The Significance of the Taking of Kazan in the Course of the Civil War

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Speech in Kazan Theatre on the day after the taking of Kazan, September 11, 1918. The beginning of this speech was not taken down. The partial shorthand report which has survived is reproduced here. – L.T.]

We value science, culture, art, and want to make them accessible to the people, along with all their institutions – schools, universities, theatres and the rest. But if our class enemies should again try to show that all these are for them only, and not for the people, we should say: ‘Perish science and art, perish the theatre!’ Comrades, we love the sun that gives us light, but if the rich and the aggressors were to try to monopolize it we should say: ‘Let the sun be extinguished, let darkness reign, eternal night

Precisely for that it was that we fought under the walls of Kazan, for that it is that we are fighting on the Volga and in the Urals – to settle the question whether homes, palaces, cities, the sun and the heavens are to belong to the working people, to the workers, the peasants, the poor, or to the bourgeois and the landlords who, having got astride the Volga and the Urals, are trying once more to get astride the working people.

The SR papers are right when they say that a working class which has taken power, which has tested and understood what that means, will not surrender power without a bitter fight.

‘Workers,’ say our enemies, gloatingly, ‘you have taken power, but where is your land flowing with milk and honey?’ The workers, however, fully aware of their historical rightness, answer them: ‘Yes, we have taken over the dreadful heritage left to us by the autocracy and by the four years of world slaughter that have exhausted the country. It is true that the working class is experiencing difficulties, but it is also true that work for the transformation of the country is very difficult work. The propertied classes ruled for thousands of years and inflicted many wounds, and the working class has had to heal these wounds in the course of a few months. Give us time: we shall cope with everything – and without having recourse to the means recommended by the Russian bourgeoisie, landlords and ex-officials, namely, the Constituent Assembly.’

‘The Constituent Assembly!’ It was under this slogan that yesterday the bourgeoisie was trying, before the walls of Kazan, to oppose the workers and peasants who were giving their lives in the fight against this slogan.

A Constituent Assembly is an aggregate of classes and parties, that is, it is made up of representatives of all the parties, from the landlords to the proletariat. And so we ask this question: ‘Who will rule in the Constituent Assembly? Are they not proposing to us to form a coalition – and this is the only thing they can now propose – a joint government, extending from Lebedev on one wing to Comrade Lenin on the other?’ I think, comrades, that this item will not appear on our historical program. Besides, our enemies themselves do not, in practice, want a coalition with the proletariat, for when Lebedev was preparing the Constituent Assembly, along with his mate Kerensky, Comrade Lenin was in a hut in the forest, where he had to hide himself, like a hermit, for several weeks, and we others lay in the Kresty prison in Petrograd. No, there was no question of a coalition then, even when those who preach the idea of a constituent assembly were in power. Let us allow that there could at that time be no coalition with the Communists, but only with the other, respectable parties, parties of govern ment, patriotic parties: the Cadets, the Right SRs, the Mensheviks, and, perhaps, even the Left SRs. Were all these moral, respectable parties able to form a coalition? That is the point, namely, that coalition is contrary to the laws of the class struggle.

A Constituent Assembly does not rule, it is a ministry that would rule. A ministry made up of whom? Of all the parties except the Bolsheviks. A coalition of all the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties against the working class and the village poor – that is what the Constituent Assembly means. But only forces that have weight count in the scales of history: on the one hand, the working class, which is strong in its labor, its skill, its numbers and its role in the economy; on the other, the landlords, so long as they hold the land, the capitalists and bankers, so long as they possess capital – these classes also have great importance: and between them, like cockroaches in cracks, huddle the Right SRs and the Mensheviks, who say: ‘Why, workers, do you fight the capitalists, and why, peasants, do you fight the landlords? We, the Right SRs and Mensheviks, will stand in the middle and, by means of a coalition, will reconcile you with your class enemies: there is no need for civil war.’ But the working class has rejected this lying and play-acting. The bourgeoisie itself compelled it to! The compromisers blame the Bolsheviks for kindling civil war, but when this civil war develops into a war of the propertied against the propertyless, the Right SRs and the Mensheviks always prove to be on the side of the propertied. Did they rise in protest against civil war when workers were being shot in Kazan, when the bourgeois groups were consolidating their power in this way? No, they did not.

There are two civil wars, or, more properly, two poles of civil war. That civil war which the landlords, the old officials, the old generals, bankers and capitalists are waging against the working masses is a dishonorable civil war: and there is the other civil war, which we, the workers, having stood up and straightened our backs, are beginning to wage against the oppressors, against the aggressors, and which is a sacred civil war. This war we waged yesterday and we will wage it tomorrow and today – we have shown this by the capture of Kazan!

The capture of Kazan! How are we to evaluate this gratifying fact?

The internal class struggle in the Soviet Republic has been complicated and has assumed the form of a protracted, authentic war because the resistance of the Russian bourgeoisie has been joined by foreign intervention, by the attack and invasion of foreign imperialism, in the form of the European and American landing and of a network of conspiracies. At the start, having landed a small expeditionary force of two or three thousand British and French at Murmansk and Archangel, the imperialist burglars calculated that the broad masses of the people would begin to flow over to their side. They did not reckon with resistance from the revolution, given the difficult situation the Russian workers were in. But the bearer of the revolution, the hungry proletariat of Moscow and Petrograd, said to them: ‘I am today eating an eighth of a pound of bread, and tomorrow I shall not have even that, but I shall just tighten my belt, and I tell you plainly – I have taken power, and this power I shall never surrender!’ And when the imperialists met with their first rebuff after their unexpected attack on Archangel, the whole bourgeois press of Britian and Prance spoke up, saying that the entire enterprise in the North was an adventure.

Meanwhile, the British plenipotentiary Lockhart and the French General Lavergne, who were in Moscow, raised a revolt in Yaroslavl and Vologda, and organized a plot in Moscow. Everything was ready, with only one ‘trifle’ to be settled: what was to be done with Comrade Lenin – was he to be sent under escort to Archangel, or to be shot on the spot?

The Yaroslavl and Moscow revolt not only took place at the bidding of the Allied imperialists and with their money, they also laid down the time-table for these revolts. And when General Lavergne summoned Savinkov and told him: ‘We need a revolt on the Volga on such-and-such a date,’ and Savinkov replied: ‘That would be a risky undertaking – at present it would be premature,’ Lavergne answered him more or less like this: ‘Have we not created all your organisations for you?’ – that is, haven’t I paid you? It was as though Lavergne had said: ‘A donkey should know his master’s crib – Savinkov should know what his master’s orders are.’ And, at the direct command of the French General Lavergne, Savinkov organized the revolt in Yaroslavi which destroyed part of the town and cost the lives of many workers. He shot them down there no less savagely than happened here in Kazan. Hardly had these events occurred than the revolt of the Czechoslovaks followed them up in Siberia, at Chelyabinsk – and Samara and Simbirsk were seized. It hadn’t worked at Vologda and Yaroslavl, so now from Kazan the wave rolled towards Nizhny-Novgorod, in an attempt to link up with the Anglo-French front. The entire bourgeois press was already trumpeting the triumph of this maneuver. That is why our capture of Kazan means more than merely the liberation of one workers’ city – the capture of Kazan means the collapse of a diabolical plan in which representatives of the American, French and Japanese stock exchanges are taking part, and in which the Russian bourgeoisie is involved, tens and hundreds of blue-blooded conspirators: a plan the aim of which was to put all the key points in our country at the disposal of Anglo-Franco Americano-Japanese imperialism, that is, to act in Russia as they acted in any colony. And this plan has been ruined by the capture of Kazan! There will still be fighting, and hard fighting, but we may hope that there will now be no link-up between the Czechoslovaks and the Anglo-French forces! Besides, nature herself leaves only a month, or six weeks, no more than that, for the enemy schemes to be realised: our northern seas are beginning to freeze up, Mother Volga too will start to freeze, and they will be left as tiny handfuls, scattered among different towns without a proper link between them, isolated and doomed!

For them, the capture of Kazan is like a sharp knife. The capture of Kazan will be followed by the capture of Samara, Simbirsk, Chelyabinsk and Ufa, and Yekaterinburg and Oren burg will be freed, which means that the Volga, the Urals and Siberia will be restored to the family of Soviet Russia. This does not, of course, mean that all danger is past. There is no greater danger for the revolutionary class than resting on its laurels and supposing that the successes achieved will ensure complete victory. There would have been no Czechoslovak mutiny if, after October, we had kept up the muscular tension with which we fought the bourgeoisie during the October revolution. But it is the working class’s misfortune that it underestimates the strength of its enemies. How many of our worst enemies were set free by the workers of Petrograd and Moscow after the first revolt! That very same General Krasnov who now rules on the Don, who has there shot, hanged and cut to pieces thousands, many thousands of workers, was taken prisoner in Petrograd in October of last year and good-naturedly released by the Petrograd workers. And all the Right SRs who are now ministers in the Ukraine or ministers of the Siberian government in Samara, all these Lebedevs, Fortunatovs and the rest, were also in the hands of the working class. Those hands held them – and let them go: without respect, with contempt, but they let them go. Now these men have organized a conspiracy against the workers, and are shooting and hanging them. And now, when the workers are accused of harshness and of waging civil war, we say, on the basis of experience: the only sin that would now be unforgivable in the Russian working class would be to show mercy and soft-heartedness towards its class enemies. We are fighting for the greatest good of mankind, for the rebirth of the entire human race, for its emancipation from oppression, from ignorance, from slavery. And everything that stands in our way must be swept aside. We do not want civil strife, blood, wounds! We are ready to join fraternally in a common life with all our worst enemies. If the bourgeoisie of Kazan were to come back today to the rich mansions that they abandoned in cowardly fashion, and were to say: ‘Well, comrade workers’ – or if the landlords were to say: ‘Well, comrade peasants, in past centuries and decades our fathers and grandfathers and we ourselves oppressed, robbed and coerced your grandfathers and your fathers and yourselves, but now we extend a brotherly hand to you: let us instead work together as a team, sharing the fruits of our labor like brothers’ – then I think that, in that case, I could say, on your behalf: ‘Messrs landlords, Messrs bourgeois, feel free to come back, a table will be laid for you, as for all our friends! If you don’t want civil war, if you want to live with us like brothers, then please do ... But if you want to rule once more over the working class, to take back the factories – then we will show you an iron fist, and we will give the mansions you deserted to the poor, the workers and oppressed people of Kazan.’

In the struggle which has begun, it is the task of the conscious workers to bend down to their brothers who are in the darkness of ignorance (there are still not a few of them) to bend down and explain to them the meaning of what has happened, to raise them up, to show them that this is not a fight between parties, not a fight over trifles, but a fight to decide whether the worker is to live as absolute master of the Russian land or to lie prostrate like a corpse on which the vultures of world imperialism will gather to tear him to pieces. You must show that we want a Workers’ and Peasants’ Soviet Republic to be established in the land of Russia, so that the working people may rule here and so that it may be made impossible for the rule of the capitalists and landlords to be re-established here. This is the simple idea which, expounded in a working-class way, must be grasped by every backward workers and every peasant.

Like everything done by the Russian revolution, our first successes against the Czechoslovaks played an enormous revolutionary role in France and Britain: an offensive by the workers against the imperialists has begun in those countries, and a split has begun to appear among the imperialists: a section of them has started to declare that this senseless offensive, this wretched, risky adventure, must cease. This was happening before the capture of Kazan.

It is therefore beyond doubt that the news of the capture of Kazan will bring about a very big split among the bourgeois imperialists of Britain, and they will start to beat retreat, having seen that the land of Russia does not lie helpless in temptation’s path, that it is not for any highway robber from among the imperialist brigands to pocket the land of Russia. It is now a workers’ and peasants’ country, and is defended by its workers’ and peasants’ army. Soviet Russia will give a decisive rebuff to the imperialists. Into Soviet Russia, as into a hornets’ nest, you will no longer thrust your thieving hands. The heroic capture of Kazan is a warning to all imperialists! But it is necessary that this warning shall not remain isolated, that it shall be given a firm and vigorous continuation. Mobilisation is under way here in Kazan province. The workers of the city of Kazan have the duty of being the first to join the workers’ and peasants’ Red Army. We must create a public opinion such that whoever now dodges or hides from military service is seen as a traitor to the cause of the working class, and just as in the old days we dealt harshly and sternly with strikebreakers who curried favour with the capitalists, so now we must deal with those workers who fail to support the workers’ and peasants’ army and help the counter-revolution. All honest Soviet citizens have the duty of defending the country.

We are accused of being bad patriots. Yes, comrades, so long as the bourgeois stood at the head of our country and landlord-bureaucrats drove the grey-clad cattle, the Russian soldiers, to shed their blood for their interests, so long were we bad patriots for their profits, for we were always patriots for the working class. But now it is the working class and the poor peasantry who rule in our country. This is now a different country, on whose soil, steeped in the violence, slavery and sweat of many generations, the working class has, for the first time in world history, risen to its full height and said: ‘I am the master here and there is no other master but me.’ And for this Russia we have the most ardent feelings, and for it we are prepared to lay down our lives and to shed our blood to the very last drop.

The terrible danger is helping us to create a strong army not in days but in hours. The mobilisation is, judging by the latest reports, everywhere proceeding splendidly: a mass of telegrams is coming in, requesting permission to carry out mobilisation of two, three, four and more age-groups. We cannot remain in our Kazan bivouac, we must push on! Other places call to us, places where the White Guards still rule. And we proclaim from here, in the name of the revolution at large: ‘Comrades of Simbirsk, Samara and other towns! We remember you, we are not holding back for one moment, we are all ready to go forward with combined efforts to help you, so as to free our Soviet Russia from the black tyranny of the bourgeois counter-revolution, we are all ready to give our lives for the life of the working class.’

And, in the name of the revolution, I call on you, comrades, to join with me in one cry: Long live Workers’ and Peasants’ Soviet Russia!

Long live the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army!

Hurrah!