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

494V. I. LENINOver there the workers have a measure of prosperity, whichis why it is more difficult to shake up the old socialist partieswhich had been there for decades, had come to power,and had acquired authority in the eyes of the people. Butthat kind of authority is already running out, the massesare surging, and there is no doubt at all that in the near—or possibly more remote—future, the socialist revolutionwill be on the order of the day in all countries, because theoppression of capital is at an end.When we are told that the Bolsheviks have invented thisutopian idea of introducing socialism in Russia, which is animpossible thing, we reply: How did it happen that utopiansand dreamers enjoy the sympathy of the majority of theworkers, peasants and soldiers? Did not the majority of theworkers, peasants and soldiers side with us because theyhad acquired a first-hand knowledge of the war and itseffects? They realised that there was no way out of the oldsociety, that the capitalists with all their marvels of technologyand culture were engaged in a destructive war,and that men had degenerated to a state of frenzy, savageryand starvation. That is what the capitalists have done, andthat is why we are faced with the alternative of perishing ordemolishing the old bourgeois society. That explains whyour revolution has depth. That is why we find that in tinyneighbouring Estland, where the people are literate, therewas recently a congress of farm-hands who elected agents totake control of all the efficient farms. This is a world-shakingdevelopment: farms are controlled by farm-hands who hadalways been at the very bottom of the social scale in thecapitalist economy. Then take Finland, where the Diet spokeon behalf of the nation, and the bourgeoisie demanded thatwe should recognise her independence. We were not going touse force to keep under Russia’s control or in one Russianstate any of the nations tsarism had kept in by oppression.We had not planned to attract other nations—the Ukraine orFinland—by force or imposition but by allowing them to setup their own socialist system, their own Soviet republics.We now find that a working-class revolution is expected tobreak out in Finland almost any day. This is the same Finlandthat had enjoyed complete internal freedom for 12years—since 1905—and had the right to elect democratic