Page:Leo Tolstoy - The Russian Revolution (1907).djvu/90

 Rh obey or serve Government, and, with the abolition of its power, the slavish conditions in which you live will vanish of themselves, for they are maintained only by governmental violence. And the violence the Government employs is supplied by yourselves. It is that power alone which places customs-duties on goods imported or exported; it alone collects taxes on articles made in the country; it (the power of the Government) makes the laws which maintain the monopolies owned by private people, and the right of private property in land; only that power, controlling the army which you yourselves supply, holds you in continual subjection or submission to itself, and to its abettors—the rich.

When you, town-workers as well as villagers, cease to obey the Government, it will no longer be necessary for you (town-workmen) to accept whatever conditions the owners of the mills and factories dictate to you, but you yourselves will give them your conditions, or will start your own co-operative (artél) manufacture of things needed by the people; or, having free land, you will resume a natural agricultural life.

"But if we Russian folk begin at once to live like that, not obeying the Government—there will be no Russia," say those to whom it seems that the existence of Russia—that is to say, the union of many different nations under one Government—is something important, great, and useful.

In reality, this combination of many different nations, called Russia, is not only not important for you, Russian working men, but just this combination is a chief cause of your miseries.

If they oppress you with taxes and duties, as they oppressed your forefathers, accumulationg vast debts which you have to pay; if they take you as soldiers and send you to different ends of the earth to fight people with whom you have nothing to do, and who have nothing to do with you, all this is only done to maintain Russia, i.e. to maintain a forcible combination of Poland, the Caucasus, Finland, Central Asia, Manchuria, and other lands and peoples, under one rule. But besides the fact that all your ills come from this union called Russia, this union involves a great sin