Speech at a Session of the Communist Fraction of the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions, March 15, 1920 (Protocol Record)
Речь на заседании коммунистической фракции ВЦСПС 15 марта 1920 г. Протокольная запись
Date: 1920
Source: ru:PSS/v40
Translated by: AI (Claude)

Comrades, Comrade Lozovsky said that Comrade Bukharin and I will partly agree with him. That's true. You wrote theses, but what are you defending? Then you must cross out your theses, because they say: "the basic principle," but we do not proceed from practice. So write that. And what will remain of your theses? Today I had to be at a meeting of water transport workers and polemicize there, and Comrade Ishchenko said: "In any case, there is a guarantee that we will pose the question as practitioners." So write that, but you wrote something else; you wrote: "the basic principle." Where is your foundation, who defends it? Nobody. They're backing away. Write this, and then half the disagreements will disappear. And what you wrote is incorrect: where do you answer the argument put forward against collegiality – where is the participation of the broad masses when three, five, seven workers participate in a collegium? Do you want the participation of the broad masses or not? Of course, whoever doesn't want this, grab him by the scruff of the neck – and that's all, but this is no argument. You say "broad non-party working masses." There are no such masses in any collegium, this is incorrect, and one cannot reason like this. To attract the broad non-party masses, this system is not needed: one must teach, one must promote, enliven. How many workers did the Central Committee of textile workers and others provide? How many of them moved up in three months and how many down? Give me the figures, and then I'll say: now these are people. To write "principles" is childish: we studied for two years and wrote principles – they'll laugh. Here the argument does not correspond to the conclusion, participation of the broad masses is ensured by a collegium of seven – three people: they'll laugh at this; this is the first objection.

Second, I refer to the bourgeoisie: from whom should we learn if not from the bourgeoisie? How did it govern? It governed as a class, when it was master, and didn't it appoint bosses? We haven't caught up with their level of development. They knew how to dominate as a class and govern through anyone, individually and completely for themselves, at the top they had a small collegium, and they didn't reason about basic principles and didn't write such resolutions – all power is in their hands, and competent is he who knows. Workers haven't reached this yet, and to win, we must abandon old prejudices. The rule of the working class is in the constitution, in property, and in the fact that it is we who move things forward, but management – that's another matter, that's a matter of skill, a matter of knack. The bourgeoisie understood this magnificently, but we haven't understood this yet. Let's learn. We already declared here that power must be held firmly in our hands, but as for how to manage – we haven't learned, we still need to learn a lot and a lot about the business of management.

The third argument: competence. Where is it possible for you to manage without competence, to manage without full knowledge, without knowledge of the science of management? Ridiculous! What kind of coherence is there, what are all these words that you've uttered for? To manage, one must know the business and be a magnificent administrator. Where is it said that therefore collegiality is needed? This follows inversely from the fact that we have few experienced workers, from this it follows that collegiality is inadmissible. Then adopt theses that say so: keep a commissar with a specialist, a commission, etc. As long as you lack the principle of competence and respect for the specialist – we stand at a primitive point of view. This way you won't create any industrial front. Unity of will! Without this there is no dictatorship at the front, but there will be dawdling. This is a typical phenomenon, that there is friction there, but no management. Put a specialist with experience, but we now know that when we combine a competent person with an incompetent one in a collegium, you create multiplicity of will and complete inconsistency. This is the fifth argument. Everyone writes resolutions that each is responsible for his assignment. And where is this carried out? Let them say where we have divided responsibility like this? We studied for two years how to govern the state, and still write: "basic principle." This is ridiculous, this is a second-grade schoolboy (letters, syllables – ba), but give us your experience, and in it we'll see to what degree you are competent people and how the lack of competence manifests itself. They say that under the artillery department, factory managements were bad. After all, this example is taken by Lozovsky and Tomsky. When? Comrade Lozovsky, one must take into account the condition of the Soviet Republic: after all, what did we start with, who was at the head? – Krylenko, Dybenko, Podvoisky before Trotsky, and we were with this collegium, and if Kolchak and Denikin beat us, then why? Because when there were 7 of us sitting, we had to study for 2 years, and from this we moved to one-man management. Must we take this into account or not? This is a trifle, they took the two-year history of the republic and crossed it out. Why? Don't like it? Change it first. And what is Rykov – Chupsovo-bor (extraordinary plenipotentiary of Soviet defense), and Rykov began to pull things up single-handedly. You don't know your history, the history of your Supreme Council of National Economy and the Soviet Republic. History says: from worker collegiality they moved to tens, broke their necks, and Kolchak beat us, and did well to beat us, for we learned something and learned that collegiality must be taken in hand with an iron grip. We have written 4 systems – adopt these 4 systems, adopt the Central Committee theses. You will stand on the ground of the two-year history of Soviet power, its experience, and not those reasonings which are primitive, which will confuse you… to a mature worker who fears no specialist and says that "if you put experienced people, our machine will work." Thus reasons a mature worker, while the timid say: "what if they leave me without a specialist." This is a sign of weakness. Stop whining and be mature.

First published in 1924 in the book: N. Lenin (V. I. Ulyanov). "Articles and Speeches on Questions of the Trade Union Movement." Published by VTsSPS

Printed from the text of the book, verified against the stenogram