Lenin on terrorism and street violence

["Lou Paulsen" <wwchi@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Speech at the Congress of the Swiss Social-Democratic Party, November 4,
1916

[...]

Permit me to say a few words on another point which is being very much
discussed these days and on which we Russian Social-Democrats are
particularly rich in experience, namely, the question of terrorism.

We have no information yet about the Austrian revolutionary
Social-Democrats.  We know that there are revolutionary Social-Democrats in
Austria, but information about them is very meagre anyway.  Consequently, we
do not know whether the assassination of Stuergkh by Comrade Fritz Adler was
the application of terrorism as tactics, THAT IS, systematic organization of
political assassinations unconnected with the mass revolutionary struggle;
or whether it was a single act in the transition from the opportunistic
socialist defence of the fatherland tactics of the official Austrian
Social-Democrats to the tactics of revolutionary mass struggle.  The latter
assumption seems to fit in more with the circumstances.  The message of
greeting to Fritz Adler proposed by the Central Committee of the Italian
party and published in Avanti! of October 29, therefore, deserves the
fullest sympathy.

At all events, we are convinced that the experience of revolution and
counter-revolution in Russia has proved the correctness of our Party's more
than twenty-year struggle against terrorism as tactics.  We must not forget,
however, that this struggle was closely connected with a ruthless struggle
against opportunism, which was inclined to repudiate the use of all violence
by the oppressed classes against their oppressors.  We have always stood for
the use of violence in the mass struggle and in connection with it.
Secondly, we linked the struggle against terrorism with many years of
propaganda, started long before December 1905, for an armed uprising.  We
have regarded the armed uprising not only as the best means by which the
propletariat can retaliate to the government's policy, but also as the
inevitable result of the development of the class struggle for socialism and
democracy.  Thirdly, we have not confined ourselves to accepting violence in
principle and to propaganda for armed uprising.  For example, four years
before the revolution we supported the use of violence by the masses against
their oppressors, PARTICULARLY IN STREET DEMONSTRATIONS [my emphasis - LP].
We sought to bring to the whole country the lesson taught by every such
demonstration.  We began to devote more and more attention to organizing
sustained and systematic mass resistance against the police and the army, to
winning over, through this resistance, as large as possible a part of the
army to the side of the proletariat in its struggle against the government,
to inducing the peasantry and the army to take a conscious part in this
struggle.  These are the tactics we have applied in the struggle against
terrorism, and it is our firm conviction that they have proved successful.

Lenin, Complete Works, V. 23, pp. 122-124

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