Comrades! On behalf of the Council of People's Commissars, I must present to you a report on its activities over the 2 months and 15 days that have elapsed since the formation of Soviet power and the Soviet government in Russia.

2 months and 15 days – this is only five days longer than the period during which the previous power of workers over the entire country, or over the exploiters and capitalists, existed – the power of the Paris workers in the epoch of the Paris Commune of 1871.

We must recall this power of workers, first and foremost, casting a glance backward and comparing it with Soviet power, which was formed on October 25. And from this comparison of the previous dictatorship of the proletariat and the present one, we can immediately see what a gigantic step the international working movement has made and in what immeasurably more favorable circumstances Soviet power finds itself in Russia, despite the unprecedented complexity of conditions amid war and ruin.

Having held out for 2 months and 10 days, the Paris workers, who were the first to create the Commune, which represents the embryo of Soviet power, perished under the gunfire of French Kadets, Mensheviks, and right-wing Socialist-Revolutionaries—the Kaledin supporters. The French workers had to pay for the first experiment in workers' government with unprecedented heavy sacrifices, an experiment whose meaning and aims were unknown to the vast majority of peasants in France.

We find ourselves in far more favorable circumstances because Russian soldiers, workers, and peasants managed to create an apparatus that informed the whole world of their forms of struggle – the Soviet government. This is what, first and foremost, changes the position of Russian workers and peasants compared with the power of the Paris proletariat. They did not have such an apparatus, their country did not understand them – we immediately relied upon Soviet power, and therefore for us there was never any doubt that Soviet power enjoys the sympathy and the warmest, the most selfless support of a gigantic majority of the masses, and that therefore Soviet power is invincible.

Those people who were skeptical of Soviet power and often, consciously or unconsciously, sold and betrayed it into compromise with capitalists and imperialists – these people have been shouting into everyone's ears that in Russia there cannot endure a power of the proletariat alone. As though any Bolshevik and their supporters ever forgot for a moment that in Russia only that power can be enduring which is able to unite the working class, the majority of peasants, all the toiling and exploited classes into one, indissolubly interconnected force, struggling against landowners and the bourgeoisie.

We never doubted that only the alliance of workers and the poorest peasants, the semi-proletariat, of which our Party program speaks, could encompass the majority of the population in Russia and ensure firm support for power. And we succeeded, after October 25, immediately, in the course of several weeks, in overcoming all difficulties and establishing power on the basis of such a firm alliance.

Yes, comrades! If the Socialist-Revolutionary party, in its old form, when peasants still did not distinguish who in it was a true supporter of socialism, put forward the slogan of equal land use, not wishing to know by whom this task would be accomplished – in alliance with the bourgeoisie or not – then we said this was deception. And that section, which now saw that there is no people behind it, that it is empty, claimed that it could carry out equal land use in alliance with the bourgeoisie; therein lay the fundamental deception. But when the Russian revolution showed the experience of cooperation of the toiling masses with the bourgeoisie, at the greatest moment of the people's life, when war was destroying and destroys the people, condemning millions to starvation, and when its consequences demonstrated in practice the experience of compromise, after it had been experienced, felt through by the Soviets themselves, having passed through the school of compromise, then it became evident that there is a healthy, viable, great socialist seed in the teachings of those who wanted to attach the peasantry, in its laboring part, to the great socialist movement of workers throughout the world.

And as soon as this question became practically clear and distinct before the peasantry, there occurred what no one doubted – as peasant Soviets and congresses have now shown: when it came time to realize socialism in deed, the peasants were able to see clearly these two fundamental political lines – alliance with the bourgeoisie or with the toiling masses; they then understood that the party expressing the true strivings and interests of the peasantry is the party of Left Socialist-Revolutionaries. And when we concluded our governmental alliance with this party, we from the very beginning set matters up on the clearest and most obvious principles. If the peasants of Russia wish to carry out the socialization of land in alliance with workers, who will carry out the nationalization of banks and create workers' control – they are our true collaborators, our most faithful and most valuable allies. There is not a single socialist, comrades, who would not recognize that obvious truth that between socialism and capitalism lies a long, more or less difficult transitional period of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and that this period in its forms will depend greatly on whether petty property or large property predominates, whether petty farming or large farming predominates. It is understandable that the transition to socialism in Estonia, that small, universally literate country consisting of large farms, cannot resemble the transition to socialism in a country that is predominantly petty-bourgeois, as Russia is. This must be taken into account.

Every conscious socialist says that socialism cannot be imposed on peasants by force and one must rely only on the force of example and on the assimilation by the peasant masses of practical experience. How does it see fit to transition to socialism? That is the task now practically set before Russian peasantry. How can it itself support the socialist proletariat and begin the transition to socialism? And the peasants have already begun this transition, and we have complete confidence in them.

The alliance that we concluded with the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries is created on a firm basis and is growing not by the day but by the hour. If in the beginning in the Council of People's Commissars we could fear that factional struggle would become an obstacle to work, then already on the basis of two months' experience of joint work I must say definitively that on the majority of questions we are developing unanimous decisions.

We know that only when experience shows the peasants, for example, what the exchange between city and countryside should be, will they themselves establish their connection from below, on the basis of their own experience. On the other hand, the experience of civil war points out to peasant representatives before their very eyes that there is no other path to socialism except the dictatorship of the proletariat and the ruthless suppression of the rule of the exploiters. (Applause.)

Comrades! Each time we have occasion to touch on this theme, at the present assembly or in the Central Executive Committee, I happen from time to time to hear from the right section of the assembly exclamations: "dictator!" Yes, "when we were socialists," then everyone recognized the dictatorship of the proletariat; they even wrote about it in their programs, they were indignant at that widespread prejudice – the notion that one can convince the population, prove to it that one ought not exploit the toiling masses, that it is sinful and shameful, and that paradise will then be established on earth. No, this utopian prejudice was long ago demolished in theory, and our task is to demolish it in practice.

One cannot imagine socialism in such a way that gentlemen socialists will hand it to us on a plate, all ready and dressed – that will not happen. Not a single question of class struggle has ever been decided in history except through violence. Violence, when it occurs on the side of the toiling, exploited masses against the exploiters – yes, we are for such violence! (Thunder of applause.) And we are in no way disturbed by the cries of people who, consciously or unconsciously, stand on the side of the bourgeoisie, or are so frightened by it, so oppressed by its rule, that, seeing now this class struggle, unprecedentedly acute, have become bewildered, wept, forgotten all their premises, and demand the impossible of us – that we, socialists, without struggle against the exploiters, without suppressing their resistance, should achieve complete victory.

The gentlemen exploiters understood as early as summer 1917 that it was a matter of the "last and decisive battles," that the last stronghold of the bourgeoisie, that chief and fundamental source of its suppression of the toiling masses, would be torn from their hands if the Soviets seized power.

That is why the October Revolution opened this systematic, unrelenting struggle so that the exploiters would cease their resistance, and so that, however difficult it may be even for the best of them, they would have to come to terms with the thought that there will no longer be the rule of the exploiting classes, that henceforth the simple muzhik will give orders and they must obey him – however unpleasant this may be for them, they will have to accept it.

This will cost many difficulties, sacrifices, and mistakes; this is a new undertaking, unprecedented in history, which cannot be read about in books. It goes without saying that this is the greatest, most difficult transition in history, but there was no other way to accomplish this great transition. And the fact that Soviet power was created in Russia showed that the revolutionary masses themselves are richest in revolutionary experience – when millions come to the aid of a few dozen party people – themselves seizing their exploiters by the throat in practice.

That is why at present civil war has acquired predominance in Russia. Against us they advance the slogan – "let civil war perish." I happened to hear this from representatives of the right section of the so-called Constituent Assembly. Let civil war perish… What does this mean? Civil war with whom? With Kornilov, Kerensky, Ryabushinsky, who spend millions on bribing lumpenproletarians and officials? With those saboteurs who, all the same, consciously or unconsciously, go along with this bribery? There is no doubt that among the latter there are people, underdeveloped people, who do this unconsciously, because they cannot even imagine that one can and should destroy the old bourgeois order to its foundations and begin to build a completely new socialist society on its ruins. There is no doubt that such people exist – but does this change matters?

That is why the representatives of the propertied classes are staking everything on the line, that is why this is for them the last and decisive battles, and they will not stop at any crime simply to break Soviet power. Does not the entire history of socialism, French socialism in particular, which is so rich in revolutionary aspirations, show us that when the toiling masses themselves take power into their hands, the ruling classes resort to unprecedented crimes and massacres when it is a matter of protecting their own money bags? And when these people speak to us of civil war, we answer them with a sneer; but when they carry their slogan to the youth, we say to them – you are deceiving them!

Class struggle did not accidentally come to its final form when the class of the exploited takes into its hands all the means of power in order to finally destroy its class enemy – the bourgeoisie, sweep from the face of Russian soil not only officials but landowners, as Russian peasants have swept them away in some provinces.

We are told that the sabotage which the Council of People's Commissars encountered from officials and landowners proves their unwillingness to move toward socialism. As though it were not clear that this entire gang of capitalists and scoundrels, lumpenproletarians and saboteurs, represents a single gang, bribed by the bourgeoisie, resisting the power of the toilers. Of course, those who thought one could leap directly from capitalism to socialism, or who imagined it possible to convince the majority of the population that this could be achieved through the Constituent Assembly, those who believed in this bourgeois-democratic fairy tale – let them calmly continue to believe in this fairy tale, but let them not blame life if life shatters this fairy tale.

Those who understand what class struggle is, what the sabotage means that officials organized – they know that we cannot leap directly to socialism. The bourgeois and capitalists remained, who harbor hope of returning their rule and are defending their money bags; the lumpenproletariat remained, a layer of bribed people, utterly crushed by capitalism and unable to rise to the idea of proletarian struggle. Officials and functionaries remained, who think that the protection of the old order is in society's interests. How can one imagine the victory of socialism otherwise than through the complete collapse of these strata, otherwise than through the complete destruction of the bourgeoisie, Russian and European? Do we not think that the Ryabushinskys do not understand their class interests? It is they who pay saboteurs so they will not work. Or do they act separately? Do they not act together with French, English, and American capitalists, buying up securities? Let us just see how much these purchases will help them. And will not the mountains of securities they are now obtaining turn out to be the emptiest, good-for-nothing, old paper?

That is why, comrades, to all accusations and charges against us of terror, dictatorship, civil war – though we have as yet far from reached real terror, because we are stronger than they, we have Soviets, it will be enough for us to nationalize banks and confiscate property in order to bring them to obedience – to all accusations of civil war we say: yes, we openly proclaimed what no government could proclaim. The first government in the world that can speak openly of civil war is the government of workers, peasants, and soldiers. Yes, we began and are waging war against the exploiters. The more directly we say this, the sooner this war will end, the sooner all the toiling and exploited masses will understand us, will understand that Soviet power is doing the true, vital work of all the toilers.

I do not think, comrades, that we shall soon achieve victory in this struggle, but we are very rich in experience: in the course of two months we have achieved much. We experienced an attempt by Kerensky to advance against Soviet power and the complete collapse of this attempt; we experienced the organization of the power of Ukrainian Kerenskys – there the struggle has not yet ended, but for anyone who observes it, who has heard even a few truthful reports from representatives of Soviet power, it is clear that the bourgeois elements of the Ukrainian Rada are living their last days. (Applause.) In the victory of Soviet power of the Ukrainian People's Republic over the Ukrainian bourgeois Rada there is not the slightest possibility for doubt.

And the struggle with Kaledin – here everything really rests on the basis of the exploitation of the toilers, on the basis of bourgeois dictatorship – if there are any social foundations against Soviet power. The peasant congress showed before all eyes that Kaledin's cause is a hopeless cause, the toiling masses are against him. The experience of Soviet power, propaganda through deeds, through the example of soviet organizations is having its effect, and Kaledin's internal support on the Don is now falling not so much from without as from within.

That is why, looking at the front of civil war in Russia, we can say with complete confidence: here the victory of Soviet power is complete and absolutely assured. And this victory of Soviet power, comrades, is achieved by the fact that from the very beginning it began to realize the age-old legacy of socialism, consistently and decisively relying on the masses, making its task to awaken to living life and raise to socialist creativity the most oppressed, downtrodden strata of society. That is why the old army, the army of barracks drill, torture of soldiers, has become a thing of the past. It has been sent to be demolished, and not a stone of it remains upon a stone. (Applause.) Complete democratization of the army has been carried out.

I will permit myself to recount an incident that happened to me. It was in a railway car on the Finland Railway, where I happened to overhear a conversation between several Finns and an old woman. I could not participate in the conversation because I did not know Finnish, but one Finn addressed me and said: "Do you know what an original thing this old woman said? She said: now one need not be afraid of a man with a gun. When I was in the forest, I met a man with a gun, and instead of taking my firewood from me, he even gave me more."

When I heard this, I said to myself: let hundreds of newspapers, whatever they call themselves – socialist, quasi-socialist, and so forth – let hundreds of extremely loud voices cry out at us: "dictators," "tyrants," and such words. We know that a different voice is rising now among the people; they say to themselves: now one need not be afraid of a man with a gun, because he is defending the toilers and will be merciless in suppressing the rule of the exploiters. (Applause.) That is what the people felt, and that is why that agitation conducted by simple, uneducated people, when they tell of how the Red Guards direct all their might against the exploiters – this agitation is invincible. It will reach millions and tens of millions and firmly create what the Paris Commune of the nineteenth century began to create but created only for a short interval, because it was smashed by the bourgeoisie – it will create a socialist Red Army, which all socialists have striven for – the universal arming of the people. It will create new cadres of Red Guard, which will make possible the education of the toiling masses in armed struggle.

If it was said about Russia that it cannot fight because it will not have officers, then we must not forget what these same bourgeois officers themselves said, observing the workers fighting against Kerensky and Kaledin: "Yes, these Red Guards are technically worthless, but if these people were to study a bit, they would have an invincible army." Because for the first time in the history of world struggle, there entered the army elements that carry with them not official knowledge, but who are guided by ideas of struggle for the liberation of the exploited. And when the work we have begun is finished, the Russian Soviet Republic will be invincible. (Applause.)

Comrades, the path that Soviet power has traveled with respect to the socialist army, it has also taken with respect to another instrument of the ruling classes, even more refined, even more complex – the bourgeois court, which presented itself as the defender of order but was in fact a blind, crude instrument of the ruthless suppression of the exploited, defending the interests of the money bag. Soviet power acted as all proletarian revolutions have bequeathed one should act – it sent it immediately to be demolished. Let them cry out that we, without reforming the old court, immediately sent it to demolition. By doing so we cleared the road for a real people's court and, not so much through the force of repression as through the example of the masses, the authority of the toilers, without formalities, transformed the court from an instrument of exploitation into an instrument of education on the firm foundations of socialist society. There is no doubt that we cannot immediately obtain such a society in full.

These are the main steps that Soviet power has taken, following the path indicated by all the experience of the greatest popular revolutions in the world. There has not been a single revolution in which the toiling masses did not begin to take steps along this path to create a new state power. Unfortunately, they only began but could not see things through to completion; they could not create a new type of state power. We have created it – we have already realized a socialist republic of Soviets.

I am not laboring under any illusion that we have begun only a transitional period toward socialism, that we have not yet reached socialism. But you will be correct if you say that our state is a socialist republic of Soviets. You will be equally correct as those who call many of the bourgeois republics of the West democratic, even though everyone and each knows that there is not a single one of the most democratic republics that is fully democratic. They grant bits of democracy, whittle away rights of the exploiters on trifles, but the toiling masses in them are oppressed just as everywhere. And nonetheless, we say that the bourgeois order represents both the old monarchies and constitutional republics.

So too with us now. We are far from having even completed the transitional period from capitalism to socialism. We never deluded ourselves with the hope that we could finish it without the help of the international proletariat. We never labored under any illusion on this score and know how difficult the road is that leads from capitalism to socialism, but we are obliged to say that our Soviet republic is socialist because we have embarked upon this path, and these words will not be empty words.

We have begun many measures that undermine the rule of capitalists. We know that the activity of all institutions our power must unite with one principle, and this principle we express in the words: "Russia is proclaimed a socialist republic of Soviets." (Applause.) This will be that truth which rests on what we must and have already begun to do, this will be the best unification of all our activity, the proclamation of its program, an appeal to the toilers and exploited in all countries, who either do not know at all what socialism is, or – still worse – understand by socialism that Chkheidze-Tsereteli mush of bourgeois reforms, which we tried and tested in the course of ten months of revolution and convinced ourselves that this is a counterfeit, not socialism.

And that is why the "free" England and France used all means in the course of ten months of our revolution not to let through a single issue of newspapers of the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries. They had to act that way because they saw before them in all countries a mass of workers and peasants who instinctively grasped everything that was being done by Russian workers. There was not a single meeting where news of the Russian revolution and the slogan of Soviet power was not met with thunderous applause. The toiling and exploited masses everywhere have already come into contradiction with their party leaderships. This old leadership-oriented socialism has not yet been buried like Chkheidze and Tsereteli in our Russia, but it is already dead in all countries of the world, it is already a corpse.

And against this old bourgeois order stands a new state – the republic of Soviets, the republic of toilers, of exploited classes, breaking down the old bourgeois partitions. New forms of state have been created, at which the possibility appeared of suppressing the exploiters, of suppressing the resistance of this tiny handful, powerful yesterday with their money bags, yesterday's store of knowledge. They transform their knowledge – professors, teachers, engineers – into an instrument of the exploitation of the toilers, saying: I want my knowledge to serve the bourgeoisie, otherwise I will not work. But their power has been violated by the workers' and peasants' revolution, and against them there arises a state in which the masses themselves freely choose their representatives.

Precisely now we can say that we have in reality such an organization of power that clearly shows the transition to the complete abolition of all power, all state. This will be possible when there is not a trace of exploitation left, that is, in socialist society.

I will now briefly touch on those measures that the socialist Soviet government of Russia has begun to realize. One of the first measures directed toward not only eliminating landowners from the face of Russian soil but also at the root undermining the rule of the bourgeoisie and the possibility of capital's oppression of millions and tens of millions of toilers, was the transition to the nationalization of banks. Banks are the large centers of modern capitalist economy. Here unprecedented wealth is gathered and distributed throughout the vast country; here is the nerve of all capitalist life. These are refined and complex organs, they have grown up over centuries, and they were the first to come under the blows of Soviet power, which encountered at first desperate resistance in the State Bank. But this resistance did not stop Soviet power. We succeeded in establishing the main thing in the organization of the State Bank – this main thing is in the hands of workers and peasants, and from these primary measures, which will still have to be worked out for a long time, we moved on to laying hands on the private banks.

We did not act as compromisers would probably have recommended: first wait for the Constituent Assembly, perhaps then work out a bill and submit it to the Constituent Assembly and thereby inform the gentlemen bourgeois of our intention so they could find a loophole to escape this unpleasant thing; perhaps attract them into partnership, then you would create a state law – that would be a "state act."

That would have been the abolition of socialism. We acted simply: not fearing to provoke the objections of "educated" people or, rather, uneducated supporters of the bourgeoisie, trading in the remnants of their knowledge, we said: we have armed workers and peasants. This morning they must occupy all the private banks. (Applause.) And after they do this, when power is already in our hands, only then will we discuss what measures we should take. And in the morning the banks were occupied, and in the evening the Central Executive Committee issued a resolution: "banks are declared national property" – there occurred a transformation into state property, a collectivization of banking, the transfer of it to the hands of Soviet power.

Not one person from our midst imagined that such a skillfully crafted, refined apparatus of banking, developed for centuries from the capitalist economic system, could be smashed or reworked in a matter of days. We never claimed this. And when learned or supposedly learned people nodded their heads and prophesied, we said: you can prophesy whatever you like. We know only one path of proletarian revolution: seize the enemy's position – learn to wield power through experience, through our own mistakes. We in no way diminish the difficulty of our path, but we have already done the main thing. The source of capitalist wealth in its distribution has been undermined. The annulment of state loans, the overthrow of the financial yoke was quite an easy step after this. The transition to the confiscation of factories after workers' control was also quite easy. When we were accused of smashing production into separate shops by introducing workers' control, we dismissed this nonsense. In introducing workers' control, we knew that it would take a long time before it would spread throughout Russia, but we wanted to show that we recognize only one path – transformations from below, so that workers themselves would develop from below new foundations of economic conditions. The development of this will take considerable time.

From workers' control we moved to the creation of the Supreme Council of the People's Economy. Only this measure, together with the nationalization of banks and railways, which will be carried out in the nearest days, will give us the opportunity to undertake the construction of a new socialist economy. We well know the difficulty of our task, but we affirm that in deed a socialist is only one who takes on this task, relying on the experience and instinct of the toiling masses. They will make many mistakes, but the main thing has been done. They know that, turning to Soviet power, they will meet only support against the exploiters. There is not a single measure making their work easier that has not been wholly and completely supported by Soviet power. Soviet power does not know everything and cannot keep pace with everything in time, and continually it finds itself faced with difficult tasks. Very often delegations of workers and peasants are sent to the government asking how they should proceed, for example, with such and such land. And I myself have often found myself in a difficult position when I saw not entirely clear views on their part. And I told them: you are the power, do everything you want to do, take everything you need, we will support you, but take care of production, take care that production is useful. Switch to useful work, you will make mistakes, but you will learn. And workers have already begun to learn, they have already begun the struggle against saboteurs. People from the educated classes made a fence blocking the toilers from moving forward; this fence will be swept away.

There is no doubt that war corrupts people both in the rear and at the front, overpaying those working for war beyond all norms, drawing in everyone who has hidden from war, lumpenproletarian and semi-lumpenproletarian elements, imbued with one desire to "grab" and escape. But these elements, the worst that remains from the old capitalist order, which carry with them all its old vices, we must cast out, remove, include in factory and plant enterprises all the best proletarian elements and from them create cells of the future socialist Russia. This measure is not an easy one, it entails many conflicts, frictions, and collisions. And we in the Council of People's Commissars, and I personally, have had to encounter their complaints and threats, but we treated them calmly, knowing that we now have a judge to whom we appeal. This judge is the Soviets of workers' and soldiers' deputies. (Applause.) The verdict of this judge is incontestable; on it we always rely.

Capitalism deliberately stratifies workers in order to unite with the bourgeoisie a tiny handful of the tops of the working class – collisions with them will be inevitable. Without struggle we shall not reach socialism. But we are ready for struggle, we have begun it, and we will bring it to an end with the help of the apparatus called Soviets. If we will submit the conflicts that arise to the judgment of the Soviet of workers' and soldiers' deputies, then any question will be resolved easily. Because no matter how strong the group of privileged workers is, yet when they are confronted with the representation of all workers, such a judge, I repeat, will be incontestable to them. Such regulation is only just beginning. Workers and peasants still insufficiently believe in their own strength; they have been too accustomed, by force of centuries-old tradition, to wait for direction from above. They have not yet fully grasped that the proletariat is the ruling class; among them there are still elements that are frightened, oppressed, who imagine they must go through the vile school of the bourgeoisie. This vilest of bourgeois prejudices has persisted the longest, but it is dying and it will perish completely. And we are convinced that with each step of Soviet power there will be separated out ever greater and greater numbers of people, completely freed from the old bourgeois prejudice that a simple worker and peasant cannot govern the state. He can and will learn, if he takes to governing! (Applause.)

The organizational task will be that of singling out from the people's masses leaders and organizers. This enormous, gigantic work now stands on the order of the day. It would be impossible even to think of accomplishing it were there no Soviet power – that filtering apparatus which can bring forward people.

We have not only a state law on control, we have something even more valuable – the attempts of the proletariat to enter into agreements with unions of manufacturers to ensure workers' management of entire branches of industry. Such an agreement is already being worked out and almost concluded by the tanners with the all-Russian society of manufacturers and factory owners of the tanning industry, and I attach special importance to such agreements. They show that among workers consciousness of their own strength is growing.

Comrades, in my report I have not especially touched on the painful and difficult questions – the questions of peace, of food – because these questions are listed as separate items on the agenda and will be discussed specially.

I set myself the aim in my brief report to show how it appears to me and to the entire Council of People's Commissars as a whole the history of what we have experienced over these two and a half months, how the correlation of class forces has formed in this new period of the Russian revolution, how the new state power has been formed, what social tasks are set before it.

Russia has embarked on the correct path toward the realization of socialism – through the nationalization of banks, the transfer of all land completely into the hands of the toiling masses. We know well what difficulties lie before us, but we are convinced, from comparison with past revolutions, that we will achieve gigantic successes and that we stand upon such a path as ensures complete victory.

And alongside us will go the masses of the more advanced countries, divided by the predatory war, workers of whom have undergone a longer school of democratization. When we are shown the difficulty of our task, when we are told that the victory of socialism is possible only on a world scale, we see in this only an attempt, especially futile, by the bourgeoisie and its willing and unwilling supporters to distort the most incontestable truth. Of course, the final victory of socialism in one country is impossible. Our unit of workers and peasants supporting Soviet power is one of the units of that world army which is now fragmented by the world war, but it strives toward unification, and every piece of news, every scrap of a report about our revolution, every mention of the proletariat is met with thunder of sympathetic applause, because they know that in Russia their common cause is being done – the cause of the uprising of the proletariat, the international socialist revolution. More than any proclamations and conferences, the living example acts, the undertaking of the work somewhere in one country, that is what ignites the toiling masses in all countries.

If the October strike of 1905 – these first steps of the victorious revolution – immediately spread to Western Europe and then, in 1905, called forth the movement of Austrian workers, if even then we saw in practice what the example of revolution is worth, the uprising of workers in one country – then now we see that in all countries of the world the socialist revolution is ripening not by the day but by the hour.

If we make mistakes, blunders, if we encounter friction on our path, this is not what is important for them, what is important to them is our example, that is what unites them; they say: we will go together and conquer, no matter what. (Applause.)

The great founders of socialism, Marx and Engels, observing over a series of decades the development of the working movement and the growth of the world socialist revolution, clearly saw that the transition from capitalism to socialism would require the long pangs of childbirth, a long period of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the smashing of all the old, the ruthless destruction of all forms of capitalism, the cooperation of workers of all countries, who must merge all their efforts to ensure victory to the end. And they said that at the end of the nineteenth century it would be such that "the Frenchman would begin and the German would finish" – the Frenchman would begin because over decades of revolution he had developed in himself that selfless initiative in revolutionary action which made him the vanguard of the socialist revolution.

We see now a different combination of forces of international socialism. We say that it is easier for the movement to begin in those countries that do not belong to the number of exploiting countries, which have the opportunity to plunder more easily and which can bribe the tops of their workers. Those supposedly socialist, almost all ministerial, Chkheidze-Tsereteli parties of Western Europe accomplish nothing and have no firm foundations. We have seen the example of Italy, we have observed these days the heroic struggle of Austrian workers against the predatory imperialists. Let even the predators succeed in stopping the movement for a time, but they cannot stop it altogether – it is invincible.

The example of the Soviet republic will stand before them for a long time. Our socialist republic of Soviets will stand firm as a beacon of international socialism and as an example before all toiling masses. There – fighting, war, bloodshed, the sacrifice of millions of people, exploitation by capital; here – true peace policy and a socialist republic of Soviets.

Things have developed differently than Marx and Engels expected; they gave us, Russian toilers and exploited classes, the honorable role of the vanguard of the international socialist revolution, and now we clearly see how the development of the revolution will proceed; the Russian has begun – the German, Frenchman, Englishman will finish, and socialism will triumph. (Applause.)