Page:Vladimir Ilyich Lenin - The Chief Task of Our Times.djvu/5

 awakened them by unheard-of perils and sufferings. The war has pushed history forward, and history is hurrying along with the speed of a locomotive. History is now made by the independent millions, and tens of millions, of people. Capitalism has now arrived at the level of Socialism.

And, therefore, if Russia is at present moving, as undoubtedly she is, from the "Tilsit" peace to the national revival, the outlet for this revival does not appear as an outlet to a bourgeois form of government, but to an International Socialist Revolution. We have been on the defensive since October 25th, 1917. We are defending our Motherland; but the national war, towards which we are moving, is a war for the Socialist Motherland, and we are a division of the universal army of Socialism.

"Hatred of the Germans," "Beat the Germans," such were and are the watchwords of the ordinary bourgeois patriotism, But we say: "Hatred of imperialistic robbers, hatred of Capitalism, death to Capitalism"; and at the same time: "Learn from the Germans, remain true to our fraternal union with the German workers." They are late in coming to our help; but we shall not wait for them in vain: they will come. Yes, learn from the Germans. History is taking a zig-zag route; it has come to pass that at present it is the German who personifies both brutal imperialism and the foundation of discipline, organisation, harmonious co-operation, based on the latest development of machinery, and the strictest co-ordination and control.

Organisation is just what we here lack, and just what we must acquire. It is precisely that which our great Revolution needs, and the possession of which would lead us from a victorious beginning, through a series of hard experiences, to a victorious end. Organisation is the thing which the Russian Republic of Soviets requires, in order to cease being wretched and weak, in order definitely to become powerful and prosperous.