NICOLAI LENIN
the Petrograd worker can do anything he likes; that he possesses a special talisman; is made of a special metal.
Well, comrades, we are too great friends to need mutual compliments. Still, I will tell you that there is some truth in it. It is not, of course, that the Petrograd workers are super-human creatures. It is that Petrograd has passed through the fire of two revolutions; that the Labor movement here has passed though the best school, and that Lenin began here in the 'nineties his career; also that many of you, without, perhaps your being aware, have in you a drop from the sweat of his labors, of his untiring work. Here, in Petrograd, will be found even now circles and nests of disciples of Comrade Lenin, who used to pass from mouth to mouth among the more intelligent proletarians what they had learned of Comrade Lenin. Here a whole generation of labour fighters has had the hapiness to see in their ranks a teacher like Lenin. …
On this day when there is such joy in our hearts on the occasion of the convalescence of Comrade Lenin, while the general situation of the revolution continues to be grave; on this day, if we wish to honor Comrade Lenin and to justify his hopes, we must say to ourselves: "Let us be a least a little like Comrade Lenin."
I remember a symposium which was published in 1912 at Saratoff by a group of Mensheviks and Bunditsts. One of the writers, I remember, apparently a sincere man, relating his reminiscences of the years 1903–5, wrote: "I was a Menshevik and I hated Lenin, but when I read his book, "What is to be done," somewhere in my mind a thought arose: 'Well, it would not be so bad, after all, to be a little like the ideal of a Russian revolutionary. which Lenin depicts in the book.'" Such were the words of a Menshevik, of a rabid opponent of Lenin. But we disciples and followers of Lenin, we have the right to proclaim publicly: Yes, we are andeavoring to be at least a little like this ardent tribune of International Communism, like this greatest leader and worker of the Socialist Revolution ever known in history. Long live, then, Comrade Lenin! (Storm of applause.)
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