economic life into Russia. Now, it is impossible to do this in the twentieth century merely by the overthrow of Tsardom; France, 125 years ago, did not stop with the overthrow of royalty. It is also impossible to do it simply by the revolutionary destruction of great landed estates (even which we have not done, because the S.R.'s and the Mensheviks have betrayed the peasants) and by the transference of land to the peasants. For we live in the twentieth century and control of the land without control of the banks is powerless to restore the country.
The regeneration of production in France, at the end of the eighteenth century, was linked up with moral and political regeneration, with the dictatorship of the revolutionary democracy and of the revolutionary proletariat (from which democracy was not yet separated and with which it was almost identical), and with a ruthless struggle against every kind of reaction. The whole nation, and especially the oppressed classes, were uplifted by great revolutionary enthusiasm; everyone looked on the war as a just war, as a war of defence—which really it was. Revolutionary France was defending herself against the reactionary Europe of the kings. It was not in 1792–93, but later, after the triumph of reaction, that the counter-revolutionary dictatorship of Napoleon changed the war of defence into a war of conquest.
And in Russia? In Russia, we are continuing to wage an imperialist war in the interests of the capitalists, in alliance with the imperialists and bound by secret treaties that the Tsar concluded with the English and other capitalists and that promise to the Russian capitalists the plunder of other countries, Constantinople, Galicia, Armenia, &c. …
This war will be for Russia a reactionary and unjust war, a war of conquest, until our country proposes a just peace and breaks with imperialism. The social character of war and its historic significance are not determined by the position of the enemies' troops (as the S.R.'s and Mensheviks think, thus descending to the intellectual level of the most ignorant moujik) but by the policy which conducts the war. (For "War is the continuation of policy.") They depend on the class which makes war and on the end for which it is made.
It is ridiculous to lead the masses to a war of plunder based on secret treaties and then to expect their enthusiasm. The advanced
