Comrades! One of the speakers, who was designated as a speaker from the opposition, demanded in his resolution that we appeal to our Constitution. When I heard this, I thought: did the speaker not confuse our Constitution with Scheidemann's? Scheidemann and all democratic republics promise all citizens all manner of freedoms. The bourgeois republics promised this to everyone for hundreds and thousands of years. You know where these bourgeois republics have ended up, and how they have now collapsed on a world scale. The enormous majority of workers stands with the communists; throughout the entire world even the word "sovietist" has been created—a word that does not exist in Russia—and we can say that into whatever country we come, if we speak the word "sovietist," everyone will understand us and follow us. In the Constitution, in article 23, it says:

"Guided by the interests of the working class as a whole, the RSFSR deprives individual persons and individual groups of rights, which are used by them to the detriment of the interests of the socialist revolution."

We have not promised freedoms right and left; on the contrary, we stated directly in the Constitution—which has been translated into all languages: German, English, Italian, and French—we declared directly that we will deprive socialists of freedom if it is used by them to the detriment of the interests of the socialist revolution, if it covers for the freedom of capitalists. That is why the appeal to this Constitution was formally incorrect. We openly declared that in the transitional period, a time of fierce struggle, we not only do not promise freedoms right and left, but we say in advance that we will deprive of rights those citizens who obstruct the socialist revolution. And who will judge this?—The proletariat will judge it.

Here an attempt was made to shift the matter onto the terrain of parliamentary struggle. I have always said: parliamentarism is splendid, but the times are no longer parliamentary. Seeing that the government declares that the situation is difficult, Comrade Lozovsky says: this is precisely when the population should present dozens of demands. All parliamentarians acted this way in the "good old days," but now this is untimely. I know that we have an enormous mass of deficiencies; I know that Soviet power in Hungary will be better than it is with us. But when during mobilization we are told: one, another, and a third thing is proposed—and let's haggle—I say that this application of old parliamentarism is worthless, that conscious workers have already rejected it. That is not what this is about.

We have defined our basic line as class struggle against kulaks, against the wealthy elements that stand against us. When this became secure, we say: now with respect to the middle peasant we must achieve a more correct approach. This is very difficult work. In a moment of great danger you must help Soviet power as it is. We will not change in these months. There is no middle ground here and there cannot be. To create this middle ground by artificial parliamentary methods—means standing on slippery ground. When the speaker declared that all the peasantry is against us—this is one of those "little" exaggerations which in practice incite Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. The enormous majority knows that the peasantry is in overwhelming majority with us. For the first time it has received Soviet power. Even the slogans of the uprising, which seized insignificant sections of the peasant masses, the slogans of the uprising were: "For Soviet Power, for the Bolsheviks, down with communism." We say: the struggle against this will be very stubborn, because the intelligentsia foisted sabotage upon us. We had to take more of the worst elements than of the best. If the best elements of the intelligentsia turned away, we had to take the worst.

Comrade Romanov proposed a resolution, which he himself carried through after his comrades were arrested. They declare: "We demand freedom for all…." (Lenin reads the resolution.) The workers later went back to work, but this cost us several thousands of lost working days and several thousands of lives of Red Army soldiers, workers and peasants on the Eastern front.

I reason soberly and categorically: what is better—to throw into prison several tens or hundreds of agitators, guilty or innocent, conscious or unconscious, or to lose thousands of Red Army soldiers and workers?—The first is better. And let them accuse me of all manner of mortal sins and violations of freedom—I admit myself guilty, and the interests of the workers will gain. When such a time came that the people are exhausted, conscious elements must help it get through these several months. It was not we who won in Odessa. It is absurd to think that we won. We took Odessa because their soldiers would not go into battle. I have a telegram from the Northern front in which they write: "Send English prisoners to the front." Comrades here say that the English are weeping and declaring: we will not go back, into the army. What does this mean?—Their troops are not going into battle. They are ten times stronger than us and they are not going.

That is why, when we are told: you promised much but fulfilled nothing—we answer: we fulfilled the main thing. We promised that we were beginning a revolution that would become worldwide—and it has begun, and it now stands so firmly that our international position is brilliant—this main promise of ours we have fulfilled, and this, evidently, the enormous majority of conscious workers has understood. They have understood that now only several months separate us from victory over the capitalists throughout the entire world. How then, in the course of these several months, if certain elements are exhausted, how then to proceed: to play with them, to agitate, or, on the contrary, to help the exhausted hold out these several months, which decide the entire war. You see that in the south we will within several months completely finish and free the army for the east, so that the Entente—both the English, French, and Americans—has collapsed—this is a fact. In Odessa they had 10 thousand troops and a fleet—that is how matters stood. Here the matter is not one of parliamentarism and not of concessions—we do not promise this and do not take it upon ourselves—but here the matter is that when the people are exhausted by war, when hunger presses heavily, what is the task of conscious proletariat, the conscious part of the workers? Should we allow a game to be played on exhaustion?—and that becomes a game. If we say: end the war—unconscious masses will vote for this—but the conscious part says: you can end it in several months. We must hearten those who are exhausted, support them, lead them. The comrades themselves see that the conscious worker leads tens of the exhausted. We say this and we demand this. That is what the dictatorship of the proletariat consists in—that one class leads another, because it is more organized, more cohesive, more conscious. The unconscious are susceptible to any bait, and from exhaustion they are ready for anything, but the conscious part says: we must hold on, because in several months we will triumph throughout the entire world. That is how the matter stands. I permit myself to think that for parliamentary discussions the time has not come: we must take one more effort, so that in the course of these months we triumph, and triumph already definitively.