and of peace without annexations, yet within Russia you persist in pursuing a policy of annexations. This is nothing short of unprecedented. You and your government—your new ministers—are, in fact, continuing the policy of annexations toward Finland and Ukraine. You quibble over the Ukrainian Congress, banning its gatherings through your own ministers{108}. Is this not annexation? It is a policy that constitutes a gross violation of the rights of nationalities that have suffered under tsarist rule simply because their children wished to speak their native language. To fear the emergence of independent republics—this is a stance that makes little sense from the perspective of workers and peasants. Let Russia become a federation of free republics. To prevent this, the working class and the peasant masses will not take up arms. Let every nation be liberated—above all, let all the nationalities with whom you are waging revolution in Russia be set free. Without such a step, you condemn yourselves to a situation in which, though you proclaim “revolutionary democracy” in words, in practice your entire policy is counterrevolutionary.

Your foreign policy is antidemocratic and counterrevolutionary, whereas a truly revolutionary policy might place you in a position where revolutionary war becomes a necessity. But this is not inevitable. Both the speaker and the press have dwelt at length on this point in recent times. I would very much like to focus on this issue here.

How, then, do we envision a practical way out of this war? We say: the only way out of this war lies in revolution. Support the revolution of those classes oppressed by capitalists; overthrow the capitalist class in your own country, and in doing so, set an example for other nations. Only in this way can we achieve socialism—and only through this path can we truly combat war. All else amounts to empty promises, mere rhetoric, or well-intentioned but innocuous wishes. Throughout the world, socialism has been fractured. You continue to muddle matters by aligning yourself with socialists who support their own governments, while forgetting that in England and Germany, the true socialists—those who genuinely embody the aspirations of the masses—have been left isolated and imprisoned. Yet it is they alone who truly represent the interests of the proletarian movement.  But what if, in Russia, the oppressed class were to seize power? When people ask us how we could possibly break free from this war on our own, we reply: it is impossible to escape this war single-handedly. Every resolution passed by our Party, every speech delivered by our rally speakers, makes clear that it is sheer folly to imagine that one can emerge from this war unaided. This war has ensnared hundreds of millions of people and tens of billions of dollars in capital. The only viable way to end it is to transfer power to a revolutionary class—one that, in practice, must sever its ties with imperialism, that is, with the financial, banking, and annexationist networks that sustain it. Until this is done in earnest, nothing has truly been accomplished. The so‑called “revolution” amounted to little more than replacing tsarism and imperialism with a government that was, in almost every respect, thoroughly imperialistic—a regime that, even when represented by revolutionary workers and peasants, failed to conduct itself democratically toward Finland and Ukraine, failing, in short, to act without fear of division.

When people claim that we seek a separate peace, that is simply untrue. We declare: no separate peace—not with any capitalists, least of all with the Russian capitalists. Yet the Provisional Government has already concluded a separate peace with the Russian capitalists. Down with that separate peace! (Applause.) We will recognize no separate peace with the German capitalists, nor will we enter into any negotiations with them—but likewise, we will accept no separate peace with the English and French imperialists. Some argue that breaking with them would mean entering into an alliance with the German imperialists. That is not true: we must break with them immediately, for their alliance is one of plunder. Others say that we cannot publish these treaties, lest we expose our entire government—and our entire policy—to public ridicule before the eyes of every worker and every peasant. If we were to publish these treaties and clearly explain, in meetings addressed to Russian workers and Russian peasants—especially in every remote village—that this is what you are fighting for today: for the straits, for the retention of Armenia—then everyone would say: we do not want such a war. (Chairman: “Your time is up.” Voices: “We ask for more time.”) Ten more minutes. (Voices: “We ask for more time.”)

I contend that the dichotomy between “either with the English imperialists or with the German imperialists” is fundamentally flawed. If peace is made with the Germans, then war inevitably follows with the English—and vice versa. This false choice serves only those who refuse to break with their own capitalists and bankers, who are willing to maintain whatever kind of alliance with them. It does not serve us. We speak of safeguarding our alliance with the oppressed classes, with the oppressed peoples. Remain faithful to this alliance—and then you will be a revolutionary democracy. This task is no easy one. Nor should it lead us to forget that, under certain conditions, we cannot do without revolutionary war. No revolutionary class can afford to renounce revolutionary war, for to do so would condemn itself to a laughable form of pacifism. We are not Tolstoyans. If a revolutionary class seizes power—if, within its state, there are no longer any annexations, if banks and big capital no longer hold sway—though this is far from easy in Russia—then such a class will wage revolutionary war not in words, but in deeds. To renounce this war is unthinkable; to do so would mean lapsing into Tolstoyan idealism, into petty-bourgeois complacency, and forgetting the entire body of Marxist theory as well as the lessons of every European revolution.

Russia cannot be erased from the map of war. Yet it is gaining colossal allies—allies who, at this very moment, do not trust you precisely because your stance is contradictory or naively idealistic; precisely because you preach to other nations: “Down with annexations!” while, in your own land, you yourself are engaging in them. To other peoples you say: “Overthrow the bankers!” but you do not overthrow your own. Try a different policy: publish your treaties and expose them to the scorn of every worker and peasant, laying them bare at public meetings. Declare: “No peace with German capitalists—and a complete break with Anglo-French capitalists.” Let the British withdraw from Turkey and cease their campaign for Baghdad. Let them withdraw from India and Egypt. We have no desire to fight in order to preserve plundered spoils; nor will we expend a single atom of our energy to ensure that German bandits retain their ill-gotten gains. If you were to do this—if, as you have only spoken of doing—you were to put words into action, if you not only declared this but actually carried it out—then those allies you now possess would reveal themselves. Look at the mood of every oppressed worker and peasant: they sympathize with you, yet they are dismayed by your weakness—by the fact that, despite possessing weapons, you allow the bankers to remain in power. Your allies are the oppressed workers of every nation. The revolution of 1905 would prove this in practice. When it first began, it was shockingly weak. But what was its international outcome? How did the foreign policy of the Russian Revolution emerge from the events of 1905? Today, you conduct the foreign policy of the Russian Revolution entirely in league with the capitalists. Yet 1905 showed us what the foreign policy of the Russian Revolution ought to be. It is an undeniable fact that after October 17, 1905, mass street uprisings broke out in Vienna and Prague, and barricades began to spring up across the cities. Following 1905 came 1908 in Turkey, 1909 in Persia, and 1910 in China. If you truly summon the revolutionary democracy—the working class, the oppressed—rather than compromising with the capitalists, then your allies will be not the oppressor classes, but the oppressed; not nationalities in which temporarily dominant classes still hold sway, but nationalities that are currently being torn apart. Here, we are reminded of the German front, where none of us ever proposed anything more than the free dissemination of our appeals—appeals written on one side in Russian, on the other in German. There it is stated: “The capitalists of both countries are bandits. Their removal is but a step toward peace.” Yet there are other fronts. On the Turkish front stands our army—whose strength I do not know. Let us assume it numbers roughly three million. If this army, which today holds onto Armenia and carries out annexations that you tolerate while preaching peace without annexations to other peoples—even though you possess the strength and the power—if this army were to embrace that program, if it were to transform Armenia into an independent Armenian Republic and return to the people the very funds that financiers in England and France extract from us, then that would be far better.

Some say we cannot do without financial support from England and France. But such support is like a rope that sustains a hanged man—mere “support.” Let the Russian revolutionary class declare: “Down with this support! I refuse to acknowledge debts incurred with French and English capitalists—I call upon all to rise up against the capitalists. No peace with German capitalists, and no alliance with the English or the French!” If this policy were pursued in earnest, our Turkish army could be liberated and redeployed to other fronts—because the peoples of Asia would see that the Russian people do not merely proclaim, in word alone, a peace without annexations based on the self-determination of nations; rather, that the Russian worker and peasant, in deed, stand at the forefront of all oppressed nationalities—that for him, the struggle against imperialism is not an empty aspiration, not a ceremonial ministerial phrase, but the blood-deep interest of the revolution.

Our situation is such that a revolutionary war may well loom over us, yet it need not necessarily break out—provided that, when you turn to the peoples surrounding all of Russia, you present them with your own practical example. Demonstrate that you are liberating the Armenian Republic, that you are entering into agreements with the Soviets of Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies in every country, that you stand for a free republic—and then the foreign policy of the Russian Revolution will truly become revolutionary, truly democratic. Today, it is revolutionary only in word; in deed, it is counterrevolutionary, because you remain bound by Anglo-French imperialism and are unwilling to state this openly, afraid to acknowledge it. It would be far better if, instead of issuing calls to “overthrow foreign bankers,” you were to tell the Russian people, the workers and peasants, quite plainly: “We are far too weak; we cannot throw off the yoke of Anglo-French imperialists—we are their slaves, and that is why we are at war.” This would be a bitter truth, yet one imbued with revolutionary significance; in practice, it would hasten the approach of the end of this predatory war. This is a thousand times more meaningful than an agreement with French and British social-chauvinists, than convening congresses to which they will attend, than continuing down this same path—while in reality you fear to sever ties with the imperialists of one country, even as you remain allies of another. You can draw upon the oppressed classes of European nations, upon the subjugated peoples of weaker states that Russia strangled under the tsars, that it continues to stifle even now—such as Armenia. By leaning on these forces, by granting freedom and aiding their workers’ and peasants’ committees, you could place yourself at the head of all oppressed classes, of all oppressed peoples in the struggle against German and English imperialism—imperialisms that cannot unite against you, for they are locked in a deadly struggle with one another, trapped in an irreparably dire predicament. For it is precisely when the foreign policy of the Russian Revolution genuinely aligns with the oppressed classes and oppressed peoples that it stands a 99‑in‑100 chance of success!

Recently, in our party’s Moscow newspaper, we came across a letter from a peasant outlining our program. I would like to conclude my remarks with a brief quotation from this letter—a testament to how the peasant has come to understand our program. The letter was published in No. 59 of our party’s Moscow newspaper, “Social Democrat”{109}, and reprinted in No. 68 of “Pravda”: “We must press harder against the bourgeoisie—so hard that it bursts at every seam. Then the war will end. But if we don’t press the bourgeoisie hard enough, things will go badly.” (Applause.)

“Pravda,” Nos. 95, 96, and 97; July 13 (June 30), July 14 (July 1), and July 15 (July 2), 1917.

Printed according to the text of the newspaper “Pravda,” verified against the stenographic record as corrected by V. I. Lenin.