12
Two Proclamations
Lenin, To the People of Russia:
“Comrades workers, soldiers, peasants—all toilers!
“The Workers’ and Peasants’ Revolution has won at Petrograd, at Moscow. … From the Front and the villages arrive every day, every hour, greetings to the new Government. … The victory of the Revolution … is assured, seeing that it is sustained by the majority of the people.
“It is entirely understandable that the proprietors and the capitalists, the employees and functionaries closely allied with the bourgeoisie—in a word, all the rich and all those who join hands with them—regard the new Revolution with hostility, oppose its success, threaten to halt the activity of the banks, and sabotage or obstruct the work of other establishments. … Every conscious worker understands perfectly that we cannot avoid this hostility, because the high officials have set themselves against the People and do not wish to abandon their posts without resistance. But the working classes are not for one moment afraid of that resistance. The majority of the people are for us. For us are the majority of the workers and the oppressed of the whole world. We have justice on our side. Our ultimate victory is certain.
“The resistance of the capitalists and high officials will be broken. No one will be deprived of his property without a special law on the nationalisation of banks and financial syndicates. This law is in preparation. Not a worker will lose a single kopek; on the contrary, he will be assisted. Without at this moment establishing the new taxes, the new Government considers one of its primary duties to make a severe accounting and control on the reception of taxes decreed by the former regime. …
“Comrades workers! Remember that you yourselves direct the Government. No one will help you unless you organise yourselves and take into your own hands the affairs of the State. Your Soviets are now the organs of governmental power. … Strengthen them, establish a severe revolutionary control, pitilessly crush the attempts at anarchy on the part of drunkards, brigands, counterrevolutionary yunkers and Kornilovists.
“Establish a strict control over production and the accounting for products. Arrest and turn over to the Revolutionary Tribunal of the People everyone who injures the property of the People, by sabotage in production, by concealment of grain-reserves, reserves of other products, by retarding the shipments of grain, by bringing confusion into the railroads, the posts and the telegraphs, or in general opposing the great work of bringing Peace and transferring the Land to the peasants. …
“Comrades workers, soldiers, peasants—all toilers!
“Take immediately all local power into your hands. … Little by little, with the consent of the majority of peasants, we shall march firmly and unhesitatingly toward the victory of Socialism, which will fortify the advance-guards of the working-class of the most civilised Countries, and give to the peoples an enduring peace, and free them from every slavery and every exploitation.”