V. I. Lenin

Speech To Propagandists On Their Way To The Provinces

January 23 (February 5), 1918

Newspaper Report

Comrades, you all know that Soviet power has been recognised by
the majority of the workers, soldiers and peasants of the Russian
nation and of other nations which in the old days were part of
Russia by compulsion and are now parts of the free Russian
Republic. We now have before us a short struggle against the
pathetic remnants of Kaledin's counter-revolutionary troops, who,
it seems, has to save himself from the revolutionary Cossacks in
his home Don area.

Now that the last bastion of the counter-revolution is about to
collapse it is safe to say that Soviet power is growing stronger
and it will be consolidated. Everyone can understand this, for
there is compelling proof that only this power—the workers,
soldiers and peasants in their Soviets— can lead Russia to a
free working people's community.

We are confronted with two powerful enemies, the first of which is
international capital. There it stands raging at the consolidation
of Soviet power it hates. There is no doubt that these multi-millionaires must wage war over an extra piece of the pie
grabbed from someone else. There is no doubt either that they are
as yet stronger than the Soviet Republic.

But it turns out that although the capitalists are stronger than
we are, they have already been sending their men to our
Commissars, and might even recognise Soviet power and, what is
more, our repudiation of the loans, which for these tightwads
would really be a most painful and terrible blow. The fact that
the agents of the international financial oligarchy have broached
the subject shows that the capitalists of the world have reached
an impasse. They would love to extricate themselves from the war
and throw their full force against the hated Soviet Republic,
which has started a conflagration all over Europe and America, but
they cannot.

Our revolution sprang from the war: but for the war, we would find
the capitalists of the world banded and ranged against us. Their
only worry is to prevent the sparks of our fire from falling on
their roofs. But you can't throw up a Chinese Wall around
Russia. We have yet to hear of a workers' organisation anywhere in
the world that is not elated at our decrees on land, nationalisation of the banks, etc.

We may be faced with a stiff fight in the future, but you should
never forget, comrades, that in most countries the workers,
oppressed by their capitalists, are already awakening, and the
Kaledinites of all countries, no matter how they rave, will never
be able to consolidate their positions, even if they manage to get
in a blow at Russia. Upon the other hand, our position is sound
because we have the workers of all countries behind us. (Applause.)

Chaos is our other enemy. It has to be fought with greater vigour
now that the position of the Soviets has become stronger. That
struggle, comrades, is one you must promote. Great importance now
attaches to your trip, the trip of propagandists from both
government parties now at the head of Soviet power. I believe that
in the backwoods you will derive a great deal of satisfaction from
persistent efforts to build up Soviet power and spread revolutionary ideas in the villages, eliminate the chaos and
liberate the toiling peasants from the village kulaks.

We are faced with some very hard work in healing the wounds of
war-The bourgeoisie of other European countries had made better
preparations than ours did. Over there they had a correct
distribution of foodstuffs, which is why they now have it easier;
they also had a system of rotating the soldiers at the front. Nothing of the sort had been done by the tsarist regime or
by the Kerensky government, which was a vacillating, conciliating
bourgeois regime.

That is why Russia now finds herself in such dire straits. To lay
the foundation of socialist society on the ruins she must solve
the tasks of organisation and struggle against those who are
war-weary and against the criminal elements who play up the chaos
for their own benefit.

Comrades, you have before you some very difficult but, as I have
said, satisfying work which boils down to getting the rural
economy running and building up Soviet power. But you have
assistants, for we know that every worker and peasant earning his
own livelihood feels, deep down in his heart, that there is no
salvation from famine and ruin but in Soviet power. We can save
Russia. There is every indication that Russia has the grain, and
it would have been available if we had taken stock of it in good
time and distributed it fairly. Cast your mind's eye over the
boundless expanses of Russia and her disrupted railways and you
will realise that we need to tighten up the control and
distribution of grain, if this famine is not to be the end of us
all. This can be done only on one condition, which is that each
worker, each peasant and each citizen must understand that he has
no one to look to but himself. Comrades, no one is going to help
you. All the bourgeoisie, the civil servants, the saboteurs are
against you, for they know that if the people manage to share out
among themselves this national wealth which had been in the hands
of the capitalists and kulaks, they will rid Russia of the chaff
and the drones. That is why they have mustered against the working
people all their forces, ranging from Kaledin and Dutov to the
saboteurs, the bribed vagrants and those who are simply weary and
are habitually unable to put up any resistance because they are
mesmerised by the exploiting bourgeoisie. One day they bribe
ignorant soldiers to raid wine and spirit warehouses; the next day
they get railway officials to hold up freights or shipowners to
hold up grain barges, etc., on their way to the capital. But when
the people come to realise that organisation alone will bring
cohesion and the conscious discipline of equals, they need have no
fear of any tricks on the part of the bourgeoisie.

That is the job you have, that is where you must work to unite,
organise and establish Soviet power. Out there in the countryside,
you will come across "bourgeois" peasants, the kulaks, who will
try to upset Soviet power. It will be easy to fight them because
the mass will be on your side.
They will see that it is not punitive expeditions but propagandists that are sent from the centre to bring light to the
countryside, to unite those in every village who earn their own
livelihood and have never lived at the expense of others.

Take the question of land: it has been declared public property
and all types of private property are being abolished. This marks
a great step towards the elimination of exploitation.

There will be a struggle between the rich and the working
peasants, and it is not bookish help that the poor need but
experience and actual participation in the struggle. We did not
take away the land from the landowners to let the rich peasants
and the kulaks get it. It is for the poor. This will win you the
sympathies of the poor peasants.

You must see to it that farm implements and machines do not remain
in the hands of the kulaks and rich peasants. They must belong to
Soviet power and be temporarily allotted to the working peasants
for their use, through the volost committees. They themselves must
see to it that these machines are not used to enrich the kulaks
but to cultivate their own land.

Every peasant will help you in this difficult task. You must
explain to the people in the villages that the kulaks and sharks
must be pulled up short. There is need for an even distribution of
products so that the working people can enjoy the fruits of the
people's labour. Ten working people must stand up against every
rich man who stretches out his avaricious paw towards public
property.

The Soviets have a revenue of 8,000 million and an expenditure of
28,000 million. With such a state of affairs we are naturally
going to fail, unless we manage to pull the state chariot out of
the bog into which the tsarist regime drove it.

The external war is over or nearly so. There is no doubt on that
score. It is an internal war that is now before us. The
bourgeoisie, its plundered goods hidden in its chests, is not
worried and thinks: "We shall sit this out." The people must
ferret out the sharks and make them disgorge. This is your task in
the localities. If we are not to collapse, we must get at them in
their hideouts. It is not the police who must make them
disgorge—the police are dead and buried—the people themselves must do this, and there is no other way of fighting
them.

One old Bolshevik gave a correct explanation of Bolshevism to a
Cossack.

The Cossack asked him: "Is it true that you Bolsheviks plunder?"
"Yes, indeed," said the old man,"we plunder the plunder." [The reference is to the fact cited in a report to the Third Congress of Soviets on January 16 (29), 1918, by a participant in the Cossack Congress in Kamenskaya.]

We shall sink in this sea unless we manage to extract from those
coffers all that is stored in them, all that has been amassed
through plunder over the years of ruthless criminal exploitation.

We in the Central Executive Committee will soon adopt a law on a
new tax on the property holders, but it is up to you to put this
through in the localities and get the working people to lay their
hands on all the hundred ruble notes tucked away since the
war. But this should not be done by force of arms: the shooting
war is over but this one is ahead of us.

Our revolution will not be overthrown by the force of the
exploiters, if we go about this business efficiently, because the
world proletariat is on our side.