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

EXTRAORDINARY ALL-RUSSIA RAILWAYMEN’S CONGRESS493started, no one knew that it was coming. We know thatworkers’ strikes have already spread to Austria. When theEuropean parties headed by their local Chernovs and Tseretelisbegan to lose control of events and felt they had lostall touch, there was talk of martial law there, and o£ militarydictatorship, in Germany; the strikes in Vienna havenow been stopped and the papers are out again. I have receiveda telegram from our Stockholm representative, Vorovsky,and he says that the movement has undoubtedly halted butthat it is impossible to crush it altogether, and that itwould go on. There you have one of the results of the factthat the peace negotiations have opened at Brest and thatwe have kept our promise. The secret treaties have beenabrogated, published and exposed to public shame. We haveshown that we regard these commitments of the old capitalists—whetherthey are known as secret treaties or loans—as mere scraps of paper to be swept aside because they hamperus, the working masses, in our construction of socialistsociety. The working masses are beginning to realise theimpudence of the German demands at Brest, which revealedthe same plunderous and predacious urge behind a screenof promises to accept a just peace. The delay is artificial,and the masses are clear on this: they say that the war canbe stopped, because the Russian workers and peasants havestopped it, and that an offensive can be started against thegovernments. On October 17, 1905, the first great nationwidestrike was suppressed by the autocracy, but it sparkedoff a chain of events and workers’ demonstrations in Austria,in Vienna and Prague, and that was when the Austrianswon their universal suffrage. Although the Russian revolutionof 1905 was crushed by tsarism, it gave hope to theWest-European workers of great reforms in the future, thatis, the very events now taking place.When the Third Congress of Soviets opened, you all sawa number of delegates from foreign parties who said in onevoice that from their observation of the working-class movementin Britain, Switzerland and America they drew theconclusion that the socialist revolution in Europe was becominga task of the day. The bourgeoisie over there is strongerand cleverer than our Kerenskys; it has managed to getorganised to make the uprising of the masses more difficult.