Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/418

 account of everything, regulate its work and produce its own organizers. It is self-understood that the party which leads the revolutionary proletariat could not gain the practical experience of large organizations and enterprises counting on millions and tens of millions of citizens; that to change the old, almost exclusively agitational habits must take a good deal of time. But it is not impossible, and—provided we have a clear understanding of the necessity of the change, a firm determination to accomplish it, and persistence in pursuing a great and difficult end,—we will attain it. There is a great deal of organizing talent in the "people," among the workers and among the peasants who are not exploiters; they had been oppressed, ruined and discarded by the thousands, by capital; we do not as yet know how to find them, how to encourage, assist them and give them prominence. But we will learn it, provided we start learning with the full revolutionary zeal without which no revolution can be victorious.

No profound and powerful popular movement in history ever escaped paying a price to the scum—the inexperienced innovators are preyed upon by adventurers and crooks, boasters and shouters; there will be stupid confusion, unnecessary bustle; individual "leaders" will undertake twenty tasks at once, accomplishing none of them. Let the poodles of bourgeois society scream and bark because of each additional splinter going to waste while the big old forest is cut down. It is their business to bark at the proletarian elephant. Let them bark. We will go ahead, trying very cautiously and patiently to test and discover real organizers, people with sober minds and practical sense, who combine loyalty to Socialism with the ability to organize quietly (and in spite of confusion and noise) the efficient and harmonious team work of a large number of people under the Soviet organization. Only such persons should, after many trials, advancing them from the simplest to the most difficult tasks, be promoted to responsible posts to direct the work of the people, to direct the management. We have not yet learned this. We will learn.