Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/56

 take up the fight. We are not pacifists. We are against imperialistic wars waged by capitalists for profit. But we have always maintained that it is nonsense to declare that the proletariat should reject revolutionary wars, which may be necessary in the interests of Socialism.

This task would be a stupendous one and would mean a series of revolutionary class struggles all over the world. It is not our impatience and our desire to confront this issue, however, but the objective conditions resulting from the world war that put before the workers this dilemma: either sacrifice more millions of men in the destruction of European civilization, or conquer the governments through the Social Revolution. When in November, 1914, our party demanded, "conversion of the imperialistic war into a civil war of the oppressed against the oppressors, and for Socialism," the demand was considered ridiculous by the social-patriots and renegades of Socialism, as well as by the moderates of the "center." Nowadays even a blind man can see that this demand was correct.

Historic conditions have made the Russian workers, perhaps for a short period, the leaders of the international proletariat, but Socialism cannot now prevail in Russia. We can expect only an agrarian revolution, which will help to create more favorable conditions for further proletarian development. The main result of the present Revolution will have to be the creation of forces for more revolutionary activity, and to influence the more highly-developed European countries into action.

In the furtherance of its revolutionary policy, the Russian proletariat has two allies:

1.—The great majority of the population, consisting of the mass of the semi-proletarian and a part of the small peasants of Russia. This great mass needs peace, bread, liberty, land. This mass will inevitably be under the influence of the bourgeoisie, particularly of the petit bourgeois middle class, which it resembles rather closely owing to its conditions of life, which vaccillate between those of the bourgeoisie and of the proletariat. The cruel lessons of the war, which will become all the more cruel as Guchkov, Milyukov & Co. carry on the war with greater energy, will inevitably push this mass into the proletariat, compel it to co-operate with the proletariat. We must now, taking advantage of the freedom of the new regime and making use of the Councils of Workers' and Soldiers' Delegates, enlighten and organize this mass, above and before everything else. Councils of Peasants' Delegates, Council of Farm-Laborers,—these are among our immediate tasks. We must