(Published in Il Popolo d'ltalia, June 4, 1919)
By Benito Mussolini
The developed and conscious proletariat is shouting "Long live Lenin!", thinking that they are shouting "Long live socialism!". They do not realize that they are actually crying "Down with socialism!". The false shepherds are deceiving the masses, who are ready to swear by and die for the new and distant ideals, believing that what has been established in Russia is socialism. This is a colossal lie! The government which has been established in Russia is only a fraction of the socialist party. The proletariat in Russia is labouring just as before, and they are being exploited just as before... We understand perfectly well that some writers coming from bourgeois circles have sympathy for Communism. In Russia there is a State, a Government, an order, a bureaucracy, a police force, militarism and hierarchies. But socialism is not to be found. There is not even the beginnings of socialism; there is nothing resembling a socialist regime. Leninism is the perfect negation of socialism. It is the government of a new caste of politicians. That is why it is very difficult to find apologists of Leninism among the talking heads of Russian and Western socialism. The most violent reactions against Leninism did not come from the bourgeois, but from the very men who fought and suffered for the redemption of the working masses. These men are Plekhanov, the master of the Russian Marxists, and Kropotkin, the apostle of anarchy.
[...]
We reaffirm that Leninism has nothing to do with socialism, yet the official Italian socialists, with threatening shouts, are calling for aid to save Russia. But Russia does not need to be saved, because it is in no danger whatsoever.
[...]
If Petrograd (St. Petersburg) does not fall, if Denikin marks time, it is because the great Jewish bankers of London and New York so desire, linked up as they are by racial ties with the Jews who, in Moscow as in Budapest are taking revenge on the Aryan race which has condemned them to dispersion for so many centuries. In Russia 80% of the Soviet leaders are Jews. In Budapest 17 out of the 22 people's commissars are Jews. Might it not be that Bolshevism is the vendetta of Jewry against Christianity? It is a subject certainly worth pondering. It is entirely possible that Bolshevism will drown in the blood of a pogrom of catastrophic proportions. World finance is in the hands of the Jews. Whoever possesses the nations banks controls their politics. Behind the puppets of Paris stand the Rothschilds, the Warburgs, the Schiffs, the Guggenheims, who are of the same blood as the masters of St. Petersburg and Budapest. Race does not betray race. Bolshevism is defended by international plutocracy. That is the essential truth. International plutocracy, dominated and controlled by the Jews, has a supreme interest in hastening all of Russian life through its process of molecular disintegration to the point of paroxysm. A paralyzed Russia, disorganized and hungry, will tomorrow be the place where the bourgeoisie—yes the bourgeoisie, my dear proletarians—will celebrate its spectacular abundance. The kings of gold believe that Bolshevism must live now, to better prepare the ground for the new business of capitalism. American capitalism has already obtained a great "concession" in Russia. But there are still mines, springs, lands, workshops, which are waiting to be exploited by international capitalism.
[...]
The fate of Leninism does not depend on the proletariat of Russia or of France, much less that of Italy. Leninism will live for as long as the kings of finance so desire; it will die when the same kings of finance decide to kill it. The anti-Bolshevik armies, which from time to time are affected by a mysterious paralysis, will become simply overwhelming at a given time which will be chosen by the kings of finance. The Jews of the Soviets precede the Jews of the banks. The fate of St. Petersburg is not determined on the icy steppes of Finland, but in the banks of London, New York and Tokyo.
To state that the international bourgeoisie now wants to destroy the Soviet Regime is to state a gross lie. If, tomorrow, the plutocratic bourgeoisie decides to destroy it, they will have no difficulty whatsoever because their "accomplices", the Leninists, already sit and work for them in the Kremlin.
