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

500V. I. LENINNow they want to negotiate with us, but these negotiationswill differ from those of Kerensky. We shall not discuss anyreform of banking. After occupying the banks with armedforce, we enter into negotiations and issue orders and instructions.It is important for us to break down the resistance ofthe saboteurs before opening negotiations. That is the wayto fight the famine and the chaos, and this alone can helpus to overcome the horrors of capitalism and anarchy. Youknow of the terrible chaos that has spread everywhere inthe world, especially in Russia, where tsarism has left alegacy of graft, violence, hatred and humiliation of theworking people. This is followed by complaints about chaos;I put it to you: can the war-weary men who have stood inthe trenches for three years fight to increase the profits ofthe Russian capitalists and capture Constantinople forthem? On every hand they see that millions are being spentto overthrow Soviet power and get the country under control.Comrades, such changes cannot be expected to take placeovernight. The socialist revolution is on, and everythingnow depends on the establishment of a discipline of equals,the discipline of the working masses themselves, which musttake the place of capitalist barrack-room discipline. Whenthe railway workers take power into their own hands, theywill wipe out sabotage and speculation through their armedorganisation, and set themselves the task of prosecutingthose who engage in graft and disrupt railway traffic. Suchpeople should be prosecuted as arch-criminals, fightingagainst the people’s power. It is on such a well-knit, vigorousorganisation—a Soviet organisation—that the fight againstthe capitalists, the saboteurs, the swindlers and the Ryabushinskysdepends. That is the way to defeat the famine,because Russia has everything she needs: iron, oil and grain,in short, everything it takes to have a decent life. If we defeatthe exploiters, we shall establish Soviet power andeconomic control in Russia, and that is the way it is goingto be. (Stormy applause.)First published in 1918in the book Transactionsof the All-Russia ExtraordinaryCongress of Railwaymen,Petrograd, January 5-30, 1918Published accordingto the text of the book