The second anniversary of Soviet power is an occasion for taking stock of what has been done during this period and for reflecting on the significance and the aims of the revolution that has been accomplished
The bourgeoisie and its supporters charge us with having violated democracy. We, on the other hand, assert that the Soviet revolution has given an unprecedented impulse to the development of democracy in breadth and in depth, democracy, that is, for the working people oppressed by capitalism, democracy for the overwhelming majority of the people, socialist democracy (for the working people) as distinct from bourgeois democracy (for the exploiters, for the capitalists, for the rich).
Who is right ?
To give proper thought to this question and achieve a deeper understanding of it one must take stock of the experience of these two years and make better preparations for further development.
The status of women makes clear in the most striking fashion the difference between bourgeois and socialist democracy and furnishes a most effective reply to the question posed.
In a bourgeois republic (i.e., where there is private ownership of land, factories, shares, etc.), be it the most democratic republic, women have never had rights fully equal to those of men, anywhere in the world, in any one of the more advanced countries. And this despite the fact that more than 125 years have passed since the great French (bourgeois-democratic) Revolution.
In words bourgeois democracy promises equality and freedom, but in practice not a single bourgeois republic, even the more advanced, has granted women (half the human race) and men complete equality in the eyes of the law, or delivered women from dependence on and the oppression of the male.
Bourgeois democracy is the democracy of pompous phrases, solemn words, lavish promises and high-sounding slogans about freedom and equality, but in practice all this cloaks the lack of freedom and the inequality of women, the lack of freedom and the inequality for the working and exploited people.
Soviet or socialist democracy sweeps away these pompous but false words and declares ruthless war on the hypocrisy of "democrats", landowners, capitalists and farmers with bursting bins who are piling up wealth by selling surplus grain to the starving workers at profiteering prices.
Down with this foul lie! There is no "equality", nor can there be, of oppressed and oppressor, exploited and exploiter. There is no real "freedoms", nor can there be, so long as women are handicapped by men's legal privileges, so long as there is no freedom for the worker from the yoke of capital, no freedom for the labouring peasant from the yoke of the capitalist, landowner and merchant.
Let the liars and the hypocrites, the obtuse and the blind, the bourgeois and their supporters, try to deceive the people with talk about freedom in general, about equality in general and about democracy in general.
We say to the workers and peasants--tear the mask from these liars, open the eyes of the blind. Ask them:
Is there equality of the two sexes?
Which nation is the equal of which?
Which class is the equal of which?
Freedom from what yoke or from the yoke of which class? Freedom for which class?
He who speaks about politics, democracy and freedom, about equality, about socialism, without posing these questions, without giving them priority, who does not fight against hushing them up, concealing and blunting them, is the worst enemy of the working people, a wolf in sheep's clothing, the rabid opponent of the workers and peasants, a lackey of the landowners, the tsars and the capitalists.
In the course of two years of Soviet power in one of the most backward countries of Europe more has been done to emancipate woman, to make her the equal of the "strong" sex, than has been done during the past 130 years by all the advanced, enlightened, "democratic" republics of the world taken together.
Education, culture, civilisation, freedom--all these high-sounding words are accompanied in all the capitalist, bourgeois republics of the world with incredibly foul, disgustingly vile, bestially crude laws that make women unequal in marriage and divorce, that make the child born out of wedlock and the "legally born" child unequal and that give privileges to the male and humiliate and degrade womankind.
The yoke of capital, the oppression of "sacred private property", the despotism of Philistine obtuseness, the avarice of the small property-owner--these are the things that have prevented the most democratic bourgeois republics from abolishing these foul and filthy laws.
The Soviet Republic, the republic of workers and peasants, wiped out these laws at one stroke and did not leave standing a single stone of the edifice of bourgeois lies and bourgeois hypocrisy.
Down with this lie! Down with the liars who speak about freedom and equality for all, while there is an oppressed sex, oppressing classes, private ownership of capital and shares and people with bursting bins who use their surplus grain to enslave the hungry. Instead of freedom for all, instead of equality for all, let there be struggle against the oppressors and exploiters, let the opportunity to oppress and exploit be abolished. That is our slogan!
Freedom and equality for the oppressed sex!
Freedom and equality for the workers and labouring peasants!
Struggle against the oppressors, struggle against the capitalists, struggle against the kulak profiteers!
This is our fighting slogan, this is our proletarian truth, the truth of the fight against capital, the truth that we hurl in the face of the world of capital with its honeyed, hypocritical and pompous phrases about freedom and equality in general, about freedom and equality for all.
And it is because we have laid bare this hypocrisy, because, with revolutionary vigour, we are ensuring freedom and full rights for the oppressed working people, against the oppressors, against the capitalists, against the kulaks-- precisely because of this Soviet rule has become so dear to the workers of the whole world.
It is because of this, the sympathies of the working masses, the sympathies of the oppressed and exploited in all countries of the world are with us on this occasion of the second anniversary of Soviet rule.
Because of this, on the occasion of the second anniversary of Soviet rule,
despite the famine and cold, despite all the suffering caused by the
imperialists' invasion of the Russian Soviet Republic, we are fully convinced
of the justness of our cause, firmly convinced of the inevitable victory
of Soviet power on a world scale.
Pravda No. 249
November 6, 1919
Signed: N. Lenin
Published according to the Pravda text