Lust for power is the foundation of all wars.

The whole society has been conditioned to live in a reactionary way, it has been conditioned to be slaves not masters. Hence, when a few people revolt against the powers – to change the power structure, and replace the old establishment with themselves –

only then do they find that what the old establishment was doing,
they, too, have to do otherwise, there will be immense chaos.

But then it is too late to understand.

And slowly slowly, they themselves turn into the same kind of people that they have thrown out – in fact, worse, because now they know the taste of power, and  they also know how they have thrown out the people who were in power before them. Soon there will be a new generation coming, which will start talking about revolution – because nothing has been changed.

They are more alert to repress any possibility of revolution because they know how they threw out the old power structure they are not going to be thrown out in the same way. They will not allow freedom of speech, which is a basis for any revolution to happen, and they will crush every individual who does not follow their structure.

For sixty years in the Soviet Union, the communist regime has proved far worse than the regime of the czars that it had revolted against. At least in the regime of czars, it was possible to create a revolution; but under a communist regime it is almost impossible. They don’t allow it from the very beginning.  All publications are government owned, radio is government owned, television is government owned.

In fact, now, in the name of communism, private property has been taken over by the state. So to call the Soviet Union a communist country is not right – it is state capitalism.

In America, there are many capitalists, and their large number gives a certain feeling of movement and change, and the possibility of revolution.  In the Soviet Union, there is only one communist, and that is the state itself. All power, all wealth, all land, everything belongs to the state man has been denuded completely of all ownership.

The educational institutions are all run by the government. You read only what the government wants you to read, you listen only to government radio stations, and on the television you see only what the government wants you to see.

You cannot have another political party in opposition to the Communist Party because it is not a democracy – it is a dictatorship of the proletariat. It is just a name, dictatorship of the proletariat; but in the name of the proletariat, it is the Communist Party which is the dictator. It is the same small group of people who have been ruling for sixty years, and total power is in their hands.

Joseph Stalin, who established communist rule in Russia, killed at least one million people in his own land. These were the same people for whom the revolution was preached and of these million people, most of them were revolutionaries. He had to kill them because now those revolutionaries were a risk.

To let them live was dangerous because they were asking continually,
”What happened to the revolution?”

Only the people in power had changed, but the revolution seemed to be happening no where all was the same. Instead of many capitalists, now there was only one capitalist, the state, which certainly made it immensely powerful and there was no opposition party, there was no question of any opposition.

It is well known – there is no evidence to prove it, but there is every possibility of its being true –

that as the revolution succeeded, Lenin, the leader of the revolution, and Trotsky, his second in command, his right hand, Commeneau, Zinoviev, and other great communist revolutionaries were killed one by one.

Lenin was given small doses of poison every day, under the pretext of giving him medicine. It was his wife who confessed it – that Stalin never allowed any other doctor except his own to take care of Lenin; and his condition went on worsening. Stalin did not want him to die immediately because, in Lenin’s name, he first wanted to establish himself securely. Stalin was only the secretary of the party; his contribution to the revolution was not much, he was not a well-known figure in the nation or internationally.

Lenin was the founder of the revolution, and Trotsky was the most influential leader – even Lenin was not such a charismatic leader. Stalin kept Lenin alive, but at most half-alive. While slowly slowly poisoning him on the one hand, on the other hand he went on taking more and more power into his own hands.

When Stalin was completely in control, Lenin was finished.  Lenin never ruled over Russia. After   the revolution he was continuously sick; he was kept sick. Then Commeneau was caught,  Zinoviev was assassinated, and Trotsky, who was the defense minister, escaped Russia fearing that now Lenin was dead his number was going to be up.

And you cannot conceive the inhumanity of man to man. The day Stalin’s assassins reached Trotsky’s house... he had already left the Soviet Union just a few hours before. They found only his dog in the house, and it seems almost unbelievable,  but Stalin ordered the dog to be assassinated immediately –

just a mad mind corrupted by power.  And he sent professional murderers to find where Trotsky was, he had to be killed – he could not be left alive anywhere in the world. And Trotsky had escaped to an unknown part of Mexico, far away from the Soviet Union, at the other end of the world.  But they finally found him, and he was brutally murdered by being hit on his head repeatedly with a hammer. His whole skull was broken into pieces.

He was writing a biography of Joseph Stalin so future generations would know that just to change the people in power is not enough – Stalin had proved to be far worse than the Czars. It is a big volume, almost one thousand pages; and a rare biography written by an enemy, so sincere, so truthful. When he was hit on his head from behind with a hammer, he was just finishing the last line of the biography. His blood is on the last pages of the book. The book is still kept in some museum in Mexico, his handwritten book with his blood on it.

All the other leaders who had been the great revolutionaries were killed, one after another, because these people were dangerous. They were still talking about revolution, and Stalin recognized the fact that no revolution was possible.  It was good to talk about it before the revolution, but now that the responsibility has fallen on your own shoulders, you have to forget all about revolution. You have to establish yourself and your party in power with such force that nobody can destroy your power.


There is a beautiful story....

When Stalin died and Khrushchev became the prime minister, his first speech was to the highest inner circle of the Communist Party, called the Presidium. While he was speaking, he said,

”Now I have to confess that Stalin was one of the greatest criminals. He knew only one thing: either you are for him or you are his enemy. And for the enemy, there is nothing other  than death.”

Somebody in the back of the auditorium shouted,

”You have been with him for all these forty years. Why did you remain silent?”

Khrushchev laughed and said,
 ”I would like the honorable comrade to stand up, so that I can see who is raising the question.”

Nobody stood up, and Khrushchev said,
”Do you understand ? If anybody stands, tomorrow he will be dead. After tomorrow, he will never be heard of again anywhere in the universe. I was also in a similar position.”

The whole country became a concentration camp. And they have used methods against human beings which have never been used by any other government or any other power. First, they would make an arrest if there was any suspicion... if a man had talked to someone against the Communist Party, against the government; or he had written a letter to someone indicating a slight difference with the Communist Party – he would be arrested immediately.

And these procedures would be followed for fifteen days he would be in police custody, and the police would not allow him to sleep they would inject him so that he could not sleep, not even a wink. They would inject chemicals to disturb his mind, to erase his memory; they would create a false madness in the man. And then after fifteen days, the man would be produced before the court.

The government attorney would say,
”He has been arrested because he is not in his right senses – he is insane.”

Such a beautiful facade... and then the court would go through its procedures: the judge would ask the man,

”What is your name ?” And the man would look all around, because he has forgotten everything, his memory has been erased. And naturally, the judge has to declare him mad. He has to be sent into a madhouse where he will be killed; nobody will ever know what happened to him in the madhouse. Or people will be sent to Siberia where life is worse than death. Death is a rest... Siberia is not a place to live, it is a place to suffer.

This has continued up to now the revolution has utterly failed. And this was the greatest revolution as far as history is concerned the greatest experiment, on the largest scale, with a profound philosophy to support it.

The same happened to the French Revolution and to the Chinese Revolution. The very mechanism of revolution is such that its success is almost impossible. If you want to remain in power, you have to be violent, destructive – particularly destructive of those people who have revolutionary ideas. Those ideas were great and good against the older regime, but they are not good against the new regime in which you are powerful. And all the promises have to be forgotten completely because they prove to be utopian.

They were against nationalism before the revolution, but afterwards Soviet Russia became a holyland. Now they wanted their power to become more and more spread all over the world. They were now imperialists, no longer against nationalism, although they continued to speak beautiful revolutionary language.

They were very articulate before the revolution they had learned all that language. Now they started talking about an international communism but ”international communism” was to be nothing but a Soviet imperialist state

Before the revolution in China, Mao Zedong, the leader of the revolution, was a follower – very intimate follower – of Joseph Stalin. But once Mao came into power, there was immediately a conflict because Stalin wanted China also to be part of one communist block.

That meant Mao’s own lust for power had no place – China would also become one of the republics of the Soviet Union. Mao resisted it and they became enemies. China and the Soviet Union, both communist countries, became so antagonistic to one another that one can see why it is difficult to have an international government.  Some nation will try, in the name of international government, to exert its own lust for power and rule over the whole world.



Lust for power is the foundation of all wars.

If you look at human history... the whole of human history is nothing but a history of wars, man killing man. Reasons have changed, but the killing continues. It seems reasons are only excuses. The real fact is that man enjoys killing.

In one of Aesop’s fables – and those are some of the greatest fables in the world, so simple and so significant – a small sheep is drinking water from a mountain stream of crystal-clear water.  A great lion comes and naturally becomes interested in the sheep – it is breakfast time but he has to find an excuse. So he says to the sheep, ”You are dirtying the stream.  Don’t you understand that I am the king of the jungle?”

The poor sheep said, ”I know, but your highness, the stream is not going towards you. I am standing below you and even if it becomes dirty by my drinking water, the water is going downwards – not towards you. You are making it dirty and I am drinking that dirty water.  So your logic is not right.”

The lion saw the point and became very angry. He said,
 ”You don’t have respect for your elders. You have some nerve arguing with me.”

The poor sheep said, ”I have not argued, I have simply said what was factual. You can see that the stream is going downwards.”

The lion was silent for a moment and then said,
”Now I remember. You belong to a very uncultured, uneducated family. Your father insulted me yesterday.”

The poor sheep said, ”It must have been somebody else, because my father has been dead for three months, and you must know that he is within your belly. He is no longer alive. You have made a lunch of him.  How can he behave disrespectfully towards you?  He is dead!”

That was too much. The lion jumped and caught hold of the sheep saying, ”You don’t know manners, you don’t know etiquette, you don’t know how to behave.”

The sheep said,
”The simple fact is, it is breakfast time. You simply eat me there is no need to find any excuse.”

In such simple parables,
Aesop has done miracles. He has said so much about man.