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

462V. I. LENINfailure of this attempt. We have experienced the organisationof power of the Ukrainian Kerenskys—the strugglehas not yet ended there, but to anyone who has watched it,who has heard at least a few truthful reports from representativesof Soviet power, it is obvious that the bourgeoiselements of the Ukrainian Rada are living their last days.(Applause.) There cannot be the slightest doubt about thevictory of Soviet power, of the Ukrainian People’s Republic,over the Ukrainian bourgeois Rada.As for the struggle against Kaledin—here, indeed, everythingrests on the basis of the exploitation of the workingpeople, on the basis of the bourgeois dictatorship—if thereis any social basis at all against Soviet power. The Peasants’Congress has clearly demonstrated that Kaledin’scause is hopeless; the working people are against him. Theexperience of Soviet power, propaganda by deeds, by theexample of the Soviet organisations, is having its effect,and Kaledin’s stronghold in the Don Region is now collapsing—notso much externally as internally.That is why, looking at the civil war front in Russia,we can say with complete conviction: here the victory ofSoviet power is complete and absolutely assured. And,comrades, the victory of Soviet power is being achievedbecause right from the outset it began to realise the age-oldaspirations of socialism, while consistently and determinedlyrelying on the people and considering it to be its dutyto awaken the most oppressed and downtrodden sections ofsociety to active life, to raise them to socialist creativework. That is why the old army with its barrack-squaredrilling and torture of soldiers has retreated into the past.It has been thrown on the scrap-heap, nothing remainsof it. (Applause.) The complete democratisation of the armyhas been carried out.Permit me to relate an incident that occurred when Iwas in the carriage of a Finnish train and I overheard aconversation between several Finns and an old woman.I could not take part in the conversation because I cannotspeak Finnish. But one of the Finns turned to me and said:“Do you know the curious thing this old woman said? Shesaid, ‘Now there is no need to fear the man with the gun.I was in the woods one day and I met a man with a gun, and