p Citizens,

p As the list of speakers is a long one and the congress can therefore give them only a short time for their reports on the economic and political situation in the countries they represent, I shall endeavour to make my account of the working-class movement in Russia as short as possible.

p It may seem strange for you to see at this congress representatives of Russia—a country where the working-class movement is far from being as developed as in West European countries. But we Russian Social-Democrats think that revolutionary Russia must not in any case remain aloof from the rest of working-class and socialist Europe; on the contrary, her present closer contact with it will be of great advantage to the world socialist movement.

p You all know the infamous role that Russian absolutism has been playing up to this very day in the history of Western Europe.

p The Russian tsars have been crowned gendarmes who regarded it as their sacred duty to support reaction in all countries from Prussia to Italy and Spain.

p It would be wasting words to speak here of the role which the Emperor Nicholas, of woeful memory, played in the wellknown events of 1848.

p That is why the triumph of the revolutionary movement in Russia would be a triumph for the European workers.

p It is therefore important to elucidate how and on what conditions this triumph of the revolutionary movement is possible in Russia.

p It is possible, citizens—we are firmly confident of this—only on condition that the Russian revolutionaries succeed in winning the sympathy of the people themselves.

p And as long as our movement remains a movement of ideologists and student youth, it may, perhaps, be dangerous for the tsar personally, but it will present no danger for tsarism as a political system.

p In order to overthrow and finally destroy tsarism, we must rely on a more revolutionary element than student youth, and this element, which exists in Russia, is the class of the proletarians, a class which is revolutionary by reason of its distressing economic situation, revolutionary in its very essence.

p Some economists who have too ardent an imagination and more good will than solid knowledge, depict Russia as a kind of European China, whose economic structure has nothing in common with that of Western Europe. That is utterly false. The old economic foundations of Russia are now undergoing a process of complete disintegration. Our village commune about which so much has been said even in the socialist press, but which in fact has been the buttress of Russian absolutism—this much praised commune is becoming more and more an instrument of capitalist exploitation in the hands of the rich peasants, while the poor are abandoning the countryside and going to the big towns and industrial centres. At the same time big manufacturing industry is growing and absorbing the once flourishing handicrafts industry in the villages.

p The autocratic government is intensifying this situation with all its might and thus promoting the development of capitalism in Russia. We socialists and revolutionaries can only be satisfied with this aspect of its activity, for it is thus preparing its own downfall.

p The industrial proletariat, whose consciousness is being aroused, will strike a mortal blow at the autocracy and then you will see its direct representatives at your congresses alongside the delegates of the more advanced countries.

p For the time being our task is to defend with you the cause of international socialism, to spread by all means the teachings of Social-Democracy among the Russian workers and to lead them in storming the stronghold of autocracy.

In conclusion I repeat—and I insist on this important point: the revolutionary movement in Russia will triumph only as a working-class movement or else it will never triumph!