The Three Stages of the Revolution
We have successfully solved the first problem of the revolution. We saw how the toiling masses formed in themselves· the fundamental condition of a successful solution: united efforts against the exploiters to· overthrow them. Such stages as October, 1905,[1] and March and November, 1917, are of universal historical significance.
We have successfully solved the second problem of the revolution; to awaken and arouse the downtrodden social classes which were oppressed by the exploiters and which only after November 7, 1917, have obtained the freedom to overthrow them and to begin to take stock and to regulate their lives in their own way. The "meeting holding" of the most oppressed and downtrodden, of the least trained toiling masses, their joining the Bolsheviks, their creating Soviet organizations everywhere—this is the second great stage of the revolution.
We are now in the third stage. Our gains, our decrees, our laws, our plans must be secured by the solid forms of every-day labor discipline. This is the most difficult, but also the most promising problem, for only its solution will give us Socialism. We must learn to combine the stormy, energetic breaking of all restraint on the part of the toiling masses, with iron discipline during work, with absolute submission to the will of one person, the Soviet director, during work.
We have not yet learned this, but we will learn it.
The restoration of bourgeois exploitation threatened us yesterday through the Kornilovs, Gotz, Dutovs, Gegechkoris, Bogajevskys. We defeated them. This restoration,
- ↑ 12 October, 1905, saw the beginning of the first Russian Revolution. It was during that month that the General strike was declared and the open struggle between the revolutionary forces and the autocracy ensued. The Czar's government was forced to grant a constitution (October 30) and establish a parliamentary form of government (Duma).
