The conquests of our revolution no one will take back, for these are now not "our" conquests, but world-historical conquests.

And when by the spring of 1921 it turned out that our vanguard of the revolution was threatened with the danger of becoming separated from the mass of the people, from the mass of the peasantry, which it must skillfully lead forward, then we unanimously and firmly decided to retreat. And during the past year we retreated, on the whole and in the main, in revolutionary order.

The proletarian revolutions, which are maturing in all the advanced countries of the world, will not be able to solve their task without combining the ability to fight selflessly and to advance with the ability to retreat in revolutionary order. The experience of the second period of our struggle, i.e., the experience of retreat, will probably also be useful in the future to the workers of at least some countries, just as our experience of the first period of the revolution, the experience of selflessly bold advance, will undoubtedly be useful to the workers of all countries.

Now we have resolved to declare the retreat completed.

This means that the entire task of our policy is posed in a new way.

The whole crux now is that the vanguard should not be afraid to work on itself, to remake itself, to openly acknowledge its insufficient preparedness, its insufficient ability. The whole crux is to now move forward with an incomparably broader and more powerful mass, and only together with the peasantry, proving to them by deed, by practice, by experience, that we are learning and will learn to help them, to lead them forward. Such a task, given the present international situation and the present state of Russia's productive forces, can be solved only by solving it very slowly, cautiously, in a businesslike manner, checking each step a thousand times in practice.

If there are voices in our party that will be against this ultra-slow and ultra-cautious movement, these voices will be isolated.

The party as a whole has understood, and will now prove by deeds that it has understood, the necessity of building its work at the present moment precisely in this way and only in this way. And once we have understood this, we shall be able to achieve our goal!

I declare the Eleventh Congress of the Russian Communist Party closed.

*Pravda* No. 76 and *Izvestia VTsIK* No. 76, April 4, 1922