Comrades, I regret that I am unable to present you with a well-organized report, and I hope that those of you who are interested in a more detailed account of the state of affairs have been able to form for yourselves a complete and accurate picture—partly from newspaper accounts and partly from personal impressions at the Congress of Soviets—of the present condition of Soviet power, its relationship to other institutions, and the tasks that confront it. Allow me therefore to limit myself to a few brief supplementary remarks. In order to characterize the tasks and position of Soviet power, I must dwell on the relationship in which it stands to the organization of the railroad proletariat, the railroad workers.

Comrades, you know that Soviet power has come into conflict with the Constituent Assembly, and that all the propertied classes—the landowners, the bourgeoisie, the Kaledinites and their supporters—are now heaping reproaches upon us for the fact that Soviet power dissolved the Constituent Assembly. But the louder these reproaches resound from the pages of the few bourgeois newspapers, the louder also resounds the voice of the workers, soldiers, laborers, and the exploited. The peasants declare that they never doubted that Soviet power stands above all other power, and that they will never surrender to anyone, to any institution, the Soviets which they themselves have chosen, created, controlled, and verified. Soviet power came into conflict with the Constituent Assembly primarily because, as you all know, the election to the Constituent Assembly took place on the basis of lists drawn up before the October Revolution. The Constituent Assembly was elected on the basis of universal, direct, equal, and secret suffrage with proportional representation. This system of elections is the most perfect system of elections, but it can give a correct expression of the will of the people only under one condition—namely, if those parties which under this system alone have the right and opportunity to draw up lists truly correspond to the sentiments, wishes, interests, and will of the population groups that elect them. For under a different system of elections, when individual constituencies elect their own separate candidates or deputies, it is easy for the people to correct their mistakes immediately, taking into account their changed sentiments or political developments. But under the system of proportional representation, a party as a whole must draw up its party lists long before the elections take place. Thus it happened that for the Constituent Assembly, which was supposed to convene on November 12, the parties had to draw up their lists as early as September and early October. As you all remember, a deadline was established by law. Within this deadline all parties had to submit their candidates according to the lists, and after this time, changes to the lists were impossible. Thus it came about that the largest party in Russia—the one which was undoubtedly the largest party in the summer and autumn, namely the Socialist Revolutionary Party—had to submit its lists in the name of the entire Socialist Revolutionary Party by early October 1917. And so it did. The lists turned out to be submitted in early October, and they contained the candidates of the Socialist Revolutionary Party as though such a party as a unified whole existed. It turned out that after the lists were drawn up, after the Russian workers and peasants, beginning with the revolution and creating their Soviets, had traveled a long, difficult, and painful path, there came an end to conciliation with Kerensky. The latter, after all, was also considered a Socialist Revolutionary—seemingly a socialist and seemingly a revolutionary—but in reality represented an imperialist who hid secret treaties in his pocket, treaties with French and English imperialists, the very same treaties that had been concluded by the tsar overthrown in February, the very same treaties that condemned the Russian people to slaughter—all for the sake of whether Russian capitalists might seize Constantinople, the Dardanelles, Armenia, or a piece of Galicia. And those among them who were especially carried away, like the famous Milyukov, had even drawn up maps in advance, according to which a piece of East Prussia was also supposed to be detached and given as a reward to the Russian people for the blood spilled by millions of workers and soldiers. That was what Kerensky's Russian bourgeois-imperialist republic essentially was—he continued to be considered and remained a genuine member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party.

At the end of October, the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies convened, when the people were already tired of this conciliation with imperialists, when the offensive that took place in June cost us hundreds of thousands of victims and clearly demonstrated why the war was dragging on, how these secret treaties condemned soldiers to slaughter, how words about peace remained merely words. Therefore, the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets overthrew this power of the bourgeois-imperialist government and established Soviet power. It happened that the elections to the Constituent Assembly took place on November 12; they placed the workers, soldiers, and especially the peasants in a position where they had to vote according to old lists—there were no other lists and none could be drawn up. And so now, when we are told: "You dispersed the Constituent Assembly, which represents the will of the majority of the people," when this is repeated by bourgeois scribblers and newspapers in various ways, like such self-styled socialists as Kerensky, we reply to them: "Why can you not tell the people a single straightforward word in response to the argument which I have just laid before you and which was set forth in the decree on the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly?" We cannot consider the Constituent Assembly an expression of the will of the people because it was elected according to old lists. Workers and especially peasants voted for the Socialist Revolutionary Party as an entire party, but this party split after the elections, and therefore after the elections the party revealed itself to the people as two parties—the Right Socialist Revolutionaries, who sided with the bourgeoisie, and the party of Left Socialist Revolutionaries, which sided with the working class, with the laborers, and proved to be a supporter of socialism. Could the people choose between Right and Left Socialist Revolutionaries when there was a Constituent Assembly? They could not, and therefore even from the standpoint of list-making and elections, from this formal point of view, we say that no one can refute us in asserting that the Constituent Assembly could not give a correct expression of the will of the people. The Revolution is not to blame for the fact that it came after the lists were drawn up and before the elections to the Constituent Assembly. The Revolution is not to blame for the fact that the people, and especially the peasantry, were kept in darkness for so long and deceived with phrases by the Socialist Revolutionary Party—that only after October 25, when the Second Congress of Peasants convened, did we see that there could be no reconciliation between Right and Left Socialist Revolutionaries. After this, there began a series of congresses—of soldiers and of peasants—and it concluded with the railroad congress.

And everywhere we saw the same picture—everywhere, on the one hand, an enormous majority of those who truly belong to the laborers and exploited came out wholly, unconditionally, and irrevocably on the side of Soviet power, while on the other hand, the bourgeois upper crust, functionaries, administrators, wealthy peasants—they all took the side of the propertied classes, the side of the bourgeoisie, and raised the slogan: "All power to the Constituent Assembly"—that same assembly which before the revolution was elected, and in choosing which the people did not know how to distinguish Right Socialist Revolutionaries from Left. No, the revolution of the laboring classes stands above old lists; the interests of the laborers and exploited, who before the revolution were oppressed, must come to the fore. And if the Constituent Assembly goes against the will of Soviet power, against the will of the indisputable majority of laborers, then for this reason—down with the Constituent Assembly and long live Soviet power! (Applause.) And now, comrades, we become more and more convinced with each passing day that Soviet power receives ever greater and greater support from the poor, laborers, and exploited in all branches of the national economy and throughout the country. And no matter how much the bourgeois newspapers and, so to speak, socialist newspapers—like the newspapers of the Right Socialist Revolutionaries, the party of Kerensky—slander us, no matter how much they claim that our power goes against the people, does not rely on the people—this is an obvious falsehood. Today we have received particularly striking confirmation of this. We received a report from the Don (in a night telegram) about how a congress of some of the Cossacks assembled in Voronezh and a congress of twenty Cossack regiments and five artillery batteries assembled in the stanitsa of Kamenskaya. The front-line Cossackry convened their congress because they see that around the Kaledinites are gathering officers, junior officers, and the sons of landowners who are discontented with the fact that power in Russia is passing to the Soviets and who would wish that the Don should go its own way. There a party of Kaledin, calling himself the first ataman, is being formed. This congress of front-line Cossackry had to be dispersed. In response to this they joined with the Voronezh congress—first; declared war on Kaledin—second; arrested the atamans—third; and occupied all the main stations—fourth.

Let the gentlemen Ryabushinsky, who sent millions there and here provided millions so that saboteurs would receive their wages and obstruct Soviet power, let the gentlemen Ryabushinsky now lament and bewail their fate together with the capitalist gentlemen of France and England and the Romanian king: their final bet has been lost, even on the Don, where there are the most prosperous peasants, those living by hiring out labor, those exploiting others' labor, those placed in constant struggle with the newly arrived peasant population brought there from afar by poverty. Even there, where there is the most exploiting peasantry, even there people rose up against this organization of junior officers, officers, and proprietors who decided to march against Soviet power. Even there we discovered that very same division which no one wishes to see and of which we are accused. "The Bolsheviks are declaring civil war." Perhaps we invented Kaledin? Perhaps the Bolsheviks invented Ryabushinsky? But we know that even under the tsar these people were the main support of tsarist power; they merely concealed themselves in order to turn the Russian republic into the same kind of bourgeois republic that exists in most countries, where despite all freedom and electibility, the laboring people are oppressed just as much, if not more, than in any monarchy. When they say that the Bolsheviks are kindling fratricidal war, civil war, when they send curses for the criminal fratricidal civil war provoked by the Bolsheviks, we reply to them: "What kind of fratricidal war is this? Are the Ryabushinskys and Kaledinites brothers to the laborers? It is strange that neither sailors nor soldiers nor workers nor peasants know this. It is strange that they have not noticed it. It is strange that they so firmly say—let the Ryabushinskys and Kaledinites obey Soviet power."

The mad and senseless attempt of junior officers and officers to organize an uprising in Petrograd and Moscow came to nothing because an enormous majority of workers and soldiers unconditionally support Soviet power. They knew that in starting a war, soldiers arm themselves and will not surrender their weapons to anyone. The people have united and organized in order to take their own fate into their own hands independently—this is why they began the revolution. And they saw very clearly and knew that here, in Petrograd, the people are wholly on the side of Soviet power. And when they were defeated both in Petrograd and in Moscow, they rushed to the Don in order to concoct a conspiracy there, and in this conspiracy of counter-revolution against the laboring masses, they hoped to rely on the bourgeois Kyiv Rada, which is living out its final days because it has lost all trust. When they everywhere declared civil war against the laborers, then we began to be reproached for having started the war. They say: you are kindling civil war; let civil war perish. We reply: Let the Ryabushinskys and Kaledinites and all their accomplices perish. (Applause.)

This is why, comrades, when the bourgeoisie raise such a grave accusation and assert that we are destroying democracy, that we have shattered the faith in democratic forms, in democratic institutions which are so precious and which for so long sustained and nourished the revolutionary movement in Russia, that we have broken the highest democratic form—the Constituent Assembly—we reply: No, this is false. When we had the republic of the socialist Kerensky, the republic of imperialist leaders, leaders of the bourgeoisie with secret treaties in their pockets, driving soldiers to war (called a just war)—of course, then the Constituent Assembly would be better than the Pre-Parliament, in which Kerensky, in agreement with Chernov and Tsereteli, pursued the same policy. From the very beginning of the revolution—from April 1917—we said openly and directly that Soviets are a far higher, far more perfect, far more expedient form of democracy, democracy of the laborers, than the Constituent Assembly. The Constituent Assembly unites all classes, which means it includes the exploiting classes, the propertied classes, the bourgeoisie, and those who received their education at the people's expense, at the expense of the exploited, who separated themselves from the people in order to join the capitalists, in order to turn their knowledge into a weapon of oppression of the people. For they use their knowledge, the highest achievements of knowledge, in the struggle against laborers. But we say: when revolution begins—it is the revolution of laborers and exploited—and only the organizations of laborers, only the organizations of exploited belong all power in the state. This democracy is incomparably higher than the old democracy. The Soviets were not invented by any party. You know very well that there was no party that could have invented them. They were called to life by the revolution of 1905. Even then, though the Soviets existed only minimally, it was already clear that the only solid support of the people's struggle against autocracy was the Soviets. As soon as the Soviets came into decline and were replaced by all-national representative institutions, we saw in these institutions, in all the Dumas, congresses, and assemblies—Cadets appeared, capitalists, exploiters, began conciliation with the tsar, and the organs of popular movement declined and the revolution perished. Therefore, when the revolution of 1917 not only revived the Soviets but covered the entire country with a network of them, they taught workers, soldiers, and peasants that they can and must take all power into their own hands in the state—not as in bourgeois parliaments, where each citizen has equal rights with other citizens. The fact that a worker proclaims his equality with Ryabushinsky, and a peasant considers himself equal to a landowner with twelve thousand desyatinas of land, will not make life sweet for the poor. Therefore, the best democratic form, the best democratic republic—is power without landowners and the wealthy.

The Russian people, owing to the fact that we have war, unprecedented devastation, famine, and the danger of the physical annihilation of millions of people, have gone through everything in experience and arrived at a decision within a few months. In April, when the wounded Linde led soldiers into the streets of Petrograd in order to overthrow the government of Milyukov and Guchkov, and after a long period of ministerial musical chairs, when all parties vied with the Cadets and produced programs each more beautiful, enticing, and grandiose than the last, the people became convinced that nothing was working out—they were promised peace but in reality were led into an offensive. In June 1917, tens of thousands of soldiers perished because there was a secret treaty of the tsar with European imperialists, which Kerensky confirmed. Through this experience, through their own experience, not through propaganda, the people compared the socialist power of Soviets with the bourgeois republic and concluded that old reforms and old institutions of bourgeois imperialism do not serve the interests of laborers and the exploited. Only the power of Soviets serves this purpose—Soviets in which people freely choose their representatives, as workers, as soldiers, as peasants, as railroad workers, as all laborers, and freely recall their deputies who do not satisfy the requirements and wishes of the people. In the Soviets people are not present in order to debate laws, to shine with parliamentary speeches, but in order to achieve freedom and cast off the yoke of exploitation. The workers themselves will build a state on new foundations, will construct a new life for the new Russia, in which exploiters will have no place. This is what created the Soviets. This is why we said that the experience of the Russian Revolution has shown people and confirmed what we have long indicated—that Soviet power is a far higher form of democracy than bourgeois republics, those that have taken shape in Western European states. True democracy—laborers, workers can and must rule over non-laborers, over the exploiting component of society. Workers, soldiers, peasants, and railroad workers can themselves be masters, can carry out exchange of products between cities and villages, can establish just wages without landowners and capitalists.

This is why the Soviet Republic of Russia has now taken shape as truly a socialist republic, which has taken land from the landowners, established workers' control in factories and plants, laid hands on the banks—the hands of workers, of socialist organizations—opening to the people the possibility of managing those unprecedented riches which capitalists have accumulated and gathered, so that they are directed not toward the oppression of laborers but toward improving the welfare and increasing the culture of all laborers. This is what the Soviet Republic is called upon to accomplish. This is why laborers and the laboring classes abroad sympathize with us so much, despite military censorship of the kings, despite the persecution by foreign Kerensky's of socialist newspapers. The bourgeois newspapers there shamelessly lie about our country; our newspapers face persecution—not a single issue of *Pravda* is allowed through. But just recently my comrade returned from Switzerland, where he was, where I myself recently had to suffer so long, and he said that in free Switzerland people do not know one fact—that the free republics of free Europe do not let through a single issue of our newspaper, that there they read only solid lies from bourgeois newspapers, which know only how to abuse the Bolsheviks. But despite this, in all countries workers have understood that Soviet power in Russia is truly a government of laborers. And there is no worker in contemporary Europe—not in England, not in France, not in Germany, not in other countries—who does not greet with applause the news of the Russian Revolution, because in it they see hope, because in it burns the torch which will set fire across all Europe.

If the Russian Revolution happened so smoothly, it is only because the most savage oppression of tsarism hung over Russia and no country has been so tortured and tormented by war as Russia.

If the Russian people have been the first to raise the torch of socialist revolution, they know that they are not alone in this struggle and that with the help of their most faithful comrades and friends they will complete this task. Perhaps much time will pass—we do not know how much time will pass—before the socialist revolution spreads to other countries as well. You know how revolutions occur in general in other states. And each of you has lived through 1917 and knows that three months before the revolution began, no one knew it would come. We know that strikes are already beginning to spread to Austria. When the European parties, led by their Chernovs and Tsereteli, began to lose all influence on the course of events, when they began to feel completely cut off, then they began to speak of introducing martial law, and in Germany of introducing military dictatorship. Now the strikes in Vienna have been halted and newspapers have begun to appear. I received a telegram from Stockholm from our representative Vorovskii, in which he says that there is no doubt that the movement has halted, but all the same they have not succeeded in completely crushing it, and it will rise again. This is one consequence of the fact that peace negotiations in Brest were begun, and we fulfilled the promise we had made. Secret treaties have been terminated, published, and put on display before you in shame. We showed that these obligations of the old capitalists, whether they are called secret treaties or loans, are now for us a scrap of paper and have been discarded, because they prevent us, the laboring masses, from building a socialist society. When the Germans at Brest came forward with their shameless demands—promising in words to recognize a just peace while in fact revealing the same interests of bandits and brigands—the laboring masses are beginning to understand this. This prolongation is artificial; it is clear to the masses. They say that it is possible to interrupt the continuation of war, once the Russian workers and peasants have interrupted it, that it is possible to pressure governments. If in 1905, on October 17, the great first all-people's strike was suppressed by autocracy, it nevertheless provoked in Austria, in Vienna and Prague, a series of events, workers' demonstrations, and then the Austrians won their universal suffrage. The Russian Revolution of 1905 was suppressed by tsarism, but it made Western European workers believe in great future reforms—that is, in what is happening now.

You all observed, at the opening of the Third Congress of Soviets, a whole series of representatives of foreign parties who said they had observed the workers' movement in England, Switzerland, and America. They spoke with one voice: the socialist revolution in Europe is becoming the order of the day. There the bourgeoisie is stronger and more clever than our Kerensky; it has managed to organize itself so that it is harder for the masses to rise. There workers possess a certain prosperity, and therefore it is harder to break through the old socialist parties, which have held power for decades, have entered the government, and have acquired authority in the eyes of the people. But such authority is already being lost. The masses are seething, and there is no doubt that in the near future, perhaps a distant future, the socialist revolution is on the agenda of the day in all countries, since the oppression of capital has come to an end.

If we are told that the Bolsheviks have invented some kind of utopian thing, such as the introduction of socialism in Russia, that this is an impossible matter, we reply to this: How could the sympathy of the majority of workers, peasants, and soldiers be attracted to the side of utopians and dreamers? Is it not because the majority of workers, peasants, and soldiers came to our side—because they saw from their own experience the results of war and that there is no way out of the old society, and that capitalists, with all the marvels of technology and culture, have entered into a war of extermination, that people have descended into brutality, savagery, and hunger? This is what capitalists have done, and this is why the question arises before us: either perish or break down this old bourgeois society to the very end. This constitutes the depth of our revolution. This is why we see that in little neighboring Estonia, where the people are literate, a congress of agricultural laborers has recently assembled, elected delegates, who have taken all the cultivated farms into their own hands. This is a worldwide upheaval. Agricultural laborers, who in capitalist economy stood at the very bottom of the social ladder, are putting them on account. Then in Finland, where the Diet spoke in the name of the nation, where the bourgeoisie demanded of us recognition of independence—we will not forcibly hold in the hands of Russia or in the Russian state all the nations which tsarism held down with oppression. We calculated that we would attract other nations—Ukraine, Finland—not by violence, not by imposition, but by the fact that they would create their own socialist world, their own Soviet republics. We now see that in Finland a workers' revolution is expected any day. In that Finland which for twelve years, since 1905, already enjoyed full internal freedom and had the suffrage of democratic institutions. From 1905–1917, in this country, which is distinguished by its culture, its economic structure, and its past, sparks of that fire which supposedly the Bolsheviks artificially fanned have fallen, and there, we see, the socialist revolution is beginning. This phenomenon proves that we are not blinded by party struggle, that we acted not according to a plan, but only the hopeless situation of all humanity after the war created this revolution and made the socialist revolution invincible.

Comrades, allow me to conclude by pointing out that the same thing has happened at your railroad congress. We saw with what difficulty the struggle was waged against your upper echelons of railroad organizations. You, railroad workers, have yourselves become convinced through experience that the mass of laboring railroad proletariat has borne the burden of organizing railroad affairs on its own shoulders. This matter did not arrive at this hopeless situation artificially or accidentally. It was either consciously obstructed by the hands of the bourgeoisie, bribed by millionaires who were throwing hundreds of thousands of rubles and were prepared to do everything to destroy Soviet power, or because the bourgeoisie refused to change the order of affairs, considering that God had ordained it this way—that there should be bosses and poor people who worked for them, and that the bosses should mock them. In fact, administrators thought that this is truly how God ordained it and that no other order could exist, and that if you tried to violate this order, chaos would result. But this is not so. The unity of the laboring masses stands above all; they will be able to create their own comradely discipline and will be able to make use of all the achievements of technology and culture in order to properly organize railroad affairs and the exchange of products between cities and villages, to help workers and peasants organize the national economy on an all-Russian scale, so that without landowners and capitalists, the laboring masses could enjoy the products of their own labor, so that scientific-technical knowledge serves not for the enrichment of a handful of people, not for the creation of a fat purse, but serves to improve the life of the entire railroad economy. This is especially important for us. You know how much bribery, deception, and speculation hangs around every major station. You know how millions are thrown by exploiters in order to ruin transport, to send wagons somewhere they cannot be found. All this is done in order to intensify hunger and turn the people against Soviet power. But you all know that if the majority of railroad organizations unite and make support of Soviet power their task, then only then all the crooks, saboteurs, capitalists, and exploiters, this entire remnant of bourgeois society will be swept away by merciless struggle. Only then will it be possible to properly organize railroad economy and achieve complete liberation of workers, soldiers, and peasants from the power of oppressors. Only then will we have socialism. (Stormy applause from the entire assembly.)