Having heard today the speakers from the right who have put forward objections to my report, I am astonished at how they have still learned nothing and have forgotten everything that they vainly call "Marxism." One of the speakers who objected to me declared that we stood for the dictatorship of democracy, that we recognized the power of democracy. This statement is so absurd, so ridiculous and senseless, that it is nothing but a jumble of words. It is as if one were to say—iron snow, or something like that. (Laughter.) Democracy is one of the forms of the bourgeois state, and all the traitors of true socialism, who have now come to the head of official socialism and claim that democracy contradicts the dictatorship of the proletariat, stand for it. As long as the revolution did not go beyond the framework of the bourgeois order—we stood for democracy, but as soon as we saw the first glimmerings of socialism in the entire course of the revolution—we took the position of firmly and resolutely defending the dictatorship of the proletariat.

And it is strange that people who cannot or will not understand this simple truth about the definition of the meaning of the words "democracy" and "dictatorship of the proletariat" dare to appear before such a numerous assembly with such old, worthless rubbish with which all the speeches of the gentlemen objectors are cluttered. Democracy—formal parliamentarism—is in reality an unceasing, cruel mockery, a soulless, unbearable oppression of the working people by the bourgeoisie. And only those who are not true representatives of the working class can object to this—pitiful little men in a case, who have always stood far to the side of life, slept, and while sleeping, carefully held under their pillow an old, tattered, useless book which serves as their guide and textbook in the matter of implanting official socialism. But the mind of tens of millions of creators produces something immeasurably higher than even the greatest and most brilliant foresight. True, revolutionary socialism split not only today, but from the beginning of the war. There is not a single country, not a single state, in which there has not been this remarkable split, this crack in the doctrine of socialism. And it is splendid that it has split!

In response to the accusation that we struggle against "socialists," we can only say that in the era of parliamentarism these supporters of the latter have no longer anything in common with socialism, but have rotted, become obsolete, fallen behind, and finally gone over to the side of the bourgeoisie. "Socialists" who cried out during the war, caused by the imperialist designs of international robbers, about "defense of the fatherland"—these are not socialists, but lackeys, hangers-on of the bourgeoisie.

Those who speak so much about the dictatorship of democracy—they only utter senseless, absurd phrases which contain neither economic knowledge nor political understanding.

One of the objectors said here that the Paris Commune can be proud of the fact that during the uprising of the Paris workers there was no violence and arbitrariness in their midst—but there is no doubt that the Commune fell only because it did not sufficiently use armed force at the necessary moment, although it has remained in history immortal, for it was the first to actually implement the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Touching briefly on the struggle against representatives of the bourgeoisie, landlords, and capitalists, the speaker, amid a burst of applause, firmly and resolutely declares:

—Whatever may be said, ultimately, by the will of the revolutionary people, the bourgeoisie will be forced either to surrender unconditionally or to perish.

Drawing a parallel between anarchism and the views of the Bolsheviks, Comrade Lenin declares that now, in the epoch of the fundamental breakdown of the bourgeois order, concepts of anarchism are finally taking on living form. But in order to overthrow the oppression of the bourgeois order, one needs firm revolutionary power of the laboring classes—the power of the revolutionary state. This is the essence of communism. Now, when the masses themselves take up arms and begin a merciless struggle with the exploiters, when a new power of the people is applied, having nothing in common with parliamentary power—at this time we are confronted not with the old state, which has outlived its traditions and forms, but with something new, founded on the creative force of the masses. And at the time when some anarchists speak with fear of the Soviets, still remaining under the influence of obsolete views, the new, fresh current of anarchism stands definitely on the side of the Soviets, in which it sees vitality and the capacity to inspire sympathy in the masses and creative force.

Your sin and blindness lie in this—the speaker declares, addressing the "objectors"—that you have not known how to learn from the revolution. As early as April 4th in this hall I asserted that the Soviets are the highest form of democracy.[30] Either the Soviets will perish—and then the revolution has irrevocably perished—or the Soviets will live—and then it is absurd to speak of some kind of bourgeois-democratic revolution when the full flowering of the socialist order is ripening and the collapse of capitalism is approaching. The Bolsheviks spoke of a bourgeois-democratic revolution in 1905, but now, when the Soviets have come to power, when the workers, soldiers, and peasants, in circumstances of war unprecedented in their deprivations and horrors, in an atmosphere of collapse, before the specter of death by starvation, have said—we shall take all power and ourselves begin the construction of a new life—at this time there can be no talk of a bourgeois-democratic revolution. And the Bolsheviks said this through resolutions and decrees at congresses and meetings and conferences as early as April of last year.

And to those who say that we have done nothing, that we have remained inactive all the time, that the rule of Soviet power has borne no fruit, we can only say to them this: look into the very depths of the laboring people, into the thick of the masses, there organizational, creative work is seething, there flows forth a life renewed, sanctified by revolution. In the villages peasants are taking the land, workers are seizing factories and mills into their hands, everywhere the most diverse organizations are arising.

Soviet power is achieving the end of the war, and we are confident that it will achieve it sooner than the representatives of the Kerensky government promised. For into the ending of the war has entered the revolutionary factor, which has torn up treaties and annulled loans. The war will end in connection with the international revolutionary movement.

In conclusion, the speaker touches upon in a few words the counterrevolutionary saboteurs: these are units bought by the bourgeoisie, which plies the sabotaging officials with handouts, those who have declared war on Soviet power, in the name of the triumph of reaction. The fact that the people, with a sweep of the peasant and worker's axe, are chopping down the bourgeoisie—this phenomenon seems to them like true doomsday and the irrevocable destruction of everything. If we are guilty of anything, it is that we have been too humane, too kind-hearted toward the monstrous, in their treachery, representatives of the bourgeois-imperialist order.

Recently writers from "Novaya Zhizn" came to me with a declaration that they had come on behalf of bank employees wishing to enter service and, ceasing the policy of sabotage, to submit entirely to Soviet power. And I replied to them: it's about time.[31] But, speaking between ourselves, if they imagine that we, in entering into these negotiations, will retreat even a jot from our revolutionary positions, they are greatly mistaken.

The world has seen nothing like what is happening now in our Russia, in this enormous country, broken up into a series of separate states, consisting of a huge number of heterogeneous nationalities and peoples: colossal organizational work in all districts and regions, organization of the masses, direct work of the people, creative, constructive activity, which meets obstacles from various bourgeois representatives of imperialism. These workers and peasants have begun work unprecedented in its titanic tasks, and together with the Soviets will break down to the end the exploitation of capitalism, and, ultimately, the oppression of the bourgeoisie will be overthrown once and for all.