Page:Lenin's Speech at the First Session of the Second Congress of the Third International (1920).djvu/19

 tionary proletariat of the advanced capitalist countries and the revolutionary masses of those countries where there is a very small or almost no proletariat, this union with the oppressed masses of the colonial countries of the East has been brought about in the present Congress. It is up to us now to make this union a strong one and I have no doubt we are going to do it. When the revolutionary onslaught of the exploited and oppressed workers within each country, having overcome the resistance of an insignificant number of the philistines of their labour aristocracy, will combine with the revolutionary onslaught of hundreds of millions of humanity which have hitherto been beyond the pale of history, which have been regarded as a mere objects of exploitation—then imperialism will have to fall. The imperialistic war has furthered the interests of the revolution. Out of the colonies, out of the backward countries, out of isolation, the bourgeoisie has recruited her soldiers for the imperialistic war. The English bourgeoisie tried to make the Hindu soldiers believe that it is the business of the Hindu peasant to protect Great Britain against Germany; the French bourgeoisie has tried to make the soldiers from the French colonies believe that it was the business of the coloured people to defend France. They have taught them the art of war. This is an extremely useful acquirement, for which we might be very grateful to the bourgeoisie—grateful in the name of all the Russian workers and peasants and particularly in the name of the Russian red army. The imperialistic war has drawn the dependent nations into the arena of history. And one of our chief problems is to consider how to lay the first foundation stone for the organisation of the soviet movement in those non-capitalist countries.

Soviets there are possible. They will be Soviets not of workingmen, they will be Soviets of peasants, soviets of toilers. Much work will be required, errors are inevitable and many difficulties will have to be met with on this road. The fundamental task of the Second Congress is to work out er to point out practical principles so that the work which has hitherto been going on among these hundreds of millions of people in an unorganised manner should go on organised, combined, systematic. Now, within one year of following the First Congress of the Communist International, we are emerging victorious over the Second International; Soviet ideas have spread not alone among the workers of the civilised countries, not only to them are they known and understood. The workers of all countries