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

458V. I. LENINthe peasants assimilating day-to-day experience. How wouldthe peasants prefer to pass to socialism? This is the problemwhich now confronts the Russian peasants in practice. Howcan they support the socialist proletariat and begin thetransition to socialism? The peasants have already tackledthis transition, and we have complete confidence in them.The alliance we concluded with the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries is built on a firm basis and is growingstronger and stronger by the hour. At first we on the Councilof People’s Commissars feared that factional struggle wouldhinder the work, but now, after the experience of two months’work together, I must say definitely that on the majorityof questions we arrive at unanimous decisions.We know that only when experience has shown the peasants,for example, the kind of exchange there must bebetween town and country they will themselves, from below,on the basis of their own experience, establish their ownconnections. On the other hand, the experience of the CivilWar has demonstrated to the peasants that there is no otherroad to socialism except the dictatorship of the proletariatand the ruthless suppression of the rule of the exploiters.(Applause.)Comrades, every time we touch upon this theme, at thepresent meeting, or in the Central Executive Committee, I,from time to time, hear from the Right side of the meetingthe exclamation “Dictator!” Yes, “when we were socialists”everyone recognised the dictatorship of the proletariat;they even wrote about it in their programmes, theywere indignant at the widespread false idea that it waspossible to persuade and prove to the population that theworking people ought not to be exploited, that this wassinful and disgraceful, and that once people were persuadedof this there would be paradise on earth. No, this utopiannotion was smashed in theory long ago, and now our task isto smash it in practice.We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bringit to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen.Not a single problem of the class struggle has ever been solvedin history except by violence. When violence is exercised bythe working people, by the mass of exploited against theexploiters—then we are for it! (Stormy applause.) And we