Vladimir Lenin

Speech At A Meeting In

The Alexeyev People’s House

August 23, 1918

Brief Newspaper Report (Comrade Lenin's appearance is greeted with stormy, prolonged applause.) Comrades, today our Party is
arranging meetings to explain what we Communists are fighting
for.

The most concise answer to this question would be that we are
fighting for the termination of the imperialist war and for
socialism.

Right at the very outbreak of the war, when reaction and
tsarism held sway, we called the war criminal and said that the
only way out was to convert it from imperialist into civil
war.

In those days many were uncertain about the connection between
the imperialist war and socialism; even many socialists thought
that this war, like any other, would end by the conclusion of
peace.

But four years of war have taught people a lot. It is now
becoming clearer and clearer that there is no other way out. The
Russian revolution is being followed by the growth of revolution
in all the belligerent countries. Why is this so? To answer that
question we must explain the attitude of Communists towards war,
give our appraisal of it. We regard all wars which are the
result of the rapacious ambitions of kings and capitalists as
criminal, because they are fatal to the labouring classes and
bring rich spoils to the ruling bourgeoisie.

But there are some wars which the working class must regard as
the only just wars. These are wars for emancipation from
slavery, from capitalist oppression. And such wars are bound to
occur, for we cannot secure our emancipation without struggle.

When the war broke out in 1914 between the Germans on the one
hand and the British and French on the other to determine how
they were to divide up the earth among themselves, who was to
have the right to oppress the whole world, the capitalists of
both camps tried to disguise their predatory aims by talking
about "national defence"; that is how they tried to pull the
wool over the eyes of the people.

Millions of people have been killed and millions crippled in
this war. It has become world-wide. And more and more insistently people are asking what is the purpose of these
unnecessary sacrifices.

Britain and Germany are drenched in blood, yet there is no way
out of the war; even if some of the imperialist countries were to
stop fighting, others would continue.

The capitalists have overreached themselves, they have grabbed
more than they can hold. Meanwhile, the armies are becoming
demoralised; there are deserters everywhere. The mountains of
Italy are swarming with them; in France soldiers are refusing to
fight, and even in Germany the old discipline has fallen
apart.

French and German soldiers are beginning to realise they must
reverse their front and turn their guns against their own
governments, as it is impossible to end this bloody war under
the capitalist system. Hence the realisation that the workers of
the world must take up the struggle against the capitalists of
the world.

It is no easy matter to create a socialist system. The Civil
War is bound to continue for many a long month, perhaps for many
a long year. This should be clear to a Russian, for he knows how
difficult it is to overthrow the ruling class and what desperate
resistance the Russian landowners and capitalists are putting
up.

There is no country in Europe in which the workers are not in
sympathy with the Bolsheviks and are not convinced that the time
will come when they will overthrow their own government, just as
the Russian workers have overthrown theirs.

We Russian Communists so far stand alone, because our detachment has proved to be ahead of all the others. We have
been cut off from our comrades; but we had to act first because
our country was the most backward. Our revolution was begun as a
general revolution, and we shall tackle our tasks with the help
of the workers and peasants of the world.

Our tasks are hard and difficult; many undesirable and pernicious elements are joining our ranks. But the work has begun,
and even if we do make mistakes, we should remember that every
mistake is an education and a lesson.

Capitalism is an international force, and it can therefore be
completely destroyed only through victory in all countries, not
in one alone. The war against the Czechs is a war against the
capitalists of the whole world.

The workers are rising and joining this struggle; the Petrograd
and Moscow workers are joining the army and bringing with them the
idea of fighting for the victory of socialism.

The workers will ensure the victory of the Soviet Republic over
the Czechs and give it a chance to hold out until the world
socialist revolution breaks out. (Comrade Lenin concludes his speech amidst stormy applause.)