Page:Vladimir Ilyich Lenin - Lenin's Views on the Revolution.djvu/1

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COMRADES,

We meet at a time which is exceedingly difficult for us, not only because we have lost our great organiser and leader, Jacob Michaelovich Sverdlov, but especially because international imperialism is making, there is no doubt, a last and very powerful effort to crush the Soviet Republic. We are convinced that the counter-revolutionary offensives from West and East, the various White Guard disturbances, and the attempts to destroy the railways which have occurred in various places, all result from a carefully arranged plan devised in Paris by the Entente Imperialists. After ending four years of capitalist warfare it was very hard for Russia to be forced to take up arms again in defence of the Soviet Republic. We have all borne the heavy burden of war; we are all exhausted by it. If this war is carried on with redoubled energy and courage it is only because, for the first time in the history of the world, an army has been raised that knows why it is fighting. For the first time in the world's history the workers and peasants, who are making unheard-of sacrifices, are clearly conscious that they are defending a Socialist Soviet Republic, that they are upholding the working man's strength against the capitalist, and the cause of the international proletarian Socialist revolution.