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

300V. I. LENINdeal, taught them above all to fight in common for politicaldemands. At first, upon awakening to political life, thepeople demanded concessions from the autocracy: thatthe tsar should convene a Duma, that he should appoint newministers in place of the old, that the tsar should “grant”universal suffrage. But the autocracy did not and could notagree to such concessions. The autocracy answered the requestsfor concessions with bayonets. And then the peoplebegan to realise that they would have to fight against theautocratic regime. Now, we may say, this understanding isbeing driven even more drastically into the heads of thepeasants by Stolypin and the reactionary noblemen’s Duma.FROM MARXTO MAOYes, they are driving it in and they’ll drive it right home.The tsarist autocracy has also learned a lesson from⋆the revolution. It has seen that it cannot rely on the faithof the peasants in the tsar. It is now strengthening itspower by forming an alliance with the Black-Hundredlandlords and the Octobrist industrialists. To overthrowthe tsarist autocracy will now require a much more powerfuloffensive of the revolutionary mass struggle than in 1905.Is such a much more powerful offensive possible? Thereply to this question brings us to the third and cardinallesson of the revolution. This lesson consists in our havingseen how the various NOT classes FOR of the Russian people act.Prior to 1905 many thought that the whole people aspiredto freedom in the same way and wanted the same freedom;at least the greatCOMMERCIALmajority had no clear understanding ofthe fact that the different classes of the Russian peoplehad different DISTRIBUTIONviews on the struggle for freedom and werenot striving for the same freedom. The revolution dispelledthe mist. At the end of 1905, then later during the Firstand Second Dumas, all classes of Russian society came outopenly. They showed themselves in action, revealing whattheir true ambitions were, what they could fight for andhow strongly, persistently and vigorously they were ableto fight.The factory workers, the industrial proletariat, wageda most resolute and strenuous struggle against the autocracy.The proletariat began the revolution with the Ninth ofJanuary and mass strikes. The proletariat carried thisstruggle to its uttermost limit, rising in armed uprising