The fourth anniversary of October 25 (November 7) is approaching.
The further that great day recedes from us, the clearer becomes the significance of the proletarian revolution in Russia, and the more deeply we ponder over the practical experience of our work as a whole.
In the briefest possible terms—and, of course, far from completely or accurately—this significance and this experience may be summed up as follows.
The direct and immediate object of the revolution in Russia was a bourgeois-democratic one, namely, to destroy the survivals of medievalism and sweep them away completely, in order to clear the road for capitalism; to clear the road for capitalism; to rid Russia of this legacy of feudalism, of this shame, of this blot upon her civilisation, of this obstacle to all culture and progress in our country.
And we can justifiably pride ourselves on having carried out that cleansing with infinitely more thoroughness and speed, more boldly and successfully, more widely and deeply, so far as the masses of the people are concerned, than the great French Revolution over one hundred and twenty-five years ago.
Both the anarchists and the petty-bourgeois democrats (i.e., the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries, who are the Russian counterparts of this international social type) have talked and still talk an incredible lot of nonsense about the relation between the bourgeois-democratic revolution and the socialist (that is, proletarian) revolution. The last four years have proved to the correctness of our understanding of Marxism on this point, and of our estimate of the experience of former revolutions. We have carried the bourgeois-democratic revo-

First page of the manuscript of V. I. Lenin “On the Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution”. October 14, 1921.

Reduced

ON THE FOURTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION
lution to its completion as nobody else has. We are advancing towards the socialist revolution consciously, firmly and unswervingly, knowing that it is not separated from the bourgeois-democratic revolution by a Chinese Wall, and knowing too that only struggle will determine how far we shall advance, what part of this infinitely great task we shall accomplish, and to what extent we shall succeed in consolidating our victories. Time will show. But we see even now that a tremendous amount—tremendous for this ruined, exhausted and backward country—has already been done towards the socialist transformation of society.
Let us, however, finish what we have to say about the bourgeois-democratic content of our revolution. Marxists must understand what that means. To explain, let us take a few graphic examples.
The bourgeois-democratic content of the revolution means that the social relations (system, institutions) of the country are purged of medievalism, serfdom, feudalism.
What were the chief manifestations, survivals, remnants of serfdom in Russia up to 1917? The monarchy, the system of social estates, landownership and land tenure, the status of women, religion, and national oppression. Take any one of these Augean stables, which, incidentally, were left largely uncleansed by all the more advanced states when they were accomplishing their bourgeois-democratic revolutions one hundred and twenty-five, two hundred and fifty and more years ago (1649 in England); take any of these Augean stables, and you will see that we have cleansed them thoroughly. In about ten weeks, from October 25 (November 7), 1917 to the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly (January 5, 1918), we accomplished a thousand times more in this respect than was accomplished by the bourgeois democrats and liberals (the Cadets) and by the petty-bourgeois democrats (the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries) during the eight months they were in power.
Those poltroons, gas-bags, vainglorious Narcissuses and petty Hamlets brandished their cardboard swords—but did not even destroy the monarchy! We swept out all that monarchist muck as nobody else had ever done, anywhere. We left no stone on stone, brick upon brick, in the age-old edifice of social estate (the most advanced countries, like England, France, Germany, have still not rid themselves of the traces of social estate!). The most deep-seated roots of social estate, namely, the vestiges of feudalism and serfdom in landownership, have been eradicated by us to the end. "One can argue" (there are enough literati, Cadets, Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries abroad to engage in these disputes) about what will come "in the final analysis" from the land reforms of the great October Revolution. We are not keen now to waste time on these disputes, for we are resolving this dispute and the whole mass of disputes dependent on it by struggle. But one cannot argue against the fact that petty-bourgeois democrats for eight months "agreed" with the landowners preserving the traditions of serfdom, while we in a few weeks swept both these landowners and all their traditions from the face of the Russian land to the end.
Take religion, or the lack of rights of women, or the oppression and inequality of non-Russian nationalities. These are all questions of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. The philistines of petty-bourgeois democracy prattled about this for eight months; there is not one of the most advanced countries in the world where these questions have been resolved in a bourgeois-democratic direction to the end. With us, they have been resolved by the legislation of the October Revolution to the end. We have fought and are fighting religion in earnest. We have given all non-Russian nationalities their own republics or autonomous regions. There is no such baseness, vileness and meanness in Russia as the lack of rights or incomplete rights of women, this outrageous vestige of serfdom and the Middle Ages, refurbished by the self-seeking bourgeoisie and the dull, intimidated petty bourgeoisie in all countries of the globe, without a single exception.
This is all the content of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. A hundred and fifty and two hundred and fifty years ago, the advanced leaders of this revolution (of these revolutions, if we speak of each national type of one general type) promised the peoples to liberate humanity from medieval privileges, from the inequal-

ON THE FOURTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION
ity of women, from state advantages for one or another religion (or the "idea of religion," "religiosity" in general), from the inequality of nationalities. They promised—and did not fulfill. They could not fulfill, for "respect" for "sacred private property" interfered. In our proletarian revolution, there was no such accursed "respect" for this thrice-cursed Middle Ages and for this "sacred private property."
But in order to secure for the peoples of Russia the conquests of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, we had to advance further, and we advanced further. We resolved the questions of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in passing, incidentally, as a "by-product" of our main and real, proletarian-revolutionary, socialist work. Reforms, we have always said, are a by-product of revolutionary class struggle. Bourgeois-democratic transformations—we have said and proved by deeds—are a by-product of the proletarian, that is, socialist revolution. By the way, all the Kautskys, Hilferdings, Martovs, Chernovs, Hillquits, Longuets, MacDonalds, Turatis and other heroes of "II 1/2" Marxism have failed to understand such a relationship between the bourgeois-democratic and the proletarian-socialist revolutions. The first grows into the second. The second, in passing, resolves the questions of the first. The second secures the cause of the first. Struggle and only struggle decides how far the second succeeds in outgrowing the first.
The Soviet system is precisely one of the clearest confirmations or manifestations of this growing of one revolution into another. The Soviet system is the maximum of democratism for workers and peasants, and at the same time it signifies a break with bourgeois democratism and the emergence of a new, world-historical, type of democracy, namely: proletarian democratism or the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Let the dogs and swine of the dying bourgeoisie and the petty-bourgeois democracy trailing after it shower us with heaps of curses, abuse, ridicule for the failures and mistakes in the construction by us of our Soviet system. We do not forget for a minute that we have indeed had and are making many failures and mistakes. How else could one manage without failures and mistakes in such a new undertaking, new for all world history, as the creation of a type of state structure never before seen! We will steadfastly fight to correct our failures and mistakes, to improve our application to life of Soviet principles, which is very, very far from perfect. But we have the right to be proud, and we are proud, that it has fallen to our lot to begin the construction of the Soviet state, to begin with this a new epoch in world history, an epoch of the rule of a new class, oppressed in all capitalist countries and everywhere advancing to a new life, to victory over the bourgeoisie, to the dictatorship of the proletariat, to the liberation of humanity from the yoke of capital, from imperialist wars.
The question of imperialist wars, of that international policy of finance capital which now dominates the entire world and which inevitably engenders new imperialist wars, inevitably engenders an unprecedented intensification of national oppression, plunder, robbery, the strangulation of weak, backward, small nationalities by a handful of “advanced” powers—this question has, since 1914, become the cornerstone question of the entire policy of all countries of the globe. This is a question of the life and death of tens of millions of people. This is a question of whether, in the next imperialist war being prepared before our very eyes by the bourgeoisie, growing before our very eyes out of capitalism, 20 million people will be slaughtered (instead of the 10 million killed in the war of 1914-1918, with its supplementary “small” wars, which are not yet over even now), whether in this inevitable (if capitalism remains) coming war 60 million will be crippled (instead of the 30 million crippled in 1914-1918). And in this question our October Revolution opened a new epoch in world history. The servants of the bourgeoisie and its toadies in the person of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, in the person of the entire petty-bourgeois allegedly “socialist” democracy of the whole world, mocked the slogan of “transforming the imperialist war into a civil war.” But this slogan proved to be the only truth—unpleasant, crude, naked, cruel, all this is so, but the truth amidst the darkness of the most refined chauvinist and pacifist deceptions. These deceptions are collapsing. The Brest peace has been exposed. Every day exposes more and more mercilessly the significance and consequences of the Versailles peace, which is even worse than the Brest peace. And ever more clearly, ever more distinctly, ever more inexorably, the menacing truth rises before millions and millions of people who are thinking about the causes of yesterday’s war and about the impending war of tomorrow: it is impossible to escape from the imperialist war and from the imperialist world inevitably engendered by it (if we had the old orthography, I would write here the two words “world” in both their meanings), it is impossible to escape from this hell otherwise than by Bolshevik struggle and Bolshevik revolution.
Let the bourgeoisie and pacifists, generals and philistines, capitalists and petty bourgeois, all believing Christians and all knights of the Second and Two-and-a-Half Internationals furiously revile this revolution. No torrents of malice, slander, and lies will obscure the world-historical fact that for the first time in hundreds and thousands of years the slaves have responded to the war between the slave-owners by openly proclaiming the slogan: let us transform this war between slave-owners over the division of their loot into a war of the slaves of all nations against the slave-owners of all nations.
For the first time in hundreds and thousands of years this slogan has been transformed from a vague and impotent expectation into a clear, precise political programme, into the effective struggle of millions of oppressed under the leadership of the proletariat, has been transformed into the first victory of the proletariat, into the first victory of the cause of the abolition of wars, of the cause of the alliance of the workers of all countries against the alliance of the bourgeoisie of different nations, that bourgeoisie which both makes peace and wages war at the expense of the slaves of capital, at the expense of the wage-workers, at the expense of the peasants, at the expense of the toilers.
This first victory is not yet the final victory, and our October Revolution achieved it at the cost of unprecedented

TO THE FOURTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION

with hardships and difficulties, with unheard-of torments, with a number of tremendous failures and mistakes on our part. Could a backward people have conquered the imperialist wars of the most powerful and advanced countries of the world without failures and without mistakes! We are not afraid to admit our mistakes and shall look at them soberly in order to learn to correct them. But the fact remains that for the first time for hundreds and thousands of years the promise to “reply” to war between slave-owners by a revolution of the slaves against all and sundry slave-owners has been completely fulfilled, and is being fulfilled despite all difficulties.
We have made a start on this business. When, precisely when, and the proletarians of which nation will complete this process is not important. The important thing is that the ice has been broken; that the road is open, the way has been shown.
Continue your hypocrisy, gentlemen, capitalists of all countries, who are “defending the fatherland”, the Japanese against the American, the American against the Japanese, the French against the English, and so forth! Continue to “wriggle out” of the question of the means of combating imperialist wars with new “Basle manifestos” (on the model of the Basle Manifesto of 1912), you knights of the Second and Two-and-a-Half Internationals, together with all pacifist philistines and petty bourgeois of the entire world! The first Bolshevik revolution has wrested the first hundred million people on earth from imperialist war and from the imperialist world. Subsequent revolutions will deliver all mankind from such wars and from such a world.
Our last, and most important, most difficult and most incomplete task is economic construction, the laying of the economic foundations for the new, socialist edifice to replace the feudal edifice that has been destroyed and the capitalist edifice that has been half-destroyed. In this most important and most difficult task we have sustained the greatest number of reverses and have made most mistakes. How could one expect that a task so new to the world could be begun without reverses and without mistakes! But we have made a start on it. We are carrying it on. By means of our “New Economic Policy”, we are correcting a number of our mistakes, learning how

FOURTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION
to continue to erect the socialist edifice in a small-peasant country without committing such mistakes.
The difficulties are immense. We are accustomed to fighting immense difficulties. It is not for nothing that our enemies call us “stone-hard” and representatives of a “bone-crushing policy”. But we have learned also—at least to a certain extent—another art that is essential in revolution, namely, flexibility, the ability to effect swift and sudden changes of tactics if altered objective conditions demand it, and to choose another path for the achievement of our goal if the former path proves to be impractical or impossible at the given moment.
Swept along on the crest of the wave of enthusiasm, rousing first the general political, and then the military enthusiasm of the people, we expected to accomplish economic tasks just as great as the political and military tasks had been accomplished by relying directly on this enthusiasm. We expected—or perhaps it would be truer to say that we presumed, without having given it adequate consideration—to be able to organise the state production and the state distribution of products on communist lines in a small-peasant country directly as dictated by the proletarian state. Experience has proved that we were wrong. It appears that a number of transitional stages were necessary—state capitalism and socialism—in order to prepare—to prepare by many years of effort—for the transition to communism. Not directly relying on enthusiasm, but aided by the enthusiasm engendered by the great revolution, and on the basis of personal interest, personal incentive and business principles, we must first set to work to build solid gangways to socialism in a small-peasant country. Otherwise we shall never get to communism, we shall never bring scores of millions of people to communism. That is what experience has taught us. That is what is dictated by the objective course of the development of the revolution.
And we, who during these three or four years have learned a little to make abrupt changes of front (when abrupt changes are needed), have begun zealously, attentively and sedulously (though still not zealously, attentively and sedulously enough) to learn to make a new change of front, namely, the “New Economic Policy”.

(not assiduously enough) to learn the new turn, the "New Economic Policy." The proletarian state must become a cautious, thrifty, skillful "proprietor," a conscientious wholesale merchant—otherwise it cannot economically set a petty-peasant country on its feet, there is no other transition to communism now, under the given conditions, alongside the capitalist (still capitalist) West. A wholesale merchant is, as it were, an economic type as far removed from communism as heaven is from earth. But this is precisely one of those contradictions which, in living reality, leads from small-peasant farming through state capitalism to socialism. Personal interest raises production; we need an increase in production first and foremost and at all costs. Wholesale trade unites millions of small peasants economically, interesting them, connecting them, leading them to a further stage: to various forms of connection and association in production itself. We have already begun the necessary restructuring of our economic policy. We already have in this area some—true, small, partial, but nonetheless undoubted successes. We are already finishing, in this area of new "science," the preparatory class. Learning firmly and persistently, checking each step with practical experience, not being afraid to redo what has been started repeatedly, to correct our mistakes, carefully delving into their significance, we will also move into the following classes. We will complete the entire "course," although the circumstances of the world economy and world politics have made it much longer and more difficult than we would have liked. At all costs, no matter how heavy the torments of the transition period, the disasters, famine, ruin, we will not lose heart and will bring our cause to a victorious end.
October 14, 1921

*Pravda* No. 234, October 18, 1921

Signed: N. Lenin

Printed from the manuscript