Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/417

 passed into the hands of the proletariat and after the expropriation of the expropriators has been accomplished, the situation is radically changed, and—as was many times pointed out by the most eminent Socialists—the force of an example can then for the first time exert a mass effect. Model Communes should and will serve the purpose of training, teaching and stimulating the backward Communes. The press should serve as a weapon of Socialist construction, giving publicity in all details to the success of the model Communes, studying the principles of their success, their methods of economy, and, on the other hand, "blacklisting" those Communes which persist in keeping the "traditions of Capitalism," that is, anarchy, loafing, disorder and speculation. Statistics under Capitalism were used exclusively by government employes or narrow specialists,—we must bring them to the masses, we must popularize them so that the toilers may gradually learn to understand and to see for themselves what work and how much work is needed, and how much rest they can have; so that a comparison between the results of the enterprise of different Communes may become a subject of general interest and study; that the foremost Communes may be immediately rewarded (by reducing the workday for a certain period, raising the wages, granting a larger measure of cultural or historical privileges and treasures, and so forth).

The appearance on the historical stage of a new class in the role of a leader of society never occurs without a period of upheavals, struggles and storms, on the one hand,—and, on the other, without a period of false steps, experiments, wavering and hesitation with regard to the choice of new methods that will fit the new objective circumstances. The perishing feudal nobility was accustomed to false revenge on the bourgeoisie, which was conquering and displacing them, not only by conspiracies, attempts at insurrections and restoration, but also by torrents of ridicule at the inability, clumsiness, and blunders of the "insolent upstarts" who dared to take hold of the "sacred helm" of the state without the ancient training for this work, of the princes, barons, nobility and aristocracy,—quite like the revenge of the Kornilovs and Kerenskys, Gotz and Martovs, all those heroes of bourgeois morality or bourgeois scepticism, on the working class of Russia for its "insolent" attempt to seize power.

Of course, many months and years must pass before the new social class, a class heretofore oppressed and crushed by want and ignorance, can become accustomed to the new situation, can take