V. I. Lenin

Speech at a Meeting of the Moscow Soviet in

Celebration of the First Anniversary of the Third
International

March 6, 1920

Comrades, a year has passed since the founding of the Communist International. During this year the Communist
International has been successful beyond all expectation; we may
say boldly that at the tithe of its foundation no one expected
such immense successes.

In the early period of the revolution many entertained the hope
that the socialist revolution would begin in Western Europe
immediately the imperialist war ended; at the time when the masses
were armed there could have been a successful revolution in some
of the Western countries as well. It could have taken place, had
it not been for the split within the proletariat of Western Europe
being deeper and the treachery of the former socialist leaders
greater than had been imagined.

To this day we lack exact information on how the demobilisation
proceeded and how the war is being wound up. We do not know, for
example, what happened in Holland, and only from an article
containing an account of a Dutch Communist’s speech (from
one chance article—there were many such articles) have I
been able to learn that the revolutionary movement in Holland, a
neutral country that was less involved in the imperialist war,
assumed such dimensions that the formation of Soviets was started,
and Troelstra, one of the most important figures in the
opportunist Dutch Social-Democratic Party, admitted that the
workers could have seized power.

Had the International not been in the hands of traitors who worked to save the bourgeoisie at the
critical moment, there would have been many chances of a speedy
revolution in many belligerent countries as soon as the war ended
and also in some neutral countries, where the people were armed;
then the outcome would have been different.

Things did not turn out that way, revolution did not succeed so
quickly, and it now has to follow the whole path of development
that we began even before the first revolution, before 1905; for
it was only due to more than ten years having passed before 1917
that we were capable of leading the proletariat.

What happened in 1905 was, so to speak, a rehearsal for the
revolution, and it was partly because of this that we in Russia
succeeded in using the moment of the collapse of the imperialist
war for the proletariat to seize power. Owing to historical
developments, owing to the utter rottenness of the autocracy, we
were able to begin the revolution with ease; but the easier it was
to begin it the harder it has been for this solitary country to
continue it, and with the experience of this year behind us we can
say to ourselves that in other countries, where the workers are
more developed, where there is more industry, where the workers
are far more numerous, the revolution has developed more
slowly. It has taken our path, but at a much slower pace.

The workers are continuing this slow development, paving the
way for the proletarian victory which is advancing with
undoubtedly greater speed than was the case with us; because when
you look at the Third International you wonder that it has spread
so rapidly, moving from success to success.

Look at the way our ugly words, such as “Bolshevism”, for example, are spreading throughout
the world. Despite the fact that we call ourselves the Communist
Party, and that the name “Communist” is a scientific, European term, it is not as widespread in European and other
countries as the word “Bolshevik” is. Our Russian word “Soviet” is one of the most widely used; it is not
even translated into other languages, but is pronounced everywhere
in Russian.

Despite the lies in the bourgeois press, despite the furious
resistance offered by the entire bourgeoisie, the sympathies of
the masses of the workers are on the side of the Soviets, Soviet
power and Bolshevism. The more the bourgeoisie lied the more they
helped to spread throughout the world what we had experienced with
Kerensky.

On their arrival from Germany, some of the Bolsheviks were met
here with attacks and persecutions, organised in the “democratic republic” in real American
style. Kerensky, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Monsheviks
did their best to assist this witch-hunt. In this way they stirred
up sections of the proletariat and made them think that there must
be something good about the Bolsheviks if they are subjected to
such persecution. (Applause,)

And when you get fragmentary information from abroad from time
to time, when—being unable to follow the entire press—you read, for example, Britain’s richest
newspaper, The Times, and find it quoting Bolshevik statements to prove that during the war the Bolsheviks were
preaching civil war, you draw the conclusion that even the
cleverest representatives of the bourgeoisie have completely
lost their heads, This British newspaper directs attention to
the book Against the Stream, recommends it to British readers and gives quotations to show that the Bolsheviks are the
very worst of people, who speak of the criminal character of the
imperialist war and preach civil war; it convinces you that the
entire bourgeoisie, while they hate us, are helping us—and
we bow to them and thank them. (Applause.)

We have no daily press either in Europe or in America; information about our work is very meagre, and our comrades are
suffering the most severe persecution. But when you see that the
very wealthy Allied imperialist press, from which hundreds of
thousands of other newspapers draw their information, has lost its
sense of proportion to such a degree that in its desire to injure
the Bolsheviks it prints numerous quotations from the writings of
Bolsheviks, digging them up from war-time publications in order to
prove that we spoke of the criminal character of the war and
worked to transform it into a civil war, it shows that these very
clever gentlemen will become as stupid as our Kerensky and his
comrades were. We can therefore vouch for it that these people,
the leaders of British imperialism, will make aclean and enduring
job of helping the communist revolution. (Applause.)

Comrades, before the war it seemed that the main division in
the working-class movement was the division into socialists and
anarchists. Not only did it seem so; it was so. In the protracted
period that preceded the imperialist war and the revolution, no
objective revolutionary situation existed in the overwhelming
majority of European countries. What had to be done at that time
was to use this slow process for revolutionary preparation. The
socialists began it, but the anarchists did not see the need for
it. The war created a revolutionary situation, and the old
division proved to be outdated. On the one hand, the top leaders
of anarchism and socialism became chauvinists; they showed what it
meant to defend their own bourgeois robbers against other
bourgeois robbers, both of whom were responsible for the loss of
millions of lives in the war. On the other hand, new trends arose
among the rank and file of the old parties—against the war,
against imperialism and for social revolution. A most profound
crisis thus developed owing to the war; both the anarchists and
the socialists split, because the parliamentary leaders of the
socialists were in the chauvinist wing while an ever-growing
minority of the rank and file left them and began to take the side
of the revolution.

Thus the working-class movement in all countries followed a new
line, not the line of the anarchists and the socialists, but one
that could lead to the dictatorship of the proletariat. This split
had become apparent throughout the world and had started before
the Third International was founded.

If our Party has been successful it is because it came into
being when the situation was revolutionary and when the labour
movement was already in existence in all countries; and we
therefore see now that a split has taken place in socialism and
anarchism All over the world, this is leading to communist workers
participating in the formation of new organisations and to their
uniting in the Third International. That is the most correct
attitude.

Disagreements are again arising, for example, over the question of using parliaments, but since the experience of the
Russian revolution and the Civil War, since the figure of
Liebknecht and his role and importance among parliamentarians,
have become known to the world, it is absurd to reject the
revolutionary use of parliaments. It has become clear to people of
the old way of thinking that the question of the state cannot be
presented in the old way, that the old, bookish approach to this
question has been succeeded by a new one based on practice and
born of the revolutionary movement.

A united and centralised force of the proletariat must be
counterposed to the united and centralised force of the
bourgeoisie. The question of the state has thus now been shifted
to a new plane, and the old disagreement has begun to lose its
meaning. The old division of the working-class movement has
yielded to new ones, the attitude towards Soviet government and to
the dictatorship of the proletariat having assumed prime
importance.

The Soviet Constitution is clear evidence of what the Russian
revolution has produced. Our experience and the study of it have
shown that all the groups of the old issues are now reduced to
one: for or against Soviet rule, either for bourgeois rule, for
democracy (for those forms of democracy which promise equality
between the well-fed and the hungry, equality between the
capitalist and the worker at the ballot-box, between the
exploiters and the exploited, and serve to camouflage capitalist
slavery), or for proletarian rule, for the ruthless suppression of
the exploiters, for the Soviet state.

Only supporters of capitalist slavery can favour bourgeois
democracy. We can see that in the whiteguard literature of Koichak
and Denikin, Many Russian cities have been cleared of this filth,
and the literature collected and sent to Moscow. When you scan the
writings of Russian intellectuals like Chirikov, or of bourgeois
thinkers like Y. Trubetskoi, it is interesting to see that they
help Denikin and at the same time argue about the Constituent
Assembly, equality, etc. These arguments about the Constituent
Assembly are of service to us; when they conducted this propaganda
among the whiteguard rank and file they helped us in the same way
as the entire course of the Civil War, all the events, helped
us. By their own arguments they proved that Soviet rule is backed
by sincere revolutionaries who sympathise with the struggle
against the capitalists. That has been made perfectly clear during
the Civil War.

After the experience gained, after what has happened in Russia,
Finland and Hungary, after a year’s experience in the democratic republics, in Germany, one cannot object to, and write
disquisitions about, the need for a central authority, for
dictatorship and a united will to ensure that the vanguard of the
proletariat shall close its ranks, develop the state and place it
upon a new footing, while firmly holding the reins of power. Democracy has completely exposed itself; that is why signs
of the strengthening of the communist movement for Soviet rule,
for the dictatorship of the proletariat, have increased
tremendously in all countries and have taken on the most diverse
forms.

This has reached a point where such parties as the German
Independents and the French Socialist Party, which are dominated
by leaders of the old type who have failed to understand either
the new propaganda or the new conditions, and have not in the
least changed their parliamentary activity, but are turning it
into a means of dodging important issues and engaging the
workers’ attention with parliamentary debates—even these leaders have to recognise the dictatorship of the
proletariat and Soviet power. This is because the masses of the
workers are making themselves felt and forcing them to recognise
it.

You know from the speeches of other comrades that the breakaway
of the German Party of Independents, the recognition of the
dictatorship of the proletariat and of Soviet government was the
last decisive blow dealt to the Second International. Taking the
existing state of affairs into consideration, it may be said that
the Second International has been killed, and that the proletarian
masses in Germany, Britain and France are taking the side of the
Communists. In Britain there is also a party of Independents which
persists in adhering to legality and in condemning the violence of
the Bolsheviks, A discussion forum was recently opened in their
newspaper. Well, the question of Soviets is being discussed there,
and next to an article printed in British working-class newspapers
we see an article by an Englishman who refuses to reckon with the
theory of socialism and persists in his stupid contempt for
theory, but who, taking the conditions of life in Britain into
consideration, reaches a definite conclusion and says that they
cannot condemn the Soviets, but should support them.

This shows that things have begun to change even among the
backward sections of the workers in countries like Britain, and it
may be said that the old forms of socialism have been killed for
ever.

Europe is not moving towards revolution the way we did,
although essentially Europe is going through the same experience. In its own way, every country must go through, and has
begun to go through, an internal struggle against its own
Mensheviks and against its own opportunists and
Socialist-Revolutionaries, which exist under different names to a
greater or lesser degree in all countries.

And it is because they are experiencing this independently that
we can be sure the victory of the communist revolution in all
countries is inevitable and that the greater the vacillations in
the enemies’ ranks, and the uncertainty in their declarations that the Bolsheviks are criminals and that they will
never conclude peace with them, the better for us.

They are now saying that even if they do trade with the
Bolsheviks they will not recognise them. We have nothing against
that; try it, gentlemen, please. As for your not recognising us,
we can understand that. We would consider it a mistake on your
part if you did recognise us. But if you have become so muddled
that you first declare that the Bolsheviks are violators of all
the laws of God and man, and that you will not talk or make peace
with them and then say that you will begin exchanges, without
recognising our policy, that is a victory for us which will give
an impulse to and strengthen the communist movement among the
masses in every country. So deep is the movement that, in addition
to those that are officially affiliated to the Third
International, a number of movements are to be seen in the
advanced countries, movements that do not adhere either to
socialism or communism, but which are being drawn towards
Bolshevism by the force of circumstances although they continue to
condemn it.

War in the twentieth century, in a civilised country, compels
governments to expose their own actions. A French newspaper has
published some documents belonging to the ex-Emperor Charles of
Austria who in 1916 offered peace to France. Now that his letter
has been published, the workers are asking Albert Thomas, the
socialist loader, who was in the government at the time, what he
did when an offer of peace was made to that government. When
Albert Thomas was asked about it, he made no reply.

These exposures have only just begun. The masses of the people
are literate, and neither in Europe nor in America can they retain
the old attitude towards war. They are asking for what cause 10
million people were killed and 20 million crippled. The
presentation of this question makes the popular Masses turn
towards the dictatorship of the proletariat. To present this
question is to answer it: 10 million people were killed and 20
million crippled in order to settle the issue of who would amass
the greater wealth, the German or the British capitalists. That is
the truth, and no matter what efforts are made to conceal it, it
is spreading.

The fall of the capitalist governments is unavoidable, because
everybody can see that another war like the last is inevitable if
the imperialists and the bourgeoisie remain in power. New disputes
and conflicts are developing between Japan and America. They have
been prepared by decades in the diplomatic history of the two
countries. Wars are inevitable because of private property. War is
inevitable between Britain, which has acquired colonies through
plunder, and France, which considers herself robbed of her full
share. No one knows where and how it will break out, but everybody
sees, knows and says that war is inevitable, and is being prepared
again.

This situation in the twentieth century, in countries with a
totally literate population, is our guarantee that the old
reformism and anarchism are out of the question. They were killed
by the war. To talk of using reforms in order to remake the
capitalist society which spent thousands of millions of rubles on
the war, to talk of remaking this society without a revolutionary
government and without force, without tremendous upheavals, is
impermissible. Anyone who speaks and thinks that way is of no
importance.

The Communist International is strong because it is based on
the lessons of the world imperialist slaughter. In every country
the correctness of its position finds increasing confirmation in
the experience of millions of people, and the movement towards the
Communist International is now a hundred times wider and deeper
than before. It has brought about the complete breakdown of the
Second International in one year.

In every country (even the most undeveloped) in the world, all
thinking workers are aligning themselves with the Communist
International, and are accepting its ideas. Therein lies the full
guarantee that the victory of the Communist International
throughout the world, in the not very distant future, is
assured. ( Applause .)