Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/425

 tain time all attention of the proletarian, all his thoughts, all his energy are turned in one direction—to breathe freely, to straighten out, to expand, to enjoy such immediate benefits of life as can be taken away and which were denied him by the overthrown exploiters. It is natural that it must take some time before the ordinary representative of the masses will not only see and become convinced, but will come to feel that he must not just simply "seize," grab, snatch,—and that this leads to greater disorganization, to ruin, to the return of the Kornilovs. A corresponding change in the environment (and, hence, in the psychology) of the rank and file of the toiling masses is barely beginning. And we, the Communist Party (the Bolsheviki), who give conscious expression to the aspirations of the exploited masses for emancipation, should fully comprehend this change and its necessity, should be in the front ranks of the weary masses which are seeking a way out, and should lead them along the right road—the road of labor discipline, harmonizing the problem of "holding meetings" to discuss the conditions of work with the problem of absolute submission to the will of the Soviet director, of the dictator, during work.

The "meeting-holding" is ridiculed, and more often wrathfully hissed at by the bourgeois, Mensheviki, etc., who see only chaos, senseless bustle and outbursts of petty bourgeois egoism. But without the "meeting-holding" the oppressed masses could never pass over from the discipline forced by the exploiters to a conscious and voluntary discipline. "Meeting-holding" is the real democracy of the toilers, their straightening out, their awakening to a new life, their first steps on the field which they themselves have cleared of reptiles (exploiters, imperialists, landed proprietors, capitalists), and which they want to learn to put in order themselves in their own way, for themselves, in accord with the principles of their, "Soviet," rule, and not the rule of the nobility and bourgeoisie. The November victory of the toilers against the exploiters was necessary, it was necessary to have a whole historical period of elementary discussion by the toilers themselves of the new conditions of life and of the new problems to make possible a secure transition to higher forms of labor discipline, to a conscious assimilation of the idea of the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat, to absolute submission to the personal orders of the representatives of the Soviet rule during work.

This transition has now begun.

We have successfully solved the first problem of the Revolution.