Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 13 - From Marx to Mao

LESSONS OF THE COMMUNE477of the Commune—if, during the treacherous attempt by theVersailles gang to seize the arms of the Paris proletariat,the workers had allowed themselves to be disarmed withouta fight, the disastrous effect of the demoralisation, that thisweakness would have caused in the proletarian movement,would have been far, far greater than the losses suffered bythe working class in the battle to defend its arms. 170 Thesacrifices of the Commune, heavy as they were, are made upfor by its significance for the general struggle of the proletariat:it stirred the socialist movement throughout Europe,it demonstrated the strength of civil war, it dispelledpatriotic illusions, and destroyed the naïve belief in anyefforts of the bourgeoisie for common national aims. The Communetaught the European proletariat to pose concretelythe tasks of the socialist revolution.The lesson learnt by the proletariat will not be forgotten.The working class will make use of it, as it has already donein Russia during the December uprising.The period that preceded the Russian revolution andprepared it bears a certain resemblance to the period of theNapoleonic yoke in France. In Russia, too, the autocraticclique has brought upon the country economic ruin andnational humiliation. But the outbreak of revolution washeld back for a long time, since social development had notyet created the conditions for a mass movement and, notwithstandingall the courage displayed, the isolated actionsagainst the government in the pre-revolutionary period brokeagainst the apathy of the masses. Only the Social-Democrats,by strenuous and systematic work, educated the massesto the level of the higher forms of struggle—mass actionsand armed civil war.The Social-Democrats were able to shatter the “commonnational” and “patriotic” delusions of the young proletariatand later, when the Manifesto of October 17th 171 had beenwrested from the tsar due to their direct intervention, theproletariat began vigorous preparation for the next, inevitablephase of the revolution—the armed uprising. Havingshed “common national” illusions, it concentrated its classforces in its own mass organisations—the Soviets of Workers’and Soldiers’ Deputies, etc. And notwithstanding all thedifferences in the aims and tasks of the Russian revolution,