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

350THE REVOLUTION IN RUSSIA AND THE TASKSOF THE WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIESComrade workers,The prediction of the socialists who have remained faithfulto socialism and have not succumbed to the savage andbeastly war hysteria has proved correct. The first revolution,caused by the world-wide predatory war among thecapitalists of various countries, has broken out. The imperialistwar, that is, a war for the capitalist division ofspoils, for the strangling of weak nations, has begun to turninto civil war, that is, a war of the workers against thecapitalists, of the toilers and the oppressed against theiroppressors, against tsars and kings, landowners and capitalists,a war for mankind’s complete liberation from wars,from poverty of the masses, from oppression of man by man!To the Russian workers has fallen the honour and thegood fortune of being the first to start the revolution—the great and only legitimate and just war, the war of theoppressed against the oppressors.The St. Petersburg workers have vanquished the tsaristmonarchy. Having started the uprising unarmed in face ofmachine-guns, in their heroic struggle against the policeand the tsar’s armies, the workers won over the majorityof the soldiers of the St. Petersburg garrison. The same thingoccurred in Moscow and in other cities. Abandoned by hisarmies, the tsar had to capitulate: he signed an abdicationon behalf of himself and his son. He suggested that thethrone be transferred to his brother Mikhail.Owing to the great rapidity of the revolution, the directassistance of the Anglo-French capitalists, insufficient classconsciousnessof the mass of the workers and the people