Vladimir Lenin

Report at a Joint Session off the All-Russia Central Executive
Committee, The Moscow Soviet, Factory Committees and Trade
Unions [1]

October 22, 1918 (Stormy, prolonged applause and shouts of “hurrah”.) Comrades, I think our present
situation, for all its contradictions might be expressed by
saying, firstly, that never before have we been so near the world
workers’ revolution, and, secondly, that never have we been
in such a perilous position. It is these two propositions,
especially the second, that I want to go into today. I think the
people at large scarcely realise the full danger bearing down on
us, and as we can only act with popular support, the chief task of
the representatives of the Soviet government is to bring home to
the people the full truth of the present situation, however
difficult this may sometimes be. As far as our being near the
world socialist revolution is concerned, I shall be brief since it
has been spoken about time and again. Indeed, one of the chief
reproaches levelled at the Soviet government both by the
bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie who have lost faith in
socialism, as well as by many so-called socialists who are used to
times of peace and never did believe in socialism, is that we are
taking a rash step in carrying through the socialist revolution in
Russia, for the revolution in the West is not yet ripe.

Comrades, this is the fifth year of the war and the universal
collapse of imperialism is as plain as can be; everyone can now
see revolution must come in every country in the war. And we, who
were not given more than a few days or weeks at the beginning,
have done more in this year of revolution than any proletarian
party in the world has ever done. Our revolution has become a
world-wide phenomenon. Even the entire bourgeoisie say that
Bolshevism is a world-wide phenomenon. This admission goes to show
that our revolution has spread from the East to the West and is
falling on more and more receptive soil. You know that revolution
has flared up in Bulgaria. The Bulgarian soldiers have begun to
form Soviets. And now news has come that Soviets are being set up
in Serbia too. Even though the Anglo-French Entente is promising
the peoples thousands of blessings if they rebel and break with
Germany, even though the capitalists of America, Britain and
France, the richest and most powerful in the world, are so lavish
with their promises, it is becoming obvious that the bourgeoisie
of the various small countries into which Austria is now
disintegrating cannot hold out under any circumstances, that their
rule and power in these countries will be short-lived and
transitory, for the workers’ revolution is knocking on the
door everywhere.

The bourgeoisie of individual countries know that the only way
they can hold on to power in their states is with the help of
foreign bayonets. And we see that revolution has begun not only in
Austria, but even in Germany, both of whose positions seemed so
stable only a little while ago. News has come that the German
press is already talking about the Kaiser’s abdication and
that the press of the Independent Social-Democratic Party has already received permission from
the Chancellor to talk about a German republic. That certainly is
something. We know demoralisation is increasing among the troops
and that there are direct appeals for an army mutiny. We know that
revolutionary military committees have been set up in Eastern
Germany and that they are issuing revolutionary publications which
are stirring up the soldiers. There is therefore every justification to say that revolution is growing in leaps and
bounds. And we are not the only ones to say so; it is being said
by all Germans in the war party and among the bourgeoisie who feel
that the ministers are tottering, that the people do not trust
them, and that they and their government will not hold on much
longer. That is what everybody who knows anything about the state
of affairs is saying, which just goes to show how inevitable a
popular revolution, and perhaps a proletarian revolution, has
become in Germany.

We know very well what an immense workers’ movement has
sprung up in other countries as well. We saw how Gompers went to
Italy and, with Entente money and the help of all the Italian
bourgeoisie and social-patriots, toured every town in Italy
calling upon the Italian workers to carry on the imperialist
war. We saw how the Italian socialist papers wrote articles about
this in which all that was left was Gompers’s name, after
the censor had deleted everything else; or articles which jeered:
“Gompers is banqueting and tonguewagging.” And the bourgeois papers admitted Gompers was hissed everywhere. The
bourgeois papers wrote: “The Italian workers are behaving as
if they would allow only Lenin and Trotsky to tour Italy.”
During the war the Italian Socialist Party has made tremendous strides forward, that is,
to the left. We know there have been too many patriots among the
workers in France; they were told that Paris and French territory
were in grave danger. But there, too, the workers’ attitude
is changing. There were cries of “Hurrah for the Socialist
Republic!” at the last congress, [2] when a letter was read about what the Allies, the British and French imperialists,
were doing. And yesterday news was received that a meeting had
been held in Paris attended by two thousand metalworkers, which
hailed the Soviet Republic in Russia. We see that of the three
socialist parties in Great Britain, [3] only one, the
Independent Socialist Party, is not openly supporting the
Bolsheviks, whereas the British Socialist Party and the Socialist
Labour Party of Scotland have definitely prociaimd their support
for the Bolsheviks. Bolshevism is also beginning to spread in
Britain. And the Spanish parties are hailing the Russian
Bolsheviks at their congresses [4] although they had formerly sided with British and French imperialism and had had
only one or two men on the outbreak of the war with even a remote
conception of what internationalists were. Bolshevism has become
the worldwide theory and tactics of the international proletariat!
(Applause.) It has accomplished a thoroughgoing socialist
revolution for all the world to see. To be for or against the
Bolsheviks is actually the dividing line among socialists. As a
result of what Bolshevism has done, a programme for the creation
of a workers’ state is the vital question of the day. Workers who had no idea of what was going on in Russia,
because they only read the bourgeois papers which were full of
lies and slander, began to realise, on seeing the workers’
government winning one victory after another over its counter-revolutionaries, that our tactics and the revolutionary
form of action of our workers’ government was the only way
out of this war. Last Wednesday there was a demonstration in
Berlin, and the workers expressed their disgust with the Kaiser by
trying to march past his palace; then they proceeded to the
Russian Embassy to express their solidarity with the actions of
the Russian Government.

That is what Europe has come to in this fifth year of war! That
is why we say we have never been so near the world revolution, it
has never been so obvious that the Russian workers have
established their might. It is clear that millions and scores of
millions of workers of the world will follow our example. That is
why, I repeat, we have never been so near the world revolution,
and never have we been in such a perilous position, because this
is the first time Bolshevism has been regarded as a world
force. It had seemed to be only a result of the fatigue of the
Russian soldiers, an outburst of discontent on the part of the
war-weary Russian soldiers; it had seemed that as soon as this
discontent had passed and peace had been established, even a peace
of the most coercive character, all steps towards building a new
state and towards socialist reforms would have been crushed. Everyone had been certain of that, but it turned out that
as soon as we emerged from the imperialist war, which ended in
very harsh peace terms, to take the first steps in building our
state, as soon as we were able to give the peasants a real chance
of living without landowners, of establishing relations against
the landowners, and of convincing themselves in practice that they
were building their own lives on the expropriated land, really for
the labouring people and not for the kulaks or the new capitalists; as soon as the workers saw they had a chance to build
their lives without capitalists and learn that difficult but great
business without which they will never escape from exploitation-it
became obvious to all, and was shown in practice, that no force,
no counter-revolution could overthrow the Soviet government.

It took months before we in Russia arrived at this conviction. It is said that in the countryside it was only in the
summer of 1918, only towards autumn, that the peasants came to
realise the meaning and significance of our revolution. In the
town this was realised some time ago, but it took many a long
month for it to reach every district, every remote rural area and
village, for the peasant to see from his own experience, not from
books or speeches, that the land has to go to those who till it,
and not to the kulak, and that the kulak has to be fought, has to
be defeated by organisation, that the revolts which swept over the
country this summer were supported by the landowners, kulaks and
whiteguards; to learn from his own bitter experience, at his own
cost, what the rule of the Constituent Assembly meant. And now,the
countryside is emerging steeled and tempered, and the mass of poor
peasants, who do not exploit the labour of others, have only now
learnt from their own experience, not from books, from which the
working people will never derive firm convictions, that Soviet
government means thegovernment of the exploited working people,
and that now every village can proceed to lay the foundations of a
new, socialist Russia.

It took many long months for us to be able to say with conviction, basing ourselves on the reports of people with
practical experience, that after 1918 in the rest of Russia, too,
in every village, however remote, the people know what Soviet
government means and uphold it. For the peasants have seen what a
menace the capitalists and landowners are. They have also seen the
difficulties of the socialist transformation, yet were not
deterred; they said: “We shall put our millions of hands to
this work; we have learnt a lot in a year, and we shall learn even
more.” This is what scores of millions in Russia are now
saying with full conviction, on the basis of their own experience.

This is just getting through to the West-European bourgeoisie
as well. Up to now they had not taken the Bolsheviks seriously;
now they begin to realise that the only stable form of state has
been set up here, a state which works hand in hand with the
working people and can rouse them to real heroic self-sacrifice. And when this workers’ state began to infect
Europe, it turned out that this was by no means something peculiar
to Russia alone, and that four years of war had caused demoralisation of the armies all over the world. Before, they used
to say that owing to her backwardness and inefficiency, only
Russia had reached such a stage when her army had fallen to pieces
in the fourth year of war, and that this could never happen in
civilised, parliamentary countries.

Now, however, everybody can see that after four years of world
war, when millions have been slaughtered and crippled for the
profit of the capitalists, and when there are tens of thousands of
deserters, this extraordinary thing is happening in Austria as
well as Russia, and even in Germany, which boasts of her good
order. When that happened, the world bourgeoisie realised they had
to contend with a more serious enemy, and they began to rally
together; and the nearer we approached the world workers’
revolution, the more the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie rallied
together.

In some countries people are still ignoring revolution, just as
in October the coalition ministers ignored the Bolsheviks and said
Russia would never fall under Bolshevik rule. In France, for
example, they say the Bolsheviks are a gang of traitors who are
selling their people to the Germans. The French bourgeoisie are
more to be excused for saying that than the Left
Socialist-Revolutionaries, for it is only to be expected that the
bourgeoisie will spend millions on fabricating lies. But when the
French bourgeoisie saw Bolshevism developing in France and even
non-revolutionary parties backing the Bolsheviks with revolutionary slogans, they saw they were confronted with a more
formidable enemythe collapse of imperialism and the superiority of
the workers in the revolutionary struggle.

Everyone knows that the danger to the workers’ revolution
is particularly great just now owing to the imperialist war,
because the workers’ revolution develops unevenly in different countries, since the crnditions of political life
differ. In one country the proletariat is too weak and in another
it is stronger. In one country the top section of workers is weak,
and in other countries the bourgeoisie are able to split the ranks
of the workers for a time as was the case in Britain and
France. That is why the workers’ revolution develops unevenly, and that is why the’ bourgeoisie recognised that
their most powerful enemy is the’revolutionary proletariat. They are rallying together to ward off the collapse
of world imperialism.

Now our situation has changed and events are moving tremendously fast. At first there were two groups of imperialist
marauders who tried to annihilate each other, but now they
see-especially by the example of German imperialism, which had
only recently considered itself the match of Britain and
France-that their chief enemy is the revolutionary proletariat. Now, when Germany is being torn apart by the
revolutionary movement at home, the British and French imperialists consider themselves masters of the world. They are
convinced their chief enemy is the Bolsheviks and the world
revolution. The more the revolution develops, the more the
bourgeoisie rally together. That is why some of us, and many
especially among the people at large, who are now convinced they
can defeat our counter-revolutionaries—the Cossacks, officers and Czechs—and think that settles everything, do
not realise this is not enough for us now, that there is a new
enemy, a far more formidable one: British and French imperialism. So far this enemy has not had very much success in
Russia, as, for example, in the case of the Archangel landing. A
French writer who published a newspaper called periodicals La Victoire said that victory over the Germans was not
enough for France, that she also needed victory over Bolshevism,
and that the campaign against Russia was not an attack on Germany,
but a campaign against the Bolshevik revolutionary proletariat and
against the contagion that is spreading all over the world.

That is why a new danger has appeared, a danger which has not
yet fully developed and is not yet fully apparent, a danger which
the British and French imperialists are plotting surreptitiously
and which we must clearly realise so as to open the people’s
eyes to it through their leaders. For although it is true the
British and French have not achieved any great success in Siberia
or in Archangel—in fact they have suffered a number of setbacks—they are now directing their efforts for an attack
on Russia from the South, either through the Dardanelles and the
Black Sea, or else overland, through Bulgaria and Rumania. As they
keep their moves a military secret, we cannot tell how far
advanced the preparations for this campaign are, and which of the
two plans, or perhaps even a third, has been selected; there lies
the danger, for we cannot know for certain. But we do know
absolutely for certain that these preparations are being made, for
the newspapers of these countries are not always very cautious,
and now and again some journalist openly announces the chief aims,
and discards all the false talk about a league of nations.

Among the German ruling circles, we now clearly perceive two
tendencies, two plans of salvation-if salvation is still
possible. Some say: Let us play for time and keep going until
spring, and perhaps we may yet be able to put up military
resistance along the fortified line. Others see their chief hope
of salvation in Britain and France; they concentrate on reaching
an agreement with Britain and France against the Bolsheviks; their
attention is centred on this. And while it is true that Wilson now
replies to peace overtures with a blunt and contemptuous refusal,
this is scarcely enough to induce the party of the German
capitalists who are seeking agreement with Britain to renounce
their plans. They know that agreements are sometimes reached
tacitly, and that they may be rewarded if they are of service to
the British and French capitalists against the Bolsheviks. In
capitalist society they do pay for services rendered. They think:
“Perhaps if we help the British and French capitalists grab
something, they will leave a portion of the spoils for us.”
One good turn deserves another—such are the ethics of the
capitalist world. And I think that in laying claim to a certain
share of British and French capital, these people know what they
are up to and are counting on billions, no less. Some of these
gentlemen are past masters at this sort of calculations.

A tacit bargain has most definitely been struck between the
German bourgeoisie and that of the Entente powers. The gist of it
is that the British and French say to the Germans: “We shall
get to the Ukraine, but don’t withdraw your troops until our
occupational forces arrive, otherwise the workers will take power
and the Soviet government will triumph there too.” That is
the way they reason, for they realise that the bourgeoisie of all
the occupied countries Finland, the Ukraine, Poland—know they
cannot hold out for a single day if ’the German army of
occupation withdraws. And that is why the bourgeoisie of these
countries-which yesterday sold themselves to the Germans, went cap
in hand to the German imperialists and concluded an alliance with
them against their own workers, just as the Ukrainian Mensheviks
did and the Socialist-Revolutionaries did in Tiflisare now ready
to sell their country to anybody. Yesterday they sold it to the
Germans, and today they are selling it to the British and
French. That is the sort of bargaining going on behind the
scenes. Seeing that the British and French bourgeoisie are
winning, they are all going over to them and preparing to make a
deal with the British and French imperialists against us and at
our expense.

When they tell their future Anglo-French multimillionaire
master they are siding with him, they say: “Your Excellency
will defeat the Bolsheviks, you must help us, because the Germans
will not save us.” This conspiracy by the bourgeoisie of all
countries against the revolutionary workers and the Bolsheviks is
increasingly taking shape and becoming openly blatant. And it is
our direct duty to indicate this danger to the workers and
peasants of all countries in the war.

Take the Ukraine as an example. Imagine her position and what
the workers and intelligent Communists must do in the present
situation. On the one hand they see the indignation against the
German imperialists, against the dreadful plunder of the Ukraine,
and on the other they see that some of the German troops, the
greater part perhaps, have been withdrawn. They may think of
giving vent to their pent-up hatred and resentment by attacking
the German imperialists at once, regardless of everything. But
others say: “We are internationalists, we must look at things from the point of view both of Russia and of Germany; even
from Germany’s point of view we know that the government
there cannot hold out; we are firmly convinced that if the victory
of the workers and peasants in the Ukraine is accompanied by the
consolidation and success of the government of Russia, then
socialist proletarian Ukraine will not only win but will be
invincible!” Such intelligent Ukrainian Communists say: We
must be very cautious. Tomorrow we may have to exert every effort
and stake everything in the struggle against imperialism and the
German troops. That may be so for tomorrow, but not for today; and
today we know that the troops of the German imperialists are being
demoralised, we know that beside the Ukrainian troops, the
East-Prussian and German troops are publishing revolutionary
literature. [5] At the same time, our chief task is to carry on propaganda for a revolt in the Ukraine. That is correct
from the standpoint of the world revolution because Germany is the
main link in this chain, since the German revolution is already
ripe; and the success of the world revolution most of all depends
on it.

We shall take care that our interference will not harm their
revolution. One must understand the changes and growth of every
revolution. The revolution proceeds in its own way in every
country-we ought to know after seeing and experiencing it-and
these ways are so diverse that it may be delayed for a year or
two. World revolution is not so smooth as to proceed in the same
way everywhere, in all countries. If it were, we should have been
victorious long ago. Every country has to go through definite
political stages. Everywhere we find the compromisers making the
same efforts, the same attempts “to save the people from the
bourgeoisie"in conjunction with the bourgeoisie. Tsereteli and
Chernov did it here, and the Scheidemannites are doing it in
Germany; in France they are doing it in their own way. And now
that the revolution is making its way into Germany, the country
where the workers’ movement is strongest, and where it is
distinguished for its organisation and endurance, where the
workers have been patient longest of all-but perhaps have
accumulated more revolutionary hatred and are better able to
settle scores with their enemies-interference in these events by
people who do not know how fast the revolution is growing may
hamper those intelligent Communists who say: “My prime purpose is to make this a deliberate process.” Now that the
German soldier has seen that he is being driven to the slaughter
on the pretext that he is going to defend his country, while in
fact going to defend the German imperialists, the time is coming
when the revolution will break out in Germany with such force and
organisation as to solve a hundred international problems. That is
why intelligent Ukrainian Communists say “We must make every
sacrifice for the victory of the world revolution, but we should
realise that the future depends on us and we must march in step
with the German revolution.”

Those are the difficulties I wanted to point out, using the
reasoning of the Ukrainian Communists as an example. These
difficulties also affect Soviet Russia’s position. We can
now say that the workers of the world have awoken and are making
immense strides; but this makes our position all the more
difficult, for our “ally” of yesterday is attacking us as his chief enemy. He is now out to fight international
Bolshevism, not hostile armies. Now that Krasnov’s troops
are mustering on the Southern Front (and we know they have
received ammunition from the Germans), now that we have exposed
imperialism in the eyes of the world, the people who blamed us for
the Brest-Litovsk Peaceand sent Krasnov to get ammunition from the
Germans with which to bombard the Russian workers and peasants,
are currently getting ammunition from the British and French
imperialists, auctioning off Russia to the highest millionaire
bidder. That is why our general conviction that a change has set
in is now not enough. We have our old enemies, and behind them new
forces are now rallying to their aid. We know and see all
that. Six months ago, in February or March, we had no army. The
army could not fight. The army which had been through four years
of imperialist war, without knowing what it was fighting for, but
vaguely feeling that it was fighting in the interests of others,
that army took to its heels, and no force on earth could stop
it.

No revolution is worth anything unless it can defend itself;
but a revolution does not learn to defend itself at once. The
revolution has awakened millions to a new life. In February and
March these millions did not know why they were being sent to
continue the slaughter to which the tsars and the Kerenskys had
driven them, and whose aim was exposed by the Bolshevik Government
only in December. All they knew was that it was not their war, and
nearly six months were required before a turn in the tide. This
turn has now come; it is changing the force of the revolution. In
February and March, the people, exhausted and tormented by four
years of war, abandoned everything and said there must be peace
and the war terminated. They were in no state to ask what the war
was about. If these people have now created a new discipline in
the Red Army, not the discipline of the rod and of the landowner
but the discipline of the Soviets of Workers’ and
Peasants’ Deputies; if they are now ready to make the greatest sacrifices; if a new unity has sprung up among them, it
is because for the first time a new discipline, a socialist
discipline, has been born in the minds and experience of tens of
millions, a Red Army has been born. It was born only when these
tens of millions of people saw from their own experience that they
had overthrown the landowners and capitalists, that a new life was
being built, that they had begun to build it themselves, and that
they would get it built if they were not prevented by foreign
invasion.

When the peasants saw who their chief enemy was and began the
struggle against the village kulaks, when the workers overthrew
the manufacturers and began to organise the factories in
accordance with a proletarian principle of national economy, they
saw all the difficulty this work of reorganisation entailed, but
they proved equal to the task. It took months to get things
going. These months have passed, and the turn has come. Gone is
the time when we were impotent. We have begun to advance with
giant strides. Gone is the time when we had no army and no
discipline; a new discipline has been created, and new people are
joining the army and laying down their lives by the thousand.

That means that the new discipline, the comradely alliance, has
re-educated us in the struggle at the front and in the struggle in
the countryside against the kulak. This turning-point has been a
difficult one, but now we feel that things are beginning to move,
and that we are passing from unorganised, decree-made socialism to
true socialism. The chief task facing us is to fight imperialism,
and this fight we must win. We make no secret of all the
difficulty and danger this fight entails. We know that the tide of
feeling has changed in the Red Army; it has begun to win
victories, it is promoting from its ranks thousands of officers
who have been through training courses in the new proletarian
military colleges and thousands of other officers who have been
through no other training than the hard training of war. Thus,
without the least exaggeration, and fully recognising the danger,
we can now say that we have an army; and this army has created
discipline and has achieved fighting efficiency. Our Southern
Front is not just a front-it is a front against British and French
imperialism, against the most powerful foe in the world. But we
are not afraid, for we know the foe will he unable to cope with
its own enemy at home.

Three months ago, people used to laugh when we said there might
be a revolution in Germany. They said that only half-crazy
Bolsheviks could believe in a German revolution. Not only the
entire bourgeoisie, but the Mensheviks and Left
Socialist-Revolutionaries as well, called the Bolsheviks traitors
to patriotism and said that revolution in Germany was impossible. But we knew that our help was needed there, and that
to render that help we had to sacrifice everything and consent
even to the most onerous terms of peace. That was how these people
were talking and trying to prove their point to us only a few
months ago, but in these few months Germany, from a mighty empire,
has become a rotten hulk. The force which has corroded it is
operating in America and England as well; today it is weak, but
with every step the British and French try to take in Russia, with
every step they try to take to occupy the Ukraine, as the Germans
did, this force will loom larger and larger and become even more
formidable than the Spanish ’flu.

That, comrades, is why I repeat that the chief task of every
class-conscious worker now is to reveal the whole truth, not to
conceal anything from the people, who may not fully realise the
acuteness of the situation. The workers are mature enough to be
told the truth. We have to defeat world imperialism as well as the
whiteguards. We have to defeat, and we shall defeat, not only that
enemy, but an enemy even more formidable. And for this we need the
Red Army more than anything else. Every organisation in Soviet
Russia must always give its prime attention to the army. Today,
when everything is clear, the war and the strengthening of the
army must take first place. We are absolutely confident we shall
cope with the counter-revolution. We know we have the forces, but
we also know that British and French imperialism is stronger than
we are, and we want the working people to realise this quite
clearly. We say that the army must be ten times stronger, and
more; we must go on strengthening discipline, and every
class-conscious, enlightened, organised and genuine leader must
show ten times more attention and concern for this. Then this
growth of the world revolution will not be confined to the
defeated countries. Revolution is now beginning in the victor
countries as well. Our forces must grow daily, and this constant
growth is, as it was, our chief and complete guarantee that world
socialism will triumph!

(Comrade Lenin’s speech is repeatedly interrupted by loud applause and ends in ovation. All rise and greet the leader of the world revolution.)

Endnotes

[1]
The session was held in the Hall of Columns of Trade Union House,
Moscow. It discussed the international situation, the question of
convening the Extraordinary Sixth All-Russia Congress of Soviets
and the dispatch to the front of 300 participants in the
session. Lenin spoke about the international situation for the
first time since his recovery, P. G. Smidovich and Y. M. Sverdlov
conveyed a message of greetings to those leaving for the
front. The session adopted a resolution drafted by Lenin and endorsed with slight amendments by the Sixth
Congress of Soviets on the basis of Lenin’s report on the
international situation. The session unanimously decided to
convene the Extraordinary Sixth All-Russia Congress of Soviets and
approved the agenda for it.

[2]
At the Congress of the French Socialist Party, held in Paris from
October 6-11, 1918, Longuet, one of the party leaders, read a
letter from Captain Sadoul, a member of the French military
mission in Russia, to Remain Rolland, in which he condemned the
actions of the Entente in Russia. According to the Geneva
correspondent of Pravda , “the letter produced an enormous impression. There were cries from the left: ’Long
live the Soviet Republic!" ( Pravda No. 221, October 13.)

[3]
This refers to the British Socialist Party , Socialist Labour Party and Independent Labour Party .

[4]
Reference is to the resolution unanimously adopted by the Eighth
Congress of the Spanish workers, held in October 1918, to send
greetings to the Soviet Republic.

[5]
This evidently means the Military Revolutionary Council which was
established in the German army on the Eastern Front and which
published the newspaper Krasny Soldat (Red Soldier).