Notes from the courtroom: Bradley Manning’s motions hearing at Ft. Meade, 11/7/12

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The government deposed two witnesses today to try to explain why it delayed Bradley Manning’s trial beyond what the military law allows. Bradley entered a plea offering that deals with lesser-included offenses, and chooses to be tried before a military judge alone. This means there will not be a jury (of military officers and high ranking NCO’s).
By Nathan Fuller, Bradley Manning Support Network. November 7, 2012.
Hurricane Sandy delivered the first delay in Bradley Manning’s two-and-a-half-year trial that didn’t come at the unconstitutional whim of the United States government. The storm left the Ft. Meade military base largely unscathed, and Bradley’s trial proceeded today.
The defense has moved to dismiss with prejudice the 22 charges against the accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower for lack of a speedy trial, and today the prosecution deposed two witnesses to attempt to justify keeping the young Army private in pretrial confinement for 900 days without bringing him to trial.

Lt. Col. Paul Almanza, at right, as I.O. of Bradley’s pretrial hearing in December 2011. (Sketch by William J. Hennessy Jr.)

Witness 1: Lt. Col. Paul Almanza
First the government called Lt. Col. Paul Almanza to the stand telephonically. Almanza was the Investigating Officer at Bradley’s initial Article 32 pretrial hearing in December 2011. Almanza excluded the government’s delays last December and in January of this year from the speedy trial clock, and today he was asked to explain why.
Last year, the government emailed Almanza, requesting that he authorize a trial delay from December 22, 2011, to January 3, 2012, and that he exclude that delay from the trial clock. Almanza granted that request and excluded it without asking for the defense’s position on the matter.
Almanza said he excluded three days (December 24-26) for Christmas, a federal holiday, two days for New Years Day, also a federal holiday, and four days in between, though he did review evidence on a Secret-clearance laptop at the Military District of Washington on December 23. He excluded the weekend of January 7 and 8, saying he took his son to a swim meet in Pennsylvania.
Almanza sent out memos on January 4 and 11 regarding delays, but in neither did he mention that he had concurrent civilian work with the Department of Justice. Asked why he didn’t mention it, Almanza said that he should have, that omitting it was an oversight. He also said he could’ve requested leave from his civilian work, but neglected to do so. Almanza testified that had he not allowed these delays, he could’ve completed the work that he submitted on January 11 by December 29.
He also said that at last December’s hearing, he would’ve accepted witness testimony regarding the classification of documents if substituted for classification reviews. This method would have obviated the long wait for Original Classification Authorities to submit their reviews.
Witness 2: Bert Haggett
After lunch, the government called Bert Haggett to testify. Haggett promulgates information security policy throughout the Army, and has reviewed documents in Bradley’s case to determine to whom they should be referred for a classification review. Unfortunately, most of Haggett’s responses to many of the defense’s initial questions were, “I don’t recall.” That was the answer he gave to, “When were you first contacted?”, “Did you sign a referral?”, “Did the referral include a deadline?” and “How long did the Original Classification Authority take?”
Haggett suggested that it was possible, or not necessarily unreasonable, for a complex classification review process to take more than a full year. However, he said it only took him 4 days to examine 900 documents and determine to which ‘equity holder’ within the government to send them.
Upon cross-examination and Judge Lind’s questioning, and after the prosecution handed him court documents recounting past proceedings, Haggett began to reveal more about his role, the government’s inexpedience, and the review process. Though he couldn’t remember the date exactly, he agreed that it was likely he was first contacted in April 2011 – more than nine months after Bradley’s arrest. Haggett couldn’t explain why it took the government so long to contact him, but he said that during 2010, “When the WikiLeaks issue occurred, I lived and breathed it.”
Haggett didn’t know too much about the status of documents relating to Bradley Manning’s case after he recommended they be sent to various OCAs, but he spoke more generally about the classification and review process in his experience. He said it was rare that he would review information and decide to declassify it. He also said that he didn’t know if trial counsel (the prosecution) had included deadlines in their requests for classification review.
Bradley’s plea offering
The other main issue of the day was Bradley’s potential plea offering. As lawyer David Coombs has posted to his blog,

“PFC Manning has offered to plead guilty to various offenses through a process known as “pleading by exceptions and substitutions.” To clarify, PFC Manning is not pleading guilty to the specifications as charged by the Government. Rather, PFC Manning is attempting to accept responsibility for offenses that are encapsulated within, or are a subset of, the charged offenses. The Court will consider whether this is a permissible plea.
PFC Manning is not submitting a plea as part of an agreement or deal with the Government. Further, the Government does not need to agree to PFC Manning’s plea; the Court simply has to determine that the plea is legally permissible. If the Court allows PFC Manning to plead guilty by exceptions and substitutions, the Government may still elect to prove up the charged offenses. Pleading by exceptions and substitutions, in other words, does not change the offenses with which PFC Manning has been charged and for which he is scheduled to stand trial.”

Judge Lind said that Manning’s plea offering deals with Specification 1 of Charge 2 (an 18 US 793(e) offense), and to Clauses 1 and 2 of the Article 134 offense. (Read Manning’s charge sheet here.)
David Coombs also explained today that, “PFC Manning has also provided notice of his forum selection. He has elected to be tried by Military Judge alone.” This means that Judge Lind alone will decide both guilt and possible punishment at court martial. There will not be a military jury, comprised of officers and senior NCO’s, involved.
Starting at 8:00 AM ET tomorrow, the government will depose Col. Carl Coffman, who will finally be forced to explain why he signed off on enough government delays to push Bradley’s arraignment back 635 days.

Notes from the courtroom: Bradley Manning’s motions hearing at Ft. Meade, 11/8/12

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Col. Carl Coffman, former Special Court Martial Convening Authority in Bradley’s trial, answered questions from the defense and prosecution about his role in delaying Bradley Manning’s pretrial confinement, which has exceeded 900 days. (Read notes from Day 1 here.)
By Nathan Fuller, Bradley Manning Support Network. November 8, 2012.

Col. Carl Coffman, former Special Court Martial Convening Authority.

Col. Carl Coffman had a lot of explaining to do today – about 6 hours worth. That’s how long the former Special Court Martial Convening Authority answered questions on the stand, in the second and final day of this week’s motions hearing for PFC Bradley Manning at Ft. Meade, MD.
Both the government and defense called Coffman to testify for the defense’s motion to dismiss for lack of a speedy trial, because Coffman signed off to approve all but one of the government’s requests to delay Bradley’s pretrial proceedings (according to the defense, paralegal Monica Carlile signed one of the delays). The defense accuses the prosecution of requesting delays that could have been avoided, it accuses various government agencies (Original Classification Authorities, or OCAs) who took months to complete classification reviews, and it accuses Coffman of both granting needless delays and unjustifiably excluding them from the speedy trial clock.
The prosecution’s Captain White questioned Coffman first for several hours, reviewing each of the government’s eight delay requests spanning August 2010, when Coffman joined the case, and December 2011, when Bradley’s pretrial proceedings finally began.
The prosecution and Coffman worked together so frequently during 2011 that Coffman referred to “my trial counsel” and to Capt. Ashden Fein by his first name during his testimony. In its questioning, the government had Coffman go through each delay request process to try to stress to the court that it frequently updated Coffman on the OCAs’ progress, it couldn’t have done anything to expedite the OCAs’ extremely long review process, and the classification reviews were necessary to conduct Bradley’s Article 32 pretrial hearing.
The defense has long objected to each of these contentions, and elicited testimony from Coffman revealing that the former Convening Authority actually knew very little about the classification review progress, instead “trusting,” in his words, that “trial counsel and the OCAs were doing their jobs.”
The government’s questioning of Coffman was very methodical, and rather long and dry. Eight times before Manning’s first court session, the prosecution requested a delay, citing the OCAs’ still-unfinished classification reviews. The defense objected to each request, arguing that Bradley’s speedy trial rights were being violated, and that the parties could proceed without waiting for the classification reviews. Coffman testified that he took the defense’s objections into consideration, but he didn’t deny a single government request for delay.
But defense questioning revealed even more about the process: we learned that the prosecution wrote all of its own delay approval memos, on which Coffman simply signed his name, after only 10-15 minutes of discussion with the government.
The problem seems to boil down to this: Coffman “trusted” the OCAs to complete their classification reviews expediently, and he “trusted” the prosecution to provide accurate updates about the reviews that in his mind necessitated delays. But the prosecution didn’t give specific progress updates – for example, that half of the documents were completed, or that they needed a certain number of days to finish – instead, the lawyers would merely tell Coffman that the OCAs were continuing to work and needed more time. (Coffman revealed that despite providing him with verbal or informal updates about the classification process, the prosecution missed its deadline to update him in writing on multiple occasions.) Coffman testified that he made no effort to contact or hurry the OCAs himself, saying that because OCAs are “senior officials,” he expected them to do their jobs without needing to be reminded to quicken their work. He couldn’t explain further why he never inquired about how many OCAs there were, how many documents they needed to review, or how much more time they needed.
How long could this have gone on? If the OCAs were still completing those reviews today, would Bradley still be awaiting arraignment? Coffman said he had no deadline in mind: the only time frame he considered problematic was the potential event that the pre-arraignment period continued until the summer of 2012, when Coffman was expecting to change positions, and didn’t know how to proceed in that event.
But even further questioning challenged the idea that Coffman had to wait for the classification reviews at all. In each objection, the defense proffered that instead of waiting on OCAs to complete reviews, the prosecution could have provided summaries or substitutes of the classified material. Coffman rejected this idea repeatedly, saying he needed the reviews to proceed, despite the defense’s multiple demands for a speedy trial.
Coffman also talked about Op Plan Bravo, the plan to prepare Ft. Meade’s logistics and security for PFC Manning’s trial, given the expected media attention and classification information to be discussed. The plan took 30 days, but Coffman didn’t order it until November 16, 2011, so Ft. Meade was ready by the December 16 hearing. But this plan didn’t depend on any classification reviews, and Coffman acknowledged it could have been executed months or a year prior. This is important because the defense requested the Article 32 hearing start on December 12, and Coffman rejected that date because Op Plan Bravo was still in effect. That’s four more days of senseless delays, four more days of Bradley’s already grueling pretrial confinement, and four more days that should count against the government on the speedy trial clock.
When asked flat out by the defense whether he ever considered denying the prosecution’s delay request, Coffman said no. When asked if he ever considered granting the delays but not excluding them from the speedy trial clock, Coffman said no. Despite his stated concern for Bradley Manning’s constitutional right to a speedy trial, Coffman decided that trusting government officials to act expediently was sufficient due diligence on his part.
Judge Lind asked Coffman, who joined the case August 3, 2010, between the first set of charges against Manning on July 5, 2010, and the second set on March 1, 2011, if the newly discovered information and charges played any part in the delay. Coffman seemed to know nothing about how that new information was discovered and how it led to new charges. He said he only conferred with the prosecution for status updates.
She also asked when Army CID completed its investigation, because the CID’s completion of a review was another, though comparatively minor, basis for delay. Coffman answered that he wasn’t sure exactly, but that he could provide a date. This ruffled the prosecution’s feathers. Government lawyer Ashden Fein got up quickly to re-direct questioning to Coffman. He asked if Coffman was aware that Army CID was “still investigating this crime,” and Coffman said, “No.” Fein asked if Coffman was aware that WikiLeaks was “still releasing classified information,” and Coffman wasn’t sure. (A federal judge also said this week that the investigation is still ongoing.)
Perhaps because this was a speedy trial hearing, this session was the first in recent months that didn’t delay the court calendar to come: all dates currently scheduled remain intact, so we’ll return for the Article 13 litigation and continuation of this motion at Ft. Meade November 27 through December 2.

Transparency isn’t treason: New York Times journalists criticize “aiding the enemy” charge

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By Nathan Fuller, Bradley Manning Support Network. January 18, 2013.

PFC Bradley Manning. Photograph: AFP/Brendan Smialowski/Getty

Last week in Fort Meade, MD, government prosecutors said that if PFC Bradley Manning had released documents to the New York Times instead of WikiLeaks, they would still charge him with indirectly ‘aiding the enemy,’ which carries a life sentence.
This would be unprecedented: never before has a soldier been sent to jail for ‘aiding the enemy’ as a result of giving information to a news outlet. Government prosecutors argue that Manning needn’t have intended to aid the enemy; merely that he knew Al Qaeda could use the information is enough. This would turn all government whistle-blowing into treason: a grave threat to both potential sources and American journalism.
Following this contention in court, the Los Angeles Times called on the government to drop the ‘aiding the enemy’ charge, writing in an editorial, “That charge strikes us as excessive in the absence of evidence that Manning consciously colluded with hostile nations or terrorists.”
Since then, even higher-profile media members have condemned the military’s pernicious claim and the precedent it would set. In an email in which she explained she couldn’t speak on behalf of her newspaper but could comment as a lifelong journalist and a former newspaper editor, New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan said,

“The implications for press freedom in the Bradley Manning prosecution trouble me, as does the federal government’s unprecedented targeting, in recent years, of whistleblowers and those who leak to the press. The issues certainly aren’t black and white, but if the public expects the press to do its crucial job in our democracy, people ought to be more worried than they apparently are. And I agree with the Los Angeles Times editorial that the “aiding the enemy” charge, which could result in a life sentence, is excessive.”

New York Times columnist and former executive editor Bill Keller said, “I think the treatment of Manning feels heavy-handed and out of proportion to actual harm done.”
In Michael Calderone’s story for the Huffington Post, “Manning Case Raises Troubling Questions For Journalists,” about the implications of this argument, the Washington Post’s Dana Priest said, “they don’t want other people to get the idea that they should be doing this,” and that it’ll have a “chilling effect on sources.”
Glenn Greenwald wrote for the Guardian, “[the government’s argument] can be – and almost certainly will be – just as easily applied to the vast majority of leaks on which investigative journalism has always relied.”
Mainstream news outlets, Greenwald said,

“might want to take a serious interest in this fact and marshal opposition to what is being done to Bradley Manning: if not out of concern for the injustices to which he is being subjected, then out of self-interest, to ensure that their reporters and their past and future whistle-blowing sources cannot be similarly persecuted.”

So why does the government continue to prosecute this way? Keller said, “It’s been clear from the outset that the government decided to make a lesson of Bradley Manning,” and that “the extreme conditions of his early confinement and the aiding-the-enemy charges suggest a deep animus toward Bradley.”
As the government works to discourage future leakers and to tighten security, it also classifies exponentially more documents every day. This harms the very people Bradley Manning wanted to inform in the first place: the American people.

Pardon Private Bradley Manning Stand-Out-Central Square, Cambridge, Wednesdays, 5:00 PM -Update

Pardon Private Bradley Manning Stand-Out-Central Square, Cambridge, Wednesdays, 5:00 PM -Update

Let’s Redouble Our Efforts To Free Private Bradley Manning-President Obama Pardon Bradley Manning -Make Every Town Square In America (And The World) A Bradley Manning Square From Boston To Berkeley to Berlin-Join Us In Central Square, Cambridge, Ma. For A Stand-Out For Bradley- Wednesdays From 5:00-6:00 PM

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Since September 2011, in order to publicize Private Manning’s case locally, there have been weekly stand-outs (as well as other more ad hocand sporadic events) in various locations in the Greater Boston area starting in Somerville across from the Davis Square Redline MBTA stop on Friday afternoons and later on Wednesdays. Lately this stand-out has been held each week on Wednesdays from 5:00 to 6:00 PM at Central Square, Cambridge, Ma. (small park at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Prospect Street just outside the Redline MBTA stop, renamed Manning Square for the duration of the stand-out) in order to continue to broaden our outreach. Join us in calling for Private Manning’s freedom. President Obama Pardon Private Manning Now!

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The Private Bradley Manning case is headed toward an early summer trial now scheduled for June 2013. The news on his case over the past several months (since about April 2012) has centered on the many pre-trial motion hearings including recent defense motions to dismiss for lack of speedy trial. Private Manning’s pre-trial confinement is now at 900 plus days and will be over 1000 days by the time of trial. That motion, still not ruled on as of this writing, is expected to be decided by the next round of pre-trial hearings in late February. The defense contends that the charges should be dismissed because the military by its own statutes (to speak nothing of that funny old constitutional right to s speedy trial guarantee that our plebeian forbears fought tooth and nail for against the bloody British and later made damn sure was included in the Amendments when the founding fathers“forgot” to include it in the main document) should have arraigned Private Manning within 120 days after his arrest. They hemmed and hawed for almost 600 days before deciding on the charges and a court martial. Nobody in the convening authority, as required by those same statutes, pushed the prosecution forward in a timely manner. Testimony from military authorities at pre-trial hearings in November 2012 about the reasons for the lack of action ranged from the lame to the absurd (one “reason” -some officer couldn’t get daycare. I didn’t make this up. I don’t have that sense of the absurd. Jesus, a man was rotting in Obama’s jails and they let him rot because they couldn’t get daycare). The prosecution, obviously, has argued that the government has moved might and main to move the case along and had merely waited until all leaked materials had been determined before proceeding. We shall see.

The defense has also recently pursued a motion for a dismissal of the major charges (espionage/ indirect material aid to terrorists) on the basis of the minimal effect of any leaks on national security issues as against Private Manning’s claim that such knowledge was important to the public square (freedom of information issues important for us as well in order to know about what the hell the government is doing either in front of us, or behind our backs). Last summer witnesses from an alphabet soup list of government agencies (CIA, FBI, NSA, Military Intelligence, etc., etc.) testified that while the information leaked shouldn’t have been leaked that the effect on national security was de minimus. The Secretary of Defense at the time, Leon Panetta also made a public statement to that effect. The prosecution argued, successfully at the time, that the mere fact of the leak of classified information caused irreparable harm to national security issues and Private Manning’s intent, even if noble, was not at issue.

The recent thrust of the motion to dismiss has centered on the defense’s contention been that Private Manning consciously and carefully screened any material in his possession to avoid any conflict with national security and that most of the released material had been over-classified (received higher security level than necessary).(Much of the materials leaked, as per those parts published widely in the aftermath of the disclosures by the New York Times and other major outlets, concerned reports of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan and diplomatic interchanged that reflected poorly on that profession.) The Obama government has argued again that the mere fact of leaking was all that mattered. That motion has also not been ruled on and is now the subject of prosecution counter- motions and a cause for further trial delay.

A defense motion for dismissal based on serious allegations of torturous behavior by the military authorities extending far up the chain of command (a three-star Army general, not the normal concern of someone so far up the chain in the matter of discipline for enlisted personal) while Private Manning was first detained in Kuwait and later at the Quantico Marine brig for about a year ending in April 2011 has now been ruled on. In December Private Manning himself, as well as others including senior military mental health workers, took the stand to detail those abuses over several days. Most important to the defense was the testimony by qualified military mental health professionals citing the constant willful failure of those who held Private Manning in close confinement to listen to, or act, on their recommendations during those periods

Judge Lind, the military judge who has heard all the pre-trial arguments in the case thus far, has essentially ruled unfavorably on that motion to dismiss given the potential life sentence Private Manning faces. As she announced at an early January pre-trial hearing the military acted illegally in some of its actions. While every Bradley Manning supporter should be heartened by the fact that the military judge ruled that he was subject to illegal behavior by the military during his pre-trial confinement her remedy, a 112 days reduction in any future sentence, is a mere slap on the wrist to the military authorities. No dismissal or, alternatively, no appropriate reduction (the asked for ten to one ratio for all his first year or so of illegal close confinement which would take years off any potential sentence) given the seriousness of the illegal behavior as the defense tirelessly argued for. And the result is a heavy-handed deterrent to any future military whistleblowers, who already are under enormous pressures to remain silent as a matter of course while in uniform, and others who seek to put the hard facts of future American military atrocities before the public.

Some other important recent news, this from the November 2012 pre-trail sessions, is the offer by the defense to plead guilty to lesser charges (wrongful, unauthorized use of the Internet, etc.) in order to clear the deck and have the major espionage /aiding the enemy issue (with a possibility of a life sentence) solely before the court-martial judge, Judge Lind (the one who has been hearing the pre-trial motions, not some senior officer, senior NCO lifer-stacked panel). Also there has been increased media attention by mainstream outlets around the case (including the previously knowingly oblivious New York Times), as well as an important statement by three Nobel Peace Laureates (including Bishop Tutu from South Africa) calling on their fellow laureate, United States President Barack Obama, to free Private Manning from his jails. Check the Bradley Manning Support Network -http://www.bradleymanning.org/ for details and future updates.

V. I. Lenin

Letters From Afar

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FIFTH Letter

The Tasks Involved in the Building of the Revolutionary Proletarian State

In the preceding letters, the immediate tasks of the revolutionary proletariat in Russia were formulated as follows: (1) to find the surest road to the next stage of the revolution, or to the second revolution, which (2) must transfer political power from the government of the land lords and capitalists (the Guchkovs, Lvovs, Milyukovs, Kerenskys) to a government of the workers and poorest peasants. (3) This latter government must be organised on the model of the Soviets of Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, namely, (4) it must smash, completely eliminate, the old state machine, the army, the police force and bureaucracy (officialdom), that is common toall bourgeois states, and substitute for this machine (5) not only a mass organisation, but a universal organisation of the entire armed people. (6) Only such a government, of “such” a class composition (“revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry”) and such organs or government (“proletarian militia”)will be capable of successfully carrying out the extremely difficult and absolutely urgent chief task of the moment, namely: to achieve peace, not an imperialist peace, not a deal between the imperialist powers concerning the division of the booty by the capitalists and their governments, but a really lasting and democratic peace, which cannot be achieved without a proletarian revolution in a number of countries. (7) In Russia the victory of the proletariat can be achieved in the very near future only if, from the very first step, the workers are supported by the vast majority of the peasants fighting for the confiscation of the landed estates (and for the nationalisation of all the land, if we assume that the agrarian programme of the “104” is still essentially the agrarian programme of thepeasantry^[2]). (8) In connection with such a peasant revolution, and on its basis, the proletariat can and must, in alliance with the poorest section of the peasantry, take further steps towards control of the production and distribution of the basic products, towards the introduction of “universal labour service”, etc. These steps are dictated, with absolute inevitability, by the conditions created by the war, which in many respects will become still more acute in the post-war period. In their entirety and in their development these steps will mark the transition to socialism, which cannot be achieved in Russia directly, at one stroke, without transitional measures, but is quite achievable and urgently necessary as a result of such transitional measures. (9) In this connection, the task of immediately organising special Soviets of Workers’ Deputies in the rural districts, i.e., Soviets of agricultural wage-workers separate from the Soviets of the other peasant deputies, comes to the fore front with extreme urgency.

Such, briefly, is the programme we have outlined, based on an appraisal of the class forces in the Russian and world revolution, and also on the experience of 1871 and 1905.
Let us now attempt a general survey of this programme as a whole and, in passing, deal with the way the subject was approached by K. Kautsky, the chief theoretician of the “Second” (1889–1914) International and most prominent representative of the “Centre”, “marsh” trend that is now to be observed in all countries, the trend that oscillates between the social-chauvinists and the revolutionary inter nationalists. Kautsky discussed this subject in his magazine Die Neue Zeit of April 6, 1917 (new style) in an article entitled, “The Prospects of the Russian Revolution”.
“First of all,” writes Kautsky, “we must ascertain what tasks confront the revolutionary proletarian regime” (state system).
“Two things,” continues the author, “are urgently needed by the proletariat: democracy and socialism.”


Unfortunately, Kautsky advances this absolutely incontestable thesis in an exceedingly general form, so that in essence he says nothing and explains nothing. Milyukov and Kerensky, members of a bourgeois and imperialist government, would readily subscribe to this general thesis, one to the first part, and the other to the second....^[1]

Written on March 26 (April 8), 1917	Published according to the manuscript
First published in the magazine Bolshevik No. 3–4, 1924

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Notes

[1]The manuscript breaks off here.—Ed.

[2]The agrarian programme of the “104”—the land reform bill the Trudovik members submitted to the 13th meeting of the First State Duma on May 23 (June 5), 1900. Its purpose was to “establish a system under which all the land, with its deposits and waters, would belong to the entire people, and farmlands would be allowed only those tilling them by their own labour” (Documents and Materials of the State Duma, Moscow, 1957, p. 172). The Trudoviks advocated organisation of a “national land fond”that would include all state, crown, monastery and church lands, also part of privately owned lands, which were to be alienated if the size of the holding exceeded the labor norm fixed for the given area. Partial compensation was to be paid for such alienated land. Small holdings were to remain the property of the owner, but would eventually be brought into the national fund. Implementation of the reform was to be supervised by local committees elected by universal, direct and equal suffrage and by secret ballot.

How To Achieve Peace

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V. I. Lenin

Letters From Afar

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FOURTH Letter

How To Achieve Peace

I have just (March 12/25) read in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (No. 517 of March 24) the following telegraphic dispatch from Berlin:

“It is reported from Sweden that Maxim Gorky has sent the government and the Executive Committee greetings couched in enthusiastic terms. He greets the people’s victory over the lords of reaction and calls upon all Russia’s sons to help erect the edifice of the new Russian state. At the same time he urges the government to crown the cause of emancipation by concluding peace. It must not, he says, be peace at any price; Russia now has less reason than ever to strive for peace at any price. It must be a peace that will enable Russia to live in honour among the other nations of the earth. Mankind has shed much blood; the new government would render not only Russia, but all mankind, the greatest service if it succeeded in concluding an early peace.”
That is how Maxim Gorky’s letter is reported.
It is with deep chagrin that one reads this letter, impregnated through and through with stock philistine prejudices. The author of these lines has had many occasions, in meetings with Gorky in Capri, to warn and reproach him for his political mistakes. Gorky parried these reproaches with his inimitable charming smile and with the ingenuous remark: “I know I am a bad Marxist. And besides, we artists are all somewhat irresponsible.” It is not easy to argue against that.


There can be no doubt that Gorky’s is an enormous artistic talent which has been, and will be, of great benefit to the world proletarian movement.
But why should Gorky meddle in politics?
In my opinion, Gorky’s letter expresses prejudices that are exceedingly widespread not only among the petty bourgeoisie, but also among a section of the workers under its influence. All the energies of our Party, all the efforts of the class-conscious workers, must be concentrated on a persistent, persevering, all-round struggle against these prejudices.
The tsarist government began and waged the present war as animperialist, predatory war to rob and strangle weak nations. The government of the Guchkovs and Milyukovs, which is a landlord and capitalist government, is forced to continue, and wants to continue,this very same kind of war. To urge that government to conclude a democratic peace is like preaching virtue to brothel keepers.
Let me explain what is meant.
What is imperialism?
In my Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, the manuscript of which was delivered to the Parus Publishers some time before the revolution, was accepted by them and announced in the magazineLetopis,^[3] I answered this question as follows:
“Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun; in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed” (Chapter VII of the above-mentioned book, the publication of which was announced in Letopis, when the censorship still existed, under the title: “Modern Capitalism”, by V. Ilyin).^[1]
The whole thing hinges on the fact that capital has grown to huge dimensions. Associations of a small number of the biggest capitalists (cartels, syndicates, trusts) manipulate billions and divide the whole world among themselves. The world has been completely divided up. The war was brought on by the clash of the two most powerful groups of multimillionaires, Anglo-French and German, for the redivision of the world.

The Anglo-French group of capitalists wants first to rob Germany, deprive her of her colonies (nearly all of which have already been seized), and then to rob Turkey.
The German group of capitalists wants to seize Turkey foritself and to compensate itself for the loss of its colonies by seizing neighbouring small states (Belgium, Serbia, Rumania).
This is the real truth; it is being concealed by all sorts of bourgeois lies about a “liberating”, “national” war, a “war for right and justice”, and similar jingle with which the capitalists always fool the common people.
Russia is waging this war with foreign money. Russian capital is apartner of Anglo-French capital. Russia is waging the war in order to rob Armenia, Turkey, Galicia.
Guchkov, Lvov and Milyukov, our present ministers, are not chance comers. They are the representatives and leaders of the entire landlord and capitalist class. They are bound by the interests of capital. The capitalists can no more renounce their interests than a man can lift himself by his bootstraps.
Secondly, Guchkov-Milyukov and Co. are bound by Anglo-French capital. They have waged, and are still waging, the war with foreign money. They have borrowed billions, promising to pay hundreds of millions in interest every year, and to squeeze thistribute out of the Russian workers and Russian peasants.
Thirdly, Guchkov-Milyukov and Co. are bound to England, France, Italy, Japan and other groups of robber capitalists by directtreaties concerning the predatory aims of this war. These treaties were concluded by Tsar Nicholas II. Guchkov-Milyukov and Co. took advantage of the workers’ struggle against the tsarist monarchy to seize power, and they have confirmed the treaties concluded by the tsar.
This was done by the whole of the Guchkov-Milyukov government in a manifesto which the St. Petersburg Telegraph Agency circulated on March 7(20): “The government [of Guchkov and Milyukov] will faithfully abide by all the treaties that bind us with other powers,” says the manifesto. Milyukov, the new Minister for Foreign Affairs, said the same thing in his telegram of March 5 (18), 1917 to all Russian representatives abroad.

These are all secret treaties, and Milyukov and Co. refuse to make them public for two reasons: (1) they fear the people, who are opposed to the predatory war; (2) they are bound by Anglo-French capital which insists that the treaties remain secret. But every newspaper reader who has followed events knows that these treaties envisage the robbery of China by Japan; of Persia, Armenia, Turkey (especially Constantinople) and Galicia by Russia; of Albania by Italy; of Turkey and the German colonies by France and England, etc.
This is how things stand.
Hence, to urge the Guchkov-Milyukov government to conclude a speedy, honest, democratic and good-neighhourly peace is like the good village priest urging the landlords and the merchants to “walk in the way of God”, to love their neighbours and to turn the other cheek. The landlords and merchants listen to these sermons, continue to oppress and rob the people and praise the priest for his ability to console and pacify the“muzhiks”.
Exactly the same role is played—consciously or unconsciously—by all those who in the present imperialist war address pious peace appeals to the bourgeois governments. The bourgeois governments either refuse to listen to such appeals and even prohibit them, or they allow them to be made and assure all and sundry that they are only fighting to conclude the speediest and “justest” peace, and that all the blame lies with the enemy. Actually, talking peace to bourgeois governments turns out to be deception of the people.
The groups of capitalists who have drenched the world in blood for the sake of dividing territories, markets and concessions cannotconclude an “honourable” peace. They can conclude only ashameful peace, a peace based on the division of the spoils, on the partition of Turkey and the colonies.
Moreover, the Guchkov-Milyukov government is in general opposed to peace at the present moment, because the “only” “loot” it would get now would he Armenia and part of Galicia, whereas it also wants to get Constantinopleand re gain from the Germans Poland, which tsarism has always so inhumanly and shamelessly oppressed. Further, the Guchkov Milyukov government is, in essence, only the agent of Anglo-French capital, which wants to retain the colonies it has wrested from Germany and, on top of that, compel Germany hand back Belgium and part of France. Anglo-French capital helped the Guchkovs and Milyukovs remove Nicholas II in order that they might help it to “vanquish” Germany.

What, then, is to be done?
To achieve peace (and still more to achieve a really democratic, a really honourable peace), it is necessary that political power be in the hands of the workers and poorest peasants, not the landlords and capitalists. The latter represent an insignificant minority of the population, and the capitalists, as everybody knows, are making fantastic profits out of the war.
The workers and poorest peasants are the vast majority of the population. They are not making profit out of the war; on the contrary, they are being reduced to ruin and starvation. They are bound neither by capital nor by the treaties between the predatory groups of capitalists; they can and sincerely want to end the war.
If political power in Russia were in the hands of the Sovietsof Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, these Soviets, and theAll-Russia Soviet elected by them, could, and no doubt would, agree to carry out the peace programme which our Party (the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party) outlined as early as October 13, 1915, in No. 47 of its Central Organ, Sotsial-Demokrat^[2](then published in Geneva because of the Draconic tsarist censorship).
This programme would probably be the following:
1) The All-Russia Soviet of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies (or the St. Petersburg Soviet temporarily acting for it) would forthwith declare that it is not bound by any treaties concludedeither by the tsarist monarchy or by the bourgeois governments.

2) It would forthwith publish all these treaties in order to hold up to public shame the predatory aims of the tsarist monarchy and ofall the bourgeois governments without exception.
3) It would forthwith publicly call upon all the belligerent powers to conclude an immediate armistice.
4) It would immediately bring to the knowledge of all the people our, the workers’ and peasants peace terms:
liberation of all colonies;
liberation of all dependent, oppressed and unequal nations.
5) It would declare that it expects nothing good from the bourgeois governments and calls upon the workers of all countries to overthrow them and to transfer all political power to Soviets of Workers’ Deputies.
6) It would declare that the capitalist gentry themselves can repay the billions of debts contracted by the bourgeois governments to wage this criminal, predatory war, and that the workers and peasants refuse to recognise these debts. To pay the interest on these loans would mean paying the capitalists tribute for many years for having graciously allowed the workers to kill one another in order that the capitalists might divide the spoils.
Workers and peasants!—the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies would say—are you willing to pay these gentry, the capitalists, hundreds of millions of rubles every year for a war waged for the division of the African colonies, Turkey, etc.?
For these peace terms the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies would, in my opinion, agree to wage war against any bourgeois government and against all the bourgeois governments of the world, because this would really be a just war, be cause all the workers and toilers in all countries would work for its success.
The German worker now sees that the bellicose monarchy in Russia is being replaced by a bellicose republic, a republic of capitalists who want to continue the imperialist war, and who have confirmed the predatory treaties of the tsarist monarchy.
Judge for yourselves, can the German worker trust such a republic?


Judge for yourselves, can the war continue, can the capitalist domination continue on earth, if the Russian people, always sustained by the living memories of the great Revolution of 1905, win complete freedom and transfer all political power to the Soviets of Workers’ and Peasants’Deputies?

N. Lenin

Zurich, March 12 (25), 1917

First published in the magazine The Communist International No. 3–4, 1924
Published according to the manuscript

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LETTERS FROM AFAR

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Notes

[1][PLACEHOLDER FOOTNOTE.] —Lenin

[2][PLACEHOLDER FOOTNOTE.] —Lenin

[3]Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism was written in the first half of 1910, and on June 19 (July 2) was sent to Petrograd via Paris. It was to have been published by the Parus publishing house which, on Maxim Gorky s initiative, was putting out a series of popular surveys of West-European countries involved in the war. Lenin maintained contact with the publishers through the editor of the series, M. N. Pokrovsky. On September 29, 1916, Gorky wrote Pokrovsky in Paris that Lenin’s book was“really excellent” and would be put out in addition to the regular series. However, the Parus editors strongly objected to Lenin’s criticism of Kautsky’s renegade position and substantially altered the text, deleting all criticism of Kautsky’s theory of ultra-imperialism and distorting a number of Lenin’s formulations The book was finally published in mid–1917 with a preface by Lenin, dated April 26.

Parus (Sail) and Letopis (Annals)—the names of the publishing house and magazine founded by Gorky in Petrograd.

Letopis—a magazine of literature science and politics whose contributors included former Bolsheviks (the Machists V. A Bazarov and A. A. Bogdanov) and Mensheviks. Gorky was literary editor, and among the other prominent writers contributing to Letopis were Alexander Blok, Valeri Bryusov, Fyodor Gladkov, Sergei Yesenin, A. V. Lunacharsky, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Vyacheslav Shishkov and A. Chaplygin. Letopis appeared from December 1915 to December 1917. The Pares publishing house existed from 1915 through 1918.

V. I. Lenin

Letters From Afar

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THIRD Letter

Concerning a Proletarian Militia

The conclusion I drew yesterday about Chkheidze’s vacillating tactics has been fully confirmed today, March 10 (23), by two documents. First—a telegraphic report from Stockholm in theFrankfurter Zeitung^[4] containing excerpts from the manifesto of the Central Committee of our Party, the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, in St. Petersburg. In this document there is not a word about either supporting the Guchkov government or overthrowing it; the workers and soldiers are called upon to organise around the Soviet of Workers’Deputies, to elect representatives to it for the fight against tsarism and for a republic, for an eight-hour day, for the confiscation of the landed estates and grain stocks, and chiefly, for an end to the predatory war. Particularly important and particularly urgent in this connection is our Central Committee’s absolutely correct idea that to obtain peace relations must be established with the proletarians of all the belligerent countries.

To expect peace from negotiations and relations between the bourgeois governments would be self-deception and deception of the people.
The second document is a Stockholm report, also by telegraph, to another German newspaper (Vossische Zeitung^[5]) about a conference between the Chkheidze group in the Duma, the workers’ group (? Arbeiterfraction) and representatives of fifteen workers’ unions on March 2 (15) and a manifesto published next day. Of the eleven points of this manifesto, the telegram reports only three; the first, the demand for a republic; the seventh, the demand for peace and immediate peace negotiations; and the third, the demand for “adequate participation in the government of representatives of the Russian working class”.

If this point is correctly reported, I can understand why the bourgeoisie is praising Chkheidze. I can understand why the praise of the English Guchkovites in The Times which I quoted elsewhere has been supplemented by the praise of the French Guchkovites inLe Temps. This newspaper of the French millionaires and imperialists writes on March 22: “The leaders of the workers’ parties, particularly M. Chkheidze, are exercising all their influence to moderate the wishes of the working classes.”
Indeed, to demand workers’ “participation” in the Guchkov-Milyukov government is a theoretical and political absurdity: to participate as a minority would mean serving as a pawn; to participate on an “equal footing” is impossible, because the demand to continue the war cannot be reconciled with the demand to conclude an armistice and start peace negotiations; to “participate” as a majority requires the strength tooverthrow the Guchkov-Milyukov government. In practice, the demand for “participation” is the worst sort of Louis Blanc-ism, i.e., oblivion to the class struggle and the actual conditions under which it is being waged, infatuation with a most hollow-sounding phrase, spreading illusions among the workers, loss, in negotiations with Milyukov or Kerensky, ofprecious time which must be used to create a real class and revolutionary force, a proletarian militia that will enjoy the confidence of all the poor strata of the population, and they constitute the vast majority, and will help them to organise, helpthem to fight for bread, peace, freedom.
This mistake in the manifesto issued by Chkheidze and his group (I am not speaking of the 0. C., Organising Committee party, because in the sources available to me there is not a word about the 0. C.)—this mistake is all the more strange considering that at the March 2 (15) conference, Chkheidze’s closest collaborator, Skobelev, said, according to the newspapers: “Russia is on the eve of a second, real [wirklich] revolution.”
Now that is the truth, from which Skobelev and Chkheidze have forgotten to draw the practical conclusions. I cannot judge from here, from my accursed afar, how near this second revolution is. Being on the spot, Skobelev can see things better. Therefore, I am not raising for myself problems, for the solution of which I have not and cannot have the necessary concrete data. I am merely emphasising the confirmation by Skobelev, an “outside witness”, i.e., one who does not belong to our Party, of the factual conclusion I drew in my first letter, namely: that the February-March Revolution was merely thefirst stage of the revolution. Russia is passing through a peculiar historical moment of transition to the next stage of the revolution, or, to use Skobelev’s expression, to a “second revolution”.

If we want to be Marxists and learn from the experience of revolution in the whole world, we must strive to under stand in what, precisely, lies the peculiarity of this transitional moment, and what tactics follow from its objective specific features.
The peculiarity of the situation lies in that the Guchkov Milyukov government gained the first victory with extraordinary ease due to the following three major circumstances: (1) assistance from Anglo-French finance capital and its agents; (2) assistance from part of the top ranks of the army; (3) the already existing organisation of the entire Russian bourgeoisie in the shape of the rural and urban local government institutions, the State Duma, the war industries committees, and so forth.
The Guchkov government is held in a vise: bound by the interests of capital, it is compelled to strive to continue the predatory, robber war, to protect the monstrous profits of capital and the landlords, to restore the monarchy. Bound by its revolutionary origin and by the need for an abrupt change from tsarism to democracy, pressed by the bread-hungry and peace-hungry masses, the government is compelled to lie, to wriggle, to play for time, to “proclaim” and promise (promises are the only things that are very cheap even at a time of madly rocketing prices) as much as possible and do as little as possible, to make concessions with one hand and to withdraw them with the other.
Under certain circumstances, the new government can at best postpone its collapse somewhat by leaning on all the organising ability of the entire Russian bourgeoisie and bourgeois intelligentsia. But even in that case it is unable to avoid collapse, because it is impossible to escape from the claws of the terrible monster of imperialist war and famine nurtured by world capitalism unless one renounces bourgeois relationships, passes to revolutionary measures, appeals to the supreme historic heroism of both the Russian and world proletariat.

Hence the conclusion: we cannot overthrow the new government at one stroke, or, if we can (in revolutionary times the limits of what is possible expand a thousandfold), we will not be able to maintain powerunless we counter the magnificent organisation of the entire Russian bourgeoisie and the entire bourgeois intelligentsia with an equally magnificent organisation of the proletariat, which must lead the entire vast mass of urban and rural poor, the semi-proletariat and small proprietors.
Irrespective of whether the “second revolution” has already broken out in St. Petersburg (I have said that it would be absolutely absurd to think that it is possible from abroad to assess the actual tempo at which it is maturing), whether it has been postponed for some time, or whether it has already begun in individual areas (of which some signs are evident)—in any case, the slogan of the moment on the eve of the new revolution, during it, and on the morrow of it, must be proletarian organisation.
Comrade workers! You performed miracles of proletarian heroism yesterday in overthrowing the tsarist monarchy. In the more or less near future (perhaps even now, as these lines are being written) you will again have to perform the same miracles of heroism to overthrow the rule of the land lords and capitalists, who are waging the imperialist war. You will not achieve durable victory in this next “real” revolution if you do not perform miracles of proletarian organisation!
Organisation is the slogan of the moment. But to confine oneself to that is to say nothing, for, on the one hand, organisation is always needed; hence, mere reference to the necessity of “organising the masses”explains absolutely nothing. On the other hand, he who confines himself solely to this becomes an abettor of the liberals, for the very thing the liberals want in order to strengthen their rule is that the workers should not go beyond their ordinary “legal”(from the standpoint of “normal” bourgeois society) organisations, i. e., that they should only join their party, their trade union, their co-operative society, etc., etc.

Guided by their class instinct, the workers have realised that in revolutionary times they need not only ordinary, but an entirely different organisation. They have rightly taken the path indicated by the experience of our 1905 Revolution and of the 1871 Paris Commune; they have set up a Soviet of Workers’ Deputies; they have begun to develop, expand and strengthen it by drawing in soldiers’ deputies, and, undoubtedly, deputies from rural wage-workers, and then (in one form or another) from the entire peasant poor.
The prime and most important task, and one that brooks no delay, is to set up organisations of this kind in all parts of Russia without exception, for all trades and strata of the proletarian and semi-proletarian population without exception, i. e., for all the working and exploited people, to use a less economically exact but more popular term. Running ahead somewhat, I shall mention that for the entire mass of the peasantry our Party (its special role in the new type of proletarian organisations I hope to discuss in one of my next letters) should especially recommend Soviets of wage-workers and Soviets of small tillers who do not sell grain, to be formed separately from the well-to-do peasants. Without this, it will be impossible either to conduct a truly proletarian policy in general,^[1]or correctly to approach the extremely important practical question which is a matter of life and death for millions of people: the proper distribution of grain, increasing its production, etc.
It might be asked: What should be the function of the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies? They “must be regarded as organs of insurrection, of revolutionary rule”, we wrote in No. 47 of the Geneva Sotsial-Demokrat, of October 13, 1915.^[2]


This theoretical proposition, deduced from the experience of the Commune of 1871 and of the Russian Revolution of 1905, must be explained and concretely developed on the basis of the practical experience of precisely the present stage of the present revolution in Russia.
We need revolutionary government, we need (for a certain transitional period) a state. This is what distinguishes us from the anarchists. The difference between the revolutionary Marxists and the anarchists is not only that the former stand for centralised, large-scale communist production, while the latter stand for disconnected small production. The difference between us precisely on the question of government, of the state, is that we are for, and the anarchistsagainst, utilising revolutionary forms of the state in a revolutionary way for the struggle for socialism.
We need a state. But not the kind of state the bourgeoisie has created everywhere, from constitutional monarchies to the most democratic republics. And in this we differ from the opportunists and Kautskyites of the old, and decaying, socialist parties, who have distorted, or have for gotten, the lessons of the Paris Commune and the analysis of these lessons made by Marx and Engels.^[3]
We need a state, hut not the kind the bourgeoisie needs, with organs of government in the shape of a police force, an army and a bureaucracy (officialdom) separate from and opposed to the people. All bourgeois revolutions merely perfected this state machine, merely transferred it from the hands of one party to those of another.
The proletariat, on the other hand, if it wants to uphold the gains of the present revolution and proceed further, to win peace, bread and freedom, must “smash”, to use Marx’s expression, this“ready-made” state machine and substitute a new one for it bymerging the police force, the army and the bureaucracy withthe entire armed people. Following the path indicated by the experience of the Paris Commune of 1871 and the Russian Revolution of 1905, the proletariat, must organise and armall the poor, exploited sections of the population in order that they themselves should take the organs of state power directly into their own hands, in order that they themselves should constitute these organs of state power.

And the workers of Russia have already taken this path in the first stage of the first revolution, in February–March 1917. The whole task now is clearly to understand what this new path is, to proceed along it further, boldly, firmly and perseveringly.
The Anglo-French and Russian capitalists wanted “only” to remove, or only to “frighten”, Nicholas II and to leave intact the old state machine, the police force, the army and the bureaucracy.
The workers went further and smashed it. And now, not only the Anglo-French, hut also the German capitalists are howling with rage and horror as they see, for example, Russian soldiers shooting their officers, as in the case of Admiral Nepenin, that supporter of Guchkov and Milyukov.
I said that the workers have smashed the old state machine. It will he more correct to say: have begun to smash it.
Let us take a concrete example.
In St. Petersburg and in many other places the police force has been partly wiped out and partly dissolved. The Guchkov-Milyukov governmentcannot either restore the monarchy or, in general, maintain powerwithout restoring the police force as a special organisation of armed men under the command of the bourgeoisie, separate from and opposed to the people. That is as clear as daylight.
On the other hand, the new government must reckon with the revolutionary people, must feed them with half-concessions and promises, must play for time. That is why it re sorts to half-measures: it establishes a “people’s militia” with elected officials (this sounds awfully respectable, awfully democratic, revolutionary and beautiful!)—but... but, firstly, it places this militia under the control of the rural and urban local government bodies, i.e., under the command of landlords and capitalists who have been elected in conformity with laws passed by Nicholas the Bloody and Stolypin the Hangman!! Secondly, although calling it a “people’s militia” in order to throw dust in the eyes of the “people”, it does not call upon the entire people to join this militia, and does not compel the employers and capitalists to pay workers and office employees their ordinary wages for the hours and days they spend in the public service, i.e., in the militia.

That’s their trick. That is how the landlord and capitalist government of the Guchkovs and Milyukovs manages to have a “people’s militia” on paper, while in reality, it is restoring, gradually and on the quiet, thebourgeois, anti-people’s militia. At first it is to consist of“eight thousand students and professors” (as foreign newspapers describe the present St. Petersburg militia)—an obvious plaything!—and will gradually be built up of the old and new police force.
Prevent restoration of the police force! Do not let the local government bodies slip out of your hands! Set up a militia that will really embrace the entire people, be really universal, and be led by the proletariat!—such is the task of the day, such is the slogan of the moment which equally conforms with the properly understood interests of furthering the class struggle, furthering the revolutionary movement, and the democratic instinct of every worker, of every peasant, of every exploited toiler who cannot help hating the policemen, the rural police patrols, the village constables, the command of landlords and capitalists over armed men with power over the people.
What kind of police force do they need, the Guchkovs and Milyukovs, the landlords and capitalists? The same kind as existed under the tsarist monarchy. After the briefest revolutionary periods allthe bourgeois and bourgeois-democratic republics in the world set up or restored precisely such a police force, a special organisation of armed men subordinate to the bourgeoisie in one way or another, separate from and opposed to the people.
What kind of militia do we need, the proletariat, all the toiling people? A genuine people’s militia, i.e., one that, first, consists of the entire population, of all adult citizens ofboth sexes; and, second, one that combines the functions of a people’s army with police functions, with the functions of the chief and fundamental organ of public order and public administration.

To make these propositions more comprehensible I will take a purely schematic example. Needless to say, it would be absurd to think of drawing up any kind of a “plan” for a proletarian militia: when the workers and the entire people set about it practically, on a truly mass scale, they will work it out and organise it a hundred times better than any theoretician. I am not offering a “plan”, I only want to illustrate my idea.
St. Petersburg has a population of about two million. Of these, more than half are between the ages of 15 and 65. Take half—one million. Let us even subtract an entire fourth as physically unfit, etc., taking no part in public service at the present moment for justifiable reasons. There remain 750,000 who, serving in the militia, say one day in fifteen (and receiving their pay for this time from their employers), would form an army of 50,000.
That’s the type of “state” we need!
That’s the kind of militia that would be a “people’s militia” in deed and not only in words.
That is how we must proceed in order to prevent the restoration either of a special police force, or of a special army separate from the people.
Such a militia, 95 hundredths of which would consist of workers and peasants, would express the real mind and will, the strength and power of the vast majority of the people. Such a militia would really arm, and provide military training for, the entire people, would be a safeguard, but not of the Guchkov or Milyukov type, against all attempts to restore reaction, against all the designs of tsarist agents. Such a militia would be the executive organ of the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’Deputies, it would enjoy the boundless respect and confidence of the people, for it itself would be an organisation of the entire people. Such a militia would transform democracy from a beautiful signboard, which covers up the enslavement and torment of the people by the capitalists, into a means of actually training the masses for participation in all affairs of state. Such a militia would draw the young people into political life and teach them not only by words, hut also by action, by work. Such a militia would develop those functions which, speaking in scientific language, come within the purview of the “welfare police”, sanitary inspection, and so forth, and would enlist for such work all adult women. If women are not drawn into public service, into the militia, into political life, if women are not torn out of their stupefying house and kitchen environment, it will be impossible to guarantee real freedom, it will be impossible to build even democracy let alone socialism.

Such a militia would be a proletarian militia, for the industrial and urban workers would exert a guiding influence on the masses of the poor as naturally and inevitably as they came to bold the leading place in the people’s revolutionary struggle both in 1905–07 and in 1917.
Such a militia would ensure absolute order and devotedly observed comradely discipline. At the same time, in the severe crisis that all the belligerent countries are experiencing, it would make it possible to combat this crisis in a really democratic way, properly arid rapidly to distribute grain and other supplies, introduce “universal labour service”, which the French now call “civilian mobilisation” and the Germans “civilian service” and without which it is impossible—it has proved to be impossible—to heal the wounds that have been and are being inflicted by the predatory and horrible war.
Has the proletariat of Russia shed its blood only in order to receive fine promises of political democratic reforms and nothing wore? Can it be that it will not demand, and secure, that every toiler shouldforthwith see and feel some improvement in his life? That every family should have bread? That every child should have a bottle of good milk and that not a single adult in a rich family should dare take extra milk until children are provided for? That the palaces and rich apartments abandoned by the tsar and the aristocracy should not remain vacant, but provide shelter for the homeless and the destitute? Who can carry out these measures except a people’s militia, to which women must be long equally with men?
These measures do not yet constitute socialism. They concern the distribution of consumption, not the reorganisation of production. They would not yet constitute the “dictatorship of the proletariat”, only the “revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the poor peasantry”. It is not a matter of finding a theoretical classification. We would be committing a great mistake if we attempted to force the complex, urgent, rapidly developing practical tasks of the revolution into the Procrustean bed of narrowly conceived “theory”instead of regarding theory primarily and predominantly as a guide to action.

Do the masses of the Russian workers possess sufficient class-consciousness, fortitude and heroism to perform “miracles of proletarian organisation” after they have per formed miracles of daring, initiative and self-sacrifice in the direct revolutionary struggle? That we do not know, and it would be idle to indulge in guessing, for practicealone furnishes the answers to such questions.
What we do know definitely, and what we, as a party, must explain to the masses is, on the one hand, the immense power of the locomotive of history that is engendering an unprecedented crisis, starvation and incalculable hardship. That locomotive is the war, waged for predatory aims by the capitalists of both belligerent camps. This “locomotive”has brought a number of the richest, freest and most enlightened nations to the brink of doom. It is forcing the peoples to strain to the utmost all their energies, placing them in unbearable conditions, putting on the order of the day not the application of certain “theories” (an illusion against which Marx always warned socialists), but implementation of the most extreme practical measures; for without extreme measures, death—immediate and certain death from starvation—awaits millions of people.
That the revolutionary enthusiasm of the advanced class can do agreat deal when the objective situation demands extreme measures from the entire people, needs no proof. This aspect is clearly seen and felt by everybody in Russia.
It is important to realise that in revolutionary times the objective situation changes with the same swiftness and abruptness as the current of life in general. And we must be able to adapt our tactics and immediate tasks to the specific features of every given situation. Before February 1917, the immediate task was to conduct bold revolutionary-internationalist propaganda, summon the masses to fight, rouse them. The February–March days required the heroism of devoted struggle to crush the immediate enemy—tsarism. Now we are in transition from that first stage of the revolution to the second, from “coming to grips” with tsarism to“coming to grips” with Guchkov-Milyukov landlord and capitalist imperialism. The immediate task is organisation, not only in the stereotyped sense of working to form stereo typed organisations, but in the sense of drawing unprecedentedly broad masses of the oppressed classes into an organisation that would take over the military, political and economic functions of the state.

The proletariat has approached, and will approach, this singular task in different ways. In some parts of Russia the February-March Revolution puts nearly complete power in its hands. In others the proletariat may, perhaps, in a “usurpatory” manner, begin to form and develop a proletarian militia. In still others, it will probably strive for immediate elections of urban and rural local government bodies on the basis of universal, etc., suffrage, in order to turn them into revolutionary centres, etc., until the growth of proletarian organisation, the coming together of the soldiers with the workers, the movement among the peasantry and the disillusionment of very many in the war-imperialist government of Guchkov and Milyukov bring near the hour when this government will be replaced by the “government” of the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies.
Nor ought we to forget that close to St. Petersburg we have one of the most advanced, factually republican, countries, namely, Finland, which, from 1905 to 1917, shielded by the revolutionary battles of Russia, has in a relatively peaceful way developed democracy and has won themajority of the people for socialism. The Russian proletariat will guarantee the Finnish Republic complete freedom, including freedom to secede (it is doubtful now whether a single Social-Democrat will waver on this point when the Cadet Rodichev is so meanly haggling in Helsingfors for bits of privileges for the Great Russians^[6])—and precisely in this way will win the completeconfidence and comradely assistance of the Finnish workers for the all-Russian proletarian cause. In a difficult and big undertaking mistakes are inevitable, nor will we avoid them. The Finnish workers are better organisers, they will help us in this sphere, they will, in their own way, push forward the establishment of the socialist republic.

Revolutionary victories in Russia proper—peaceful organisational successes in Finland shielded by these victories—the Russian workers’transition to revolutionary organisational tasks on a new scale—capture of power by the proletariat and poorest strata of the population—encouragement and development of the socialist revolution in the West—this is the road that will lead us to peace andsocialism.

N. Lenin

Zurich, March 11 (24), 1917

First published in the magazine The Communist International No. 3–4, 1924
Published according to the manuscript

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LETTERS FROM AFAR

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Notes

[1]In the rural districts a struggle will now develop for the small and, partly, middle peasants. The landlords, leaning on the well-to-do peasants, will try to lead them into subordination to the bourgeoisie. Leaning on the rural wage-workers and rural poor, we must lead them into the closest alliance with the urban proletariat. —Lenin

[2][PLACEHOLDER FOOTNOTE.] —Lenin

[3]In one of my next letters, or in a special article, I will deal in detail with this analysis, given in particular in Marx’s The Civil War in France, in Engels’s preface to the third edition of that work, in the letters: Marx’s of April 12, 1871, and Engels’s of March 18–28, 1875, and also with the utter distortion of Marxism by Kautsky in his controversy with Pannekoek in 1912 on the question of the so-called “destruction of the state”.^[7] —Lenin

[4]Frankfurter Zeitung—an influential German capitalist daily paper, published in Frankfurt-on-Main, from 1856 to 1943. Resumed publication in 1949 under the name Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung; speaks for West German monopoly interests.

[5]Vossische Zeitung—a moderate liberal newspaper published in Berlin from 1704 to 1934.

[7]See Lenin’s The State and Revolution (present edition, Vol. 25).

[6]Soon after its formation, the Provisional Government appointed the Octobrist M. A. Stakhovich Governor-General of Finland and the Cadet F. I. Rodichev Minister (or Commissioner) for Finnish Affairs. On March 8 (21), the Provisional Government issued its Manifesto “On Approval and Enforcement of the Constitution of the Grand Duchy of Finland”. Under this Finland was allowed autonomy, with the proviso that laws promulgated by the Finnish Diet would be subject to confirmation by the Russian Government. Laws that ran counter to Finnish legislation were to remain in force for the duration of the war.

The Provisional Government wanted the Finnish Diet to amend the Constitution to give “Russian citizens equal rights with Finnish citizens in commerce and industry”, for under the tsarist government such equality was imposed in defiance of Finnish laws. At the same time, the Provisional Government refused to discuss self-determination for Finland “pending convocation of the constituent assembly”. This led to a sharp conflict, resolved only after the Great October Socialist Revolution when, on December 18 (31), 1917, the Soviet Government granted Finland full independence.