V. I.

Lenin

September 22-25, 1920 [7]

I

Speech on the Immediate Tasks of Party
Development. September 24

Comrades, I think that certain statements made during the
debates and even certain speeches are worth mentioning if only because they
obviously express not just overstrain, but overstrain bordering on hysteria
and therefore giving a misplaced emphasis. I would not call it demagogy. It
is physical overstrain to the point of hysteria. This applies mainly to the
speeches by Lutovinov and Bubnov, in which there was less of
demagogy than of overstrain. To some extent I think there were signs of
overstrain in Medvedev’s statement too. He said: “Now you have all started
speaking about unhealthy symptoms, but before you used to deny it, you
weren’t telling the truth.” I think this explanation is not quite
correct, in fact it is quite incorrect. That the unhealthy
symptoms we are talking about really exist-was hardly a secret. Without a
doubt, the general situation was so grave that we couldn’t find time till
now for the Party, we had no chance to raise this question specially in the
Party. Even now we raise it with difficulty, because the chance we are
discussing here in our political talk-the chance of our being able to avoid
a winter campaign-is extremely slender. The general situation of the
Republic, as I mentioned, has improved to such an extent that we are now
able to discuss things more calmly: there is no longer any question of
suspending the conference the way we did several times when Kolchak and,
Denikin were advancing. There were Party congresses from which a number of
leading workers went straight off to the front without waiting for them to
end. Mind you, we seldom convene congresses, we seldom have a chance of
discussing important issues at congresses-yet before we couldn’t even see a
congress through to the end, rarely though it was convened.

Today at any rate we can and ought to thresh things out without
restricting ourselves. I should also like to say a word about
Kalinin’s attempts to present the case in a Marxist way. It seems to
me that his arguments were a long step away from Marxism, and the correct
Marxist view I think was given in the resolution of the Moscow
Committee—which you have all, of course, read and which has been put out
in a small pamphlet and printed in Pravda—and the letter of the Central
Committee.

I should like to read out several lines, which I would offer to the
committee (if it be decided to set one up), not in lieu of the Moscow
resolution and the C.C.’s letter, but as supplementary material to them. [1]

The resolution of the Moscow Committee I think-and all are agreed on
this-deals with the question correctly. Allow me to quote those few words
and dwell on them briefly. Here is the addendum: “The indescribably grave
position of the Soviet Republic in the early years of its existence,
extreme devastation and grave military danger, made it necessary to
designate special “shock” (and therefore virtually privileged)
departments and groups of workers. This was unavoidable, since the ruined
country could not be saved unless resources and energies were concentrated
on such departments and such groups of workers, without the strengthening
of which the imperialists of the whole world would have certainly crushed
us and prevented the Soviet Republic from even starting on economic
construction ....”

As regards the old specialists we have heard some very heated attacks
here. The truth came out in Comrade Kutuzov’s speech when he said
that the proletariat saw no improvement of its position from Soviet
Russia–if anything, it was often worse. That’s true. But one must sort out
the facts-for instance, that in Vienna, where there is no Soviet
government, you have the same deterioration, to which you can add a moral
humiliation a hundred times worse. But the rank and file cannot get this
straight. Understand-ably, we are asked: What did we get in the course of
these two years? And obviously, dissatisfaction with the old specialists is widespread. Naturally, the question whether we need
specialists or not was a salient issue. We shouldn’t forget, however, that
without them we would not have had our army. We would have found ourselves
in the same position as Hungary and the Finnish workers. That is how the
matter stands. Without these specialists—I spoke about this in my
political report—we would not have been able to take those elementary steps
that helped us rise to a definite level. If we had failed to cope with this
specialist business, we would not have had this, we would not have been
able to make further progress. But now, when we have taken them in hand and
harnessed them, when we know that they will not run away from us, but, on
the contrary, are all running to join us, we shall now be sure that
democratisation in the Party and the army will rise. I shall read further
( reads the resolution ) ....

Point one ( reads ). [2]

Here there is an addition. Comrade Tomsky said, referring to what we have
often spoken about ourselves, that the rank and file should be brought to
the fore, the leaders are tired, give the rank and file a chance. This
could not be done at once, but it will be after another, maybe the
twentieth, attempt. Failing this, Soviet Russia’s cause would be
hopeless. But we know that it is not hopeless, because we have new elements
that are growing up. If the first attempts failed, we shall try and try
again.

Point two ( reads ). [3]

Here a rather sarcastic question was asked as to whether freedom of
criticism would correspond to freedom to eat peaches. [8] I have one measure as a possible guarantee, on the basis
of the proposals made by the committee. At moments when the country is in
danger, when Kolchak reached the Volga and Denikin Orel, there can be no
freedoms. There are other things than this to be regretted. But the
military situation is bad now, too, we see how fickle the fortunes of war
are. We must put this question on the order of the day. But we cannot, we
must not, promise that at moments of military danger we shall not act
differently. We shall have to make a tremendous effort again and no arguing about it, we shall have to stand firm, strain
every nerve. We do not renounce this at all, and until we have an Italian
victory we must not renounce it. And that’s my reply to the peaches.

Point three ( reads ). [4]

Here Comrade Preobrazhensky raised a question which Zinoviev raised too: Is
regulation appropriate here and what is to be understood by it? I shall
leave this question open, as it will be detailed in the committee. We shall
see whether regulation is to be understood as detailed points or as the
setting up of special bodies.

Point four ( reads ). [5]

The speaker here said that this question had been raised by the committee
but was rejected by its majority. I believe—I am putting this forward only
in my own name—I believe that it should not be rejected, and if not
accepted at once, at least it should first be considered. It has been
pointed out here that 500 complaints have accumulated in the Orgbureau of
the C.C. The Orgbureau has to distribute tens of thousands of
people. Besides, there is not a single member of the Orgbureau who is not
swamped with work, doing several jobs. Under these conditions one has to
work with unknown quantities, and under such conditions you can only decide
questions by intuition, a thing only experienced people can do, and even
they often make mistakes. Taking into consideration these conditions, we
want to find people with a length of Party membership of not less than
fifteen years, who enjoy the Party’s trust, who are unbiassed, and who
would help in this business, while at the same time standing above the
Orgbureau as regards independence, as they would be elected by the
congress. I believe this step could be taken. To hamper the C.C.’s work or
hold up the decision is impossible. There is no special provision for it,
and we cannot offer it. There used to be a control commission in the German
Workers’ Party. How far that will be possible in our war situation—one
cannot say. In any case we are in a position to take such a step, and the
C.C. has taken that course.

The C.C.’s letter says:

“Special Party commissions to handle relevant complaints should be
organised at all

Gubernia Party Committees and made up of the most dispassionate comrades
enjoying the general trust of the organisation.” It speaks here of
dispassionate comrades. For real militant activities—military, economic
and organisational—passionate people are very often absolutely necessary,
because without high passion they will not be able to work at high
pressure, they will not solve the urgent problem facing the exhausted
country. On the contrary, what we need here are people, who though they may
not possess conspicuous administrative abilities, have a good knowledge of
life. I doubt whether we shall be able to find enough of them for the whole
of Russia, for all gubernias, and if the commissions which are now going to
be set up and which you will set up under the Gubernia Party Committees
prove to be unsuccessful, don’t draw the conclusion that the whole
enterprise is a failure. We may not find a sufficient number of comrades in
the gubernias capable of holding out from congress to congress. If we don’t
find them in the gubernias, we shall find staunch comrades with a knowledge
of life in the centre. I think we should not give up the idea of forming
these bodies.

It may be said: Where is the guarantee that these bodies can exist? We
are in a state of desperate civil war, where, generally speaking, there can
be no question of any freedom of broad criticism and so forth. We have
other things to think of, we must strain every effort to end the war. If
the conditions of war were not what they are, the position would be
different. Under the present conditions we cannot provide for a good many
things; and we say straight out that in order to settle this question in a
practical manner we cannot rely on the C.C., because it is swamped with
work as it is. I doubt whether you will find a single C.C. member—I judge
from my own experience—who doesn’t feel over head and heels in debt as
regards unfinished or skimped jobs. I can imagine no more effective
guarantee of this plan being carried out than the creation of this
commission, of a group of comrades capable of concentrating wholly on this
job with the assurance that it will be entirely independent, handling
affairs which no single member of the C.C., the Orgbureau, or the
Politbureau is in a position to go into with any thoroughness. We may have
a practical grasp of things, seeing that we are making some progress, that we have increased our grain
collections from 60 to 260 million poods-but this proved insufficient to
give us a Red Army that was not overexhausted, to give us workers who did
not say, “What good has the Red Army done us, we are starving”, and to
give us a leadership that was not utterly worn out and does not stand in
need of help from the rank and file. Nevertheless, we did make that
progress, and that means that even in such a mass state of extreme fatigue
the scale of this fatigue is beginning to diminish and we are entering a
period when we can stop discussing the crust-of-bread question and pass on
to weightier problems confronting us, which we all shall most certainly
tackle.