Vladimir Lenin

Speech

At A Congress Of Chairmen Of Gubernia Soviets [1]

July 30 1918

Newspaper Report

Comrades, your job is one of administration, which plays a
dominant part in the affairs of the Council of People’s
Commissars. Quite naturally, many difficulties lie ahead of
you. In the majority of gubernia Executive Committees it is
evident that the masses are at last beginning to tackle the work
of administration themselves. There are certainly bound to be
difficulties. One of our greatest shortcomings has been that we
still draw too little on the workers for our staffs. But it was
never our intention to adapt the old apparatus to the new system
of administration, and we do n ot regret that with the abolition of the old apparatus everything has to be built anew
with so much difficulty. The workers and peasants possess
greater constructive abilities than might have been expected. It
is to the revolution’s credit that it swept away the old
administrative apparatus. Yet at the same time we must admit
that the people’s chief shortcoming is their timidity and
reluctance to take things into their own hands.

Some of our gubernia Soviets have been inefficient, but now the
work is steadily improving. Information has been coming in from
may parts of the country stating that the work is progressing
without any misunderstandings or conflicts. Although only eight
months have elapsed, the Russian revolution has proved that the
new class which has taken administration into its own hands is
capable of coping with the task. Although it is short-staffed, the
administrative apparatus is running more smoothly every day.

Our apparatus is till at a stage where no definite results are
visible, a fact which the enemy keeps harping on. Nevertheless,
quite a lot has already been done. The transfer of land and
industry to the working people, the exchange of goods and the
organisation of food supply are being carried into effect in face
of fantastic difficulties. The working people must be promoted to
independent work in building up and running the socialist
state. Only practice will teach them that the old exploiting class
is finished and done with.

Our chief and most urgent task is administration, organisation
and control. This is a thankless and inconspicuous job; but it is
in doing this job that the managerial and administrative talents
of the workers and peasants will develop more and more effectively.

Now to the new Constitution. [2] It embodies what experience has already given, and will be corrected and
supplemented as it is being put into effect. The main thing about
the Constitution is that the Soviet government is completely
dissociating itself from the bourgeoisie, preventing them from
participating in building up the state.

The workers and peasants, upon whom the government has called
to run the country, and who have remained remote from such affairs
for so long, were bound to want to build the state by their own
experience. The effect of the slogan "All Power to the Soviets!"
was that the people in the localities wanted to gain experience in
building the state by learning from their own mistakes. Such a
transitional period was unavoidable, ad it has proved beneficial. In this tendency towards separatism, there was much
that was healthy and wholesome in the sense that it displayed a
creative spirit. The Soviet Constitution has defined the relations
between the volost authority and the uyezd authority, between the
uyezd authority and the gubernia authority, and between the latter
and the centre.

Only large-scale, planned construction, which aims at evenly
utilising economic ad business values, deserves to be called
socialist. The Soviet government certainly does not intend to
belittle the importance of the local authorities or kill their
autonomy ad initiative. Even the peasants realise through their
own experience the need for centralism.

Now that the Constitution has been endorsed and is being put
into effect, an easier period in our state affairs is beginning. But, unfortunately, it is hard for us just now to
devote ourselves to an economic, business and agricultural
policy. We have to divert all our attention to more elementary
things-the food question. The condition of the working class in
the hungry provinces is really drastic. Until the new harvest is
brought in, every effort must be made to overcome somehow the
food difficulties and other troubles.

Besides this, there are military tasks. You know that the Czech
movement, financed and instigated by the British and French
imperialists, has caught Russia in a semicircle. You also know
that the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie and the kulak peasants
are joining this movement. We have received news from the
localities that Soviet Russia’s recent reverses have convinced the workers and the revolutionary peasants by their own
experience that control is needed in the military sphere as well
as in state development.

I am convinced that things will get better in future. I am
convinced that the gubernia Executive Committees will create a
strong socialist army by organising control over the commanding
staff with the help of the peasants. The lessons of the revolution
have at last taught the classes of the workers and exploited
peasants the need to take up arms. The peasants and workers,
besides having won the land, control, etc., base learnt to
understand the need to control the army. By carrying their efforts
into the sphere of military affairs, they will make the army of
their creation fully worthy of the title of a socialist army, an
army which will successfully fight the counter-revolutionary
bourgeoisie and the imperialists until the international
revolutionary proletariat comes to our aid. (Comrade Lenin
’s speech is greeted with stormy applause from all delegates.)

Endnotes

[1]
The Congress was held in Moscow from July 30 to August 1, 1918,
There were 122 delegates, of whom 120 were
Communists. G. I. Petrovsky, People's Commissar for the Interior
of the R.S.F.S.R., delivered a report on the work of the
Commissariat of the Interior and its immediate tasks. Other
speakers at the Congress dealt with the activity of the local
Soviets, the character, tasks and organisational forms of Soviet militia, housing and other
subjects. Lenin spoke at the evening session on July 30. The
resolutions called for the improvement of the Soviet apparatus
and emphasised the need for greater harmony between all its
parts, close contact with the centre and complete obedience to
the Constitution. The Congress called on the workers and
peasants of the Republic to rise in arms in defence of the
socialist fatherland.

[2]
Reference is to the Constitution of the Russian Socialist
Federative Soviet Republic, unanimously adopted at the Fifth
All-Russia Congress of Soviets on July 10, 1918, and publisheden
July 19 as the Fundamental Law which went into force on
publication.

It was the first Soviet Constitution. It gave force of law to
the great gains of the October Revolution-the new, Soviet state
system, the abolition of private capitalist property and landed
proprietorship, equality of all nations inhabiting Russia,
etc. It gave force of law to the dictatorship of the proletariat
in the shape of Soviet power, provided for the participation of
all working people in state administration and disfranchised the
exploiters. Lenin pointed out:“The world has never known
such a constitution as ours. It embodies the workers’ experience of struggle and organisation against the exploiters
both at home and abroad.”