Pathway to Japanese Literature

Preface

I. The Current Life of Workers and Peasants in the Soviet Union

II. Through What Struggles Did the Soviet Union’s Brothers Achieve Victory?

III. The State Structure of the Soviet Union and Japan’s State Structure

Preface

On September 18 of last year, throughout Japan and Manchukuo, celebrations and demonstrations commemorating the first anniversary of the "Manchurian Incident" were carried out under orders from the ruling class.
Bourgeois newspapers issued extra editions, memorial services for the war dead were held across the country, and the Akamatsu faction of emperor-worshipping fascists pledged allegiance to the Emperor through “loyalty to the Emperor and love of country” demonstration marches.
At the very moment when workers, peasants, and laboring masses were being driven ever deeper into the abyss of destitution by war—when all resistance was being trampled underfoot by military police and officers in the name of a state of emergency—the ruling class and all its agents celebrated the first anniversary of the war.
And declared: “I hereby earnestly pray that we shall advance single-mindedly toward fulfilling the Imperial Army’s mission through national unity and military-civilian solidarity.”
(Army Minister Araki, September 18, *Yomiuri Shimbun*), and thus the bourgeois-landlord government renewed its pledge to strengthen its aggressive policies.

Japanese imperialism, now acutely experiencing the deadlock of the global economic crisis, had—precisely because it constituted the weakest link among the imperialist powers—desperately initiated an aggressive war aimed at the colonial redivision of China and the crushing of the Chinese Revolution, with already one year having passed since its commencement.
The war of aggression initiated by Japanese imperialism on September 18 of last year—triggered by the dubious South Manchuria Railway bombing incident—had consistently been reported under names such as the “Manchurian Incident” or “Shanghai Incident,” terms that superficially suggested localized conflicts.
However, under this veil of deception, Japanese imperialism’s military actions—aiming to invade the Soviet Union while embroiled in conflict with the United States—were being systematically expanded in preparation for a Second World War.
The occupation of Manchukuo was not merely conceived as a source of raw materials for Japan’s imperialist military industry in Manchuria.
It had been seized as a sturdy military foothold for the invasion of the Soviet Union.
Under the pretext of suppressing “bandits” (in reality, armed uprisings by China’s proletariat and peasants who had risen against Japanese imperialist aggression), Japanese imperialism was deploying its military forces with unrelenting insidiousness ever closer to the Soviet Union’s borders—a fact made evident even by bourgeois newspaper reports.

Now, this bourgeois-landlord government was attempting to overcome the deadlock of Japanese capitalism through two means: domestically, by intensifying ruthless exploitation and control over the worker-peasant masses; and externally, through imperialist war for colonial redivision—specifically, war of anti-Soviet intervention.

But what kind of country was the Soviet Union—now marking the fifteenth anniversary of its revolution—amidst the hatred of imperialist powers?

We, the workers and peasants, fight under the slogan "Defend the Soviet Union." Why do we call the Soviet Union the "homeland" of workers and peasants? To properly understand this, one must know the Soviet Union's state structure and fully grasp how fundamentally it differs from Japan's bourgeois-landlord Emperor System state.

I. The Current Life of Workers and Peasants in the Soviet Union

To understand what kind of country a nation is, knowing the lives of the workers and peasants engaged in its production provides the surest path.

Currently, over forty million unemployed people flood the capitalist world.
In the Soviet Union alone does not a single unemployed person exist.
Moreover, through completion of the Five-Year Plan, all workers' salaries had tripled compared to 1913.
The capitalist world's agricultural crisis has struck even America—once called a land of eternal prosperity—where cultivated areas shrink in every country, agricultural production decreases, and farmers' livelihoods grow increasingly desperate.
The Soviet Union alone stands apart.
Sixty percent of rural areas have been collectivized; agriculture operates through cutting-edge machinery like tractors and combines; collective farm clubs now enable free radio listening and movie screenings.
Factory work has been electrified; though wages rose, working hours were reduced to an average of seven hours and six minutes.
Young workers under eighteen labor six-hour days while those under sixteen work four-hour days.
Only in the Soviet Union do female workers receive equal pay to male workers for equivalent skills.
Furthermore, pregnant women can take four months of paid leave around childbirth while receiving preparation funds equal to half their monthly wage.
Maternity hospitals charge no fees.
Every district maintains kindergartens; factory daycare centers provide care through hygienic doctors and nurses.
All Soviet workers take one month's annual vacation, retreating to "rest homes" in scenic coastal or mountainous areas.
Each industrial union operates these well-appointed "rest homes"—complete with meals—for members' use.
The palaces and villas that Tsars, grand bourgeoisie, and landlords—who once exploited Russia's working masses as "black riffraff"—built in extravagant luxury now stand open and utilized exclusively for Soviet workers.

British workers dispatched to the Soviet Union reported the working hours and wages in their machine factories as follows.
(Here too, on our side, workers and peasants were traveling to observe firsthand socialist construction advancing there; proposals to solidify Japanese-Soviet worker solidarity were being implemented—yet all such efforts faced obstruction and suppression by those clinging to power.)

“Looking at the following table, one can see that wages have notably increased due to the success of production.”

Year Minimum Wage (1 ruble is approximately equivalent to 1 Japanese yen)

1927 85 rubles

1928 96 rubles

1929 110 rubles

1930 127 rubles

1931 (August) 131 rubles

1931 (September) 140 rubles

Last year, a progressive piece-rate system was introduced.
The following income table had been verified from workers currently employed.

Drill press lathe operator (minimum 180 rubles)

Bearing lathe operator (same as above…………)

Income ranged from 300 rubles to 105 rubles per month.

Finishing worker (minimum 160 rubles)

Assembly worker (minimum 180 rubles)

Income: 350 rubles per month

Other lockhole drillers, grinders, mill workers, and winders received increases at the same rate, while supervisors, draftsmen, and inspectors were granted slight raises.

The average wage of semi-skilled workers was 140 rubles per month.
Working hours were seven hours per day.
Double pay was provided for overtime work.
Work clothes were provided free of charge, and workers could enroll in free social insurance.
At this factory as well, as in others, a two-week paid vacation was granted annually.

"Such conditions pale in comparison to those found in British factories,"
"The most significant point through our inspection was that we had discovered the following fact:
In other words, if workers increase production and reduce waste and damage, wages and working conditions would naturally improve over time.
This fact could be said not only of the Lepse Factory but of all factories within Soviet Russia."

(Soviet Friend, August issue, page 7)

What was the life of workers and peasants like in Japan?

The number of unemployed exceeded three million and was rapidly increasing day by day.

Wages continued to fall.
The bourgeois landlords were attempting to shift the current panic onto the shoulders of the working masses and escape.
Wages had been consistently lowered for that reason.
Let us examine the wages in the "machinery and equipment industry" as per the Bank of Japan’s survey.

April 1930 (Showa 5): ¥1.863

April 1931 (Showa 6): ¥1.791

April 1932 (Showa 7): ¥1.738

This represented a decrease of ¥0.157 compared to April of Year 5 (1930) and a decrease of ¥0.057 compared to April of Year 6 (1931). If Showa 1 (1926) was taken as 100, that year’s April corresponded to 94.4. The machinery industry displayed "vitality" due to military goods manufacturing. Since it was an extremely small industry, the decline in wages had not yet become severe, but even so, compared to the monthly income of mechanics in the Soviet Union, the difference remained incomparable. According to the aforementioned report by British workers, the September 1931 income had been 140 rubles (yen), whereas Japan’s fixed monthly income in April 1931 stood at 52 yen and 14 sen—approximately one-third.

In industries other than machinery, such as silk reeling, when Showa 1 (1926) was taken as 100, this April stood at a ratio of 60.2; when last April was taken as 100, it stood at 87.9.
And generally speaking, wage decreases of approximately ¥0.15 compared to two years prior and ¥0.05 compared to last year had been implemented.

Not only had wages decreased in this manner, but in industries such as military production that remained operational, through intensified labor like overtime and night shifts in unsanitary facilities, bodies continued deteriorating relentlessly. Temporary workers were subjected to far worse conditions than regular workers, with unemployment looming before them, being squeezed as sacrifices for capitalist wartime profits.

Female workers faced colonial exploitation compounded by the harsh conditions endured by male workers. Not only were they denied maternity leave before and after childbirth; even bathroom breaks were restricted. For most female textile workers, lungs being ruined by factory life had become common knowledge—such was the severity of exploitation. In Shinshu’s silk thread factories, workers were forced to labor over twelve hours daily for a minimum of 18 sen and an average of 30 sen, while in midsummer they were tormented in 120-degree factories.

The organization of reactionary indoctrination groups (Kibōsha and others), the rote recitation of Kimigayo, officials’ lectures promoting loyalty-and-patriotism ideology, state-sponsored sports designed to blunt class struggle—such stood as the only cultural facilities available. Even book reading clubs and cultural circles faced crackdowns. Workers found themselves dismissed merely for reading legally published literary newspapers. Should they fall ill—with no social insurance to rely on—they were denied rest and instead made prime targets for rationalization layoffs. And even amidst these conditions, once war expanded and “national total mobilization” commenced openly, workers faced bayonet-enforced labor at soldiers’ wages—fifteen sen per day.

What about Japan's rural areas?

First, the agricultural crisis grew more severe at the start of this year.
Urban unemployed workers returned to rural areas by 200,000 to 300,000 annually, but with no new jobs available, family destitution only increased.
It was not merely a matter of falling agricultural prices and reduced harvests; farmers now confronted imminent starvation.
In the Tohoku region, they resorted to selling their wives and gnawing on tree roots to survive.
At places like movie theaters, there were no patrons paying money; instead, they brought onions and vegetables to substitute for admission fees.
The Imperial Agricultural Association Report stated that in November 1931, all 700 households in Kamikita County’s Towada Village contained sick residents, while all 300 households in Sannohe County’s Sarube Village had 250 sick people.
But of course, they could hardly even consult doctors.
Throughout agricultural and fishing villages, the number of undernourished children reached 200,000.

Chairman Fukuzawa of the National Association of Towns and Villages himself announced the results of last year’s household budget survey in Nagano Prefecture’s rural areas as follows.

┌Income: 322 yen

Owner-farmers: Expenditure: 477.89

└Deficit: 125.87

┌Income: 404.81

Owner-tenant farmers: Expenditure: 489.85

└Deficit: 85.04

┌Income: 259.23

Tenant farmers: Expenditure: 336.63

└Deficit: 77.40

The average deficit was 96 yen and 11 sen.
The cumulative burden of heavy taxes and the seizure of fifty to sixty percent of tenant fees had driven rural debt to approximately seven billion yen.
Due to land hunger and food shortages, poor and middle peasants were rising up in mass action.
The Manchurian invasion war, under the noble name of patriotism, was steadily taking young workers from rural areas to the battlefield.
Ironically, conscripts from famine-stricken rural areas—so malnourished they could not endure military drills—were being ordered back to their villages, as bourgeois newspapers reported—such was the depth of rural destitution.

While being countries on the same Earth, and moreover while being one and the same workers and peasants—what a difference! This is truly a difference between human and non-human.

Why does such a society exist only in the Soviet Union?
Why is it that only the Soviet Union, occupying one-sixth of the Earth, has built such a decisively different world from other bourgeois countries?
It is because the Soviet Union alone constitutes a proletarian dictatorship—a state where workers and peasants truly hold power and have become the ruling class.

It is because those who live in comfort through exploiting and oppressing workers, peasants, and the laboring masses—the Emperor, landlords, capitalists, and their ilk—do not rule; instead, it is the workers who wield political power and govern all aspects of economy and culture.
Because it is a country of workers and peasants advancing toward socialized production and the ultimate abolition of class distinctions.
There, those who labor are granted supreme rights and happiness.

In Japan, being the exact opposite, workers and peasants are forced to lead slave-like lives like cattle and horses.
Like all capitalist societies, here, workers are stripped of every right and shred of happiness.

Among capitalist countries, you must know that Japanese Imperialism constituted an especially barbaric nation.

In Japan, when transitioning from feudalism to capitalism, because the Emperor System—semi-feudal bureaucrats and large landowners—secured victory, they began plundering weaker neighboring peoples to position backward Japanese capitalism on equal footing with imperialist powers.
The plundering of markets and raw materials, and the seizure of colonies for exploiting slave-like labor, proved necessary from Japanese capitalism's very inception.
Wars to seize colonies became imperative.
It grew evident that the military-police-absolutist apparatus driving masses into war for bourgeois-landlord interests had intensified.
Japanese Imperialism seized Taiwan through the First Sino-Japanese War, annexed Karafuto via the Russo-Japanese War, and exploited territories like the South Sea Islands—acquired during the European War—as fresh materials for extraction.
Domestically, through unrestrained power, they continued imposing upon working masses exploitation harsher than that endured by colonial laborers.

In rural areas, seventy percent of all farm households operated as impoverished agricultural enterprises, with semi-serf exploitation by landlords continuing unabated. Workers, though possessing productivity equal to their European counterparts, found themselves subjected to conditions identical to colonial laborers. "Starvation wages, endless working hours, military-style regimentation, annual contract bondage, absence of social legislation, and complete political disenfranchisement—these precisely define the Japanese working class's condition," declared *The Situation in Japan and the Tasks of the Japanese Communist Party* in the German-language *Kommunistische Internationale*.

And upon this foundation of bourgeois landlords' exploitation of workers and peasants did barbaric Emperor System rule take root.
Japanese Imperialism had grown through imposing semi-feudal exploitation on rural areas and colonial exploitation on workers domestically while violently annexing invading and colonizing neighboring peoples militarily abroad.
And as demonstrated by the notorious Tanaka Memorial this very policy of aggression constituted Emperor System rule's policy—the barbaric representatives of two exploiting classes.

That is why the vanguard of Japanese workers and peasants fights to forcibly achieve proletarian dictatorship through bourgeois democratic revolution. And now, at the stage of bourgeois democratic revolution, they are igniting widespread mass struggles by raising the following tasks.

1. Abolition of the Emperor System
2. Abolition of parasitic land ownership

3. Realization of the seven-hour workday system

And, as its action slogans, the revolutionary proletariat raised the following.

1. Oppose imperialist war; transform imperialist war into civil war.

2. Abolition of the bourgeois-landlord Emperor System; establishment of a Worker-Peasant Soviet Government.

3. Confiscation without compensation of all land owned by landlords, the imperial household, and shrines and temples; delivery of said land to peasants.
4. Complete cancellation of all peasant debts to landlords, usurers, and banks.

4. Seven-hour workday system and fundamental improvement of workers’ conditions.
Organization of class-based labor unions and freedom to operate.

5. Liberation of the colonies (Korea, Manchuria, Taiwan, and others) from the yoke of Japanese Imperialism.

6. Defense of the Soviet Union and the Chinese Revolution.

You must not think that achieving these tasks belongs to some distant future.
The Soviet Union's comrades admirably fought for and achieved aims equivalent to the slogans we now raise, finally becoming rulers through proletarian revolution.
They overthrew the barbaric Tsar, overthrew the bourgeois-landlord government, and ultimately fought for and won their present happy lives.
They raised the slogan we now hold aloft—"Transform imperialist war into civil war"—,
turned their weapons against the ruling class, and created today’s Red Army.

Let us also learn from the heroic struggles of our Soviet Union comrades.
Already, even in our midst, the mass struggles of workers and peasants were surging forth under the guidance of the revolutionary proletariat.
We shall now examine through what struggles our Soviet Union comrades fought and won their victories, so that we might fight our own struggle with even greater conviction of triumph and gain many lessons from them.

2. Through what struggles did our Soviet comrades achieve victory?

Fifteen years ago, the lives of Russia's working masses ranked as the worst among European capitalist nations.
The Tsar ruled as an absolute autocrat - simultaneously a major landowner and capitalist magnate.
Land was monopolized by aristocratic landlords; Lenin documented how "700 landlords each controlled an average of 30,000 desyatins* of farmland, these seven hundred owning triple the land held by six hundred thousand smallholders."
Russian peasants endured extortionate rents while being abandoned to primitive farming methods - mirroring how Japanese landlords today extract feudal rents without modernizing agriculture.
These landed oligarchs controlled three-quarters of all farmland yet cultivated barely one-fifth of it.

*desyatin ≈ 2.7 acres

How inhumane the living conditions of factory workers were, and how they were treated as mere livestock to be milked and silenced, was evident from Russia’s illiteracy rate ranking highest among all capitalist nations worldwide.
The wages of Russian workers were several times lower than those in Western Europe.
Foreign capital was sinking its teeth into the nation’s industries.
Working hours ranged from ten to thirteen hours, and textile workers barely managed to receive even fifteen (yen) per month in wages.
The [three-character redaction] government for exploitation and oppression swept away such wretched living conditions with all its might and violently suppressed the resistance of working masses attempting to rise up.
The Tsar’s Russian army and gendarmerie massacred their own flesh-and-blood working masses on the pretexts that they had gone on strike or planned resistance.
Universities did not admit the sons of workers.
Only churches that lulled the masses to sleep with dark, gloomy hymns and bars that drowned class discontent in alcohol—corrupting the working masses both physically and mentally while allowing the government to reap abundant taxes from them—existed at every street corner.
On paydays, one would invariably see long lines of workers and lines of wives shouting curses and demanding money just to buy bread in front of the bars.

At the beginning of 1905, an unusual air hung over the land.
The defeat in the Russo-Japanese War, combined with a new wave of revolutionary movements and the expanding influence of the Social Democratic Party (the precursor to the Russian Communist Party—the Bolsheviks), deepened the economic and political discontent of the masses.

At last arrived an epoch-making historic day in the history of the Russian Revolution.

January 1905 became an unforgettable commemorative month in the history of Imperial Russia's revolutionary masses.

Father Georgy Gapon, an agent of the Petrograd secret police, sought to stage a historically significant spectacle by bringing under his control both the strike sparked by the dismissal of four Putilov Factory workers and the swelling wave of labor activism.
He orchestrated a “Cross Procession” aiming to channel mass political discontent into a petition campaign directed at the Tsar.

On January 9, tens of thousands of workers led by Gapon marched bearing church banners, religious icons, and Tsarist portraits while singing imperial hymns—women and children trailing behind—toward Winter Palace Square to present their pleas.
Yet what did the Tsar grant this procession lacking red banners or revolutionary chants?
Near Nerli Gate, cavalry suddenly charged and gunfire erupted in unison.
Gapon escaped.
The barrage continued against women, children, and elders alike.
The Tsar—mastermind of this prearranged drama—answered the workers’ petition with fusillades meant to terrorize and crush them.
But not every laborer scattered in panic.

“Workers tore open their shirts at the chest and shouted, ‘Comrades! Let us die, but do not retreat a single step!’”
The unarmed procession, under Social Democrat guidance, hastily erected barricades and resisted with timber, stones, and improvised weapons.
Though over a thousand lay wounded and two hundred dead were counted, the Tsar’s forces scattered the workers.

From this day—dubbed “Bloody Friday”—onward, relentless hatred toward the Tsar became etched into the working masses’ hearts, shattering their former perception of him as “God’s earthly proxy.”
Through grievous sacrifice, Russia’s laborers came to recognize the Tsar as autocracy’s standard-bearer.
Henceforth surged protest strikes through cities while rural areas saw estate demolitions and agrarian uprisings.
Workers enshrined twin slogans: an eight-hour workday and relentless struggle against autocratic rule.

Struggle also arose within the military.
In June 1905, a rebellion broke out in the Black Sea Fleet.
The sailors of the Battleship Potemkin rose up, raising political demands.
They arrested the officers and continued their rebellion by rallying sister ships to their side but were ultimately defeated.
However, despite this defeat, it shook the Tsar’s rule and served as valuable groundwork for the armed uprising of the Russian Revolution.

After September 1905, the wave of political movements led by the proletariat surged.
In October, strikes and armed uprisings occurred in Petrograd (now Leningrad).
The main demands were an eight-hour workday, civil freedoms, and the convocation of a constitutional assembly.

On October 13th, Petrograd saw its first workers' "Soviet" come into being.
(Soviet means a council of representatives.)
(It refers to a system where representatives—elected through mass elections—advocate for working-class opinions and interests while fighting to realize them.)

This Soviet became not only Petrograd's leadership but that of all Russia's struggles—armed uprisings and revolution.
Pressed by these revolutionary surges, the Tsar's government made temporary concessions on October 17 by promising "political freedoms" and the "convocation of an Imperial Parliament."
Yet the proletariat exposed these promises as empty words and continued their struggle.
The peasant movement expanded across regions three times larger than those in spring—the Caucasus, Central Russia, Poland, and beyond.
In mid-November, the Black Sea Fleet's Ochakov renewed its rebellion.

In November，the number of workers' Soviets increased．

From November 1 to 7，the second general strike commenced．
Railway and printing workers operated solely under authorization from the workers' Soviets．
The military expressed sympathy toward the Soviets．

From December 8 to 9, based on the Soviet's resolution, the political general strike spread to all workers and peasants.
Though decentralized, barricades were erected and armed rebellion commenced.
The laboring masses strained every nerve to gain the army's allegiance.
Lenin wrote thus in "Lessons of the Moscow Uprising":
"The Moscow Uprising revealed to us the most savage struggle—a death grapple between reaction and revolution—as though contending for mastery over the military forces."

"The Moscow proletariat gave us splendid lessons in 'agitation' toward the military during the December events—for example, on December 21 [8], at Strastnaya Square, when the crowd surrounded Cossack soldiers, joined them, fraternized with them, and forced them to retreat; or on December 23 [10], in Presnya, when a young working woman among ten thousand protesters—holding aloft a red flag—charged at Cossack soldiers shouting 'Kill us! We'll never surrender this flag as long as we live!'; or when Cossack soldiers, startled by the crowd's cries of 'Long live the Cossacks!', galloped away—these must forever be etched into the consciousness of the proletariat."

Yet the Tsar’s reactionary forces organized widespread and gruesome political terror through the dispersal of assemblies, the arrest of leaders, and Cossack raids.
Despite armed uprisings spreading across all regions, the revolution was ultimately suppressed, resulting in the Tsar’s victory.

“The December Rebellion signified the peak of revolutionary tension, and its defeat marked the beginning of the proletariat’s retreat.” Yet this struggle bestowed immense significance upon the oppressed masses. Through great sacrifices, they came to deeply understand that nothing could be expected from either the Tsar or the bourgeoisie, and profoundly recognized armed uprising as an essential means of decisive struggle against Tsarist rule.

In resolute opposition to Plekhanov’s notorious opportunist declaration—“We should not have taken up arms”—Lenin extracted numerous positive lessons from this struggle. He asserted: “The organizations lagged behind the movement’s development and leaps.” “During the uprising’s unfolding, we failed to comprehend the crucial task of struggling to win over vacillating military forces.” (Lessons of the Moscow Uprising) Here he stressed establishing resolute offensive leadership and military tactics for insurrections. Dismissing Plekhanov’s lamentations, he appraised the 1905 uprising thus: “Without this ‘general rehearsal’ of 1905, victory in the October Revolution of 1917 would have been impossible” (Lenin, *“Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder*). We Japanese proletarians and peasants must today adopt these lessons of 1905—particularly overcoming the vanguard party’s lagging role—for securing victory in our impending people’s revolution.

Following the First Russian Revolution of 1905–1907 came an era of brutal reaction spanning 1907–1910.

Lenin captured the characteristics of this era of reaction as follows.

“Tsarism was victorious.”
“All revolutionary and anti-government parties were defeated.”
“Apathy, decadence, division, dispersal, betrayal, and obscene literature replaced politics.”
“A fervor for philosophical idealism arose, while mysticism flourished as a counterrevolutionary tendency.”
“Yet this great defeat simultaneously became an invaluable lesson for revolutionary parties and classes—a lesson in historical dialectics, a lesson in understanding and technique for conducting all political struggles.”
“True friends are found precisely in misfortune.”
“(This truth) is well learned by a defeated army” (Lenin, same work).

This period was when the revolutionary proletariat learned how best to organize their ranks through retreat in preparation for coming struggles.
The Tsar’s barbaric repression hounded revolutionary elements via agencies like the so-called “Black Hundreds.”

The number of death sentences handed down during this period testifies to the extreme brutality of the reactionary forces at the time.

Year — Number of Sentences

1907 — 1,692

1908 — 1,959

1909 — 1,435

During this reactionary period, many petty-bourgeois elements—unable to endure the arduous and unglamorous struggle—abandoned illegal activities and resorted to liquidationism and the “left-wing” liquidationism of “complete abandonment of the legal stage.”
We can recall the dissolutionist factions, the formation of the New Workers and Peasants Party, or the uprisings-oriented ultra-leftist deviations that arose following our country’s March 15 and April 16 incidents.
Lenin, truly resolute against such opportunist wavering, fought against elements that would shake the party’s revolutionary objectives and correctly instructed on the dialectical combination of legal and illegal methods by the illegal party.

Since 1910, a new wave of revolutionary upsurge had been rising.
Stolypin’s agricultural reforms, the development of heavy industry, and a sharp increase in strikes were observed.
This became particularly pronounced following the bloody mass strike at Lena in April 1912, and by the first half of 1914, approximately two million workers (twenty times the 1910 figure) had gone on strike.

When the Mensheviks were lowering their struggle platform to “freedom of association,” the Bolsheviks correctly maintained the three fundamental slogans and increasingly strengthened their revolutionary leadership over the working class.
In periods of struggle’s difficulty, exploiting circumstances to lower platforms is characteristic of opportunists in every country.
Since the establishment of the Bolsheviks’ special party leadership in Prague in 1912, the party’s independent leadership grew stronger, as became immediately evident in their guidance of the parliamentary faction.

In 1914, World War I broke out, and Tsarist Russia—dragging out young laborers from the working masses—participated in this imperialist war.
Just as today Japan’s bourgeois-landlord Emperor System rule seeks a “bloody path” through imperialist war, so too did Tsarist Russia of that time desire war.
Just as Japanese imperialism stood as the most barbaric watchdog in the Orient today, so too did Tsarism in Eastern Europe.
This watchdog directed its savage feudal oppressions and plunder domestically while turning outward to wars of pillage.
Moreover, participation in the war followed the will of French and British financial capital that dominated Russian capitalism—the Tsar, acting as representative of financial capital and landlords, burned with fervor to plunder Balkan “markets.”

Since the outbreak of the imperialist war, the Bolshevik Central Committee had raised the slogans “Defeat for Our Own Imperialist Government” and “Transform the War into Civil War,” waging a thoroughgoing struggle against the betrayals of the social-chauvinists and defensists of Plekhanov’s faction.

During the World War, 2.5 million Russian soldiers were killed in action, and approximately five million were wounded.
As the war progressed, the majority of rural workers were taken away, livestock were arbitrarily requisitioned, production declined, and livelihoods were reduced to ruinous destitution.
Prices skyrocketed, tormenting the lives of the working masses.
The war had brought nothing but a “boom” that provided wartime profits to capitalists.
Great confusion arose within the ruling class itself.

Thus, class struggle inevitably intensified.
At the forefront of the struggle stood the revolutionary proletariat—the Bolsheviks.
The Bolsheviks’ anti-war struggle advanced by putting down firm roots within large enterprises.
And the revolutionary situation signaled its imminence.

As a new development of 1905, the March 1917 revolution was initiated under the leadership of the proletariat.
The wave of strikes that had not ceased even during the war escalated into riotous mass actions.
Demonstrations continued to be held under the slogans "Down with autocracy!" and "Stop the war!"

On March 3, meetings were held in all workplaces where political and economic demands became united.
On March 8—International Women’s Day—the revolution had already commenced.
On March 10, the Bolsheviks issued an urgent proclamation: “All must rise!”
On March 11, factories and enterprises were shuttered.
On March 12, Kronstadt’s masses aligned themselves with the revolution.
In 1905, soldiers of the Preobrazhensky Regiment—dispatched to Moscow to suppress workers—had been first to mutiny.
Do we not witness here too how correctly the Bolsheviks executed lessons from 1905?

On the same day, amid the chaos, the “Diet” elected a provisional committee and hurriedly organized a bourgeois government.
The rebelling soldiers and workers formed a Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies Soviet.
On March 13, as they crushed the Tsar’s last desperate resistance, his high-ranking officials were successively arrested or executed by firing squad.
(Even in Japan, revolutionary retribution must be delivered upon the Emperor who continues to imprison, torture, and massacre workers and peasants—and upon his detestable reactionary henchmen.) On March 16, driven by the revolution’s momentum, Nicholas finally abdicated.

The Tsar’s rule was overthrown in the March Revolution.
However, political power was not seized by the revolutionary proletariat; instead, a “Provisional Government”—composed of bourgeois representatives including the Constitutional Democratic Party, October Party, and Mensheviks—was established based on the State Duma and assumed control.
The Soviet leaders, who commanded far greater authority among the masses than the Provisional Government, made no attempt to secure power for the Soviets, instead entrusting bourgeois politicians with assuming governance.
As the Bolshevik organization had sustained heavy damage during the war, it was Mensheviks who occupied the Soviet leadership.

Thus, as the working class’s class consciousness and organization had not yet sufficiently matured, and due to circumstances such as the compromisers’ control over the Soviets, the so-called era of “dual power” began.
Lenin wrote in *The State and Revolution*: “The Soviets had already been emasculated thanks to the leadership of bourgeois democrats, and the bourgeoisie lacked sufficient strength to dissolve them.”

The new government was, in its essence, a bourgeois government allied with landlords.
The “Republicanism” Since March
The government even harbored intentions to restore the dynasty.

The Provisional Government did not stop the war.
“To the final victory!”
Their slogan was this.
The capital of all Russian enterprises remained the capitalists’ capital.
The Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks abandoned the confiscation of landlords’ property.

What tormented the peasants above all was the imperialist war.
“Break free from the war!”
This was the heartfelt cry raised by peasants from the depths of destitution.
And that necessitated overthrowing the bourgeois rule of the Provisional Government—the power of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks.
The proletariat appeared on the stage of decisive struggle against the bourgeoisie.
The March Revolution that overthrew the Tsar had, so to speak, swept this stage clean.

The Bolsheviks led by Lenin opposed the Provisional Government’s continuation of the war, fighting to gradually strengthen and expand their mobilization of workers and peasants.
The Bolshevik Party emerged within factory committees, Soviets, and other organizations under the slogan “All power to the Soviets!”
The Soviets embodied the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasants.

The Russian workers and peasants gained profound political experience from March to October 1917.
This period lasted a mere eight months, but amidst the revolutionary fervor, the masses were imbued with profound political education.
During this period, workers and peasants became increasingly revolutionary, particularly as peasants broke away from the Socialist-Revolutionary Party and aligned themselves with the Bolsheviks—the true champions of land and freedom.

This period saw two parties battling to win over the majority of workers and peasants to their side.
It marked an era of decisive struggle between petty-bourgeois democracy and Bolshevik proletarian democracy.
Through this process, Russia's workers and peasants came to recognize the Bolsheviks as the true vanguard of democracy for the laboring masses.

The shifts in strength between two forces—as seen in the number of delegates at the All-Russian Soviet Congresses from the March Revolution through the November Revolution to around March 1918—indicated the direction of Bolshevik victory.

First Session: June 1917

Bolsheviks Anti-Bolsheviks

100 delegates 681 delegates

Second Session: November 1917

390 delegates 259 delegates

Third Session: January 1918

434 delegates 267 delegates

Fourth Session: March 1918

732 delegates 352 delegates

In response to the Bolsheviks' growth, Kerensky—head of the Provisional Government and leader of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party—countered their slogan by proclaiming "All power to the Provisional Government!" and launched a crackdown on the Bolsheviks.
Lenin consequently had to go underground to direct the revolution.
Yet the Bolsheviks' indomitable struggle never yielded to the Provisional Government's terror.
On October 16, the Bolsheviks organized the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet.
On October 26, the Military Committee organized the Workers' and Peasants' Red Guards from worker volunteer corps.
Defying the Provisional Government's desperate suppression, the Petrograd Soviet Congress convened on October 25 (November 7 in the Gregorian calendar). Leader Lenin appeared at this Soviet assembly and through an All-Russian Soviet Congress resolution declared the overthrow of the bourgeois Provisional Government and establishment of a workers' and peasants' government.

Thus, November 7, 1917 became a truly honorable moment in human history.
The Russian proletariat, through the proletarian revolution, not only finally overthrew their own bourgeoisie but also awakened tens of millions of working masses across the world to the might of revolution and the immense potential latent within the proletariat as a class to construct a new society.

Thus, the Russian Bolsheviks, who transformed the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a victory of proletarian revolution within a short period, became an exemplar in the history of the international proletariat.
Russian imperialism, which was “the knot of all contradictions of imperialism,” was overthrown under the leadership of the proletariat, the most revolutionary in the world.
The world capitalist system was dealt a great revolutionary fissure in Russia.
In the postwar revolutionary upsurge in Western Europe, the proletariat of countries other than Russia—such as Germany—could not achieve victory in revolution because they lacked a steadfast revolutionary party capable of immediately going underground in response to enemy attacks.
However, the Bolshevik Party—having already shaken off opportunist elements on multiple occasions, armed themselves with proletarian heroism, and truly a "steel" party—carried the revolution through to the end under all manner of difficult conditions.

Fifteen years have passed since this day of victory.
The workers and peasants of the Soviet Union are about to mark the 15th anniversary of [the] revolution through [the] enormous victories achieved through constructing a socialist society.
But it was truly—literally—fifteen years of construction forged through struggles and hardships.

What occurred during the period from after the revolution until the commencement of the First Five-Year Plan?
The armed intervention by world imperialism and economic blockades; domestically, the exhaustion caused by the destruction of economic organizations that had inevitably arisen from the civil war following the imperialist war.
The sabotage by counter-revolutionary old disgruntled elements aiming to overthrow the Soviet government.
However, after the blood-soaked struggles filled with the hardships of War Communism, the "stage of industrial construction" arrived.
The stage had arrived for constructing the entire national economy upon a new technological foundation.
Even during this period, construction was by no means carried out without struggle against the conspiracies of interference by old bourgeois elements and the demagogy of the decaying capitalist nations.
But the giant strides of socialist construction from the First to the Second Five-Year Plan laid an unshakable foundation for the victory of the Soviet Union's workers and peasants.
Having defeated right-wing opportunism and against Trotsky's ultra-left defeatism, all the facts of construction proved the possibility of socialism in one country.

III. The State Structure of the Soviet Union and Japan’s State Structure

The struggle for socialist construction was not being carried out by itself.
The unceasing guidance of the Bolshevik Party—that is, today’s Communist Party—persisted through this construction just as it had before the revolution.

It was this party that maintained the proletarian dictatorship that had to pass through from capitalism to socialism.
Wherein lay the necessity and significance of the proletarian dictatorship?
It was because only the proletarian class could decisively fight capitalism to the end without any wavering.
Even after bourgeois rule had been overthrown through revolution, capitalist elements did not vanish all at once.
The proletariat needed a state of proletarian dictatorship to overthrow its enemies, fight against the revival of capitalism, overcome the vacillations of the middle peasants, and eradicate classes.

Stalin explained as follows regarding why a state of proletarian dictatorship is organized:

1. To crush the resistance of landlords and capitalists overthrown by the revolution and to eliminate all their attempts to restore the rule of capital.

2. To organize construction efforts under the spirit of rallying all laborers around the proletariat and to persistently continue this work toward the goal of liquidating and eradicating classes.

3. Arming of the revolution: organizing a revolutionary army for the struggle against external enemies—namely, imperialism.

The dictatorship of the proletariat was necessary for carrying out these tasks.
This proletarian dictatorship could not be managed with an existing state apparatus.

"The working class cannot simply seize hold of ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes" (Marx). To organize its own new state apparatuses, the proletariat had to dismantle, smash through, and completely abolish all old state power.
This became possible solely through armed proletarian dictatorship.
"Dictatorship does not permit such a thing as a new class commanding and managing through old state apparatuses.
"On the contrary," it continued inexorably,"it must consist precisely of this new class smashing those apparatuses while commanding and managing through new ones."

"It is precisely the Soviet that replaces bourgeois democracy with proletarian democracy and constitutes a new organizational form forming the foundation of the proletarian state apparatus."
"As the state form of proletarian dictatorship, Soviet power possesses an incomparable 'force' when compared to old organizational forms."

"It lies in the fact that the Soviet is the most comprehensive mass organization of the proletariat."
"For it is the Soviet, and only the Soviet, that can win over all workers without exception."
"It is that the Soviet is the sole mass organization encompassing all the oppressed and exploited—workers and peasants, soldiers and sailors—and that it is the masses’ own direct organization: the most democratic and thus most authoritative mass organization. It not only greatly facilitates participation in constructing the new state and its administration but also allows the masses’ revolutionary forces, initiative, and creative power to be fully exercised in destroying the old state, building the new state, and fighting for proletarian order."
(Stalin)

We shall next examine the distinctive characteristics of this Soviet power.

“(1) ‘Soviet power is, as long as classes exist, the greatest and most democratic organization among all state organizations.’”
However, this meant a state where workers and poor peasants united against exploiters, with the laboring majority ruling over an exploiting minority.

Therefore, no such thing existed as the freedom and rights for all people that liberals—those who denounced proletarian dictatorship—so loved to proclaim.
Only workers’ freedom and rights were guaranteed, while exploiters naturally found themselves suppressed.

We shall examine that in terms of the Soviet constitution.

Article 1: Russia declares itself to be a Republic of Soviets formed from workers, soldiers, and peasant representatives.
All power, both central and local, belongs to the Soviets.

Article 64: Suffrage and eligibility for election to the Soviets shall be enjoyed by the following male and female citizens of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic who have reached eighteen years of age on election day, regardless of religious, ethnic, residential, or other such qualifications.

(i) Those who obtain their livelihood through socially useful productive labor; those engaged in domestic labor to enable such persons to work; namely, workers and employees of all types and natures engaged in industry, commerce, agriculture, or other fields; and peasants and Cossacks who do not hire others for private profit.

(ii) Soldiers of the Soviet Republic’s land and naval forces.

We must pay special attention to this fact: soldiers of these Soviet Red Army land and naval forces possessed suffrage.
In the Soviet Union, soldiers of the Red Army and Navy—as armed vanguards of the proletariat and peasants—were granted considerable privileges.
When elected as Soviet officials, ordinary citizens might be appointed to a single position such as education committee member, while Red Army and Navy soldiers retained the right to additionally serve on another committee.
In bourgeois-landlord Japan under Emperor System rule, soldiers endured extreme oppression.
They were stripped of suffrage and eligibility for election—even their daily wage of fifteen sen, freedom to read books freely, and freedom to assemble were wrested from them.

In the Soviet Union, those who are not granted suffrage and eligibility for election are the following types of people.

(i) Those who employ others for the purpose of obtaining profit.

(ii) Those who live on income not derived from their own labor, such as that generated by interest on capital, ownership of enterprises or land, and so on.

(iii) Individual merchants, commercial intermediaries, and brokers.

(iv) Priests and preachers of all religious sects.

(iv) Officials and employees of the former police; gendarmes; secret agents; and members of the old Russian dynasty.

(vi) Those legally recognized as mentally incompetent, the insane, and those placed under guardianship.

(v) Those who had been deprived of Soviet suffrage and eligibility for election for a fixed period by law or court judgment due to crimes of moral turpitude or financial offenses.

We believed that by quoting from a British visitor’s account of election proceedings in Soviet factories—as recorded in their Soviet Union travelogue—we could render our understanding of the Soviet state structure more concrete.

“When I visited there several days before the actual elections, two lists of names—candidates seeking election to the Moscow City Soviet and the less significant district Soviet—were posted on the factory walls.” There was also a shorter list enumerating the names of “proxies” who would serve as substitutes when elected members were absent for extended periods due to death or other duties. The factory had the right to elect one representative committee member for every six hundred of its workers. The factory’s allocation was actually fourteen members. However, this list stood out because it enumerated fifteen names. At the top appeared Lenin’s name—he had been a member during his lifetime, and they still paid this moving tribute to his memory.” Following Lenin’s name was that of Rykov, who had succeeded him as Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the entire Union. This factory had been a pioneer during the revolutionary struggle; therefore, it possessed the rightful honor to elect as its representative committee member the de facto leader of Soviet governance. The remaining names all belonged to people of worker origin who had previously worked at this factory. Of the fourteen members, seven were Communist Party members as indicated on the list; one was a Communist Youth League member; the rest were all “non-party members.” Three of the fourteen members were women.

There was also a public list displayed to voters there that simply listed a majority of official Communist Party members to obtain approval.
There was no opposing list of any kind.
By what method was that list created?
As the first stage, last year’s Soviet committee members (elections are held annually) who intended to stand again reported on their activities.
Next, a meeting was held between the factory committee and three hundred representatives of small worker groups from various categories.
At this meeting, candidates’ names were presented, often leading to thorough discussions about each candidate’s activity records and evaluations.
Voting was usually conducted separately for each candidate.
Through this method, under the factory committee’s supervision, the initial draft of the public candidate list was created.
This draft was then brought before separate meetings of various factory departments, where amendments could be made.
In its final form, the draft became a refined version that the factory committee presented to the general assembly of all factory workers.
(H.N. Brailsford, *The Political Structure of Soviet Russia*)

The Soviet delegates elected from enterprises in this manner proceeded to reach the all-union structure through the hierarchical system illustrated in the diagram on the previous page.

(2) Soviet power stood as the most international among all class-based state organizations.
Article 2 of the Constitution declared: “The Russian Soviet Republic shall be founded upon the free union of free nations and shall organize itself as a federal union of national Soviet republics.”
This Soviet power constituted that which eradicated all forms of national oppression.
Imperialist Japan oppressed and exploited the peoples of Taiwan, Korea, Manchuria, and others.
But in the Soviet Union, those peoples who had gasped under Tsarist oppression revived their distinct languages—with education and newspapers employing these liberated tongues—built high schools across republics, and cultivated a culture socialist in content yet national in form.

(3) Soviet power, under the guidance of the proletarian vanguard, readily enables the broadest masses of working people to participate in state administration and socialist construction.
The Communist Party—the vanguard of the proletariat—links with tens of millions through labor unions along production lines and through Soviets along state institutional lines.
How is this leadership exercised?
Comrade Stalin once responded to American labor delegates during 1927 talks—when asked "Can it be said that the Communist Party controls the government?"—with these words:

“Where is the fact of government leadership by the Workers’ Party—that is, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union—manifested?”

“It is manifested first and foremost in the Communist Party’s efforts to secure, through the Soviets and Soviet Congresses, its own candidates—those most excellent Party personnel devoted to the proletariat’s cause who consistently strive to serve the proletariat faithfully—in the most important positions of the state.”

And the Party accomplishes this in most cases.

“Because the workers and peasants trust the Party.”

“The fact that the leaders of our country’s power organs are Communist Party members, and that these leaders possess immense authority domestically, is by no means accidental.”

Secondly, it was manifested in the Party auditing the activities of administrative organs and various government offices; rectifying committed shortcomings and errors; assisting these organs in executing government directives; striving to ensure they received mass support; and simultaneously ensuring these organs could not make any significant resolutions without the Party’s directives.

Thirdly, it was manifested in that when government offices formulated activity plans concerning industry, agriculture, commerce, or cultural facilities, the Party provided general guidelines defining the nature and direction of these organs’ activities during said plans’ implementation period.

Ordinarily, bourgeois newspapers expressed "amazement" at such "interference" by the Party in state affairs.
But such "amazement" was entirely false.
In capitalist countries, bourgeois parties did indeed “interfere” in state affairs and lead governments in precisely this manner, and it was well known that in such cases, this leadership was concentrated in the hands of a small group of people who were connected to major banks through various means and who consequently sought to conceal their role from the eyes of the populace.
Was there anyone who did not know that within every bourgeois party in England or other capitalist countries there existed a secret cabinet formed by a small group of people who had concentrated leadership in their own hands?

In a state of proletarian dictatorship, the Communist Party connected with the broad masses through such methods and guided them.
The types of demagogy concerning the Soviet Union that were prevalent among world capitalist countries were manifold, and such demagoguery constantly exposed the baseness and self-serving lack of confidence inherent in the bourgeois worldview.
In the Soviet Union, this issue of proletarian dictatorship was subjected to intense controversy from revolutionary times onward.
The bourgeois parties distorted this class-based dictatorship of workers into claims about Lenin’s personal rule or Stalin’s autocracy.
As their most ludicrous fabrication emerged accusations labeling Soviet governance itself as mere State Security Department tyranny.

In Japan as well, these demagogic lies were being vigorously disseminated by the bourgeois-landlord Emperor System government.
However, the proletariat openly demonstrated in all instances that the dictatorship of the proletariat constituted the sole path advancing from capitalist to communist society.
And the fact that the broad masses of workers and peasants in the Soviet Union supported the Communist Party’s guidance through the Soviets had already been demonstrated by fifteen years of post-revolutionary history.

However, the bourgeois-landlord Emperor System dictatorship of Japanese imperialism arrays tools such as parliament, political parties, and general elections, spreading the illusion that all the people can participate in governance, thereby freely indulging in brutal oppression and exploitation.

This was a fact that could not help but be fully recognized at a single glance of the Japanese Constitution，hailed as the foundation of the state．Article 11 of the Constitution explicitly stated as follows．“Article 11：The Empire of Great Japan shall be governed by the Emperor of an unbroken line for all ages．”“Article 3：The Emperor is the head of the state and holds sovereign power，exercising it in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution．”

There may have been those who argued that Japan was not an absolute monarchy but a constitutional monarchy because it possessed an Imperial Diet.
However，by what power was parliament absolutely controlled?
This，too，was explicitly stated in the Constitution.
“Article 7：The Emperor convened the Imperial Diet and ordered its convocation，adjournment，and dissolution of the House of Representatives.” Proceeding further：“Article 11：The Emperor commanded the Army and Navy.” “Article 13：The Emperor declared war，concluded peace，and entered into various treaties.”
Even when reading provisions such as “Article 14：The Emperor proclaimed martial law，” we could recognize that this “constitutional” system was in fact a completely sham constitutional polity.
Moreover，surrounding the Emperor existed barbaric execution organs of dictatorial rule cloaked under names like “advisory” and “assistance”—the Genrō，Lord Keeper of Privy Seal，and Privy Council；while specifically feudal-military domination relied on bodies centered on him such as Field Marshal Headquarters，Supreme War Council，Army General Staff，and Naval Command.
Since hostilities began in China，two imperial family members had been appointed Chief of Staff and Chief of Naval General Staff respectively.

It was precisely Japan’s military Emperor System rule that demonstrated the aggressive nature of Japanese imperialism wielding highly developed monopoly capital.
The entity wielding infinite power—through a conscription-enforced standing army of approximately 290,000 troops (it should be noted that among so-called bourgeois first-class nations, only Japan, France, and Italy employed such conscription laws!) and a police force deployed to protect private property—was none other than the imperialist Japanese state of the absolutist military-police Emperor System: “a special coercive apparatus created for exploitation,” operated by a handful of minorities who continued to oppress the laboring masses through semi-feudal semi-colonial exploitation.
That such a Japanese bourgeois state possessed a constitution and parliament ultimately served only as a vile deception against the laboring masses.
It concealed the reality that Emperor System rule constituted a barbaric form of capitalist-landlord dictatorship in Japan while through traditional mystification instilled in the exploited masses the superstition that the Emperor—as though inherently endowed with inviolable moral superiority and absolute dignity—reigned as a “divine-human” whose authority stretched unbroken through eternity.
The Constitution’s guaranteed “freedom of assembly” and “freedom of speech,”
what kind of things the “freedom of association” and “freedom of the press” truly were should have been known by all people possessing the eyes of the laboring masses.
Dispersing assemblies without permitting even half a spoken phrase while making arrests and detentions had become routine.
Even family gatherings were being attacked by police dogs.

Through such obscuring of Emperor System rule’s essence，the absolutist domination of the ruling class was only further streamlined．
The ruling class’s efforts to reinforce absolutism—seeking to shackle proletariat and peasants under exploitation—encompassed everything from elementary school language primers and history textbooks to reactionary organizations like reservist associations，youth leagues，and women’s youth groups．
Loyalty to the Emperor and patriotism were embedded as educational policy’s bedrock．

Similarly, among the measures conducted to whitewash the bourgeois-landlord Emperor System is the general election.
However, workers and peasants who have undergone that qualification review even once will come to realize that it is by no means a general election conducted to reflect the voices of the masses.
The right to vote is limited to men aged twenty-five years or older who have resided in the same location for one year or more (women are entirely excluded).
A truly complex set of restrictions has been created with the purpose of preventing the revolutionary representation of the laboring masses.
(We must not forget that military service obligations are imposed from age seventeen onward.) The restrictions on eligibility for election are even more extensive: men aged thirty or older must deposit a security fee of two thousand yen to run as candidates, with a rule stipulating full forfeiture of this sum if votes received fail to reach one-tenth of valid ballots divided by electoral district seats.
Moreover, defendants associated with the Communist Party and its supporters are being deprived even of the right to run for office through police oppression.
Social fascists praise the crumbs dispensed by this deceptive parliament that obscures the Emperor System’s true nature while spreading illusions among workers and peasants of parliamentary salvation and mass victory through electoral triumph.
However, we must absolutely not overlook how it constitutes one of the utterly barbaric organs of bourgeois-landlord Emperor System rule.

It was none other than the bourgeois-landlord Emperor System rule that had imposed unprecedented sentences in human history—death penalties, life imprisonments, and others totaling over twelve hundred years—upon comrades of the Japanese Communist Party in the March 15 and April 16 Incidents. The imperial crest was ostentatiously engraved in courtrooms, where officials oppressed workers and peasants under the Emperor’s “mandate.” The Peace Preservation Law—which had already thrown over three thousand communists into prison—stood as an evil law whose paramount purpose was to protect the safety and interests of the Emperor.

In this way, Japan’s Emperor System rule single-handedly controlled all legislative, executive, judicial, and military powers.
The rule of this bourgeois-landlord Emperor System state placed all the people in a state of complete political disenfranchisement.
In few countries in the world did police power reach such heights of tyranny while the unconscious masses held such terror toward the police as in Japan.
Already, countless revolutionary fighters were massacred and maimed by brutal violence akin to demons and beasts perpetrated by Japanese police, prisons, and military police.
Japan’s bourgeois landlords indulged in exploiting and oppressing workers and peasants with the Emperor as their strongest bulwark.

Indeed, in Japan, Emperor System rule—as a weapon of bourgeois-landlord dictatorship—carries out far more barbaric oppression than any fascism in Western Europe.

Not only the issues we had addressed thus far, but all everyday realities meeting our eyes and reaching our ears proved conclusively that the new theses’ anatomical analysis of the Emperor System state apparatus—as follows—remained entirely correct.

“Japan’s Emperor System bases itself principally on the parasitic feudal class of landlords while simultaneously grounding itself in a rapaciously wealthy bourgeoisie amassing fortunes; it forges an unbreakable bloc with these classes’ pillars, flexibly representing their interests through consummate skill. Simultaneously, Japan’s Emperor System preserves its unique role of relative significance alongside its absolute nature—barely veiled by pseudo-constitutional trappings.”
The Emperor System bureaucrats—greedily hoarding power and revenue—enforced reactionary police control domestically and devoted their full efforts to preserving every barbaric remnant within Japan’s economic and political life.
The Emperor System state apparatus—serving as chief bulwark of domestic political reaction and feudal vestiges—had become the unyielding backbone supporting the exploiting classes’ extant dictatorship.
“Its annihilation must be recognized as paramount among Japan’s principal revolutionary tasks.”
(German text: *Inprecorr* No. 42)

(4) We previously stated that Soviet power constitutes the most comprehensive mass organization of the proletariat.

It is precisely in the Soviet power’s close connection with the masses that it proves more democratic and robust than any state power.

Unlike the bourgeois parliament, the Soviets are not merely a body that deliberates laws but a state power that implements them.
Soviet deputies, unlike bourgeois parliamentarians, are connected with the masses at the point of production.
"Urban Soviets sense the pulsating life of the masses through their structure; rural Soviets maintain constant contact with ordinary peasants."

And the masses monitor the Soviet deputies they have elected, criticize their activities, and have the right to recall them at any time if the deputies fail to fulfill their duties.
Thus we will come to know the following.
The centralization within the bourgeois-landlord Japanese state apparatus is a centralization for exploitation and oppression bound tightly by a chain stretching from the Emperor down to the smallest village heads.
In the Soviet polity centralization is that which “workers have combined their own armed forces through free will.”

Next, let us present a diagram that comparatively and approximately illustrates these two types of centralization for your reference.
(49–50 [pp. 524–525 in this volume])

(5) The Red Army of the Soviet Union constitutes a vital unit of the proletarian dictatorship state advancing socialist construction.
Just as courts serve as defenders of socialist construction's social discipline by the laboring masses themselves and tribunals condemning counter-revolutionaries, it embodies the workers' own armed force.
The army of Japanese imperialism consists of the Emperor's agents—military cliques and officers—alongside forcibly conscripted "workers and peasants in military uniforms" laboring under inhuman conditions comparable to beasts of burden.
Yet this army bears imposed roles: suppressing the laboring masses and functioning as imperialist war's weapon.
Precisely therefore, workers and peasants awakening to their class mission now rise up—reversing their weapons to overthrow the ruling class.

The Red Army of the Soviet Union was tasked with defending socialist construction not only from domestic counter-revolutionaries but also from imperialist powers attacking through wars of intervention against the Soviet Union.
And it did not merely defend.
When struggle between capitalist and socialist states ripened internationally someday，the Red Army would manifest its power as international proletariat’s glorious army.
Communist Party cells had been organized within Red Army，and Party leadership thoroughly permeated.

The lives of Red Army soldiers were incomparably superior in every aspect—political, economic, and cultural—to the abused existence under the Tsarist era. The base corporal punishments of the Tsar’s army (which could equally describe Japan’s military)—such as carrying heavy backpacks and standing at present arms for hours as displays of loyalty—were nowhere to be found. Regarding the lives of Red Army soldiers, I shall now introduce notes from a British observer previously cited.

"Among the many pleasant experiences I had in Russia, I recall visiting the Red Army barracks in Kazan. I initially didn't have much interest. The barracks were spacious and clean. The soldiers were adequately clothed. The food looked appetizing and was plentiful in quantity—as the officers told me, it exceeded the caloric allowance specified for the Polish army by several hundred calories. The social life provided for the soldiers left no room for complaints of boredom. This was because, according to the charts posted on the walls, plays, cinema screenings, and concerts were being held for them every night. The general political atmosphere was supplied by the reading room's 'Lenin Corner'. In one room, an amateur theater troupe was rehearsing."

“We could not even imagine such scenes in any other army.
But this proved typical of the entire spirit and organization of this revolutionary army.
Other armies had completely expelled politics.
Yet this army was founded on the belief that a good soldier must remain conscious of the purpose he served.
He stood not merely as a defender of national territory but as a servant of worldwide ideals.
The Red Army maintained a tutorial manual concerning its political education.
And all recruits were required to fully understand this manual just as they mastered rifle handling.”

The laboring masses of the Soviet Union completed the First Five-Year Plan in four years through heroic constructive efforts and embarked on implementing the Second Five-Year Plan.
From 1929 when implementation of this Five-Year Plan began until now, we have received numerous reports detailing both its astonishing production expansion plans and their even more remarkable realization.
Through this Five-Year Plan alone, not one unemployed person remains in all of Soviet territory while total production has increased by forty to seventy percent across various sectors.
While what we call a world economic crisis not only fails to abate but rather intensifies ever further—in stark contrast—the socialist construction of Soviet society continues achieving monumental successes.
The statistical results from just this first half of 1932 demonstrate these achievements as follows.

Current Year Previous Year

State-owned farms 1,200 500

Collective farms 6,700 5,600

Power: 44% increase; coal: 27% increase; steel: 11% increase; machinery: 36% increase (including a 75% increase in tractors). And even bourgeois newspapers were compelled to report that "the enormous funds invested since the Five-Year Plan were now gradually yielding profits" (August 10th Asahi Shimbun).

In contrast to this, within the imperialist powers, as the economic crisis progresses, there is an intensification of class struggle, a series of revolutionary upsurges, extreme mass impoverishment—and preparations for anti-Soviet war are evident.

But what astonishes us is not the raw numbers within these vast statistics. Every single initiative in the Soviet Union is truly carried out for workers' happiness and to usher in a classless society. The completion of the Dnieper Power Station in the Soviet Union signifies far more than merely increasing electricity output by tens of millions of kilowatt-hours. This expansion of electrical capacity—driving factory electrification, rural power networks, and radio infrastructure—marks the elevation of an economic foundation that will hasten the arrival of a genuinely free, classless society.

Regarding the political content of the Second Five-Year Plan, the 17th Party Conference at the beginning of this year issued the following declaration:

“the final liquidation of capitalist elements and classes in general; the complete abolition of all causes giving rise to class distinctions and exploitation; the overcoming of capitalist remnants in the economy and human consciousness; and the transformation of all working people into conscious and active builders of a socialist society free from exploitation”

To witness the proletarian country spanning one-sixth of the globe taking a giant stride toward a classless society through the strengthening of proletarian dictatorship was our boundless joy.

But we must protect this workers' and peasants' motherland.
Today, as imperialist powers—spearheaded by Japan's bourgeois-landlord Emperor—direct their venomous claws toward our Soviet Union and the Chinese Soviets, and as the crisis of intervention war grows ever more imminent, we must protect our motherland with renewed determination.
The cries and actions of "Oppose anti-Soviet intervention wars! Defend the Soviet Union and the Chinese Soviets!" are swelling among the proletariat worldwide on the eve of the approaching 15th anniversary of the Revolution.

Once, Lenin wrote:
"Now history has placed before us the most revolutionary task among all immediate tasks of the proletariat of any other country."
"The realization of this task—that is, the smashing not only of European reaction but also (now we can say this) of Asian reaction's strongest pillar—will make the Russian proletariat become the vanguard of the international revolutionary proletariat."
*(What Is To Be Done?)* The Russian Party had already admirably demonstrated this.

Now, in this era of second revolution and war, the magnitude of the tasks placed before the Japanese proletariat truly rivaled that of those once shouldered by the Russian proletariat.
Before us loomed the most reactionary "fortress" among the imperialist powers of the world.
We workers and peasants too had to storm this fortress through unyielding struggle and fulfill our internationally significant historical task.

We, the workers and peasants of Japan, know that it is precisely through the struggle to overthrow Asia's most barbaric system of rule—our own bourgeois-landlord Emperor System—and construct a Soviet Japan, that we above all defend our motherland and pave the way for the victory of world revolution.

[December 1932]