Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 26 - From Marx to Mao

SPEECH AT A MEETING OF THE PETROGRAD SOVIET295up to your full stature and straighten your backs, and thenyou need have no fear of threats. The officer cadets triedto engineer an uprising but we were able to deal with them;they organised a bloodbath in Moscow and shot soldiers on theKremlin wall. But when the people won out, they let the enemykeep not only their military honour but also their arms.The Vikzhel has threatened a strike, but we shall turn tothe masses and ask them whether they want to go on strikeand starve the soldiers at the front and the people in the rear,and I am sure that the railway proletariat won’t have it. Weare accused of making arrests. Indeed, we have made arrests;today we arrested the director of the State Bank. We areaccused of resorting to terrorism, but we have not resorted,and I hope will not resort, to the terrorism of the Frenchrevolutionaries who guillotined unarmed men. I hope weshall not resort to it, because we have strength on our side.When we arrested anyone we told him we would let him goif he gave us a written promise not to engage in sabotage.Such written promises have been given. Our fault is that theSoviet organisation has not yet learned to govern, and thatthere are far too many meetings. Let the Soviets form teamsand get down to the business of government. Our task is toadvance to socialism. A few days ago the workers receivedthe law on the control of production 118 which makes thefactory committee a state institution. The workers mustimplement this law immediately. They will supply the peasantswith cloth and iron, and the peasants will give them grain.I just saw a comrade from Ivanovo-Voznesensk, and he toldme this was the main thing. Socialism means keeping accountof everything. You will have socialism if you take stock ofevery piece of iron and cloth. We need engineers for production,and we value their labour highly. We shall be glad topay them. We do not intend, at the moment, to deprivethem of their privileged position. We value everyone whois willing to work but he must not behave as a boss but asan equal, under workers’ control. We have no feeling ofanimosity for individuals, and we shall try to help them fitinto the new pattern.As for the peasants we say: help the working peasant,spare the middle peasant, compel the rich peasant to pay.After the October 25 Revolution we were threatened with