March 23 (40) Vladimir Ilyich begins and March 24 (44) finishes the 
3rd "Letter from Afar." We are printing it from a copy preserved in Vladimir Ilyich's papers, made by means of carbon paper.

4.
LENIN.
LETTERS FROM AFAR.
LETTER THREE.
ON THE PROLETARIAN MILITIA.
[March 23 (10)—24 (11), 1917]
The conclusion I drew yesterday regarding Chkheidze's wavering tactics has been fully confirmed today, March 10 (23), by two documents.
The first is an extract from the manifesto of the Central Committee of our party, the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, in Petrograd, telegraphed from Stockholm to the *Frankfurter Zeitung*. This document contains not a word either about supporting the Tuchkov government or about overthrowing it: workers and soldiers are called upon to organize around the Soviet of Workers' Deputies, to elect representatives to it for the struggle against tsarism for a republic, an 8-hour working day, for the confiscation of landlord lands and grain reserves, and most importantly, for the cessation of the predatory war.
At the same time, the absolutely correct idea of our Central Committee that relations with the proletarians of all warring countries are necessary for peace is especially important and especially topical.
To expect peace from negotiations and relations between bourgeois governments would be self-deception and deception of the people.
The second document is a report, also telegraphed from Stockholm to another German newspaper (*Vossische Zeitung*), about a meeting of the Duma faction of Chkheidze with the labour group (? *Arbeiterfraction*) and with representatives of 15 workers' unions on March 2 (15), and about an appeal published the next day. Of the 11 points of this appeal, the telegram states only three: 1st - the demand for a republic, 7th - the demand for peace and an immediate

LENIN. - LETTERS FROM AFAR.

start of negotiations on peace, and the 3rd, requiring "sufficient participation of representatives of the Russian working class in the government."
If this point is stated correctly, then I understand why the bourgeoisie praises Chkheidze.
I understand why the praise of the English Guchkovites in the *Times*, which I cited above, was joined by the praise of the French Guchkovites in *Le Temps*. This newspaper of French millionaires and imperialists writes on 22/111: "The leaders of the workers' parties, especially Mr. Chkheidze, are using all their influence to moderate the desires of the working classes."
Indeed, to demand "participation" of workers in the Guchkov-Miliukov government is theoretically and politically absurd: to participate in the minority would mean being a pawn; to participate "equally" is impossible, because it is impossible to reconcile the demand to continue the war with the demand to conclude an armistice and open peace negotiations; to participate in the "majority", one must have the power to overthrow the Guchkov-Miliukov government. In practice, the demand for "participation" is the worst Louis Blanc-ism, i.e. forgetting the class struggle and its real situation, indulging in the emptiest, sonorous phrase, spreading illusions among the workers, wasting precious time on negotiations with Miliukov or Kerensky, which must be used to create a real class and revolutionary force, a proletarian militia, capable of inspiring confidence in all the poorest strata of the population, which constitutes the vast majority of it, to help them organize, to help them fight for bread, for peace, for freedom.
This mistake of the appeal of Chkheidze and his group (I am not talking about the party of the O.C., the Organizing Committee, because in the sources available to me there is not a sound about the O.C.) - this mistake is all the more strange because at the meeting on March 2 (15), Chkheidze's closest like-minded person, Skobelev, as the newspapers report, said the following: "Russia is on the eve of the second, real (*wirklich*, literally: actual) revolution."
This is the truth, from which Skobelev and Chkheidze forgot to draw practical conclusions. I cannot judge from here, from my cursed afar, how close this second revolution is. Skobelev can see better there, on the spot. Therefore, I do not ask myself questions for the solution of which I have no and cannot have concrete data. I only emphasize the confirmation by a "third-

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party witness," i.e. Skobelev, who does not belong to our party, of the factual conclusion to which I came in the first letter, namely: the February-March revolution was only the first stage of the revolution. Russia is experiencing a peculiar historical moment of transition to the next stage of the revolution or, in Skobelev's words, to the "second revolution."
If we want to be Marxists and learn from the experience of revolutions throughout the world, we must try to understand the peculiarity of this transitional moment and what tactics follow from its objective characteristics.
The peculiarity of the situation is that the Guchkov-Miliukov government won the first victory unusually easily due to the following three main circumstances: 1) the assistance of Anglo-French financial capital and its agents; 2) the assistance of part of the upper strata of the army; 3) the ready-made organization of the entire Russian bourgeoisie in zemstvo, city institutions, the State Duma, military-industrial committees, etc.
The Tuchkov government is in a vise: bound by the interests of capital, it is forced to strive to continue the predatory, robber war, to protect the monstrous profits of capital and landlords, to restore the monarchy. Bound by its revolutionary origin and the need for a sharp transition from autocracy to democracy, under the pressure of hungry masses demanding peace, the government is forced to lie, wriggle, buy time, "proclaim" and promise as much as possible (promises are the only thing that is very cheap even in an era of rampant inflation), fulfill as little as possible, give concessions with one hand, take them back with the other.
Under certain circumstances, in the best case for it, the new government may delay the collapse for a while, relying on all the organizational abilities of the entire Russian bourgeoisie and the bourgeois intelligentsia. But even in this case, it cannot escape the collapse, because it is impossible to escape from the clutches of the terrible monster of the imperialist war and famine, generated by world capitalism, without leaving the soil of bourgeois relations, without moving to revolutionary measures, without appealing to the greatest historical heroism of both the Russian and the world proletariat.

LENIN. - LETTERS FROM AFAR.

Hence the conclusion: we will not be able to overthrow the new government with a single blow, or, if we can do this (in revolutionary times the limits of the possible expand a thousandfold), then we will not be able to retain power without opposing the magnificent organization of the entire Russian bourgeoisie and all bourgeois intelligentsia with an equally magnificent organization of the proletariat, leading the entire vast mass of urban and rural poor, semi-proletariat, and petty proprietors.

Regardless of whether the "second revolution" has already broken out in St. Petersburg (I said that it would be completely absurd to try to account for the specific pace of its brewing from abroad), or whether it has been postponed for some time, or whether it has already begun in some individual localities of Russia (there seem to be some indications of this) – in any case, the slogan of the moment both on the eve of the new revolution, and during it, and the day after it, must be proletarian organization.

Comrade workers!

You performed miracles of proletarian heroism yesterday, overthrowing the tsarist monarchy.

You will inevitably have to, in the more or less near future (perhaps even now, as I write these lines), again perform miracles of the same heroism to overthrow the power of the landlords and capitalists waging an imperialist war. You will not be able to win firmly in this next, "real" revolution, if you do not perform miracles of proletarian organizedness!

The slogan of the moment is organization. But to limit oneself to this would be to say nothing, because, on the one hand, organization is always needed, so a single indication of the necessity for "organization of the masses" explains absolutely nothing, and on the other hand, whoever limited himself to this would only turn out to be an echo of the liberals, because the liberals precisely want, in order to strengthen their domination, that the workers do not go beyond the usual, "legal" (from the point of view of "normal" bourgeois society) organizations, i.e., that the workers only enroll in their party, in their trade union, in their cooperative, etc., and so on.

The workers, with their class instinct, understood that in revolutionary times they need a completely different, not just the usual

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organization, they correctly embarked on the path indicated by the experience of our revolution of 1905 and the Paris Commune of 1871, they created the Soviet of Workers' Deputies, they began to develop, expand, and strengthen it by attracting soldiers' deputies and, undoubtedly, deputies from rural hired workers, and then (in one form or another) from all the peasant poor.

The creation of such organizations in all localities of Russia without exception, for all professions and strata of the proletarian and semi-proletarian population without exception, i.e., for all the toilers and exploited, if one uses a less economically precise but more popular expression, is a task of paramount, most urgent importance. Looking ahead, I note that for the entire peasant mass, our party (I hope to discuss its special role in proletarian organizations of a new type in one of the following letters) should especially recommend separate soviets of hired workers and then of small farmers who do not sell grain, from wealthy peasants; without this condition, it is impossible to conduct a truly proletarian policy, generally speaking *), or to properly approach the most important practical question of the life and death of millions of people: the correct distribution of grain, the increase of its production, etc.

But, one asks, what should the soviets of workers' deputies do? They "should be regarded as organs of insurrection, as organs of revolutionary power," we wrote in No. 47 of the Geneva "Social-Democrat," on October 13, 1915.

This theoretical proposition, derived from the experience of the Commune of 1871 and the Russian Revolution of 1905, must be explained and more concretely developed on the basis of practical indications of precisely this stage, precisely this revolution in Russia.

We need revolutionary power, we need (for a certain transitional period) the state. In this we differ from the anarchists. The difference between revolutionary Marxists and anarchists is not only that the former stand for
*) A struggle will now unfold in the countryside for the petty and partly middle peasantry. The landlords, relying on the wealthy peasants, will lead it to submission to the bourgeoisie. We must lead it, relying on rural hired workers and the poor, to the closest alliance with the urban proletariat.
N.

LENIN. - LETTERS FROM AFAR.

centralized large, communist production, while the latter stand for fragmented, small production. No, the difference precisely on the question of power, of the state, is that we are for the revolutionary use of revolutionary forms of the state to fight for socialism, while the anarchists are against it.

We need the state. But we do not need such a state as the bourgeoisie has created everywhere, from constitutional monarchies to the most democratic republics. And this is where we differ from the opportunists and Kautskyites of the old, decaying socialist parties, who have distorted or forgotten the lessons of the Paris Commune and the analysis of these lessons by Marx and Engels *).

We need a state, but not one that the bourgeoisie needs, with organs of power separated from the people and opposed to the people in the form of the police, the army, the bureaucracy (officialdom). All bourgeois revolutions have only improved this state machine, only transferred it from the hands of one party to the hands of another party.

The proletariat, however, if it wants to defend the conquests of the given revolution and go further, to conquer peace, bread, and freedom, must "smash," in Marx's words, this "ready-made" state machine and replace it with a new one, merging the police, the army, and the bureaucracy with the universally armed people. Following the path indicated by the experience of the Paris Commune of 1871 and the Russian Revolution of 1905, the proletariat must organize and arm all the poorest, exploited sections of the population, so that they themselves take the organs of state power directly into their own hands, and they themselves form the institutions of this power.

And the workers of Russia, even during the first stage of the first Russian revolution, in February–March 1917, embarked on this path. The whole task now is to clearly understand what this is

*) In one of the following letters or in a special article, I will dwell in detail on this analysis, given in particular in Marx's "The Civil War in France," in Engels's preface to the 3rd edition of this work, in the letters: Marx of April 12, 1871 and Engels of March 18–28, 1875, as well as on Kautsky's complete distortion of Marxism in his 1912 polemic against Pannekoek on the question of the so-called "destruction of the state."
H. J.

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new path, — in boldly, firmly and persistently following it further.
The Anglo-French and Russian capitalists wanted "only" to replace or even "scare" Nicholas II, leaving untouched the old state machine, the police, the army, the bureaucracy.
The workers went further and smashed it.
And now not only Anglo-French, but also German capitalists are howling with malice and horror, seeing, for example, how Russian soldiers shot their officers, even supporters of Guchkov and Miliukov, Admiral Nepenin *).
I said that the workers smashed it, the old state machine. More precisely: began to smash it.
Let's take a concrete example.
The police were partly killed, partly dismissed in St. Petersburg and many other places.
The Guchkov-Miliukov government will not be able either to restore the monarchy, or generally to stay in power, without restoring the police, as a special organization of armed people, separate from the people and opposed to them, under the command of the bourgeoisie. This is as clear as day.
On the other hand, the new government must reckon with the revolutionary people, feed them with half-concessions and promises, and delay time.
Therefore, it goes for a half-measure: it establishes a "people's militia" with elected authorities (it sounds terribly plausible! terribly democratic, revolutionary and beautiful!) But... But, firstly, it places it under the control, under the command of the zemstvo and city self-governments, i.e. under the command of landlords and capitalists, elected according to the laws of Nicholas the Bloody and Stolypin the Hangman!! Secondly, calling the militia "people's" in order to throw dust in the eyes of the "people," it does not in fact call on the people to participate in this militia across the board and does not oblige the owners and capitalists to pay employees and workers the usual fee for those hours/days that they devote to public service, i.e., the militia.
That's where the rub is.
That is how the landlord and capitalist government of Guchkov and Milyukov achieves the fact that the "people's militia" remains on paper, and in fact a bourgeois, anti-people militia is being restored little by little, quietly, first from "8,000 students and professors" (this is how foreign newspapers describe the current St. Petersburg militia)—this is a clear toy!—then gradually from the old and new police.
Do not allow the police to be restored! Do not release local authorities from your hands!
Create a truly all-people's, universal, led by the proletariat, militia!—this is the task of the day, this is the slogan of the moment, equally corresponding to both the correctly understood interests of the further class struggle, the further revolutionary movement, and the democratic instinct of every worker, every peasant, every working and exploited person who cannot but hate the police, guards, district police officers, the command of landlords and capitalists over armed people, who receive power over the people.
What kind of police do we need, and Guchkov and Miliukov, the landlords and capitalists? The same as it was under the tsarist monarchy.
All bourgeois and bourgeois-democratic republics in the world have established or restored, after the shortest revolutionary periods, precisely such a police, a special organization of armed people separated from the people and opposed to them, subordinate, in one way or another, to the bourgeoisie.
What kind of militia do we need, the proletariat, all the working people?
A truly people's militia, that is, firstly, consisting of the entire population, of all adult citizens of both sexes, and secondly, combining the functions of the people's army with the functions of the police, with the functions of the main and basic organ of state order and state administration.
To make these provisions more clear, I will take a purely schematic example. Needless to say, it would be absurd to think of drawing up any kind of "plan" for a proletarian militia: when the workers and all the people in a real mass get down to business in practice, they will develop and furnish it a hundred times better than any theorists. I am not proposing a "plan", I only want to illustrate my idea.

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In St. Petersburg there are about two million inhabitants, of which more than half are between 15 and 65 years old. Let's take half—1 million.
Let's even discard a whole quarter for the sick, etc., who are not participating in public service at the moment for valid reasons. There remain 750,000 people who, working in the militia, say, 1 day out of 15 (and continuing to receive pay from the owners for this time), would make up an army of 50,000 people.
This is the type of "state" we need.
This is the kind of militia that would be in deed, and not just in words, a "people's militia."
This is the path we must take to ensure that neither a special police force nor a special army separate from the people can be restored.
Such a militia, 95 parts out of 100, would consist of workers and peasants, would truly express the Reason and will, the strength and power of the vast majority of the people. Such a militia would indeed arm and train the entire people in military affairs, ensuring not in the Guchkov manner, not in the Miliukov manner, from any attempts to restore reaction, from any intrigues of tsarist agents.
Such a militia would be the executive body of the "Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies", it would enjoy the absolute respect and trust of the population, because it itself would be an organization of the entire population. Such a militia would turn democracy from a beautiful signboard, covering up the enslavement of the people by capitalists and the mockery of the capitalists of the people, into a real education of the masses for participation in all state affairs. Such a militia would draw adolescents into political life, teaching them not only in word, but also in deed, in work. Such a militia would develop those functions which, speaking in a scholarly language, relate to the conduct of "welfare police," sanitary supervision, etc., attracting all adult women across the board to such matters. And without attracting women to public service, to the militia, to political life, without tearing women out of their stupefying home and kitchen environment, it is impossible to ensure real freedom, it is impossible to build even democracy, let alone socialism.
Such a militia would be a proletarian militia, because industrial and urban workers are just as naturally

*) The manuscript says Репенина [Repenina]. - Ed.
LENIN. -- LETTERS FROM AFAR.

and would inevitably have obtained a leading influence in it on the mass of the poor, as they naturally and inevitably occupied a leading place in the entire revolutionary struggle of the people in 1905-07, and in 1917.
Such a militia would ensure absolute order and unselfishly implemented comradely discipline. At the same time, it, in the severe crisis experienced by all warring countries, would make it possible to really democratically combat this crisis, correctly and quickly implement the allocation of grain and other supplies, to carry out "universal labor conscription", which the French now call "civil mobilization", and the Germans "obligation of civil service", and without which it is impossible – it turned out that it is impossible – to heal the wounds inflicted and being inflicted by the robber and terrible war.
Did the proletariat of Russia shed its blood only in order to receive pompous promises of only political democratic reforms? Will it not demand and achieve that every worker immediately see and feel a certain improvement in his life? So that every family has bread? So that every child has a bottle of good milk and that no adult in a wealthy family dares to take extra milk until the children are provided for? So that palaces and wealthy apartments, left by the Tsar and the aristocracy, do not stand idle, but give shelter to the bloodless and destitute? Who can implement these measures other than a people's militia with the indispensable participation of women on an equal footing with men?
Such measures are not yet socialism. They concern the allocation of consumption, and not the reorganization of production. They would not yet be a "dictatorship of the proletariat", but only a "revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the poorest peasantry". It is not a matter now how to theoretically classify them. It would be the greatest mistake if we began to fit the complex, urgent, rapidly developing practical tasks of the revolution into the Procrustean bed of a narrowly understood "theory", instead of seeing in theory first and foremost a guide to action.
Will there be enough consciousness, endurance, heroism in the mass of Russian workers to display "miracles of proletarian

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organization" after they have shown in direct revolutionary struggle miracles of courage, initiative, self-sacrifice? We do not know this, and to guess about it would be an idle business, for answers to such questions are given only by practice.
What we firmly know and what we, as a party, must explain to the masses is, on the one hand, that there is a historical engine of the greatest force, which generates an unprecedented crisis, famine, and countless disasters. This engine is the war, which the capitalists of both warring camps are waging with predatory aims. This "engine" has brought a whole series of the richest, freest and most enlightened nations to the brink of the abyss. It forces the peoples to strain all their forces to the utmost, it puts them in an unbearable situation, it puts on the agenda not the implementation of any "theories" (there is no question of this, and Marx always warned socialists against this illusion), but the implementation of the most extreme practically possible measures, for without extreme measures there is ruin, immediate and unconditional ruin of millions of people from starvation.
That the revolutionary enthusiasm of the advanced class, under the conditions when the objective situation requires extreme measures from the entire people, can do a lot, there is no need to prove. This aspect of the matter is clearly observed and felt by everyone in Russia.
It is important to understand that in revolutionary times the objective situation changes as quickly and sharply as life in general flows. And we must be able to adapt our tactics and our immediate tasks to the peculiarities of each given situation. Before February 1917, the agenda was bold revolutionary-internationalist propaganda, calling the masses to struggle, awakening them. In the February-March days, heroism of unreserved struggle was required to immediately crush the immediate enemy—Tsarism. Now we are experiencing a transition from this first stage of the revolution to the second, from a "fight" with Tsarism to a "fight" with Guchkov-Miliukov, landlord and capitalist imperialism. The organizational task is on the agenda, but by no means in the stereotyped sense of working on only stereotyped organizations, but in the sense of attracting unprecedentedly broad masses of oppressed classes into the organization and embodying within this very

LENIN. ----LETTERS. FROM AFAR.

organization the tasks of military, general state and national economic importance.
The proletariat has approached and will approach this unique task in different ways. In some areas of Russia, the February-March revolution gives it almost complete power, - in others, it may be, by "grabbing" it will begin to create and expand the proletarian militia; - in the third, it will probably seek immediate elections on the basis of universal etc. suffrage to the city Dumas and zemstvos, in order to create revolutionary centers from them, etc., until the growth of proletarian organization, the rapprochement of soldiers with workers, the movement in the peasantry, the disappointment of many and many in the suitability of the military-imperialist government of Guchkov and Miliukov, approaches the hour of replacing this government with a "government" of the Soviet of Workers' Deputies.
Let us also not forget that right next to Petrograd we have one of the most advanced, actually republican countries, Finland, which from 1905 to 1917, under the cover of revolutionary battles in Russia, relatively peacefully developed democracy and won over the majority of the people to the side of socialism. The Russian proletariat will ensure complete freedom to the Finnish Republic, up to the freedom of secession (now hardly a single Social-Democrat] hesitates on this score, when the Cadet Rodichev so unworthily trades in Helsinki for pieces of privileges for the Great Russians), — and precisely thereby it will win the full confidence and comradely assistance of the Finnish workers to the all-Russian proletarian cause. In a difficult and great cause, mistakes are inevitable—we cannot avoid them either—Finnish workers are the best organizers, they will help us in this area, they will move the establishment of a socialist republic forward in their own way.
Revolutionary victories in Russia itself, — peaceful organizational successes in Finland under the cover of these victories, — the transition of Russian workers to revolutionary-organizational tasks on a new scale, — the conquest of power by the proletariat and the poorest strata of the population, — encouragement and development of the socialist revolution in the West, — this is the path that will lead us to peace and to socialism.
N. Lenin.
Zurich March 11 (24), 1917.