Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/512

496 496 SIBERIA 2. Around the enchained people we see a class of exploiters whom the state creates and protects. The state itself is the greatest capitalistic power in the land, it constitutes the sole political oppressor of the people, and only through its aid and support can the lesser robbers exist. This bourgeois excrescence in the form of a government sustains itself by mere brute force — by means of its military, police, and bureaucratic organization — in precisely the same way that the Mongols of Genghis Khan sus- tained themselves in Russia. It is not sanctioned by the people, it rules by arbitrary violence, and it adopts and enforces govern- mental and economical forms and principles that have nothing whatever in common with the people's wishes and ideals. 3. In the nation we can see, crushed but still living, its old traditional principles, such as the right of the people to the land, communal and local self-government, freedom of speech and of conscience, and the rudiments of federal organization. These principles would develop broadly, and would give an entirely dif- ferent and a more popular direction to our whole history, if the nation could live and organize itself in accordance with its own wishes and its own tendencies. B 1. We are of opinion, therefore, that it is our first duty, as socialists and democrats, to free the people from the oppression of the present Government, and bring about a political revolution, in order to transfer the supreme power to the nation. By means of this revolution we shall afford the people an opportunity to de- velop, henceforth, independently, and shall cause to be recognized and supported, in Russian life, many purely socialistic principles that are common to us and to the Russian people. 2. We think that the will of the people would be sufficiently well expressed and executed by a national Organizing Assembly, elected freely by a general vote, and acting under the instructions of the voters. This, of course, would fall far short of an ideal manifestation of the people's will ; but it is the only one that is practicable at present, and we therefore think best to adopt it. Our plan is to takeaway the power from the existing Government, and give it to an Organizing Assembly, elected in the manner