Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/390

 same time, the point of departure for a great national awakening. Historical circumstances at that time provided no other way out than through the bourgeois state; for, a century or more ago, history was created by a band of noblemen and the cliques of bourgeois intellectuals, while the great masses of workers and peasants lay slumbering and unobserving. History at that time, therefore, moved with frightful slowness.

Capitalism has now considerably raised culture in general, and particularly that of the masses. The war has shaken up the masses, awakened them with unparalleled terrors and sufferings. The war has accelerated the march of history until it now flies with the speed of a locomotive. History is now made by the independent action of millions and tens of millions of people. Capitalism has reached the stage of Socialism.

And therefore, if Russia now can pass, as she indisputably is passing, from a Peace of Tilsit to a period of national awakening, to a great war of national defense, the result of this transition will not be the bourgeois state, but the international Socialist revolution. We have therefore become, since November 7, 1917, "defenders"; we are for the "defense of the fatherland," but the fatherland that we are defending is the Socialist fatherland. We arc defending our Socialism, which is a section of the universal army of Socialism.

"Hatred of the Germans, down with the Germans!"—such was the cry and remains the cry of the ordinary, that is, bourgeois, patriotism. And we say: "Hatred to the imperialist robbers, hatred to Capitalism, death to Capitalism;" and, together with this: "We must learn from the Germans! Remain faithful to the fraternal union with the German workers. They have been late in coming to our assistance. We shall wait for their coming, we shall gain time; they will come to our assistance."

Yes, learn from the Germans! History moves in zig-zags and in round-about paths. It so happens that the German at present simultaneously personifies, together with savage Imperialism, the beginnings of discipline, organization, harmonious co-operation, on the basis of the modem machine industry, and strict accountability and supervision.

And that is precisely what we lack. That is just what we must learn. That is exactly what our Revolution must have in order to proceed from a victorious beginning, through a series of difficult trials, to a victorious conclusion. That is exactly what the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic needs in order to cease being poor and weak, and to become, once for all, rich and mighty.