V. I. Lenin

Our Foreign and Domestic Position and Party Tasks

Speech Delivered To The Moscow Gubernia Conference Of The R.C.P.(B.) [1]

November 21, 1920 ( Applause. ) Comrades, in speaking of the
international position of the Soviet Republic we naturally have to
deal mainly with the Polish war and Wrangel’s defeat. I
think that at a meeting of Party workers who have, of course,
followed the Party press and have frequently heard major reports
on this question, there is no need and indeed it would be
superfluous, for me to speak in detail on this period or on each
phase of the war against Poland, on the character of our
offensives, or on the significance of our defeat at Warsaw. I
presume that most of the comrades are so familiar with this aspect
of the matter that I would only be repeating myself, which would
be unsatisfactory to these comrades. I shall therefore speak, not
on the various episodes and turns of our Polish campaign but on
the results we now have before us.

After the Red Army’s brilliant victories in the summer,
the serious defeat at Warsaw, and the conclusion of a preliminary
peace with Poland, which at this very moment, in Riga, is being or
at least should be turned a conclusive peace, the chances of that
preliminary peace really becoming conclusive have greatly
increased as a result of Wrangel’s débâcle. Now that the latter has become an
established fact the imperialist press in the Entente countries is
beginning to show its cards and disclose what it has most of all
kept in the dark.

I do not know whether you noticed a brief news item published
in the papers today or some days ago to the effect that the
newspaper Temps , mouthpiece of the French imperialist bourgeoisie, now speaks of the peace with Poland having been
signed against France’s advice. There can be no doubt that
the French bourgeoisie’s spokesmen are admitting a truth
they would have preferred to cover up and indeed have covered up
for a very long time. Despite the unfavourable terms of the Polish
peace (which are more advantageous than those we ourselves offered
to the Polish landowners this April in order to avoid any war),
and they are indeed unfavourable as compared to what might have
been achieved but for the extremely serious situation at Warsaw,
we succeeded in getting terms that frustrate the greater part of
the imperialists’ over-all plan. The French bourgeoisie have
now acknowledged that they insisted on Poland continuing the war,
and were opposed to the conclusion of a peace, because they feared
the rout of Wrangel’s army and wished to support a new intervention and campaign against the Soviet Republic. Though
Polish imperialism’s conditions have impelled it to go to
war against Russia—despite this—the French imperialists’ plans have collapsed, and as a result we now
have gained something more than a mere breathing-space.

Of the small states formerly belonging to the Russian Empire,
Poland has been among those that have been most of all at odds
with the Great-Russian nation during the last three years, and
made the greatest claims to a large slice of territory inhabited
by non-Poles. We concluded peace with Finland, Estonia and
Latvia [2] also against the wishes of the imperialist Entente, but this was easier because the bourgeoisie
of Finland, Estonia and Latvia entertained no imperialist aims
that would call for a war against the Soviet Republic, whereas the
Polish bourgeois republic had an eye, not only to Lithuania and
Byelorussia but the Ukraine as well. Furthermore, it was impelled
along the same direction by the age-old struggle of Poland, who
used to be a great power and is now pitting herself against
another great power—Russia. Even at present, Poland cannot
hold back from this age-long struggle. That is why Poland has been
far more bellicose and stubborn in her war plans against our
Republic, and why our present success in concluding peace against
the wishes of the Entente is so much more resounding. Among the
states which have preserved the bourgeois system and border on
Russia, there is no other country but Poland on which the Entente
can rely in a long-term plan of military intervention; that is why
in their common hate of the Soviets, all the bourgeois states are
directly interested in having Eastern Galicia under the control of
the Polish landed proprietors.

Moreover, Poland lays claim to the Ukraine and Lithuania. This
gives the campaign a particularly acute and stubborn character. Keeping Poland supplied with war materials has,
naturally, been the main concern of France and certain other
powers, and it is quite impossible to estimate just how much money
has gone into this. Therefore, the importance of the Red
Army’s final victory despite our defeat at Warsaw, is particularly great, for it has placed Poland in a position in
which she is unable to prosecute the war. She has had to agree to
peace terms that have given her less than those we proposed in
April 1920, before the Polish offensive, when we, unwilling to
discontinue our work of economic construction, proposed boundaries
that were highly disadvantageous to us. At that time, the press of
the petty-bourgeois patriots, to whose number both our
Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks belong, accused the
Bolsheviks of submissiveness, and an almost Tolstoyan attitude
displayed by the Soviet government. The latter term was used to
qualify our acceptance of peace along the proposed Pilsudski line,
which left Minsk in Polish hands, the boundary lying some 50 vests
and at places some 100 vests east of the present line. Of course,
I do not have to tell a meeting of Party workers why we accepted,
and had to accept, worse boundaries if indeed our work of economic
construction was to go on. The outcome was that, by waging war,
Poland, which had retained her bourgeois system, brought about an
acute dislocation of her entire economy, a tremendous growth of
discontent, and a bourgeois reign of terror, not only against the
industrial workers but against the farm labourers as well. Poland’s entire position as a bourgeois state became
so precarious that there could be no question of continuing the
war.

The successes scored in this respect by the Soviets have been
tremendous. When, three years ago, we raised the question of the
tasks and the conditions of the proletarian revolution’s
victory in Russia, we always stated emphatically that victory
could not be permanent unless it was followed up by a proletarian
revolution in the West, and that a correct appraisal of our
revolution was possible only from the international point of
view. For victory to be lasting, we must achieve the victory of
the proletarian revolution in all, or at any rate in several, of
the main capitalist countries. After three years of desperate and
stubborn struggle, we can see in what respect our predictions have
or have not materialised. They have not materialised in the sense
that there has been no rapid or simple solution of the problem. None of us, of course, expected that such an unequal
struggle as the one waged by Russia against the whole of the
capitalist world could last for three years. It has emerged that
neither side—the Russian Soviet Republic or the capitalist
world—has gained victory or suffered defeat; at the same
time it has turned out that, while our forecasts did not
materialise simply, rapidly and directly, they were fulfilled
insofar as we achieved the main thing—the possibility has
been maintained of the existence of proletarian rule and the
Soviet Republic even in the event of the world socialist
revolution being delayed. In this respect it must be said that the
Republic’s international position today provides the best
and most precise confirmation of all our plans and all our
policy.

Needless to say, there can be no question of comparing the
military strength of the R.S.F.S.R. with that of all the
capitalist powers. In this respect we are incomparably weaker than
they are, yet, after three yeas of war, we have forced almost all
of these states to abandon the idea of further intervention. This
means that what we saw as possible three years ago, while the
imperialist war was not yet over, i.e., a highly protracted
situation, without any final decision one way or the other, has
come about. That has been, not because we have proved militarily
stronger and the Entente weaker, but because throughout this
period the disintegration in the Entente countries has intensified, whereas our inner strength has grown. This has been
confirmed and proved by the war. The Entente was unable to fight
us with its own forces. The workers and peasants of the capitalist
countries could not be forced to fight us. The bourgeois states
were able to emerge from the imperialist war with their bourgeois
regimes intact. They were able to stave off and delay the crisis
hanging over them, but basically they so undermined their own
position that, despite all their gigantic military forces, they
had to acknowledge, after three years, that they were unable to
crush the Soviet Republic with its almost non-existent military
forces. It has thus turned out that our policy and our predictions
have proved fundamentally correct in all respects and that the
oppressed people in any capitalist country have indeed shown
themselves our allies, for it was they who stopped the war. Without having gained an international victory, which we
consider the only sure victory, we are in a position of having won
conditions enabling us to exist side by side with capitalist
powers, who are now compelled to enter into trade relations with
us. In the course of this struggle we have won the right to an
independent existence.

Thus a glance at our international position as a whole will
show that we have achieved tremendous successes and have won, not
only a breathing-space but something much more significant. By a
breathing-space we understand a brief period during which the
imperialist powers have had many opportunities to renew in greater
force the war against us. Today, too, we do not underestimate the
danger and do not deny the possibility of future military
intervention by the capitalist countries. It is essential for us
to maintain our military preparedness. However, if we cast a
glance at the conditions in which we defeated all attempts made by
the Russian counter-revolutionaries and achieved a formal peace
with all the Western states, it will be clear that we have
something more than a breathing space: we have entered a new
period, in which we have won the right to our fundamental
international existence in the network of capitalist states. Domestic conditions have not allowed a single powerful
capitalist state to hurl its army against Russia; this has been
due to the revolution having matured within such countries,
preventing them from overcoming us as quickly as they might have
done. There were British, French and Japanese armies on Russian
territory for three years. There can be no doubt that the most
insignificant concentration of forces by these three powers would
have been quite enough to win a victory over us in a few months,
if not in a few weeks. We were able to contain that attack only on
account of the demoralisation among the French troops and the
unrest that set in among the British and Japanese. We have made
use of this divergence of imperialist interests all the time. We
defeated the interventionists only because their interests divided
them, thereby enhancing our strength and unity. This gave us a
breathing-space and rendered impossible the complete victory of
German imperialism at the time of the Peace of Brest-Litovsk.

These dissensions have become more aggravated of late, especially because of the project of an agreement on concessions
with a group of American capitalist sharks, with the toughest of
them, headed by a multimillionaire who expects to form a group of
multimillionaires. [3] We know that almost all reports from
the Far East bear witness to the extreme resentment felt in Japan
over the conclusion of this agreement, although so far there has
been no agreement, but only the draft of one. Japanese public
opinion, however, is already seething, and today I read a
communication which said that Japan is accusing Soviet Russia of
wanting to set Japan against America.

We have correctly appraised the intensity of the imperialist
rivalry and have told ourselves that we must make systematic use
of the dissension between them so as to hamper their struggle
against us. Political dissension is already apparent in the
relations between Britain and France. Today we can speak, not
merely of a breathing space, but of a real chance of a new and
lengthy period of development. Until now we have actually had no
basis in the international sense. We now have this basis, the
reason being the attitude of the smaller powers that are
completely dependent on the Great Powers both in the military and
in the economic sense. It now appears that, despite the pressure
brought to bear by France, Poland has signed a peace with us. The
Polish capitalists have a hate of Soviet power; they crush the
most ordinary strikes with unparalleled ferocity. They want war
with Soviet Russia more than anything else, yet they prefer to
make peace with us rather than carry out the conditions set by the
Entente. We see that the imperialist powers dominate the whole
world although they comprise an insignificant part of the
world’s population. The fact that a country has appeared
that for three years has resisted world imperialism has
considerably changed the international situation; the minor
powers—and they form the majority of the world’s population—are therefore all inclined to make peace with
us.

The entry of the socialist country into trade relations with
capitalist countries is a most important factor ensuring our
existence in such a complex and absolutely exceptional situation.

I have had occasion to observe a certain Spargo, an American
social-chauvinist close to our Right Socialist-Revolutionaries
and Mensheviks, one of the leaders of the Second International
and member of the American Socialist Party, a kind of American
Alexinsky, and author of a number of anti-Bolshevik books, who
has reproached us—and has quoted the fact as evidence of
the complete collapse of communism—for speaking of transactions with capitalist powers. He has written that he
cannot imagine better proof of the complete collapse of
communism and the break down of its programme. I think that
anybody who has given thought to the matter will say the
reverse. No better proof of the Russian Soviet Republic’s
material and moral victory over the capitalists of the whole
world can be found than the fact that the powers that took up
arms against us because of our terror and our entire system have
been compelled, against their will, to enter into trade
relations with us in the knowledge that by so doing they are
strengthening us. This might have been advanced as proof of the
collapse of communism only if we had promised, with the forces
of Russia alone, to transform the whole world, or had dreamed of
doing so. However, we have never harboured such crazy ideas and
have always said that our revolution will be victorious when it
is supported by the workers of all lands. In fact, they went
half-way in their support, for they weakened the hand raised
against us, yet in doing so they were helping us.

I shall not dwell any further on this question but shall only
remark that at the moment conditions in the Caucasus are
becoming most complex and extremely difficult to analyse, with
the likelihood that war may be forced on us any day. But with
the peace with Poland almost assured and Wrangel wiped out, this
war cannot be so alarming and, if forced on us, only promises to
strengthen and fortify our position even more. Newspaper reports
of events in Armenia and Turkey give us some idea of this. [4] An extremely confused situation has
arisen, but I am absolutely confident that we shall emerge from
it, preserving peace on the present basis, which in some
respects is extremely favourable, on a basis that is satisfactory to us and permits our economic existence. We are
doing all we can to ensure this. It is, however, quite likely
that circumstances may arise which will directly force war on us
or indirectly lead to it. We can view this prospect quite
calmly—this will be a war in a distant region, with the
balance of forces fully in our favour, probably ensuring greater
advantages than the Polish war. The Polish war was a war on two
fronts, with a threat from Wrangel, and it could not be called
peripheral, because the Pilsudski line did not run so far from
Moscow. With this, I shall conclude my review of the international situation.

I now turn to the state of affairs at home. The failure of a
number of attempts at military intervention has led to a
considerable improvement in our economic position. The main cause
of our former desperate position was that we in Central Russia,
industrial Russia, proletarian Russia—Petrograd, Moscow, and
Ivanovo-Voznesensk—were cut off from all the main grain-producing areas such as Siberia, the South and the
South-East; we were cut off from the Donets Basin, one of the main
sources of fuel, and from the sources of oil, and it seemed
absolutely impossible for the Republic to hold out. You know what
appalling distress, what extreme privation, what grain shortages
and famine we experienced because we were cut off from the richest
grain-producing areas and the most important economic regions. The
return of these territories is to a considerable extent
responsible for the improvement now to be seen. Thanks to the
possibility of drawing on Siberia and the Caucasus, and to the
social changes developing in our favour in the Ukraine, there is
promise that with the state food procurements in the forthcoming
food campaign we shall not only emerge without an actual shortage
as we did this year, but shall have sufficient food for all
industrial workers. This is the first campaign when we can hope
that, as a result of the doubtless improvement in the transport
system, the government will dispose of such food stocks—between 250 and 300 million poods of grain—that
we shall not merely be talking about socialist construction and
doing precious little, as at present, but shall actually operate
with real armies of labour; we shall be able to transfer hundreds
of thousands of industrial workers, or workers now engaged in
provisioning for industry, to really urgent and essential work,
and to improve that work in the same way as the improved fuel
situation made it possible to restore the textile industry. The
Ivanovo-Voznesensk Gubernia mills have begun to work. At first,
not more than a quarter of a million spindles were operating but
at present there are already half a million, perhaps 600,000, and
by the end of the year we count on a million spindles in
operation. We think the number will go up to four million next
year. Whereas quite recently we made both ends meet with the
greatest difficulty by using up old stocks, conditions have now
set in in which we are starting to rehabilitate Russia’s
ruined industry, and shall be able, while collecting grain from
the countryside, to supply the peasants in return with salt and
paraffin oil, and, though in small quantities, with textiles. Without this it is useless to talk of socialist
construction.

While in the international sense we have gained a footing by
concluding a series of military campaigns and by wresting peace
treaties from a number of states, it has only now become
economically possible for us to supply the industrial workers with
bread and to provide the bread of industry, namely fuel, on a
scale enabling us to set about the construction of socialism. That
is our main task, the root of the problem, a transition we have
several times tried to make. I remember that at a meeting of the
All-Russia Central Executive Committee in April 1918, I said that
our military tasks appeared to be ending and that we had not only
convinced Russia, not only won her from the exploiters, for the
working people but had now to tackle other tasks in order to
govern Russia in the interests of her economic construction. [5] Our breathing-space at the time proved
quite brief. The war that was forced on us, starting with the
Czechoslovak revolt in the summer of 1918, was most ferocious. However, we made several attempts, both in the spring
of 1918 and, on a broader scale, in the spring of this year when
the question of labour armies was posed in practice. We must now
once again give top priority to this transitional stage and exert
every effort to achieve it. Regarded from the international point
of view, from the standpoint of victory over capitalism in
general, this is a paramount task of the entire socialist
revolution To defeat capitalism in general, it is necessary, in
the first place, to defeat the exploiters and to uphold the power
of the exploited, namely, to accomplish the task of overthrowing
the exploiters by revolutionary forces; in the second place, to
accomplish the constructive task, that of establishing new
economic relations, of setting an example of how this should be
done. These two aspects of the task of accomplishing a socialist
revolution are indissolubly connected, and distinguish our
revolution from all previous ones, which never went beyond the
destructive aspect.

If we do not accomplish this second task, nothing will follow
from our successes, from our victories in overthrowing the
exploiters, and from our military rebuff to international
imperialism, and a return to the old system will be inevitable. In
the theoretical sense, that is beyond question. In this instance,
the transitional stage is abrupt and most difficult, and calls for
new methods, a different deployment and use of forces, a different
emphasis, a new psychological approach, and so on. In the place of
methods of the revolutionary overthrow of the exploiters and of
repelling the tyrants, we must apply the methods of constructive
organisation; we must prove to the whole world that we are a force
capable, not only of resisting any attempt to crush us by force of
arms but of setting an example to others. All the writings of the
greatest socialists have always provided guidance on these two
aspects of the task of the socialist revolution which, as two
aspects of the same task, refer both to the outside world, to
those states that have remained in capitalist hands, and to the
non-proletarians of one’s own country. We have convinced the
peasants that the proletariat provides them with better conditions
of existence than the bourgeoisie did; we have convinced them of
this in practice. When the peasants, though they were dissatisfied
with Bolshevik government, compared it in practice with the rule
of the Constituent Assembly, Kolchak and the others they drew the
conclusion that the Bolsheviks guaranteed them a better existence
and defended them militarily from violence by world imperialism. Yet, under conditions of bourgeois rule, half of the
peasantry lived in a bourgeois fashion, and this could not have
been otherwise. The proletariat must now solve the second problem:
it must prove to the peasant that the proletariat can provide him
with the example and practice of economic relations of a higher
level than those under which every peasant family farms on its
own. The peasant still believes only in this old system; he still
considers this the normal state of affairs. That is beyond
doubt. It would be absurd to think that the peasant will change
his attitude to vital economic problems, as a result of our
propaganda. His is a wait-and-see attitude. From being neutrally
hostile, he has become neutrally sympathetic. He prefers us to any
other form of government because he sees that the workers’,
the proletarian state, the proletarian dictatorship, does not mean
brute force or usurpation, as it has been described, but is a
better defender of the peasants than Kolchak, Denikin, and the
rest are.

But all that is not enough; we have not achieved the main
object: to show that the proletariat will restore large-scale
industry and the national economy so that the peasants can be
transferred to a higher economic system. After proving that, by
revolutionary organisation, we can repel any violence directed
against the exploited, we must prove the same thing in another
field by setting an example that will convince the vast mass of
the peasants and petty bourgeois elements, and other countries as
well, not in word but in deed, that a communist system and way of
life, can be created by a proletariat which has won a war. This is
a task of world-wide significance. To achieve the second half of
the victory in the international sense, we must accomplish the
second half of the task, that which bears upon economic
construction. We discussed this at the last Party conference, so I
think there is hardly any need or possibility to go into detail on
the various points; this is a task that embraces every aspect of
economic construction. I have briefly described the conditions
ensuring bread for the industrial workers and fuel for industry. These conditions are fundamental in providing the
possibility of further construction. I should add that, as you
have seen from the agenda published in the newspapers! the
question of economic construction will be the main item to be
discussed at the forthcoming Congress of Soviets. The entire
agenda has been drawn up so that the entire attention and concern
of all delegates and of the whole mass of Government and Party
workers throughout the Republic will be concentrated on the
economic aspect, on the restoration of transport and industry, on
what is cautiously termed “aid to the peasant economy” but which implies far more—a system of carefully thought-out
measures to raise to the appropriate level the peasant economy,
which will continue to exist for some time to come.

The Congress of Soviets will, therefore, discuss a report on
the electrification of Russia, so that an all-over economic plan
for the rehabilitation of the national economy, of which we have
spoken, can be drawn up in the technological aspect. There can be
no question of rehabilitating the national economy or of communism
unless Russia is put on a different and a higher technical basis
than that which has existed up to now. Communism is Soviet power
plus the electrification of the whole country, since industry
cannot be developed without electrification. This is a long-term
task which will take at least ten years to accomplish, provided a
great number of technical experts are drawn into the work. A
number of printed documents in which this project [6] has been
worked out in detail by technical experts will be presented to the
Congress. We cannot achieve the main objects of this plan—create so large regions of electric power stations
which would enable us to modernise our industry—in less than
ten years. Without this reconstruction of all industry on lines of
large-scale machine production, socialist construction will
obviously remain only a set of decrees, a political link between
the working class and the peasantry, and a means of saving the
peasants from the rule by Kolchak and Denikin; it will remain an
example to all powers of the world, but it will not have its own
basis. Communism implies Soviet power as a political organ,
enabling the mass of the oppressed to run all state affairs—without that, communism is unthinkable. We see proof
of this throughout the world, because the idea of Soviet power and
its programme are undoubtedly becoming victorious throughout the
world. We see this in every phase of the struggle against the
Second International, which is living on support from the police,
the church and the old bourgeois functionaries in the working-class movement.

This guarantees political success. Economic success, however,
can be assured only when the Russian proletarian state effectively
controls a huge industrial machine built on up-to-day technology;
that means electrification. For this, we must know the basic
conditions of the application of electricity, and accordingly
understand both industry and agriculture. This is an enormous
task, to accomplish which will require a far longer period than
was needed to defend our right to existence against invasion. However, we are not afraid of such a period and we think
we have won a victory by attracting to this work tens and hundreds
of engineers and scientists imbued with bourgeois ideas, whom we
have given the mission of reorganising the entire economy,
industry and agriculture, in whom we have aroused interest and
from whom we have received a great deal of information being
summarised in a number of pamphlets. Each region earmarked for
electrification is dealt with in a separate pamphlet. The plan for
the electrification of the Northern region is ready, and those
interested may receive it. Pamphlets dealing with each region,
with the over-all plan for reorganisation, will be published by
the time the Congress of Soviets meets. It is now our task to
carry on systematic work throughout the country, in all Party
cells, in every Soviet institution, according to this all-over
plan covering many years, so that we may in the near future have a
clear idea of how and in what measure we are progressing, without
deceiving ourselves or conceal- ing the difficulties confronting
us. The entire Republic is faced with the task of accomplishing
this single economic plan at any cost. All the Communist
Party’s activities, propaganda and agitation must be focussed on this task. From the angle of theory, it has been dealt
with on more than one occasion; nobody argues against it, but
scarcely a hundredth part of what has to be done has been
accomplished.

It is natural that we have grown used to a period of political
warfare; we have all been steeled in the political and military
struggle and, therefore, what has been accomplished by the present
Soviet government is only an approach to a task which demands that
the train should be switched over to other rails; this is a train
which has to carry tens of millions of people. The switching of
this heavy load on to other rails, along a track on which there
are no rails at all in places, calls for concentrated attention,
knowledge and very great persistence. The cultural level of the
peasants and the workers has not been high enough for this task
and, at the same time, we have become almost totally accustomed to
tackling political and military tasks; this has led to a revival
of bureaucratic methods. This is generally admitted. It is the
task of the Soviet government to completely destroy the old
machinery of state as it was destroyed in October, and to transfer
power to the Soviets. However, our Programme recognises that there
has been a revival of bureaucratic methods and that at present no
economic foundation yet exists for a genuinely socialist
society. A cultural background, literacy, and in general a higher
standard of culture are lacking in the mass of workers and
peasants. That is because the best forces of the proletariat have
been engaged with militally tasks. The proletariat has made
tremendous sacrifices to assure the success of military tasks into
which tens of millions of peasants had to be drawn, and elements
imbued with bourgeois views had to be put to work, because no
others were available. That is why we had to state in the
Programme—in a document like the Party Programme—that there has been a revival of bureaucratic methods, against which a
systematic struggle has to be waged. It is natural that the
bureaucratic methods that have reappeared in Soviet institutions
were bound to have a pernicious effect even or Party organisations, since the upper ranks of the Party are at the same
time the upper ranks of the state apparatus; they are one and the
same thing. Since we recognise that the evil consists in the old
bureaucratic methods which have been able to appear in the Party
apparatus, it is obvious and natural that all the symptoms of this
evil have revealed themselves in the Party organisations. Since
that is so, the question has been placed on the agenda of the
Congress of Soviets and has received a great deal of attention
from this Conference. That is how it should be, because a disease
that has affected the Party and has been acknowledged in the
resolutions of the general Party Conference exists, not in Moscow alone, but has spread throughout the entire
republic. It is a result of the need to carry on political and
military work, when we had to involve the peasant masses and were
unable to increase our demands for a broader plan to raise the
level of the peasant economy, and that of the mass of peasants.

Allow me in conclusion to say a few words about the situation
within the Party, about the struggle and the appearance of an
opposition, of which all those present are fully aware and which
took up a great deal of energy and attention at the Moscow City
and Gubernia Conference perhaps considerably more than we would
have all liked. It is quite natural that the great transition now
in progress at a time when all the forces drawn by the Republic
from the proletariat and the Party during three years of struggle
have been exhausted, has placed us in a difficult position in the
face of a task to accurately assess which is beyond our powers. We
have to acknowledge that we do not know the real extent of the
evil, and that we cannot determine the relationships and the exact
groupings. The Party Conference’s main task is to raise the
question, not cover up the existing evil, but to draw the
Party’s attention to it, and call on all Party members to
work on remedying the evil. From the point of view of the Central
Committee and also, I think, of the immense majority of Party
comrades, it is perfectly natural and beyond doubt (as far as I am
aware of the views, which nobody has repudiated), that in
connection with the crisis in the Party the opposition which
exists, not only in Moscow but throughout Russia, reveals many
tendencies that are absolutely healthy, necessary and inevitable
at a time of the Party’s natural growth and the transition
from a situation in which all attention was concentrated on
political and military tasks to a period of construction and
organisation, when we have to take care of dozens of bureaucratic
institutions, this at a time when the cultural level of the
majority of the proletariat and the peasants is unequal to the
task. After all, the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection exists more as a pious wish; it has been impossible to set it in
motion because the best workers have been sent to the front, and
the cultural level of the peasant masses is such that they have
been unable to produce a sufficient number of officials.

Of course the opposition, whose slogan urges a more speedy
transition, the enlistment of the greatest number of fresh and
young forces and the promotion of local workers to more
responsible posts, has extremely sound aspirations, trend and
programme. No doubts on this score exist either in the Central
Committee or among comrades who hold positions of any responsibility, as far as can be seen from their statements. It
is, however, equally beyond doubt that, besides the sound elements
which are united on the platform of fulfilment of Conference
decisions, others also exist. At aIl meetings, including
preliminary meetings attended by a larger number of delegates than
this Conference, opinions on this question were unanimous. Our
general Programme must be carried out’that is beyond doubt,
and difficult work awaits us. Of course, the important thing is
not to confine ourselves to overthrowing the opponent and
repelling him. Here we have petty-bourgeois elements surrounding
us and numbering tens of millions. We are fewer in number; there
are very few of us compared with this petty-bourgeois mass. We
must educate this mass and prepare it, but it has so happened that
all the organised forces engaged in such preparatory work have had
to be directed elsewhere and employed in an undertaking that is
essential, arduous and very risky, involving great sacrifices,
i.e., warfare. War calls for every ounce of effort, and there is
no getting away from this fact.

The question we must ask ourselves in connection with this
state of affairs is; is the Party quite healthy again? Have we a
complete victory over bureaucratic methods so as to place economic
construction on a more correct foundation, and get the
Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection operating, not only in the sense of issuing decrees but by actually drawing the masses
of workers into the work? This is a difficult matter, and our main
task’if we are to speak of Party tasks’must be the speediest possible elimination of the so-called line of the
opposition. If this is a question of diverging views, differing
interpretations of current events, different programmes or even of
future activities, the Central Committee must devote the greatest
attention to the matter at all meetings of the Political Bureau
and at plenary meetings, where various shades of opinion are
voiced. Harmonious work by the entire Party will ensure the
accomplishment of this task. We regard this as a matter of the
utmost importance. We now face an economic effort that is more
taxing than the military task we have accomplished thanks to the
enthusiasm of the peasants, who undoubtedly preferred the
workers’ state to that of Kolchak. Things are quite different today when the peasant masses have to be switched over
to construction work that is quite unfamiliar to them, which they
do not understand and cannot have any faith in. This task calls
for more systematic work, greater perseverance, and greater
organising skill, and so far as the latter quality is concerned,
the Russian is not in the picture. This is our weakest point, so
we must try rapidly to eliminate everything that hampers this
work. The opposition, which is a reflection of this period of
transition, no doubt contains a sound element, but when it turns
into an opposition for the sake of opposition, we should certainly
put an end to it. We have wasted a great deal of time on
altercations, quarrels and recrimination and we must put an end to
all that, and try to come to some agreement to work more
effectively. We must make certain concessions, better greater than
smaller, to those who are dissatisfied, who call themselves the
opposition, but we must succeed in making our work harmonious, for
otherwise we cannot exist when we are surrounded by enemies at
home and abroad.

There can be no doubt that the old petty-bourgeois elements’small property-owners’outnumber us. They are
stronger than the socialist sector of an economy geared to meet
the requirements of the workers. Anyone who has had contacts with
the rural areas and has seen the speculation in the cities,
realises perfectly well that this social sector, which is based on
small-scale economy units is stronger than we are: hence the
necessity of absolutely harmonious effort. We must achieve it at
all costs. When I had occasion to observe the controversies and
the struggle in the Moscow organisations, and saw the numerous
debates at meetings, and the altercations, and quarrels there, I
came to the conclusion that it was high time to put an end to all
this and to achieve general unity on the Conference platform. It
should be said that we have paid a heavy price for this. It was
sad, for example, to see hours wasted at Party meetings on
altercation as to whether someone had arrived at the meeting
punctually or not, or whether a particular individual had made his
stand clear in one way or another. Do people attend meetings for
this sort of thing? For that we have a special commission, which
decides whether or not an individual on the list of delegates has
made his stand clear in one way or another. Here, however, it is a
question of the content of the meeting. For instance, take an
experienced Party comrade like Bubnov. I heard his speech on the
platform proposed by the Conference. This platform boils down to
greater freedom of criticism. The Conference, however, was held in
September, and it is now November. Freedom of criticism is a
splendid thing’but once we are agreed on this, it would be
no bad thing to concern ourselves with the content of criticism. For a long time the Mensheviks,
Socialist-Revolutionaries and others tried to scare us with
freedom of criticism, but we were not afraid of that. If freedom
of criticism means freedom to defend capitalism then we shall
suppress it. We have passed that stage. Freedom of criticism has
been proclaimed, but thought should be given to the content of
criticism.

And here we have to admit something that is highly regrettable:
criticism is devoid of content. You visit a district and ask
yourself what criticism actually contains. The Party organisations
cannot overcome illiteracy by using the old bureaucratic
methods. What methods of defeating red tape are there other than
bringing workers and peasants into the work? Meanwhile, criticism
at district meetings is concerned with trifles, and I have not
heard a single word about the Workers’ and Peasants’
Inspection. I have not heard of a single district encouraging
workers and peasants to take part in this work. Genuine
construction work means applying criticism which must be
constructive. For instance, the management of every small block of
flats, every large plant, every factory in Moscow must have its
own experience. If we wish to combat bureaucratic methods, we must
draw people from below into this work. We must acquaint ourselves
with the experience of certain factories, learn what steps they
have taken to remove their bureaucrats, and study the experience
of a house management or of a consumers’ society. A most
rapid functioning of the entire economic machine is needed, but
meanwhile you do not hear a word about this, although there is
plenty of altercation and recrimination. Of course, such a
gigantic upheaval could not have taken place without a certain
amount of dirt and some scum coming to the surface. It is time we
posed the question, not only of freedom of criticism but also of
its content. It is time we said that, in view of our experience,
we must make a number of concessions but that in future we shall
not tolerate the slightest tendency to recrimination. We must
break with the past, set about genuine economic construction, and
completely overhaul all Party work so as to enable it to guide
Soviet economic construction, ensure practical successes, and
conduct propaganda more by example than by precept. Today neither
the worker nor the peasant will be convinced by words; that can be
done only by example. They have to be persuaded that they can
improve the economy without the capitalists, and that conflicts
can be abolished without the policeman’s truncheon or capitalist starvation; for that they need Party leadership. This
is the attitude we must adopt; if we do so, we shall achieve
successes in future economic construction which will lead to our
complete victory on a world-wide scale.

Endnotes

[1]
The Conference was held in the Kremlin between November 20 and
22, 1920, during the discussion on trade unions, which had begun
in the Party. The acute struggle waged by opposition groups
against the Party’s policy created a tense atmosphere at the
Conference. The anti-Party “Democratic Centralism”, “Workers’ Opposition” and Ignatov’s groups
demagogically attacked the Party’s policy. Before and during
the Conference they tried to gain decisive influence in the
Party’s Moscow organisation. In an attempt to get the maximum number of their supporters elected to the Moscow Committee
the “Workers’ Opposition” group held a special conference of their supporters from among the worker
delegates.

Directed by Lenin, the Conference repulsed the anti-Party attacks and pointed to the need of combating the
unscrupulous groups bred by an atmosphere of recriminations. After
hearing the report of the Moscow Committee, the Conference passed
a resolution reflecting the viewpoint of the Central
Committee. The list of candidate members of the Moscow Committee,
drawn up by the opposition at the private conference was
blackballed, and only those delegates were elected who had been
nominated by the Political Bureau of the Central Committee.

[2]
Peace between the R.S.F.S.R. and Finland was signed on
October 14, 1920. The treaty terminated the state of war,
confirmed Finland’s independence and sovereignty as granted
by the Soviet Government in 1917, and laid down the state
frontiers between the two countries.

Peace between the R.S.F.S.R. and Estonia was signed in Yuryev (now Tartu) on February 2, 1920. Under the treaty
Soviet Russia recognised Estonia’s independence.

Latvian ruling circles were also compelled to sign peace with the R.S.F.S.R., following the defeat of the
foreign interventionists and the whiteguards in 1919 and the
resulting consolidation of Soviet Russia’s international
position. On March 25, 1920, the Latvian Foreign Ministry
approached the Soviet Government suggesting that peace talks be
started. On April 16, the Soviet and Latvian representatives
started peace talks in Moscow and on August 11 a treaty was signed
with Latvia in Riga.

[3]
In the autumn of 1920 Washington Vanderlip, who represented the
U.S. Vanderlip Syndicate, arrived in Moscow to negotiate a
concession for fishing, prospecting and extracting oil and coal in
Kamchatka and elsewhere in Siberia, east of the 160th meridian.

In agreeing to the concession, the Soviet
Government intended not only to establish mutually advantageous
co-operation with American businessmen but also to normalise
relations between Soviet Russia and the United
States. Vanderlip’s move, however, did not get the support
of the U.S. Administration and financial tycoons, and the
agreement was never signed.

[4]
To incite Turkey against Soviet Russia and torpedo the talks
between the two countries on the establishment of friendly
relations, the Entente diplomats provoked Dashnak Armenia’s
attack on Turkey. The Dashnak nationalist party, then in power in
Armenia (1918-20), pursued an aggressive policy with regard to
Turkey and aimed at establishing a “Greater Armenia” that would include nearly half of Asia Minor. On September 24,
1920 the Dashnak government began hostilities against Turkey, but
five days later the Turkish troops checked the Dashnak offensive
and, in a counter-offensive lasting from September to November
occupied Sarykamysh, Kars and Alexandropol. The Turkish Government
decided to take advantage of the adventurist Dashnak policy and
occupy the whole of Armenia.

On November 11 the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs of the R.S.F.S.R. offered its mediation to the
warring parties. Turkey rejected Soviet mediation, and the Dashnak
government had to agree to a shackling treaty which made Armenia a
Turkish protectorate. The treaty, however, did not go into force,
because by November 29, when it was to be signed, the Dashnak
government bad been overthrown and Soviet power proclaimed in
Armenia. Claiming that the treaty was still valid, the Turkish
Government held up the evacuation of Alexandropol district. Only
after the Soviet Government had, in the middle of May 1921, firmly
demanded the evacuation of the district, were the Turkish forces
withdrawn.

Lenin is referring to his Report on the Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government which he delivered at a session
of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee on April 19, 1918

[5]
The reference is to the book Plan for the Electrification of the R.S.F.S.R. Report of the State Commission for the Electrification of Russia to the Eighth Congress of Soviets
published in Moscow in 1920. The outcome of collective work by
leading scientists and specialists, the plan was the first
long-term plan for the creation of the material foundation of
socialism on the basis of the country’s electrification. Lenin called this plan “the Party’s
second programme”.

[6]
Lenin is referring to the resolutions of the Ninth All-Russia
Conference of the R.C.P.(B.) (see VKP(B) v rezolutsiyakh i resheniyakh syezdov, konferentsii i plenumov TsK [ the C.P.S.U.(B.) in the Resolutions and Decisions of Its Congresses , Conferences and Plenums of the Central Committee ], Part. I, 1940, pp. 349-54).