Lenin CW-Vol. 23.pdf - From Marx to Mao

SPEECH AT CONGRESS OF SWISS S. D. PARTY123Adler 62 was the application of terrorism as tactics, i.e.,systematic organisation of political assassinationsunconnected with the mass revolutionary struggle; or whetherit was a single act in the transition from the opportunist,non-socialist defence of the fatherland tactics of the officialAustrian Social-Democrats to the tactics of revolutionarymass struggle. The latter assumption seems to fit inmore with the circumstances. The message of greeting toFritz Adler proposed by the Central Committee of theItalian party and published in Avanti! of October 29,therefore, deserves the fullest sympathy.At all events, we are convinced that the experience ofrevolution and counter-revolution in Russia has provedthe correctness of our Party’s more than twenty-yearstruggle against terrorism as tactics. We must not forget,however, that this struggle was closely connected with aruthless struggle against opportunism, which was inclinedto repudiate the use of all violence by the oppressed classesagainst their oppressors. We have always stood for the useof violence in the mass struggle and in connection with it.Secondly, we linked the struggle against terrorism withmany years of propaganda, started long before December1905, for an armed uprising. We have regarded the armeduprising not only as the best means by which the proletariatcan retaliate to the government’s policy, but alsoas the inevitable result of the development of the classstruggle for socialism and democracy. Thirdly, we havenot confined ourselves to accepting violence in principleand to propaganda for armed uprising. For example,four years before the revolution we supported the use ofviolence by the masses against their oppressors, particularlyin street demonstrations. We sought to bring tothe whole country the lesson taught by every such demonstration.We began to devote more and more attention toorganising sustained and systematic mass resistance againstthe police and the army, to winning over, through thisresistance, as large as possible a part of the army to theside of the proletariat in its struggle against the government,to inducing the peasantry and the army to take aconscious part in this struggle. These are the tactics wehave applied in the struggle against terrorism, and