V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:PSS/v38; en:MT;es:MT
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

Comrades, allow me, instead of giving an appraisal of the current moment, which some of you seem to have expected today, to reply to the most essential political questions—of course, not only theoretical but also practical—which now confront us, which characterise the entire stage of the Soviet revolution, and which give rise to the greatest controversy, the greatest attacks from people who consider themselves socialists, and the greatest perplexity among people who consider themselves democrats and who are particularly eager and particularly widespread in levelling accusations against us for violating democracy. It seems to me that these general political questions are too often, indeed constantly, encountered in all the present propaganda, agitation, and all the literature hostile to Bolshevism—if, of course, this literature rises even a little above the level of sheer lies, slander and abuse, which is its character in all the organs of the bourgeoisie. If we take literature that rises even a little above this, I think that the fundamental questions of the relation of democracy to dictatorship, of the tasks of a revolutionary class in a revolutionary period, of the tasks of transition to socialism in general, of the relations between the working class and the peasantry—I think that these questions constitute the most essential basis of all present-day political debates, and their elucidation, although it may sometimes seem to you to deviate somewhat from the immediate issues of the day—their elucidation, I think, must nevertheless constitute our common main task. Of course, in a short report I cannot by any means claim to cover all these questions. I have selected some of them, and on some of these questions I should like to converse with you.

I

The first of the questions I have outlined is the question of the difficulties of every revolution, of every transition to a new system. If you look at the attacks that are showered upon the Bolsheviks by people who consider themselves socialists and democrats—as a sample of these people I can take the literary groups “Vsegda Vperyod!” and “Delo Naroda”—newspapers which were closed, in my opinion, quite justly and in the interests of the revolution, newspapers whose representatives most frequently in their attacks, which are only too natural on the part of organs which our government considers counter-revolutionary, most frequently resort to theoretical criticism—if you look at the attacks that are hurled at Bolshevism from this camp, you will see that among the accusations there very often figures this one: “The Bolsheviks promised you, the working people, bread, peace and freedom; they have given neither bread, nor peace, nor freedom; they have deceived you, and they have deceived you by departing from democracy.” About the departure from democracy I shall speak separately. I shall now take the other side of this accusation: “The Bolsheviks promised bread, peace and freedom; the Bolsheviks have in fact given a continuation of the war, they have given a particularly cruel and particularly stubborn struggle, a war of all the imperialists, the capitalists of all the Entente countries, that is, of all the most civilised and advanced countries, against exhausted, tormented, backward, weary Russia.” These accusations, I repeat, you will see in each of the newspapers I have named, you will hear in every conversation of a bourgeois intellectual who, of course, imagines himself not to be bourgeois—you will constantly hear this in every philistine speech. And I invite you to think over accusations of this kind.

Yes, the Bolsheviks embarked on a revolution against the bourgeoisie, on the forcible overthrow of the bourgeois government, on a break with all the traditional habits, promises, precepts of bourgeois democracy, on the most desperate, forcible struggle and war for the suppression of the propertied classes—they embarked on this in order to tear Russia, and then all mankind, out of the imperialist slaughter and to put an end to all wars. Yes, the Bolsheviks embarked on a revolution for this, and, of course, they never thought of renouncing this fundamental, main task of theirs. And it is equally certain that the attempts to get out of this imperialist slaughter, to break the rule of the bourgeoisie, that these attempts brought down upon Russia the campaign of all the civilised states. For such is the political programme of France, England and America, however much they may assure us that they renounce intervention. However much Lloyd Georges, Wilsons and Clemenceaus may assure us of this, however much they may assure us that they renounce intervention, we all know that this is a lie. We know that the warships of the Allies, which have left and been forced to leave Odessa and Sevastopol, are blockading the coast of the Black Sea and even shelling near Kerch that part of the Crimean peninsula where the volunteers are entrenched. They say: “We cannot give you this. Even if the volunteers cannot cope with you, we still cannot give up this part of the Crimean peninsula, because you will be masters of the Sea of Azov, you will cut off our route to Denikin, you will not give us the opportunity to supply our friends.” Or the offensive against Petrograd is developing: yesterday there was a battle between our destroyer and four enemy destroyers. Is it not clear that this is intervention, is not the British fleet participating here? Is not the same thing happening in Archangel, in Siberia? The fact is: the entire civilised world is now marching against Russia.

The question is: have we fallen into contradiction with ourselves when we called the working people to revolution, promising them peace, and brought about the campaign of the entire civilised world against weak, weary, backward, shattered Russia, or have those who have the insolence to cast such a reproach at us fallen into contradiction with the elementary concepts of democracy and socialism? That is the question. In order to put this question to you in a theoretical, general form, I will draw a comparison. We speak of a revolutionary class, of a revolutionary policy of the people; I suggest you take an individual revolutionary. Take Chernyshevsky, for instance, and appraise his activity. How can a completely ignorant and benighted person appraise it? He will probably say: “Well, the man ruined his life, ended up in Siberia, achieved nothing.” Here is a sample. If we hear such an opinion from someone unknown, we will say: “At best it comes from a hopelessly benighted person, who is perhaps not to blame for being so downtrodden that he cannot understand the significance of the activity of an individual revolutionary in connection with the general chain of revolutionary events; or else this opinion comes from a scoundrel, a supporter of reaction, who consciously wants to frighten the working people away from revolution.” I took the example of Chernyshevsky because, no matter to what trend people who call themselves socialists belong, here, in the appraisal of this individual revolutionary, there can be no essential divergence. Everyone will agree that if one appraises an individual revolutionary from the point of view of the sacrifices, outwardly useless, often fruitless, which he made, leaving aside the content of his activity and its connection with preceding and subsequent revolutionaries, if one appraises the significance of his activity in this way—this is either hopeless darkness and ignorance, or malicious, hypocritical defence of the interests of reaction, oppression, exploitation and class tyranny. On this score there can be no disagreement.

I now invite you to pass from an individual revolutionary to the revolution of a whole people, a whole country. And did any of the Bolsheviks ever deny that a revolution can finally triumph only when it embraces all, or at least some of the most essential advanced countries? We always said this. Did we assert that it was possible to get out of the imperialist war by simply sticking bayonets into the ground? I deliberately take precisely that expression which we in the epoch of Kerensky—I personally and all our comrades—constantly used in resolutions, in speeches and in newspapers. We said: the war cannot be ended by sticking bayonets into the ground; if there are Tolstoyans who think so, one must pity people who have gone off the rails—well, you can’t get anything out of them.

We said that the way out of this war could mean a revolutionary war. We said this from 1915 onwards and later in the epoch of Kerensky. And, of course, a revolutionary war is also a war, just as heavy, bloody and painful a thing. And when it becomes a revolution on a world scale, it inevitably evokes a rebuff on the same world scale. And therefore, when we now find ourselves in a position where all the civilised countries of the world are marching against Russia, we cannot be surprised if we are accused of breaking our promises by quite benighted peasants: we will say—you can’t get anything out of them. Their complete darkness, their extreme ignorance do not allow us to accuse them. Where, indeed, can one demand from a completely benighted peasant an understanding that there is war and war, that there are just and unjust wars, progressive and reactionary wars, wars of advanced classes and wars of backward classes, wars serving to consolidate class tyranny and wars serving to overthrow it? For this one must be familiar with the class struggle, with the foundations of socialism, at least a little with the history of revolution. We cannot demand this from a benighted peasant.

But if a man who calls himself a democrat, a socialist, who goes to the rostrum to speak publicly, regardless of what he calls himself—Menshevik, Social-Democrat, Socialist-Revolutionary, true socialist, supporter of the Berne International—there are many nicknames, nicknames are cheap—if such a subject hurls the accusation at us: “You promised peace and provoked war!”—what is to be answered to him? Can it be assumed that he has reached such a degree of darkness as an ignorant peasant, that he cannot distinguish between war and war? Can it be admitted that he does not understand the difference between the imperialist war, which was a predatory war and is now completely exposed—after the Versailles Peace, only those who are completely incapable of reasoning and thinking, or completely blind, can fail to see that it was predatory on both sides—can it be admitted that there is at least one literate person who does not understand the difference between that war, a predatory war, and our war, which is acquiring a world scale because the world bourgeoisie has realised that a decisive battle is being waged against it? We cannot admit all this. And therefore we say: anyone who claims to be a democrat or a socialist of any shade and in one way or another, directly or indirectly, spreads among the people accusations that the Bolsheviks are prolonging the civil war, a heavy war, a painful war, whereas they promised peace—is a supporter of the bourgeoisie, and we will answer him accordingly and will stand opposed to him just as we do to Kolchak—that is our answer. That is the crux of the matter.

The gentlemen from “Delo Naroda” are surprised: “But we are against Kolchak; what a crying injustice that we are persecuted.”

Very sorry, gentlemen, that you do not want to connect ends with ends and do not want to understand that simple political ABC from which definite conclusions follow. You assure us that you are against Kolchak. I take the newspapers “Vsegda Vperyod!” and “Delo Naroda”, I take all the philistine arguments of this type, these moods, which are abundant among the intelligentsia, they predominate in the intelligentsia. I say: every one of you who spreads accusations of this kind among the people is a Kolchakite, because he does not understand that elementary, fundamental difference, understandable to every literate person, between the imperialist war, which we smashed, and the civil war, which we brought upon ourselves. We never concealed from the people that we were taking this risk. We are straining every effort to defeat the bourgeoisie in this civil war and to undermine the very possibility of class tyranny. No, there never has been and cannot be a revolution that would be guaranteed against a long, heavy struggle, perhaps full of the most desperate sacrifices. He who cannot distinguish the sacrifices made in the course of the revolutionary struggle for its victory, when all the propertied, all the counter-revolutionary classes are fighting against the revolution, he who cannot distinguish these sacrifices from the sacrifices of a predatory, exploiting war—is a representative of the most extreme darkness, and one must say of him: he must be put to the ABC, and before out-of-school education, subjected to the lowest school education, or else he is a representative of the most malicious Kolchak hypocrisy, whatever he calls himself, under whatever nicknames he hides. And such accusations against the Bolsheviks are the most common and “popular” accusations. These accusations are indeed connected with the broad working masses, for it is difficult for a benighted peasant to understand this. He suffers equally from war, no matter for what purpose this war is waged. I am not surprised if I hear among the benighted peasantry such opinions: “We fought for the tsar, we fought off the Mensheviks, and now we shall have to fight for the Bolsheviks.” This does not surprise me. Indeed, war is war, it brings with it heavy sacrifices without end. “The tsar said it was for freedom and liberation from the yoke, the Mensheviks said it was for freedom and liberation from the yoke, now the Bolsheviks say the same. Everyone says it, how are we to make it out!”

Indeed, a benighted peasant, perhaps, how is he to make it out. Such a man still has to learn elementary political literacy. But what can be said about a man who uses the words “revolution”, “democracy”, “socialism”, who claims to use these words understanding them? He cannot juggle with such concepts if he does not want to turn into a political swindler, for the difference between a war of two groups of predators and a war waged by an oppressed class that has risen against all predation—this is an elementary, fundamental and basic difference. The point is not that this or that party, this or that class, this or that government justified the war, but what is the content of this war, what is its class content, which class is waging the war, what policy is embodied in the war.

II

From the question of appraising the heavy and difficult period we are now living through and which is inevitably connected with the revolution, I shall pass to another political question, which also constantly crops up in all debates and in all perplexities—the question of a bloc with the imperialists, of an alliance, an agreement with the imperialists.

You have probably met in the newspapers the names of the Socialist-Revolutionaries Volsky and, I think, a second one—Svyatitsky, who have written recently in “Izvestia” as well, who have come out with their manifesto, who consider themselves precisely such Socialist-Revolutionaries as cannot be accused of Kolchakism: they left Kolchak, they suffered from Kolchak, they, having come over to us, rendered us a service against Kolchak. That is true. But look at the arguments of these citizens, look at how they appraise the question of a bloc with the imperialists, of an alliance or agreement with the imperialists. I happened to become acquainted with their arguments when their writings were seized by our government, which was fighting counter-revolution, and when it was necessary to acquaint oneself with their documents in order properly to appraise their involvement in Kolchakism. They are, undoubtedly, the best of the Socialist-Revolutionary public. And in their writings I encountered arguments of this kind: “Allow us, they expect repentance from us; they expect us to repent. Nothing of the sort, never! We have nothing to repent of! We are accused of having been in a bloc, in an agreement with the Entente, with the imperialists. And you, Bolsheviks, were you not in agreement with the German imperialists? And what about Brest? And is not Brest an agreement with imperialism? You agreed with German imperialism at Brest, we agreed with French imperialism—we are quits, we have nothing to repent of!”

This argument, which I found in the writings of the persons I have named and their like-minded people, I encounter when I recall the newspapers I have named, when I try to sum up the impressions from philistine conversations. You will constantly meet this argument. It is one of the basic political arguments that one has to deal with. And so, I invite you to dwell on the analysis, the examination, the theoretical reflection on this argument. What is its significance? Are those right who say: “We, democrats, socialists, were in a bloc with the Entente, you were in a bloc with Wilhelm, you concluded the Brest Peace—we have nothing to reproach each other with, we are quits”? Or are we right when we say that those who have shown themselves not in words but in deeds in agreement with the Entente against the Bolshevik revolution are Kolchakites? Even if they deny it a hundred thousand times, even if they personally left Kolchak and declared to the whole people that they were against Kolchak, they are Kolchakites in their fundamental roots, in the whole content and significance of their arguments and their deeds. Who is right? This is the fundamental question of the revolution, and it must be thought over.

To clarify this question, I will permit myself to draw a comparison, this time not with an individual revolutionary, but with an individual ordinary citizen. Imagine that your car is surrounded by bandits and they put a revolver to your temple. Imagine that after this you give the bandits money and weapons, allowing them to drive off in this car. What is the matter? You gave the bandits weapons and money. That is a fact. Now imagine that another citizen gave the bandits weapons and money in order to participate in the exploits of these bandits against peaceful citizens.

In both cases there is an agreement. Whether it is written down or not, whether it is spoken or not, is not essential. One can imagine that a man silently hands over his revolver, his weapons and his money. The content of the agreement is clear. He says to the bandits: “I will give you a revolver, weapons and money, you will give me the opportunity to get away from your pleasant proximity” (laughter); the agreement is obvious. In exactly the same way, it is possible that a silent agreement is concluded by a man who gives weapons and money to bandits in order to enable them to rob others, and who later receives a share of the booty. This is also a silent agreement.

I ask you, is there a literate person who would not be able to distinguish between the two agreements? You will say: he is certainly a cretin, if indeed there is such a person who is incapable of distinguishing the one from the other and who says: “You gave weapons and money to bandits, so don’t accuse anyone else of banditry; what right have you after that to accuse of banditry?” If you meet such a literate person, you will have to admit, or at any rate 999 out of 1000 will admit, that he is not in his right mind and that it is impossible to argue with such a person not only on political but even on criminal topics.

I now invite you to pass from this example to a comparison of the Brest Peace and the agreement with the Entente. What was the Brest Peace? Was it not the violence of bandits who came out against us at a time when we honestly proposed peace, proposing to all peoples to overthrow their bourgeoisie? It would have been ridiculous if we had begun with the overthrow of the German bourgeoisie! We exposed this treaty before the whole world as the most predatory and brigandish, stigmatised it and even refused to sign this peace immediately, counting on the assistance of the German workers. When the violators put a revolver to our temple, we said: take the weapons, the money, we will settle accounts with you later by other means. We know another enemy of German imperialism, whom blind people did not notice—the German workers. Can this agreement with imperialism be compared with that agreement when the democrats, the socialists, the Socialist-Revolutionaries—don’t joke, the stronger the sound, the louder—when they agreed with the Entente to go against the workers of their own country? For that is how the matter stood and still stands. For the most influential part of the European-known Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries abroad are even now, and they are even now agreeing with the Entente. Whether it is signed or not—I don’t know—probably not signed—clever people do such things silently. But it is clear that such an agreement exists, since they are carried in their arms, given passports, and messages are sent all over the world by radiotelegraph that today Axelrod spoke, tomorrow Savinkov or Avksentyev, the day after tomorrow Breshkovskaya. Is this not an agreement, albeit a silent one? And is this the same kind of agreement with the imperialists as ours? Its external appearance is as similar to ours as the act of a man giving a gun and money to bandits is externally similar to any act of this kind, regardless of its purpose and character—at any rate, regardless of whether I give the bandits money and weapons in order to get rid of them when they attack me and when I am placed in a position where, if I do not give them the revolver, they will kill me? Or do I give money and weapons to bandits who are going to rob, which I must know and in the proceeds of which I participate?

“I call this, of course, the liberation of Russia from the dictatorship of the violators, I am, of course, a democrat, because I support the well-known Siberian or Archangel democracy, I am fighting, of course, for the Constituent Assembly. Do not dare to suspect me of anything bad, and if I render a service to the bandits, the English, French, American imperialists, I do this in the interests of democracy, the Constituent Assembly, popular sovereignty, the unity of the working classes of the population and the overthrow of the violators, usurpers, Bolsheviks!”

The aims are, of course, the most noble. But have not all who engage in politics heard that politics is appraised not by declarations but by real class content? Which class do you serve? If you are in agreement with the imperialists, are you participating in imperialist banditry or not?

In my “Letter to the American Workers” I pointed out, among other things, that the American revolutionary people, when they liberated themselves from England in the 18th century, when they waged one of the first and greatest truly liberative wars in human history and one of the few truly revolutionary wars in human history, that liberating itself, the great revolutionary American people, entered into agreements with the bandits of Spanish and French imperialism, which then had colonies in America itself adjacent to this people. In alliance with these bandits they beat the English and liberated themselves from them. Were there literate people in the world, have you seen such socialists, Socialist-Revolutionaries, representatives of democracy, or whatever else they are called, down to the Mensheviks—have you ever seen them dare publicly to accuse the American people of this, to say that it violated the principle of democracy, freedom, etc.? Such a crank has not yet been born. And now we have such people who call themselves by such nicknames and even claim that they should be in one International with us and that this is exclusively Bolshevik mischief—it is a well-known fact that the Bolsheviks are mischief-makers if they set up their own Communist International, do not want to go into the Berne, good, old, common, united International!

And there are such people who say: “We have nothing to repent of—you agreed with Wilhelm, we agreed with the Entente—we are quits!”

I assert that these people, if they possess elementary political literacy, are Kolchakites, however much they personally may renounce this, however much Kolchakism may personally be repugnant to them, however much they personally may have suffered from Kolchak and even if they have gone over to our side. They are Kolchakites, because it is impossible to imagine that they do not understand the difference between a forced agreement in the struggle against the exploiters, which the exploited classes have been forced to conclude time and again throughout the history of revolution, and what the most influential representatives of our so-called democrats, representatives of the so-called “socialist” intelligentsia, have done and are doing, who partly entered yesterday and partly are entering today into an agreement with the bandits and robbers of international imperialism against a part—they say so—against a part of the working classes of their own country. These people are Kolchakites, and no other attitude towards them is permissible except that which conscious revolutionaries must have towards Kolchakites.

III

I shall now pass to the next question. This is the question of the attitude towards democracy in general.

I have already had occasion to point out that the most common justification, the most common defence of the political positions occupied by the democrats and socialists against us, is the reference to democracy. The most decisive representative of this point of view in European literature has been, as you, of course, know, Kautsky, the ideological leader of the Second International and still a member of the Berne International. “The Bolsheviks have chosen a method that violates democracy, the Bolsheviks have chosen the method of dictatorship, therefore their cause is wrong,”—so he says. This argument has figured a thousand and a million times everywhere and constantly in all the press and in the newspapers I have named. It is constantly repeated by the entire intelligentsia, and sometimes half-consciously repeated in the arguments of ordinary citizens. “Democracy is freedom, it is equality, it is the decision of the majority; what can be higher than freedom, equality, the decision of the majority! If you, Bolsheviks, have departed from this and even had the insolence to say openly that you are above freedom, equality, and the decision of the majority, then do not be surprised and do not complain that we call you usurpers, violators!”

We are not at all surprised at this, because we want above all clarity and count only on the advanced part of the working people really clearly realising their position. Yes, we have said and are constantly saying in our programme, in the Party programme, that we will not allow ourselves to be deceived by such fine-sounding slogans as freedom, equality and the will of the majority, and that we regard those who call themselves democrats, supporters of pure democracy, supporters of consistent democracy, directly or indirectly opposing it to the dictatorship of the proletariat—that we regard them as accomplices of Kolchak.

Sort it out, it must be sorted out. Are the pure democrats really guilty of preaching pure democracy, defending it against the usurpers, or are they guilty of finding themselves on the side of the propertied classes, on the side of Kolchak?

Let us begin to sort it out with freedom. Freedom, it goes without saying, for every revolution, whether socialist or democratic, is a very, very essential slogan. And our programme declares: freedom, if it contradicts the liberation of labour from the yoke of capital, is a deception. And every one of you who has read Marx—I think even everyone who has read at least one popular exposition of Marx—knows that Marx devoted a large part of his life and his literary works and a large part of his scientific research precisely to ridiculing freedom, equality, the will of the majority and all sorts of Benthams who expounded this, and to proving that underneath these phrases lie the interests of the freedom of the commodity owner, the freedom of capital, which he uses to oppress the working masses.

We say to everyone who, at a moment when it has come to the overthrow of the power of capital throughout the world, or at least in one country, who at such a historical moment, when the struggle of the oppressed working classes for the complete overthrow of capital, for the complete abolition of commodity production, comes to the fore—all who at such a political moment appeal with the word “freedom” in general, who in the name of this freedom go against the dictatorship of the proletariat—that person helps the exploiters and nothing more, he is their supporter, because freedom, if it is not subordinated to the interests of the liberation of labour from the yoke of capital, is a deception, as we have directly declared in our Party programme. Perhaps this is superfluous from the point of view of the external construction of the programme, but it is the most fundamental from the point of view of all our propaganda and agitation, from the point of view of the foundations of the proletarian struggle and proletarian power. We know perfectly well that we must fight against world capital, we know perfectly well that world capital in its time had before it the task of creating freedom, that it threw off feudal slavery, that it created bourgeois freedom, we know perfectly well that this is a world-historical progress. And we declare that we are going against capitalism in general, against republican capitalism, against democratic capitalism, against free capitalism—of course, we know that it will raise the banner of freedom against us. And we answer it. We considered it necessary to give this answer in our programme: every freedom is a deception if it contradicts the interests of the liberation of labour from the yoke of capital.

But, perhaps, this cannot be? Perhaps there is no contradiction between freedom and the liberation of labour from the yoke of capital? Look at all the West European countries, which you have either visited or, at any rate, read about. In every book their system was described as the freest system, and now these West European civilised countries—France, England, America—they have raised this banner, they are marching against the Bolsheviks “in the name of freedom”. Quite recently—French newspapers now reach us rarely, because we are surrounded by a ring, but information comes by radio, the air cannot be captured after all, we intercept foreign radio—quite recently I had the opportunity to read in a radio message sent by the French predatory government: marching against the Bolsheviks and supporting their opponents, France still holds high its characteristic “high ideal of freedom”. We encounter this at every step, this is their basic tone in polemics against us.

And what do they call freedom? These civilised Frenchmen, Englishmen, Americans, they call freedom at least the freedom of assembly. The constitution must say: “Freedom of assembly for all citizens.” “This,” they say, “is the content, this is the basic manifestation of freedom. And you, Bolsheviks, you have violated the freedom of assembly.”

Yes, we reply, your freedom, gentlemen Englishmen, Frenchmen, Americans, is a deception if it contradicts the liberation of labour from the yoke of capital. You forgot a trifle, gentlemen civilised. You forgot that your freedom is written in the constitution which legalises private property. That is the crux of the matter.

Alongside freedom—property, so it is written in your constitution. That you recognise freedom of assembly is, of course, a tremendous progress compared with the feudal order, the Middle Ages, serfdom. All socialists recognised this when they used this freedom of bourgeois society to teach the proletariat how to overthrow the yoke of capitalism.

But your freedom is such that it is freedom on paper, not in reality. This means that if in big cities there are large halls, like this one, they belong to the capitalists and landowners, called, for example, halls of the “Noble Assembly”. You can freely assemble, citizens of the Russian Democratic Republic, but this is private property, excuse me, please, you must respect private property, otherwise you will be Bolsheviks, criminals, robbers, plunderers, mischief-makers. And we say: “We will turn this over. We will first make this building from the ‘Noble Assembly’ into a building for workers’ organisations, and then we will talk about freedom of assembly.” You accuse us of violating freedom. We, on the other hand, recognise that every freedom, if it is not subordinated to the interests of the liberation of labour from the yoke of capital, is a deception. The freedom of assembly which is written in the constitution of all bourgeois republics is a deception, because in order to assemble in a civilised country, which after all has not abolished winter, has not changed the weather, one needs premises for meetings, and the best buildings are in private ownership. First we will take the best buildings, and then we will talk about freedom.

We say that freedom of assembly for the capitalists is the greatest crime against the working people, it is freedom of assembly for the counter-revolutionaries. We say to the gentlemen bourgeois intellectuals, the gentlemen supporters of democracy: you lie when you hurl the accusation of violating freedom in our faces! When your bourgeois great revolutionaries in England in 1649, in France in 1792–1793 made a revolution, they did not give freedom of assembly to the monarchists. That is why the French revolution is called great, because it was not distinguished by the flabbiness, half-heartedness, phrase-mongering of many revolutions of 1848, but because it was a businesslike revolution which, having overthrown the monarchists, crushed them to the end. So we too will be able to deal with the gentlemen capitalists, for we know that for the liberation of the working people from the yoke of capital it is necessary to take away freedom of assembly from the capitalists, it is necessary to take away or curtail their “freedom”. This serves the liberation of labour from the yoke of capital, this serves that real freedom when there will be no buildings in which a single family lives and which belong to someone individually—landlords, capitalists or some joint-stock company. When this happens, when people forget that there can be public buildings in someone’s ownership, then we will be for complete freedom. When only workers remain in the world and people forget to think that one can be a member of society without being a worker—this will not be so soon, the gentlemen bourgeois and the gentlemen bourgeois intellectuals are to blame for the delay—then we will be for freedom of assembly for everyone, but now freedom of assembly is freedom of assembly for the capitalists, the counter-revolutionaries. We are fighting them, we are giving them our rebuff and declare that we are abolishing this freedom.

We are going into battle—that is the content of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The times of naive, utopian, fantastic, mechanical, intellectual socialism are past, when the matter was presented as if the majority of people would be convinced, a pretty picture of socialist society would be drawn, and the majority would adopt the point of view of socialism. The times are past when these childish fables amused oneself and others. Marxism, which recognises the necessity of the class struggle, says: mankind will come to socialism only through the dictatorship of the proletariat. Dictatorship is a cruel, heavy, bloody, painful word, and such words are not thrown to the winds. If the socialists have come out with such a slogan, it is because they know that otherwise the exploiting class will not surrender and that it will cover its rule with all sorts of fine words.

Freedom of assembly—what can be higher, what can be better than this word! Is the development of the working people and their consciousness conceivable without freedom of assembly? Are the foundations of humanity conceivable without freedom of assembly? And we say that freedom of assembly according to the constitution of England and the United States of North America is a deception, because it ties the hands of the working masses for the entire period of transition to socialism—it is a deception, because we know perfectly well that the bourgeoisie will do everything to overthrow this power, so unusual, so “monstrous” at first. It cannot be otherwise in the eyes of anyone who has thought through the class struggle, who thinks at all concretely, clearly about the relation of the insurgent workers to the bourgeoisie, which is overthrown in one country and not overthrown in all, and which precisely because it is not completely overthrown, throws itself into the struggle with all the greater fury.

It is precisely after the overthrow of the bourgeoisie that the class struggle assumes the most acute forms. And those democrats and socialists are worthless who deceive themselves and then deceive others by saying: once the bourgeoisie is overthrown, the matter is finished. It is only begun, not finished, because the bourgeoisie until now did not believe the idea that it was overthrown, and on the eve of the October revolution joked very nicely and very amiably; Milyukov, Chernov, and the Novaya Zhizn people joked. They joked: “Well, please, gentlemen Bolsheviks, form a cabinet, take power yourselves for a couple of weeks—you will help us splendidly!” For Chernov wrote this from the Socialist-Revolutionaries, Milyukov wrote this in “Rech”, the semi-Menshevik “Novaya Zhizn” wrote this. They joked because they did not take the matter seriously. But now they have seen that the matter has become serious, and the gentlemen English, French and Swiss bourgeois, who thought that their “democratic republics” were armour that protected them, they have seen and realised that the matter has become serious, and now they are all arming. If you could see what is happening in free Switzerland, how there every single bourgeois is arming, creating a white guard, because he knows that the question has arisen whether he will preserve his privileges, which allow him to keep millions in wage slavery. Now the struggle has assumed a world scale, therefore now everyone who comes out against us with the words “democracy”, “freedom”, takes the side of the propertied classes, deceives the people, because he does not understand that freedom and democracy have hitherto been freedom and democracy for the propertied and only crumbs from the table for the non-propertied.

What is freedom of assembly when the working people are crushed by the slavery of capital and work for capital? It is a deception, and in order to move towards freedom for the working people, one must first overcome the resistance of the exploiters, and if I withstand the resistance of a whole class, it is clear that I cannot promise either freedom, or equality, or the decision of the majority for this class.

IV

Now from freedom I shall pass to equality. Here the matter stands even deeper. Here we touch upon a question even more serious, causing great disagreements, and more painful.

The revolution in its course overthrows one exploiting class after another. It first overthrew the monarchy and understood by equality only that there should be an elective power,