Grigory Zinoviev

“ It should be kept in mind that the Commissar is the representative of a class which has conquered power and is in power for good and all; at the same time respect is due to the dignity of the man who, though issued from another sphere of life, of different breeding and education, yet comes to work with us a with a stone in his bosom, and assists with his knowledge not a party but the people, Russia—that Russia which, just now destitute, starving, crucified on every side, still is our very own, beloved Russia. ”

“ The conquest of political power by the proletariat does not put a stop to its class struggle against the bourgeoisie; on the contrary it makes the struggle especially broad, acute and pitiless. All the groups, parties, leaders of the Labour movement, fully or partially on the side of reformism, the "centre" and so on, turn inevitably, during the most acute moments of the struggle, either to the side of the bourgeoisie or to that of the fluctuating ones, or the most dangerous add to the number of the unreliable friends of the vanquished proletariat. ”

“ Following the easy victories in the Ukraine the Poles will begin to feel the wrath of the workers and peasants of the whole of Russia, the wrath even of non-party circles who have finally learned to see in the Soviet Government the protector of the independance of a great country which having given freedom to all oppressed nations demands now that right which she herself has recognised even for the smallest peoples,—the right of arranging her life upon her own territory in accordance with the expressed will of the popular masses of Russia. ”

“ They are the white army of German capitalism, the watchdogs of capital. Whenever the bourgeoisie wants some mean, dirty, murderous work to be done, it makes use of no others than these pseudo-labour "leaders." These reactionaries of labour extraction give the bourgeoisie everything that is most precious to the working man—his energies, his physical strength, all his knowledge of life, in a word, the most valuable gifts the worker possesses—these counter-revolutionary ex-workers enrol to serve the bourgeoisie everything. ”

“ This, comrades, is no mere phrase; it is truth, Each time when the situation becomes difficult and calls for heroic measures, the first thing which occurs to Comrade Lenin is to appeal to the Petrograd proletariat. "Why are you idle? Don't you understand that you are the salt of the earth; that you must save not only yourselves, but the entire workers' revolution?" Such is the sense of the numerous message which Comrade Lenin has addressed to you many times from Moscow. Lenin is convinced that any single one of you, Petrograd workers, is worth a hundred others. ”

“ Principally from the moment when civilized Europe, from the old semi-feudal, semi-servile armies, passed to the standing armies organized on the principle of obligatory universal military service, armies everywhere became flesh of the flesh and blood of the blood of the people. And every people had the army it deserved to have. And in each army, as the sun is reflected in the tiniest drop of water, came to be reflected each country's political structure and social order. ”

“ Every class struggle is a political struggle, because it is finally a struggle for power. Any strike, when it spreads through the whole country, is a threat to the bourgeois State and thus acquires a political character. To strive to overthrow the bourgeoisie and to destroy its State by any means whatever, means to carry on political warfare. To create one's own class apparatus—for the management and suppression of the resisting bourgeoisie—whatever such an apparatus may be—means to gain political power. ”

“ Thus, in 1916, during the war, when we in Switzerland got to know that a revolutionary movement was beginning here at Petrograd, and that our comrades had begun to pass round the word about the reorganisation of the Soviets, Comrade Lenin wrote, in articles and letters, that the organisation of a Soviet was a great slogan, and must not be frivolously played with. It must only be raised when the workers were determined to go to the end; to stake their heads on victory and to proclaim that the moment of a real proletarian revolution, the moment to capture all power, had arrived. ”

“ On the other hand, it is the same disguising of capitalism and bourgeois democracy, the same deceiving of the workmen, when the old parties and old leaders of the Second International admit the idea that the majority of the workers and exploited will be able to acquire a clear Socialist consciousness, firm Socialist convictions and character under the conditions of capitalist enslavement, under the yoke of the bourgeoisie, which assumes an endless variety of forms—the more refined and at the same time the more cruel and pitiless, the more cultured the given capitalist nation. ”

“ This stratum of the labour aristocracy and bureaucracy is the soil upon which Menshevism was reared in Russia, and social democracy and the Right Independent Party in Germany. This sickly flower sprung up on putrid marshy soil. These labour aristocrats, reared by the bourgeoisie, are now the mainstay of capitalism. A number of countries are now on the very threshold of revolution, but the social democrats prevent them from advancing. The workers cannot get over the last difficulty, which has grown from within. ”

“ Why is it, however, that the former government in Russia and the bourgeois governments in Europe keep on to this day asserting that the army must stand outside of politics? This is why: because their conscience is not at rest, because they cannot tell the people the truth, because their entire form of government is founded not only on self-delusion, but on deceit. They cannot openly tell the army, composed as it is of working men and peasants, that it is bound to safeguard the interests of the possessing classes, the bourgeoisie, the landed gentry and the bankers ”

“ Refuse to send Poland either ammunition or provisions for it is all to be thrown in the war against Worker Peasant Russia.
Workers of all countries. Get out into the Street, make demonstrations and strikes and let your war cry be: «Down with the hypocritical game of the Allied capitalists and Governments against Soviet Russia. Down with support to white guard Poland. The Allies should chain their dog—the Polish capitalists and landlords, and should themselves conclude an open peace with Soviet Russia». ”

“ The second is to inspire and lead in the footsteps of the revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat, its Communist party—not only the whole proletariat or its larger majority, but the entire mass of workers and exploited by capital, to enlighten, organise, instruct, and discipline them during the course of the bold and mercilessly firm struggle against the exploiters; to wrench this enormous majority of the population in all the capitalist countries out of their state of dependence on the bourgeoisie ”

“ In fact, no Soviets were needed for such a purpose. In his view, the Soviets were organisations for the seizure of State power, and for transforming the workers into the ruling class. That is why he again and again told the Petrograd workers in the course of 1916: "Ask yourselves a hundred times whether you are prepared, whether you are strong enough; look carefully before you jump. To organise Soviets means to declare a war to a finish, to declare civil war upon the bourgeoisie, to begin the proletarian revolution." And Comrade Lenin has remained faithful and true to himself in his view. ”

“ At Versailles they made every endeavour economically and forever to destroy Germany and to split up Central Europ into small States—to dismember it so that the sharks of international capital may the easier swallow the peoples of Germany, Austria and the Bakans piece by piece. But the peoples of Europe are neither Hindoos nor Negroes, and knowing this, the knights of French capital tremble with fear before the consequences of their own policy. ”

“ How can he, fresh from the hands of a French hairdresser, find it in his heart to jeer at the poor Russian homespun-clad, sometimes half-clad peasant army, whole squads of which go barefoot?
So it is that the most monstrous treason goes on before the people's eyes. Men are clothed, fed, taught by Englishmen and Frenchmen, who cannot send their own armies to Russia, because their soldiers are sufficiently united and organized and refuse to go forth to kill Russian workers and peasants. ”

“ When, oh when, will the giant, the German proletariat rouse up and shake off the bourgeois gang and their hirelings from the top of the social ladder? Thrice cursed be the so-called civilised capitalist world, a world that stifles the human soul, and turns millions of men into slaves! ”

“ The proletariat becomes a truly revolutionary class, truly Socialist in its actions, only by acting as the vanguard of all those who work and are being exploited, as their leader in the struggle for the overthrow of the oppressors; and this cannot be achieved without carrying the class struggle into the country, without making the labouring masses of the country all gather around the Communist Party of the town proletariat, without the peasants being educated by the town proletariat. ”

“ But even to these White officers I say: Instead of begging and cringing to the French bourgeoisie and its hirelings, and striving for them to despise you like that—deservedly too, for anyone will despise a man who sells his own people, and goes to the French bourgeoisie, begging help to shoot Russian workers and peasants and crawling on his belly before Frenchmen and Englishmen—were it not better, gentlemen, to realize once for all that it is the People who are in power in Russia now, that you can never again see the old-time estates, the old-time palaces ”

“ Poor deluded workers! When will the day come when all the workers will know their traitor "leaders"! When shall we at last reach a period when men like Crispien, Hilferding, Dittmann and others will no longer be able to gather a whole party in the course of a few weeks by means of an obvious and systematic deception of the workers? Under such circumstances our task was to force a discussion by all manner of means, be it even at the party congress, on the fundamental questions of principle—the programme and tactics of the Third International. ”

“ Throughout the whole activity of Comrade Lenin one can notice that he is always an innovator, that he goes against the current, that he ploughs a new furrow in the political and social life. In the 'nineties, too, at Petrograd, it fell to his share to trace out a new path, to form, to rally the first detachments of workers, the first detachments of a genuine working-class intelligentsia, from which more than one leader of the present workers' revolution has come. ”

“ The economic struggle of the proletariat In all countries is daily becoming more and more a revolutionary struggle. Therefore the labour unions must consciously use their forces for the support of all revolutionary struggles in their own and in other countries. For this purpose they must not only, in all other countries, strive to attain, as great as possible, centralisation of their struggle, but they must do so on an international scale by joining the Communist International and uniting into one army the different parts of which shall carry on the struggle conjointly, supporting one another. ”

“ The number of honest commanders will increase, that of Judases, calling themselves Nekliudov, Koltchak, Balachovitch, will melt away. The number of men like the late comrade Nicolayev will increase, for men see that we are true, all the world sees it; the labourers and peasants of the world walk in our footsteps. They see that we, unshod, halfclad, struggle for the right, and the right cannot but conquer. ”