V. I. Lenin

Fourth Conference Of

Trade Unions and Factory Committees Of

Moscow [1]

June 27-July 2, 1918

I

Report On The Current Situation

June 27, 1918

Comrades, you all know, of course, of the great disaster that
has befallen our country, namely, famine. Before discussing the
measures to be adopted to combat this disas-ter, which has now
become more acute than ever, we must first of all discuss its
main causes. In discussing this ques-tion we must say to
ourselves, and remember, that this disaster has befallen not
only Russia, but all, even the most cultured, advanced and
civilised countries.

In Russia, where the overwhelming majority of the peasantry
were ruined and oppressed by the yoke of the tsars, the
landowners and capitalists, famine more than once in the past
few decades affected whole regions of our agrarian country. And
it has affected us particularly now, during the revolution. But
this disaster reigns also in the West-European countries. Many
of these countries had not known what famine was for decades and
even centuries, so highly was agriculture developed there, and
to such an extent were those European countries which could not produce a sufficient supply of grain of their own assured of an enormous
quantity of imported grain. But now, in the twentieth century,
side by side with still greater progress in technology, side by
side with wonderful inventions, side by side with the wide
application of machinery and electricity, of modern internal
combustion engines in agriculture, side by side with all this we
now see this same disaster of famine advancing upon the people
in all European countries without exception. It would seem that
despite civilisation, despite culture, the countries are once
again returning to primitive savagery, are again experiencing a situation when
morals deteriorate and people become brutalised in the struggle
for a crust of bread. What has caused this return to savagery in
a number of European countries, in the majority of them? We all
know that it has been caused by the imperialist war, by the war
which has been torturing humanity for four years, a war which
has already cost the peoples more, far more than ten million
young lives, a war which was called forth by the avarice of the
capitalists, a war which is being waged to decide which of the
great rob-bers-the British or the German-shall rule the world,
acquire colonies and strangle the small nations.

This war, which has affected almost the whole of the globe,
which has destroyed not less than ten million lives, not
counting the millions of maimed, crippled and sick, this war
which, in addition, has torn millions of the health-iest and
best forces from productive labour-this war has reduced humanity
to a state of absolute savagery. What numerous socialist writers
foresaw as the worst, most pain-ful and most unbearable end of
capitalism has come to pass. They said: capitalist society,
based on the private owner-ship of the land, the factories and
tools by a handful of capitalists, of monopolists, will be
transformed into social-ist society, which alone is capable of
putting an end to war, because the “civilised”, “cultured” capitalist world is heading for
unprecedented bankruptcy, which is capable of undermining and
will inevitably undermine all the founda-tions of cultured
life. I repeat, we see famine not only in Russia, but in the
most cultured, advanced countries, like Germany, where the
productivity of labour is incomparably greater, which can supply
the world with more than a sufficiency of technical appliances,
and which, still maintain-ing free intercourse with remote
countries, can supply her population with food. The famine there
is incomparably better “organised”, it is spread over a longer period than in Russia, but it is famine
nevertheless, still more severe and more painful than here. Capitalism has led to such a severe and painful disaster
that it is now perfectly clear to all that the present war
cannot end without a number of most severe and bloody revolutions, of which the Russian revolution was only the first,
only the beginning.

You have iiow received news to the effect. that in Virnns, for
example, an Arbeiterrat has been established for the second
time, and for the second time the working population have come
out on an almost general mass strike. [2] We hear that in
cities like Berlin, which up to now have been models of
capitalist order, culture and civilisation, it is becoming
dangerous to go out into the street after dark, because, in
spite of the very severe measures and the very strict guard that
is kept, the war and famine have reduced people to such a state
of absolute savagery, have led to such anarchy, have roused such
indignation, that not merely the sale, but downright looting, an
actual war for a crust of bread, is becoming the order of the
day in all cultured, civilised countries.

Hence, ’comrades, since a painful and difficult situation
has been created in our country as a consequence of the famine,
we must explain to the few absolutely blind and ignorant people
(though few, they do still exist) the main and principal causes
of the famine. We can still meet people in our country who argue
in this way: but under the tsar we had bread; the revolution has
come and there is no bread. Naturally, it is quite possible that
for some old village women the development of history during the
past ten years is summed up entirely by the fact that formerly
there was bread and now there is none. This is comprehensible,
because famine is a disaster which sweeps away all other
questions, which takes its place as the cornerstone, and
overrules everything else. But it goes without saying that our
task, the task of the class-conscious workers, is to explain to
the broad masses, to explain to all the representatives of the
working masses in town and country the principal cause of the
famine; for unless we explain this we shall not be able to
create a proper attitude either among ourselves or among the
representatives of the working masses, we shall not be able to
create a proper understanding of its harmfulness and we shall
not be able to create that firm determination and temper that is
required to combat this disaster. If we remember that this
disaster was caused by the imperialist war, that today even the
richest countries are experiencing unprecedented food shortages
and that the o,,,erwlielrriing majority of the working masses
are suffering incredible torture; if we remember that for four years already this imperialist war has
been compelling the workers of the various countries to shed
their blood for the benefit of the greedy capitalists, and if we
remember that the longer the war lasts, the fewer become the
ways out of it, we will understand what gigantic, immense forces
will have to be set moving.

The war has lasted nearly four years. Russia has come out of the
war, and owing to the fact that she has come out of the war
alone she has found herself between two gangs of imperialist
plunderers, each of which is clutching at her, strangling her
and taking advantage of her temporary defencelessness and lack
of arms. The war has already lasted four years. The German
imperialist plunderers have achieved a number of victories and
continue to deceive their workers, a section of whom, bribed by
the bourgeoisie, have deserted to the side of the German
imperialists and continue to repeat the despicable lie about the
defence of the fatherland when as a matter of fact the German
soldiers are defending the selfish predatory interests of the
German capitalists who have promised them that Germany will
bring peace and prosperity. Actually we see that the more
extensive Germany’s victories become the more the hopelessness of her position is revealed.

When the forced, exploiters’ peace of Brest, a peace based
upon violence and the oppression of peoples, was concluded,
Germany, the German capitalists boasted that they would give the
workers bread and peace. But now they are reducing the bread
ration in Germany. It is universally admitted that the food
campaign in the rich Ukraine has been a failure. In Austria the
situation has again reached the stage of hunger riots, of
nation-wide outbursts of indignation, because the more Germany
is victorious the clearer it becomes to all, even to many
representatives of the big bourgeoisie in Germany, that the war
is hopeless. They are beginning to realise that even if the
Germans are able to maintain their resistance on the Western
front it will not bring the end of the war any nearer but will
create another enslaved country which will have to be occupied
by German troops and make it necessary to continue the war; and
this will lead to the disintegration of the German army, which
is being transformed from an army into a gang of plunderers violating foreign peoples, unarmed peoples, and extracting from
their countries the last remnants of food supplies and raw
materials in the face of tremendous resistance from the
population. The closer Germany approaches the outer frontiers of
Europe the clearer it becomes that she is confronted by Britain
and America, which are far more developed than she is, which
have greater productive forces, which have had time to dispatch
tens of thousands of the best new forces to Europe, and to
transform all their machines and factories into instruments of
destruction. The war is receiving fresh fuel, and that means
that every year, nay every month, sees the further extension of
this war. There is no other way out of this war except revolution, except civil war, except the transformation of the
war between capitalists for profits, for the sharing of the
loot, for the strangulation of small countries, into a war of
the oppressed against the oppressors, a war which always
accompanies not only great revolutions but every serious
revolution in history, a war which is the only war that is
legitimate and just, a holy war from the point of view of the
interests of the working people, of the oppressed and of the
exploited masses. (Applause.) Without such a war there can be no
liberation from imperialist slavery. We must be perfectly clear
in our minds about the new disasters that civil war brings for
every country. The more cultured a country is the more serious
will be these disasters. Let us picture to ourselves a country
possessing machinery and railways in which civil war is raging,
and this civil war cuts off communication between the various
parts of the country. Picture to yourselves the condition of
regions which for decades have been accustomed to living by the
interchange of manufactured goods and you will understand that
every civil war brings fresh disasters, which the great
socialists foresaw. The imperialists doom the working class to
disaster, suffering and extinction. Intolerable and painful as
all this may be for the whole of mankind, it is becoming clearer
and clearer every day to the new socialist society that the
imperialists will not be able to put an end to the war which
they started; other classes will end it—the working class,
which in all countries is becoming more and more active every
day, more and more angry and indignant, and which, irrespective of sentiments and moods, the force of circumstances is
compelling to overthrow, the rule of the capitalists. We, in
Russia, are particularly affected by the disaster of famine and
are passing through a period more difficult than has ever been
experienced by any revolution, and we cannot count on immediate
aid from our West-European comrades. The whole difficulty of the
Russian revolution is that it was much easier for the Russian
revolutionary working class to start than it is for the
West-European classes, but it is much more difficult for us to
continue. It is more difficult to start a revolution in
West-European countries because there the revolutionary
proletariat is opposed by the higher thinking that comes with
culture, and the working class is in a state of cultural
slavery.

Meanwhile, because of our international position, we must pass
through an incredibly difficult time, and we representatives of
the working masses, we workers, class-conscious workers, in all
our agitation and propaganda, in every speech we deliver, in
every appeal we issue, in our talks in the factories and at
every meeting with peasants, must explain that the disaster,
that has befallen us is an international disaster and that there
is no other way out of it except world revolution. Since we must
pass through such a painful period in which we temporarily stand
alone, we must exert all our efforts to bear the difficulties of
this period staunchly, knowing that in the last analysis we are
not alone, that the disaster which we are experiencing is
creeping upon every European country, and that not one of these
countries will be able to extricate itself except by a series of
revolutions.

Russia has been afflicted by famine, which has been made more
acute by the fact that the imposed peace has deprived her of the
most fertile grain-bearing gubernias, and it has also been made
more acute by the fact that the old food campaign is drawing to
a close. We still have several weeks to go before the next
harvest, which will undoubtedly be a rich one; and these few
weeks will be a very difficult period of transition which, being
a difficult one generally, is rendered still more critical by
the fact that in Russia the deposed exploiting classes of
landowners and capitalists are doing all they can, are exerting
every effort to restore their power.

This is one of the main reasons why the grain-bearing gubernias
of Siberia are cut off from us as a result of the Czechoslovak
mutiny. But we know very well what forces are behind this
revolt, we know very well that the Czechoslovak soldiers are
declaring to the representatives of our troops, of our workers
and of our peasants, that they do not want to fight against
Russia and against the Russian Soviet government, that they only
want to make their way by force of arms to the frontier. But at
their head stand yesterday’s generals, landowners and capitalists, who are financed by the British and the French and
enjoy the support of Russian traitors to socialism who have
deserted to the side of the bourgeoisie. (Applause.)

The whole gang of them is taking advantage of the famine to make
another attempt to restore the landowners and the capitalists to
power. Comrades, the experience of our revolution confirms the
correctness of the words which always distinguish the representatives of scientific socialism, Marx and his followers,
from the utopian socialists, from the petty-bourgeois socialists, from the socialist intellectuals and from the
socialist dreamers. The intellectual dreamers, the petty-bourgeois socialists, thought, and perhaps still think, or
dream, that it is possible to introduce socialism by persuasion. They think that the majority of the people will be
convinced, and when they become convinced the minority will
obey; that the majority will vote and socialism will be
introduced. (Applause.) No, the world is not built so happily;
the exploiters, the brutal landowners, the capitalist class are
not amenable to persuasion. The socialist revolution confirms
what everybody has seen—the furious resistance of the exploiters. The stronger the pressure of the oppressed classes
becomes, the nearer they come to overthrowing all oppression,
all exploitation, the more resolutely the oppressed peasantry
and the oppressed workers display their own initiative, the more
furious does the resistance of the exploiters become.

We are passing through a very severe and very painful period of
transition from capitalism to socialism, a period which will
inevitably be a very long one in all countries because, I
repeat, the oppressors retaliate to every success achieved by
the oppressed class by fresh attempts at resistance, by attempts to overthrow the power of the oppressed class. The
Czechoslovak mutiny, which is obviously being supported by
Anglo-French imperialism in the pursuit of its policy of
overthrowing the Soviet government, illustrates what this
resistance can be. We see that this mutiny is, of course,
spreading because of the famine. It is understandable that among
the broad masses of the toilers there are many (you know this
particularly well; every one of you sees this in the factories)
who are not enlightened socialists and cannot be such because
they have to slave in the factories and they have neither the
time nor the opportunity to become socialists. It is understandable that these people should be in sympathy when they
see the workers coming to the fore in the factory, when they see
that these workers obtain the opportunity to learn the art of
managing facto~. riesa diffi cult and exacting task in which
mistakes are inevitable,.’ but the only task in which the
workers can at last realise their constant striving to make the
machines, the factories, the works, the best of modern techniques, the best achievements of humanity serve not purposes
of exploitation, but the purpose of improving and easing the
lives of the overwhelming majority. But when they see the
imperialist plunderers in the West, in the North and in the East
taking advantage of Russia’s defencelessness to tear her
heart out, and since they do not yet know what the situation in
the labour movement will be in other countries, of course they
are guided by despair. Nor can it be otherwise. It would be
ridiculous to expect and foolish to think that capitalist
society, based on exploitation, could at one stroke create a
complete appreciation of the need for socialism and an understanding of it. This cannot be. This appreciation comes
only at the end of the struggle which has to be waged in this
painful period, in which one revolution has broken out before
the rest and gets no assistance from the others, and when famine
approaches. Naturally, certain strata of the toilers are
inevitably overcome by despair and indignation and turn away in
disgust from everything. Naturally, the counter-revolutionaries,
the landowners and capitalists, and their protectors and
henchmen, take advantage of this situation for the purpose
of. launching attack alter attack upon the socialist government.

We see what this has led to in all the towns where no assistance
was given by foreign bayonets. We know that it was possible to
defeat the Soviet government only when those people who had
shouted so much about defending the fatherland and about their
patriotism revealed their capitalist nature and concluded
agreements, one day with the German bayonets in order jointly
with them to massacre the Ukrainian Bolsheviks, the next day
with the Turkish bayonets in order to march against the
Bolsheviks, the day after that with the Czechoslovak bayonets in
order to overthrow the Soviet government and massacre the
Bolsheviks in Samara. Foreign aid alone, the aid of foreign
bayonets alone, the selling out of Russia to Japanese, German
and Turkish bayonets alone, have up to now given some show of
success to the landowners and to those who have compromised with
the capitalists. But we know that when, owing to the famine and
the despair of the masses, rebellions of this sort broke out in
districts where the aid of foreign bayonets could not be
obtained, as was the case in Saratov, Kozlov and Tambov, the
rule of the landowners, the capitalists and their friends who
camouflaged themselves with the beautiful slogans of the
Constituent Assembly lasted not more than days, if not hours. The further the units of the Soviet army were from the
centre temporarily occupied by the counter-revolution, the more
determined was the movement among the urban workers, the more
initiative these workers and peasants displayed in marching to
the aid of Saratov, Penza and Kozlov and in immediately
overthrowing the rule of the counter-revolution which had been
established.

Comrades, if you examine these events from the point of view of
all that is taking place in world history, if you bear in mind
that your task, our common task, is to explain to ourselves and
to explain to the masses that these great disasters have not
befallen us accidentally, but first as a result of the imperialist war, and secondly as a result of the furious
resistance of the landowners, the capitalists and the exploiters, if we are clear about this we can be certain that,
however difficult it may be, the full appreciation of this will
spread wider and wider among the masses and we shall succeed in
creating discipline, in overcoming the indiscipline in our
factories, and in helping the people to live through this painful and particularly difficult period,
which perhaps will last the month or two, the few weeks that
still remain until the new harvest.

You know that, as a consequence of the Czechoslovak counter-revolutionary mutiny, which has cut us off from Siberia,
as a consequence of the continuous unrest in the South, and as a
consequence of the war, the position in Russia today Is
particularly difficult; but it goes without saying that the more
difficult the position of our country in which famine is
approaching becomes, the more determined and firm must be the
measures that we adopt to combat this famine. One of the
principal measures to combat the famine is the establishment of
the grain monopoly. In this connection you will know perfectly
well from your own experience that the kulaks, the rich, are
raising an outcry against the grain monopoly at every step. This
can be understood, because in those places where the grain
monopoly was temporarily abolished, as Skoropadsky abolished it
in Kiev, profiteering reached unprecedented dimensions; there
the price of a pood of grain rose to two hundred rubles. Naturally, when there is a shortage of goods without
which it is impossible to live, the owners of such goods can
become rich, prices rise to unprecedented heights. Naturally,
the horror, the panic created by the fear of death from
starvation forced prices up to unprecedented heights, and in
Kiev they had to think of restoring the monopoly. Here in
Russia, long ago, even before the Bolsheviks came to power,
notwithstanding the wealth of grain that Russia possessed, the
government realised the necessity of introducing the grain
monopoly. Only those who are absolutely ignorant, or who have
deliberately sold themselves to the interests of the moneybags,
can be opposed to it. (Applause.)

But, comrades, when we speak of the grain monopoly we must think
of the enormous difficulties of realisation that are contained
in this phrase. It is quite easy to say “grain monopoly”, but we must ponder over what this phrase
means. It means that all surplus grain belongs to the state; it
means that every single pood of grain over and above that
required by the peasant for his farm, to maintain his family and
cattle and for sowing, that every extra pood of grain must be
taken by the state. How is this to be done? The state must fix prices; every surplus pood of grain must be found
and brought in. How can the peasant, whose mind has been
stultified for hundreds of years, who has been robbed and beaten
to stupefaction by the landowners and capitalists, who never
allowed him to eat his fill, how can this peasant learn to
appreciate in a few weeks or a few months what the grain
monopoly means? How can millions of people who up to now have
known the state only by its oppression, its violence, by the
tyranny and robbery of the government officials, how can these
peasants, living in remote villages and doomed to ruin, be made
to understand what the rule of the workers and peasants means,
be made to understand that power is in the hands of the poor,
that to hoard grain, possess surplus grain and not hand it over
to the state is a crime, and that those who hoard surplus grain
are robbers, exploiters, and guilty of causing terrible
starvation among the workers of Petrograd, Moscow, etc.? How can
the peasant understand these things, considering that up to now
he has been kept in ignorance and that the only thing he has
been concerned with in the village is tose11 his grain? How can he understand these things? It is not
surprising that when we examine this question more closely, from
the point of view of practical life, we realise what an.enormously difficult task it is to introduce a grain monopoly
in a country in which tsarism and the landowners held the
majority of the peasants in ignorance, in a country in which the
peasantry have sown grain on their own land for the first time
in many centuries. (Applause.)

But the more difficult this task is, the greater it appears to
be upon close and careful study, the more clearly must we say to
ourselves what we have always said, namely, that the emancipation of the workers must be performed by the workers
themselves. We have always said: the emancipation of the working
people from oppression cannot be brought from outside; the
working people themselves, by their struggle, by their movement,
by their agitation, must learn to solve a new historical
problem,; and the more difficult, the greater, the more
responsible this new historical problem is, the larger must be
the number of those enlisted for the purpose of taking an
independent part in solving it. No class consciousness, no
organisation is required to sell grain to a merchant, to a trader. To do that one must live as the
bourgeoisie has ordered. One must merely be an obedient slave
and imagine and admit that the world as built by the bourgeoisie
is magnificent. But in order to overcome this capitalist chaos,
in order to introduce the grain monopoly, in order to ensure
that every surplus pood of grain is transferred to the state,
there must be prolonged, difficult and strenuous organisational
work, not by organisers, not by agitators, but by the masses
themselves.

There are such people in the Russian countryside. The majority
of the peasants belong to the category of the very poor and poor
peasants who are not in a position to trade in grain surpluses
and become robbers hoarding perhaps hundreds of poods of grain
while others are starving. But today, the situation is that a
peasant will perhaps call himself a working peasant (some people
like this term very much); but if such a peasant has by his own
labour, even without the aid of hired labour, harvested hundreds
of poods of grain and calculates that if he keeps this grain he
will be able to get more than six rubles, from a profiteer, or
from a starving urban worker who has come with his starving
family and may offer two hundred rubles a pood—such a peasant, who hoards hundreds of poods of grain in order to raise
the price and get even a hundred rubles a pood, cannot be called
a working peasant, he becomes transformed into an exploiter,
into someone worse than a robber. What must we do under these
circumstances? Whom can we rely upon in our struggle? We know
that the Soviet revolution and the Soviet government differ from
other revolutions and other governments not only because they
have overthrown the power of the landowners and the capitalists,
not only because they have destroyed the feudal state, the
autocracy, but also because the masses have rebelled against all
the bureaucrats and created a new state in which power must
belong to the workers and peasants—not only must, but already does belong to them. In this state there are no police,
no bureaucrats and no standing army kept in barracks for many
years, isolated from the people and trained to shoot the people.

We place arms in the hands of the workers and peasants, who must
learn the art of war. There are units who give way to temptation, vice and crime because they are not separated by
a Chinese Wall from the world of oppression, from the world of
starvation, in which those who have want to enrich themselves
out of what they have. That is why very often we see detachments
of class-conscious workers leaving Petrograd and Moscow and, on
reaching the district to which they have been sent, going astray
and becoming criminals. We see the bourgeoisie clapping their
hands in delight and filling the columns of their corrupt press
with all sorts of bogies to frighten the people. “See what
your detachments are like,”they say, “what disorder they are creating, how much better our detachments of private
capitalists behaved”.

No, thank you, bourgeois gentlemen! You will not frighten
us. You know very well that recovery from the misfortunes and
ulcers of the capitalist world will not come all at once. And we
know that recovery will come only through struggle; we will
expose every incident of this kind, not to provide material for
the counter-revolutionary Mensheviks and
Constitutional-Democrats to smile and gloat over, but in order
to teach wider masses of the people. Since our detachments do
not fulfil their duties properly, give us more loyal and
class-conscious detachments far exceeding the number of those
who gave way to temptation. These must be organised and
educated; exploited and starving workers who are not class-conscious must be rallied around every class-conscious
worker. The rural poor must be roused, educated and shown that
the Soviet government will do all it possibly can to help them,
so as to carry out the grain monopoly.

And so, when we approached this task, when the Soviet government
stated these questions clearly, it said: comrades, workers,
organise, rally the food detachments, combat every case in which
these detachments show that they are not equal to their duties,
organise more strongly and rectify your mistakes, rally the
village poor around you! The kulaks know that their last hour
has struck, that their enemy is advancing not merely with
sermons, words and phrases, but by organising the village poor;
and if we succeed in organising the village poor we shall
vanquish the kulaks. The kulaks know that the hour of the last,
most determined, most desperate battle for socialism is
approaching.

This struggle seems to be only a struggle for bread, but as a
matter of fact it is a struggle for socialism. If the worers
learn to solve these problems independently—no one will
come to their aind if they learn to rally the village poor
around them, they will achieve victory, they will have bread and
the proper distribution of bread, they will even have the proper
distribution of labour, because by distributing labour properly
we shall be supreme in all spheres of labour, in all spheres of
industry.

Foreseeing all this, the kulaks have made repeated attempts to
bribe the poor. They know that grain must be sold to the state
at six rubles per pood, but they sell grain to a poor peasant
neighbour at three rubles per pood and say to him: “You
can go to a profiteer and sell at forty rubles per pood. We have
common interests; we must unite against the state, which is
robbing us. It wants to give us six rubles per pood; here, take
three poods, you can make sixty rubles. You needn’t worry
about how much I make, that is my business.”

I know that on these grounds armed conflicts with the peasants
repeatedly occur, while the enemies of the Soviet government
gloat over it and snigger, and exert every effort to overthrow
the Soviet government. But we say: “That is because the
food detachments that were sent were not sufficiently class-conscious; but the larger the detachments were the more
frequently we had cases—and this happened repeatedly—when the peasants gave their grain without a
single case of violence, because class-conscious workers show
that their main strength lies, not in violence, but in the fact
that they are the representatives of the organised and enlightened poor, whereas in the rural districts there is a mass
of ignorance, the poor are not enlightened. If the latter are
approached in an intelligent manner, if they are told in plain
language, without bookish words, in a plain human way, that in
Petrograd and Moscow an4 in scores of uyezds people are starving
and typhus is spreading as a result of famine, that tens of
thousands of Russian peasants and workers are dying of starvation, that it is the rich who have been unjustly hoarding
grain and making profit out of the starvation of the people, it
will be possible to organise the poor and get the surplus grain
collected not by violence but by the organisation of the village
poor. I frequently receive complaints about the kulaks from
comrades who have gone to the villages with food detachments and
who have fought against the counter-revolution. I will quote an
example of which I have a particularly lively recollection
because I heard it yesterday, of something that occurred in
Yelets Uyozd. [3] In that uyezd a Soviet of
Workers’ Deputies has been set up, and there are a large
number of class-conscious workers and poor peasants there. Thanks to this, it has been possible to consolidate the
power of the poor. The first time the representatives of Yelets
Uyezd came to report to me I would not believe them, I thought
they were boasting. But what they said was confirmed by comrades
who had been sent especially from Moscow to other gubernias. They said that the manner in which work had been
organised in Yelets was only to be welcomed, and confirmed the
fact that in Russia there were uyezds where the Soviets were
equal to their tasks and had succeeded in completely removing
the kulaks and exploiters from the Soviets, in organising the
toilers, in organising the poor. Let those who use their wealth
for profit clear out of the Soviet state organisations!
(Applause.)

After they had expelled the kulaks they went to the town of
Yelets, a trading town. They did not wait for a decree to
introduce the grain monopoly but remembered that the Soviets
represent a government that is close to the people and that
every person, if he is a revolutionary, if he is a socialist and
is really on the side of the toilers, must act quickly and
decisively. They organised all ’the workers and poor peasants and formed so many detachments that searches were made
all over Yelets. They allowed only the trusted and responsible
leaders of the detachments to enter the houses. Not a single
person of whom they were not certain was allowed to enter the
houses, for they knew how often vacillation occurs and that
nothing disgraces the Soviet government so much as these cases
of robbery committed by unworthy representatives and servants of
the Soviet government. They succeeded in collecting a huge
quantity of surplus grain and there was not a single house in
commercial Yelets in which the bourgeoisie could make any profit
by profiteering.

Of course, I know that it is much easier to do this in a small
town than in a city like Moscow, but it must not be forgotten
that not a single uyezd town possesses the proletarian forces
that Moscow has.

In Tambov, recently, the counter-revolution was victorious for
several hours. It even published one issue of a Menshevik and
Right Socialist-Revolutionary newspaper which called for the
convocation of a Constituent Assembly, for the overthrow of the
Soviet government and declared that the victory of the new
government was permanent. But Red Army men and peasants arrived
from the surrounding country and in one day overthrew this new
“permanent”government, which claimed to be supported by the Constituent Assembly. (Applause.)

The same thing occurred in other uyezds in Tambov Gubernia, a
gubernia of enormous size. Its northern uyezds are in the
non-agricultural zone, but its southern uyezds are extraordinarily fertile, there they gather very big
harvests. Many of the peasants there have surplus grain, and
there one must act energetically and have a particularly firm
and clear understanding of the situation to be able to gain the
support of the poor peasants and overcome the kulaks. There the
kulaks are hostile to every sort of workers’ and peasants’ government and our people have to wait for the
assistance of the Petrograd and Moscow workers who, on every
occasion, armed with the weapon of organisation, expel the
kulaks from the Soviets, organise the poor and jointly with the
local peasants acquire experience in fighting for the state
monopoly of grain, experience in organising the rural poor and
urban toilers in such a way as will guarantee us final and
complete victory. I have quoted these examples to illustrate the
food situation, comrades, because it seems to me that from the
point of view of the working people, for us, for the workers,
for the politically conscious proletariat it is not the
statistical estimate of the amount of grain, of how many million
poods we can obtain, that matters when one is describing the
fight against the kulaks for bread. I leave it to the food
supply experts to draw up these statistics. I must say that if
we succeed in securing the surplus grain from the gubernias
adjacent to the Moscow non-agricultural zone and from fertile
Siberia, even there we could secure enough grain to save the
non-agricultural gubernias from starvation during the few
critical weeks that remain until the harvest. In order to do
that we must organise a still larger number of class-conscious,
advanced workers. This was the main lesson to be learned from
all preceding revolutions, and it is the main lesson to be
learned from our revolution. The better we are organised, the
more widely organisation manifests itself, the more the workers
in the factories realise that their strength lies entirely in
their organisation and that of the village poor, the more will
our victory in the struggle against famine and. in the struggle
for socialism be assured. For, I repeat, our task is not to
invent a new form of government but to rouse, to educate and to
organise every representative of the village poor, even in the
remotest villages, to independent activity. It will not be
difficult for a few class-conscious urban workers, Petrograd and
Moscow workers, to explain, even in remote villages, that it is
wrong to hoard grain, to profiteer in grain, to use it for
making vodka, when hundreds of thousands are dying in Moscow. In
order to do that, the workers of Petrograd and Moscow, and
particularly you, comrades, the representatives of the most
varied trades, factories and works, must thoroughly understand
that no one will come to your assistance, that from other
classes you can expect not assistants but enemies, that the
Soviet government has no loyal intelligentsia at its service. The intelligentsia are using their experience and
knowledge—the highest human achievement—in the service of the exploiters, and are doing all they can to prevent
our gaining victory over the exploiters; their efforts will
cause the death of hundreds of thousands from starvation, but
that will not break the resistance of the toilers. We have no
one to depend upon but the class with which we achieved the
revolution and with which we shall overcome the greatest
difficulties, cross the very difficult zone that lies ahead of
us—and that is the factory workers, the urban and rural
proletariat, who speak to each other in a language they all
understand, who in town and country will vanquish all our
enemies—the kulaks and the rich.

But in order to achieve this we must remember the fundamental postulate of the socialist revolution which the workers so often forget, and that is, that in order to make a
socialist revolution, in order to bring it about, in order to
liberate the people from oppression, it is not necessary
immediately to abolish classes; the most class-conscious and
organised workers must take power in their hands. The workers
must become the ruling class in the state. That is the truth
which the majority of you have read in The Communist Manifesto
of Marx and Engels, which was written more than seventy years
ago, and which has been translated into all languages and
circulated in all countries. Everywhere the truth has been
revealed that in order to vanquish the capitalists it is
necessary during the struggle against exploitation, while
ignorance is rife, while people do not yet believe in the new
system, that the organised urban factory workers become the
ruling class. When you gather together in your factory committees to settle your affairs, remember that the revolution
will not be able to retain a single one of its gains if you, in
your factory committees, merely concern yourselves with
workers’ technical or purely financial interests. The workers and the oppressed classes have managed to seize power
more than once, but never have they been able to retain it. To
do this the workers must be able not only to rise in heroic
struggle and overthrow exploitation; they must also be able to
organise, to maintain discipline, to be staunch, to discuss
affairs calmly when everything is tottering, when you are being
attacked, when innumerable stupid rumours are being spread it is
at such a time that the factory committees, which in all things
are closely connected with the vast masses, are faced with the
great political task of becoming primarily an organ of administration of political life. The fundamental political
problem that faces the Soviet government is that of securing the
proper distribution of grain. Although Yelets succeeded in
bridling the local bourgeoisie, it is much more difficult to do
this in Moscow; but here we have incomparably better organisation, and here you can easily find tens of thousands of
honest people whom your parties and your trade unions will
supply and answer for, who will be able to lead the detachments
and guarantee that they will remain ideologically loyal in spite
of all difficulties, in spite of all temptations and in spite of
the torments of hunger. No other class could undertake this task at the present time, no other class would
ibe able to lead the people who often fall into despair; there s
no other class but the urban factory proletariat that can do
this. Your factory committees must cease to be merely factory
committees, they must become the fundamental state nuclei of the
ruling class. (Applause.) Your organisation, your solidarity,
your energy will determine whether we shall hold out in this
severe transitional period as staunchly as a Soviet government
should hold out. Take up this work yourselves, take it up from
every side, expose abuses every day. Rectify every mistake that
is committed with your own experience—many mistakes are
committed today because the working class is still inexperienced, but the important thing is that it should itself
take up this work and rectify its own mistakes. If we act in
this way, if every committee understands that it is one of the
leaders of the greatest revolution in the world—then we
shall achieve socialism for the whole world! (Applause culminating in an ovation.)

REPLY TO THE DEBATE
ON THE CURRENT SITUATION
JUNE 28, 1918

Comrades, permit me first of all to deal with a few of the
propositions advanced in opposition to me by Paderin, who
delivered the second report. From the shorthand report I note
that he said: “We must do everything possible to enable
primarily the British and German proletariat to rise against
their oppressors. What must be done to bring this about? Is it
our business to help these oppressors? By rousing enmity among
ourselves, by destroying and weakening the country, we infinitely strengthen the position of the imperialists, British,
French and German, who in the end will unite in order to
strangle the working class of Russia. This argument shows how
irresolute the Mensheviks have always been in their struggle
against and in their opposition to imperialist war, because the
argument I have just quoted can only be understood as coming
from the lips of a man who calls himself a defencist, who takes
up a completely imperialist position (applause), of a man who
justifies imperialist war and who repeats the bourgeois lie that
in such a war the workers defend their fatherland. If, indeed,
one adopts the point of view that the workers must not destroy
and weaken the country during such a war, it is tantamount to
calling upon the workers to defend the fatherland in an
imperialist war. And you know what the Bolshevik Government,
which considered it its first duty to publish, to expose and to
pillory the secret treaties, has done. You know that the Allies
waged war for the sake of the secret treaties, and that the
Kerensky government, which existed with the aid and support of
the Mensheviks and the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, not only
did not annul the secret treaties, but did not even publish
them; you know that the Russian people waged war for the sake of
these secret treaties, which promised the Russian landowners and
capitalists, in the event of victory, Constantinople, the
Dardanelles, Lvov, Galicia and Armenia. If we adopt the point of
view of the working class, if we are opposed to the war, how
could we tolerate these secret treaties? As long as we tolerated
the secret treaties, as long as we tolerated the rule of the
bourgeoisie in Russia, we fostered the chauvinistic conviction
in the minds of the German workers that there were no class-conscious workers in Russia, that everyone in Russia
supported imperialism, and that Russia was pursuing a war for
the purpose of plundering Austria and Turkey. But the very
opposite is the case. The workers’ and peasants’ government has done more than any other government in the world
to weaken the German imperialists, to tear the German workers
away from them, because when the secret treaties were published
and exposed to the world, even the German chauvinists, even the
German defencists, even those workers who supported their
government, had to admit in their newspaper
Vonviirts,”.’ their central organ, that “this is an act of a socialist government, a genuinely revolutionary
act”. They had to admit this because not a single imperialist government involved in the war did this; ours was
the only government that denounced the secret treaties.

Of course at the back of every German worker’s mind, no
matter how cowed, downtrodden or bribed by the imperialists he
may be, there is the thought: “Has not our government secret treaties?”(A voice: “Tell us about the Black
Sea fleet.”) All right, I will tell you about it, although
it has nothing to do with the subject. At the back of every
German worker’s mind there is the thought: “If the
Russian workers have gone to the length of denouncing the secret
treaties, has not the German Government secret treaties?”When the Brest negotiations began, Comrade
Trotsky’s exposures reached the whole world. Did not this
policy rouse in an enemy country engaged in a terrible
Imperialist war with other governments, not anger but the
sympathy of the masses of the people? The only government to do
that was our government. Our revolution succeeded in rousing a
great revolutionary movement during wartime in an enemy country
merely by the fact that we denounced the secret treaties, by the
fact that we said: “We will not be deterred by any danger.”If we know, if we say, and not merely say, but
mean it, that international revolution is the only salvation
from world war, from the imperialist massacre of the people,
then we in our revolution must pursue that aim, notwithstanding
all difficulties and all dangers. And when we took this path,
for the first time in history, in Germany, in the most imperialistic and most disciplined country, in the midst of war,
a mass strike broke out and flared up in January. Of course,
there are people who believe that revolution can break out in a
foreign country to order, by agreement. These people are either
mad or they are provocateurs. We have experienced two revolutions during the past twelve years.We know that
revolutions cannot be made to order, or by agreement; they break
out when tens of millions of people come to the conclusion that
it is impossible to live in the old way any longer. We know what
difficulties accompanied the birth of the revolution in 1905 and
in 1917, and we never expected revolution to break out in other
countries at one stroke, as a result of a single appeal. The
revolution now beginning to grow in Germany and in Austria is a
tribute to the great service rendered by the Russian October
Revolution. (Applause.) We read in the newspapers today that in
Vienna, where the bread ration is smaller than ours, where the
plunder of the Ukraine can bring no relief, where the population
says that it has never before experienced such horrors of
starvation, an Arbelterrat has sprung up. In Vienna general
strikes are breaking out again.

And we say to ourselves: This is the second step, this is the
second proof that when the Russian workers denounced the
imperialist secret treaties, when they expelled their bourgeoisie, they acted as consistent class-conscious worker
internationalists, they facilitated the growth of the revolution
in Germany and in Austria in a way that no other revolution in
the world has ever done in a hostile country which was in a
state of war, and in which bitter feeling ran high.

To forecast when a revolution will mature, to promise that it
will come tomorrow, would be deceiving you. You remember,
particularly those of you who experienced both Russian revolutions, that no one in November 1904 could guarantee that
within two months a hundred thousand St. Petersburg workers
would march to the Winter Palace and start a great revolution.

Recall December 1916. How could we guarantee that two months
later the tsarist monarchy would be overthrown in the course of
a few days? We in this country, which has experienced two
revolutions, know and realise that the progress of the revolution cannot be foretold, and that revolution cannot be
called forth. We can only work for the revolution. If you work
consistently, if you work devotedly, if this work is linked up
with the interests of the oppressed masses, who make up the
majority, revolution will come; but where, how, at what moment,
from what immediate cause, cannot be foretold. That is why we
shall never take the liberty of deceiving the masses by saying:
“The German workers will help us tomorrow, they will blow
up their Kaiser the day after tomorrow.” We have no right
to say such things.

Our position is made more difficult by the fact that the Russian
revolution proved to be ahead of other revolutions; but the fact
that we are not alone is proved by the news that reaches us
nearly every day that the best German Social-Democrats are
expressing themselves in favour of the Bolsheviks, that the
Bolsheviks are being supported in the open German press by Clara
Zetkin and also by Franz Mehring, who in a series of articles
has been showing the German workers that the Bolsheviks alone
have properly understood what socialism is. Recently a
Social-Democrat named Hoschka definitely stated in the
Wiirttemberg Landtag that he regarded the Bolsheviks alone as
models of consistency in the pursuit of a correct revolutionary
policy. Do you think that such statements do not find an echo
among scores, hundreds and thousands of German workers who
associate themselves with these statements almost before they
are uttered? When affairs in Germany and Austria have reached
the stage of the formation of Arbelterrdte and of a second mass
strike, we can say without the least exaggeration, without the
least self-deception, that this marks the beginning of a
revolution. We say very definitely: Our policy and our path have
been a correct policy and a correct path; we have helped the
Austrian and the German workers to regard themselves, not as
enemies strangling the Russian workers in the interests of the
Kaiser, in the interests of the German capitalists, but as
brothers of the Russian workers, who are performing the same
revolutionary work as they are. (Applause.)

I would also like to mention a passage in Paderin’s speech
which, in my opinion, deserves attention, the more so that it
partly coincides with the idea expressed by the preceding
speaker. [4] This is the passage: “We now see that civil war is being waged within the working class. Can
we permit this to go on?” You see that civil war is described as war within the working class or as war against the
peasants, as the preceding speaker described it. We know
perfectly well that both descriptions are wrong. The civil war
in Russia is a war waged by the workers and the poor peasants
against the landowners and the capitalists. This war is being
prolonged and protracted because the Russian land-owners and
capitalists were vanquished in October and November with
relatively small losses, were vanquished by the enthusiasm of
the masses of the people under conditions in which it became
immediately clear to them that the people would not support
them. Things reached the stage that even in the Don region,
where there is the largest number of rich Cossacks who live by
exploiting wage labour, where the hopes of the counter-revolution were brightest, even there, Bogayevsky, the
leader of the counter-revolutionary rebellion, had to admit and
publicly admitted: “Ours is a lost cause because even in
our region the majority of the population are on the side of the
Bolsheviks.” (Applause.)

That was the position, that was how the landowners and capitalists lost their counter-revolutionary game in October and
November.

That was the result of their reckless attempt to organise the
officer cadets, the officers, the sons of landowners and
capitalists into a White Guard to fight the workers’ and
peasants’ revolution. And now—if you don’t know this read today’s newspapers—the Czechoslovak
adventurers are operating with the financial assistance of the
Anglo-French capitalists, [5] who are bribing troops to drag us
into the war again. Haven’t you read what. the
Czechoslovaks said iii Samara? They said: “We shall join
Dutov aiid Semyonov and compel the workers of Russia and the
Russian people once again to fight against Germany side by side
with Britain and France. We shall restore those secret treaties
aiid fling you once again, for another four years perhaps, into
this imperialist war in alliance with the bourgeoisie.”
But instead of that we are now waging war against our bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie of other countries,’and it
is solely due to the fact that we are waging this war that we
have won the sympathy and support of the workers of other
countries. If the workers of one belligerent country see that in
the other belligerent country close connections are being
established between the workers and the bourgeoisie it splits
the workers up according to nation and unites them with their
respective bourgeoisie. This is a great evil, it means the
collapse of the socialist revolution, it means the collapse and
doom of the whole International. (Applause.)

In 1914 the International was wrecked because the workers of all
countries united with the bourgeoisie in their respective
countries and split their own ranks. Now, this split is being
healed. Perhaps you have read that in Britain recently the
Scottish schoolteacher and trade unionist MacLean was sentenced
for a second time, to five years’ imprisonment—the first time he was sentenced to eighteen months—for
exposing the real objects of the war and speaking about the
criminal nature of British imperialism. When he was released
there was already a representative of the Soviet Government in
Britain, Litvinov, who immediately appointed MacLean Consul, a
representative of the Soviet Russian Federative Republic in
Britain, and the Scottish workers greeted this appointment with
enthusiasm. The British Government has again started persecuting
MacLean and this time not only as a Scottish schoolteacher, but
also as Consul of the Federative Soviet Republic. MacLean is in
prison because he acted openly as the representative of our
government; we have never seen this man, he is the beloved
leader of the Scottish workers, he has never belonged to our
Party, but we joined with him; the Russian and Scottish workers
united against the British Government in spite of the fact that
the latter buys Czechoslovaks and is manoeuvring frantically to drag the Russian Republic into the
war. This is proof that in all countries, irrespective of their
position in the war—in Germany which is fighting against
us, in Britain which is trying to grab Baghdad and strangle
Turkey—the workers are uniting with the Russian
Bolsheviks, with the Russian Bolshevik revolution. The speaker
whose words I have quoted said that workers and peasants are
waging a civil war against workers and peasants; we know
perfectly well that this is not true. The working class is one
thing; groups, small strata of the working class are another
thing. From 1871 to 1914, for almost half a century, the German
working class was a model of socialist organisation for the
whole world. We know that it had a party with a membership of a
million, that it created trade unions with a membership of two,
three and four millions; nevertheless, in the course of this
half-century hundreds of thousands of German workers remained
united in Christian trade unions, which stood staunchly for the
priests, for the church and for the Kaiser. Who were the real
representatives of the working class? Was it the huge German
Social-Democratic Party and the trade unions, or the hundreds of
thousands of church-going workers? The working class, which
comprises the overwhelming majority of the class-conscious,
advanced, thinking workers, is one thing, while a single
factory, a single district, a few groups of workers who still
remain on the side of the.bourgeoisie are another thing.

The overwhelming majority of the working class of
Russia—this is shown by all the elections to the Soviets,
the factory committees and conferences—ninety-nine per cent of them are on the side of the Soviet government
(applause), knowing that this government is waging war against
the bourgeoisie, against the kulaks and not against the peasants
and workers. It is quite a different matter that there is an
insignificant group of workers still in slavish dependence upon
the bourgeoisie. We are not waging war against them but against
the bourgeoisie. If those insignificant groups which are still
in alliance with the bourgeoisie get hurt in the process they
have only themselves to blame. (Applause.)

A question has been sent to me in writing; it reads as follows:
“Why are counter-revolutionary newspapers still published?” One of the reasons is that there are elements
among the printers who are bribed by the bourgeoisie. [6] (Commotion, shouts: “It’s
not true.”) You can shout as much as you like, but you will not prevent me from telling the trtith, which all the
workers know and which I have just begun to explain. When a
worker attaches great importance to the wages he gets for
working for the bourgeois press, when he says: “I want to
keep my high wages by helping the bourgeoisie to sell poison, to
poison the minds of the people,” then I say it is as if
these workers were bribed by the bourgeoisie (applause), not in
the sense that any individual person was hired, but in the sense
in which all Marxists have spoken about the British workers who
ally themselves with their capitalists. All of you who have read
trade union literature know that there are not only trade unions
in Britain, but also alliances between the workers and capitalists in a particular industry for the purpose of raising
prices and of robbing everybody else. All Marxists, all
socialists of all countries point the finger of scorn at these
cases and, beginning with Marx and Engels, say that there are
workers who, owing to their ignorance and pursuit of their craft
interests, allow themselves to be bribed by the bourgeoisie. They have sold their birthright, their right to the
socialist revolution, by entering into an alliance with their
capitalists against the overwhelming majority of the workers and
the oppressed toilers in their own country, against their own
class. The same thing is happening here. When certain groups of
workers say, the fact that the stuff we print is opium, poison,
spreads lies and provocation, has nothing to do with us, we get
high wages and we don’t care a hang for anybody else—we will denounce such workers. In our literature we
have always said openly: “Such workers are abandoning the
working class and deserting to the side of the bourgeoisie.” (Applause.)

Comrades, I will in a moment deal with the questions that have
been put to me; but first of all, so as not to forget, I will
reply to the question about the Black Sea fleet, [7] which
seems to have been put for the purpose of exposing us. Let me
tell you that the man who was operating there was Comrade
Raskolnikov, whom the Moscow and Petrograd workers know very
well because of the agitation and Party work be has carried on. Comrade Raskolnikov himself will be here
and he will tell you how he agitated in favour of destroying the
fleet rather than allow the German troops to use it for the
purpose of attacking Novorossiisk. That was the situation in
regard to the Black Sea fleet; and the People’s Commissars
Stalin, Shlyapnikov and Raskolnikov will arrive in Moscow soon
and tell us all about it. You will see then that ours was the
only possible policy; like the Brest peace policy, it caused us
many misfortunes but it enabled the Soviet government and the
workers’ socialist revolution to hold their banner aloft
before the workers of all countries. If the number of workers in
Germany who are abandoning the old prejudices about the
Bolsheviks, and who understand that our policy is correct, is
growing day by day it is due to the tactics we have been
pursuing since the Brest Treaty.

Of the questions that have been sent up to me I will deal with
the two concerning the transportation of grain. Certain workers
ask: “Why do you prohibit individual workers from bringing
grain into the town when it is for’ the use of their own
families?” The reply is a simple one. Just think what would happen if the thousands of poods that are necessary for a
given locality, for a given factory, for a given district, or
for a given street were carried by thousands of people. If we
allowed this, the food supply organisations would begin to break
down entirely. We do not blame the man who, tormented by hunger,
travels into the country to get grain and procures it in
whatever way he can, but we say: “We do not exist as a workers’ and peasants’ government for the purpose of
legalising and encouraging disintegration and ruin.” A government is not required for this purpose. It is required for
the purpose of uniting and organising the class-conscious in
order to combat lack of class consciousness. We cannot blame
those who owing to their lack of class consciousness throw up
everything, close their eyes to everything, and try to save
themselves by procuring grain in whatever way they can, but we
can blame Party people who, while advocating the grain monopoly,
do not sufficiently foster class consciousness and solidarity in
action. Yes, the struggle against the bag-trader, against the
private transportation of grain is a very difficult one because
it is a struggle against ignorance, against lack of class
consciousness, against the lack of organisation of the broad
masses; but we shall never abandon this struggle. Every time
people try to collect grain on their own, we shall call for
proletarian socialist methods of combating famine: having united
together, let us replace the sick food detachments by new
forces, by fresher, stronger, more honest, more class-conscious
and tried men, and we shall collect the same amount of grain,
the same thousands of poods that are collected individually by
two hundred persons, each carrying fifteen poods, each raising
prices and increasing profiteering. We shall unite these two
hundred persons, we shall create a strong, compact workers’army. If we do not succeed in doing this at the
first attempt we shall repeat our efforts; we shall try to
induce the class-conscious workers in every factory to delegate
larger numbers of more reliable people for the purpose of
combating profiteering, and we are sure that the class consciousness, discipline and organisation of the workers will
in the last resort withstand all severe trials. When people are
convinced by their own experience that individual bag-traders
cannot help to save hundreds of thousands from starvation we
shall see the victory of the cause of organisation and class
consciousness, and by united action we shall organise the fight
against famine and secure the proper distribution of grain.

I am asked: “Why is not a monopoly introduced on manufactured goods, which are as necessary as grain?” My
reply is: “The Soviet government is adopting all measures
to this end.” You know that there is a tendency to organise, to amalgamate the textile factories, the textile
industry. You know that the majority of the people in the
leading bodies of this organisation are workers, you know that
the Soviet government is preparing to nationalise all branches
of industry; you know that the difficulties that confront us in
this matter are enormous, and that much effort will be required
to do all this in an organised manner. We are not setting to
work on this task in the way governments which rely on bureaucrats do. It is quite easy to manage affairs in that way:
let one man receive 400 rubles per month; let another get more,
a thousand rubles per month—our bussiness is to give orders and the others must obey. That is how all bourgeois
countries are administered; they hire officials at high
salaries, they hire the sons of the bourgeoisie and entrust the
administration to them. The Soviet Republic cannot be administered in this way. We have no officials to manage and
guide the work of amalgamating all the textile factories, of
registering all their property and stocks, of introducing a
monopoly of all articles of primary necessity, and of properly
distributing them. We call upon the workers to do this work; we
call upon the representatives of the Textile Workers’
Union and say to them: “You must form the majority on the
collegium of the Central Textile Board, and you are the majority
on it, in the same way as you are the majority on the collegiums
of the Supreme Economic Council. Comrades, workers, take up this
very important State task yourselves. We know that it is much
more difficult than appointing efficient officials, but we know
also that there is no other way of doing it.” Power must
be placed in the hands of the working class, and the advanced
workers must, in spite of all difficulties, learn by their own
bitter experience, by their own efforts, by the work of their
own hands, how all articles, all textile goods, should be
distributed in the interests of the toilers. (Applause.)

Hence, the Soviet government is doing all it possibly can in the
present circumstances to introduce a state monopoly and to fix
prices. It is doing it through the medium of the workers, in
conjunction with the workers; it gives them the majority on the
management boards, and in every leading centre, as, for example,
the Supreme Economic Council or the amalgamated metalworks, or
the amalgamated sugar refineries, which were nationalised in a
few weeks. This is a difficult road, but, I repeat, we cannot
avoid difficulties in the task of getting the workers to adopt a
new position, workers who have been accustomed and have been
trained by the bourgeoisie for hundreds of years merely to carry
out its orders slavishly, to work like convicts, of making them
feel that they are the government. We are the owners of
industry, we are the owners of the grain, we are the owners of
all the wealth of the country. Only when this has deeply
penetrated the minds of the working class, when, by their own
experience, by their own efforts, they increase their forces
tenfold, will all the difficulties of the socialist revolution
be overcome.

I conclude by once again appealing to this factory committee
conference. In the city of Moscow the difficulties are particularly great because it is an enormous centre of trade and
speculation in which, for many years, tens of thousands of
people have obtained their livelihood by trade and speculation. Here the difficulties are particularly great, but
here there are forces that no small town in the country
possesses. Let the workers’ organisations, let the factory
committees remember and take firm note of what present events
and the famine that has descended upon the toilers of Russia
teach. New organisations, broader organisations of class-conscious and advanced workers alone can save the
revolution and prevent the restoration of the rule of the
landowners and capitalists. Such workers are now in the
majority, but it is not enough; they must take a greater part in
general state work. In Moscow we have hosts of cases of
profiteers gambling on the famine, making profit out of the
famine, breaking the state grain monopoly, of the rich having
everything they desire. In Moscow there are 8,000 members of the
Communist Party. In Moscow the trade unions can delegate 20,000
to 30,000 men and women whom they can vouch for, who will be
reliable and staunch exponents of proletarian policy. Unite
them, create hundreds of thousands of detachments, tackle the
food problem, search the whole of the rich population, and you
will secure what you need. (Applause.)

In my report I told you what successes were achieved in this
sphere in the town of Yelets; but it is more difficult to
achieve this in Moscow. I said that Yelets was a well organised
town. There are many towns that are much less organised because
this is a very difficult matter, because it is not a matter of a
shortage of arms’we have any amount of them’the difficulty lies in appointing hundreds and thousands of
completely reliable workers to responsible administration posts,
workers who understand that they are not working in their local
cause but in the cause of the whole of Russia, who are capable
of sticking at their posts as representatives of the whole
class, of organising the work according to a definite and
systematic plan, of carrying out orders, of carrying out the
decisions of the Moscow Soviet, of the Moscow organisations
representing the whole of proletarian Moscow. The whole
difficulty lies in organising the proletariat, in training it to
become more class-conscious than it has been up to now. Look at
the Petrograd elections. [8] You will see that although famine is
raging there even worse than in Moscow and still greater
misfortunes have befallen it, the loyalty to the workers’
revolution is growing, organisation and solidarity are increasing, and you will say to yourselves: the disasters that
have befallen us are multiplying but the determination of the
working class to overcome all these difficulties is multiplying
also. Take this path, increase your efforts, put thousands of
new detachments on this path to help to solve the food problem,
and together with you, relying on your support, we will overcome
the famine and secure proper distribution. (Applause.)

Resolution On The Report On The Current Situation

The Fourth Moscow Conference of Factory Committees wholeheartedly supports the Soviet government’s food
policy and particularly approves (and insists that it should be
supported by all workers) the policy of uniting the rural poor.

The liberation of the workers can be achieved only by the
workers’ own efforts, and only the closest alliance between the urban workers and the rural poor can overcome the
resistance of the bourgeoisie and the kulaks, bring all
surpluses of grain into their hands and achieve proper distribution among those in need both in town and country.

The Conference calls on all factory committees to exert every
effort to organise broader sections of the workers in food
detachments and to send them under the leadership of the most
reliable comrades to give all-round support to the food policy
of the workers’ and peasants’ government.

Endnotes

[1]
Fourth Conference of Trade Unions and Factory Commitlee
of Moscow was held from June 27 to July 2, 1918. It was attended
by 472 delegates with a vote and 71 with a voice but no vote; 341
of them were Communists, 34 Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, 24
Mensheviks, 9 Right S.R.s, and 64 non-party people and representatives of other groups. The Conference considered the
food situation; universal military training and mobilisation;
labour discipline; work of the labour exchange;rules of the
factory committees, etc. Lenin delivered a report on the vital
question of food suptly. The Conference passed a resolution based
on the draft propose by Lenin. In spite of opposition from the
Mensheviks and S.R.s, the Conference approved the resolutions
moved by the Communist group on all questions.

[2]
In May-June 1918, Austria-Hungary was swept by a wave of
strikes, demonstrations and mass protests by the workers of a
political and anti-militarist nature. A big strike was launched
in Vienna in the middle of June over the reduction of the bread
ration; Soviets of Workers’ Deputies (A rbei terrdte)
came. into being and started operating in Vienna, Budapest and
other cities.

The Vienna Soviet presented the government with the strikers’ demands: conclusion of peace, increase of wages,
reduction of working hours and restoration of the former bread
ration. The Social-Democratic leaders were unable to prevent the
strike but they succeeded in making the Vienna Soviet abandon
it.

The first Soviets of Workers’ Deputies and Soldiers’
Deputies	were formed during the strike campaign in Vienna,
Budapest and	other cities in January 1918. A political strike, which spread to the	industrial centres of
Austria-Hungary, was declared in Vienna on	January l4in
protest against the rapacious demands made on Soviet	Russia
by the governments of the Austro-German bloc during the	peace
negotiations. Strike calls went out for immediate conclusion
of general peace on the terms proposed by Soviet Russia,
abolition	of wartime laws and the censorship, an amnesty for
political pris-	oners, fair distribution of food, etc. The
movement was crushed	and the Soviets broken up with the
direct support of the opportunist leaders of the Austrian
Social-Democrats.

[3]
Lenin is referring to the article “The Secret Treaties
Expose(l”, printed on November 28, 1917, in the newspaper
Vorwdrts (For-w.,xrd) No. 326. It was admitted in this article
that “by publishing the secret despatches exchanged between St. Petersburg and Paris the Bolshevik Government of
Russia is performing a truly revolutionary act”.

Vorivrts was the main daily newspaper of the German
Social-Democratic Party and had been coming out in Berlin since
1891.	In the late nineties, after the death of Engels the
editorship of the	paper fell into the hands of the Right wing of
the party and began systematically printing articles by
opportunists. During the ’imperialist war of 1914-18
Vortvdrts took up a position of social-chauvinism; after the
Great October Socialist Revolution the paper conducted anti-Soviet propaganda. It continued appearing in Berlin until
1933. [See also the Vorwarts glossary entry ]

[4] The
reference is to V. A. Tikhomirov, a representative of the
Bogorodsk Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, who was also at the
time chairman of the Bogorodsk co-operatives union.

[5]
Lenin is referring to the article “The French
Millions” published June 28, 1918, in Prukopnik Svobody (Pioneer of Freedom), the main newspaper of the
C.E.C. of the Czechoslovak Communist groups in Soviet Russia. In
this article it was stated that the

French and British governments had given the Czechoslovak
white-guards about 15 million rubles. The article was reprinted
on the same day in Pravda No. 130 and a summary appeared in
Izvestia VTsIK No. 132.

[6]
Lenin has in mind a group of print workers which had for a
longtime been under the influence of the Mensheviks and Right
S.R.s who ran the yellow Union of Printing Trade Workers. After
the October Revolution this union opposed Soviet power and
organised strikes in Moscow, Petrograd and other cities. The
Bolsheviks and Left Internationalists had their groups in all
the large printshops and founded the Red Union of Printers. When
this union was organised, the influence of the yellow union
began to decline.

[7]
The Black Sea fleet was moved from Sevastopol to Novorosslisk on
April 29-30, 1918, on orders from the Soviet Government because the Crimea was being occupied by the German
imperialists. Lenin set forth the circumstances concerning
the fleet’s removal and its possible return to
Sevastopol in the “Protest to the German Government against the Occupation of the Crimea". Since there was no
possibility of saving the fleet and the Soviet Government did
not wish to surrender it to the German imperialists, who had
presented an ultimatum demanding the return of the fleet to
Sevastopol, Lenin sent the following instruction to the Supreme
Military Council: in view of the hopelessness of the situation,
which	as been proved by the highest military authorities,
the fleet must be destroyed immediately” (see
History of the Civil War in the U.S.S.R., Vol. 3, 1957,
p. 139). On June 18-19 the government’s order was
carried out. Most of the ships were scuttled off Novorossiisk.

[8]
The reference is to the elections to the Petrograd Soviet in
June 1918-. During the elections the Mensheviks and S.R.s
conducted a	bitter struggle against the Bolsheviks, resorting to terrorism (on June 20 during the elections
V. Volodarsky, an active member of the Communist Party, was
assassinated by a Right S.R.). The Communists won the election. The first session of the Soviet on June 27 was
attended by 405 Bolsheviks and Bolshevik sympathisers, 75 Left
S.’R.s, 59 Menshevik defencists and Right S.R.s and 43 non-party people.