Page:Vladimir Ilyich Lenin - The Chief Task of Our Times.djvu/9

 worn-out and demoralised masses. They continually remind us that at the voting on the question of peace 18 votes were against and 28 for the conclusion of peace. But should not one, in recalling the voting six weeks ago, examine the figures a little more closely? If we were to give any political significance to this voting, then should not we take cognisance of the voting of the All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets? Before stating that the healthy South was against, and the exhausted, demoralised, industrially weakened North was for peace, should not one recall the voting of the majority of sections of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, at which less than a tenth of the votes were against peace? If we are to quote figures, and give them a political significance, we must take political ballots as a whole, and then we shall see that the parties which had learned certain watchwords, and had made a fetich of them, voted on the side of the lower middle. classes, and that the labouring and exploited masses, the workers, soldiers, and peasants, did not reject peace. As to the demoralised elements, it is precisely the demoralised "intelligentsia" who were against peace, but the masses of toilers were all on out side on that question. Certainly the peace we have concluded is extremely unstable, and there is no doubt whatever that the respite which has been given us can be interrupted any day from the West, as well as from the East. Our international position is so critical that we must strain every nerve in order to remain in power as long as possible, so as to give time for the development of the Western Revolution, which is growing much more slowly than we expected and wished, but nevertheless is growing; undoubtedly it is imbibing and gathering more and more inflammable material.

If we were the first to come to the front as a separate division of the world's proletariat, it is not because this division is better organised. No, it is inferior, weaker, less organised than others; but it would be absurd and pedantic to argue, as many do: "Yes, if the start were made by the most organised division, followed first by the less organised, and then by the third best-organised, then we would all willingly become the advocates of the Socialist Revolution, But since things have happened not according to rule, and the vanguard was not supported by the other divisions, the Revolution is doomed to failure." We reply: No, our task is to reform the whole organisation; and further, in view of our isolation, to maintain the Revolution, to preserve in it some form of Socialism, no matter how weak and limited, while the Revolution is maturing in the other countries, while the other divisions are getting ready. To expect from history that it will put in motion the Socialist divisions of the different countries in a strict graduation and according to plan is either to show complete ignorance of the revolution or to refuse to support the Socialist Revolution for no other reason than one's own stupidity. At this moment, when we occupy a firm position in Russia, and have not strength for the fight against international imperialism, we have only one task and one policy: it can be termed the policy of tacking, waiting, and retreating, I know very well,that these words cannot claim popularity, that they lend themselves to a double interpretation and to the linking together with the word "coalition." Thus they can lead to no end of piquant deductions, and to all sorts of recriminations and raillery. But if our opponents—the bourgeois of the Right, our recent friends, the Social Revolutionaries of the Left, and our friends of yesterday, to-day and to-morrow, the Communists of the Left—were to use all their batteries of wit against us, and to give us any number of proofs of the virtue of their indecisions (which they cannot deny), these would have no effect upon us whatever, for events have proved us right. We have had a respite, because the imperialist war slaughter is still going on, and in the Far East the rivalry is growing. These facts alone can explain the continued existence of the Soviet Republic.

We shall neither be protected by any scrap of paper, by any peace treaty, nor because we do not desire to fight with Japan. If Japan should find it necessary, she will rob us, in spite of all treaties and obligations. We shall be protected, not by a scrap of paper, not by "the state of peace," but by the continuation in the West of the struggle between the two giants of imperialism and by our own steadfastness. We have not forgotten the fundamental Marxist teaching, which has been fully confirmed by the Russian Revolu-