Published:
Soldatskaya Pravda No. 26, June 1 (May 19), 1917.
Published according to the newspaper text.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1964,
Moscow,
Volume 24,
page 389.
Translated: Isaacs Bernard
Transcription\Markup:
B. Baggins and D. Walters
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
1999
(2005).
You may freely copy, distribute,
display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
Archive” as your source.
Lenin set forth the Bolsheviks’ views on the war, on peace, and the coalition government.
In the first part of his speech Lenin briefly stated the reasons for his journey via Germany, then passed on to the war and made clear its predatory nature. He then dwelt on the question of how to end the war and developed the idea that the only way of doing this was by an alliance of the workers of all the belligerent countries.
Lenin next dealt with the question as to what stood in the way of such an alliance and outlined the road by which such an alliance of the workers could and should be achieved.
The way to this was not by an agreement between the workers and the capitalists, and between the soldier-peasants and the landowners, but by a struggle of the workers and peasants against their oppressors.
The coalition government was an agreement between the socialists and the capitalists, it meant suppression of the revolution.
Seizure of power by the workers and the peasants could solve our country’s most pressing problems for her—the problem of the land, of its transfer to the peasants, and other questions connected with the war, such as food supply, improving the condition of the workers, etc.
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