The trial of the insurrectionists from Shuia, for opposing aid to the starving, should be carried out in utmost haste and should end not other than with the shooting of the very largest number of the most influential and dangerous of the Black Hundreds in Shuia, and, if possible, not only in this city but even in Moscow and several other ecclesiastical centers.
The passing of state power from one class to another is the first, the principal, the basic sign of a revolution, both in the strictly scientific and in the practical political meaning of that term.
Only the most ignorant people can close their eyes to the bourgeois nature of the democratic revolution which is now taking place. Whoever wants to reach socialism by any other path than that of political democracy will inevitably arrive at conclusions that are absurd and reactionary both in the economic and the political sense.
We love our language and our country, and we are doing our very utmost to raise her toiling masses (I. E., nine-tenths of her population) to the level of a democratic and socialist consciousness.
It is in prison. That one becomes a real revolutionary.
The worker is becoming impoverished absolutely, i. e., he is actually becoming poorer than before; he is compelled to live worse, to eat worse, to suffer hunger more, and to live in basements and attics.
Political institutions are a superstructure resting on an economic foundation.
If the world is eternally moving and developing matter (as the Marxists think), reflected by the developing human consciousness, what is there "static" here?
It is necessary to be able to withstand all this, to agree to any and every sacrifice, and even, if need be, to resort to all sorts of stratagems, manoeuvres and illegal methods, to evasion and subterfuges in order to penetrate the trade unions, to remain in them, and to carry on Communist work in them at all costs.
Victory will belong only to those who have faith in the people, those who are immersed in the life-giving spring of popular creativity.