Page:Lenin's Speech at the First Session of the Second Congress of the Third International (1920).djvu/20

 ridicule the wiseacres among whom there. ave many who call themselves Socialists and who discuss in a learned or semi-learned way we Soviet „system“, as the Germans systematically prefer to express themselves, or the Soviet idea according to the expression of the English „guild“ socialists. These discussions of the Soviet „system“ or „idea“ frequently dim the eyes and the minds of the workers, but the working people sweep away that pedantic refuse and take up the weapon furnished them by the Soviets. The understanding of the role and the significance of the Soviets has spread also in the countries of the East.

The foundation for a soviet movement has been laid all over the East, all over Asia, atone the colonial countries. The idea that the exploited must rise against the exploiter and create their own councils is net a complicated one. This idea, after our experience, after two and a half years of the existence of the Soviet Republic in Russia and after the First Congress of the Third International, has become accesible to hundreds of millions of oppressed and exploited masses all over the world: While at present in Russia we are frequently forced to make compromises, to bide our time because we are weaker than the international imperialists are, we know at the same time that we ate the defenders of the interests of a billion and a quarter of People. We are still hindered by those barriers, by those prejudices, by the ignorance which is hourly passing sway, and as time goes on we are more and more becoming the representatives and the protectors of 70% of the population of the earth, of the mass of those who toil and are being exploited. We have reason for feeling proud of the fact that while at the First Congress we were in reality only propagandists, we only scattered our fundamental ideas among the proletariat of the world, we only sounded the call for conflict, only asked where those people are who are capable of going our way, now we have with us the advanced ranks of the proletariat everywhere. We have a proletarian army all over the world although at times badly organised and requiring reorganisation.

If our international comrades will aid us now in the organisation of a unified army, then no defects are prevent us from doing our work. This is the work of the world proletariat, the work of creating a world wide Soviet Republic. (Long, continuous cheering: the orchestra plays the International).