Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 16 - From Marx to Mao

172V. I. LENINextreme Rights, a hundred nationalists and “Right Octobrists”,a hundred and twenty-five Octobrists—such is theblack-hand gang which has already mustered in the Dumaand has been suitably prepared by the long continued incitementsof the government press to ensure the adoption ofany measure of violence against Finland.The old nationalism of the autocracy, which suppressedall “non-Russian races”, has now been reinforced, firstly bythe hatred of all the counter-revolutionary elements towardsa people which managed to utilise the brief victory of theproletariat of Russia in October to create under the verynose of the Black-Hundred tsar one of the most democraticconstitutions in the world, and to create free conditions forthe organisation of the working masses of Finland, the staunchsupporters of Social-Democracy. Finland took advantageof the Russian revolution to secure a few years of freedomand peaceful development. The counter-revolution in Russiais making haste to utilise the complete lull “at home” totake away as much as possible of Finland’s gains.History, as it were, is demonstrating by the example ofFinland that the famous “peaceful” progress, so idolised byall philistines, is just one of those brief, unstable, ephemeralexceptions which conclusively prove the rule. And thisrule is that only the revolutionary movement of the massesand of the proletariat at their head, only a victorious revolution,can make lasting changes in the life of peoples and seriouslyundermine medieval rule and semi-Asiatic forms ofcapitalism.Finland could only breathe freely when the workingclass of Russia rose in a gigantic mass and gave a shock tothe Russian autocracy. And it is only by joining the revolutionarystruggle of the masses in Russia that the Finnishworker can now seek the way to deliverance from the onslaughtof the Black-Hundred bashi-bazouks.The bourgeoisie of Finland has shown its counter-revolutionaryqualities even in this peaceful country, whichaccomplished a revolution at the expense of the October daysin Russia, which upheld liberty under the wing of the Decemberstruggle and the two oppositional Dumas in Russia.Bourgeois Finland persecuted the Red Guard of the Finnishworkers and accused them of revolutionism; it did every-