V. I. Lenin

Eighth All-Russia Conference Of The R.C.P(B.) [1]

December 2-4 1919

1

Speech At The Opening Of The Conference
December 2

Comrades, on behalf of the Central Committee of the Russian
Communist Party (Bolsheviks) I declare the All-Russia Party
Conference open.

Comrades, according to Party Rules this type of conference
should be convened every three months, but the difficult situation
obtaining a few months ago in connection with the war forced us to
bend our efforts and to reduce all bodies, both government and
Party, to such an extent that we were unfortunately unable to
carry out the Rules to the letter and the conference was
postponed.

Comrades, we are calling this conference in connection with the
Congress of Soviets [2] at a time when we have succeeded in
achieving a tremendous improvement on the fronts, and when we are
certain that we are on the eve of a gigantic change for the better
in the international situation, in respect of the war and in
respect of our internal development. The tasks that are unfolding
before us have been frequently discussed at Party meetings and in
the press, and we shall return to them when discussing definite
individual items on the agenda. I shall, therefore, get right down
to business and propose that you elect a presidium for the
conference.

Let me have your proposals on that point, please.

2

Political Report Of The Central Committee
December 2 (Applause.) Comrades, the present report of the Central
Committee should, from the formal point of view, give you mainly a
summary of experience acquired during the period under review. I
must say that such an approach—confining oneself to history
or, at any rate, making a report that turns mainly on history—is too far removed from the spirit of the times in
which we live and from the tasks that confront us. In the present
report, which I should also like to present to the Congress of
Soviets, I intend to transfer the centre of gravity more to the
lessons we are receiving, and which we must receive for our
immediate practical activity, rather than to a description of what
we have passed through.

Although we may say, without any exaggeration, that in the
period under review we have achieved tremendous successes,
although our main difficulty is now behind us, we still have ahead
of us difficulties that are without doubt very, very great. The
Party must naturally concentrate its attention wholly on the
solution of those problems and may permit itself excursions into
history only insofar as it is absolutely necessary for the
solution of the problems facing us.

It stands to reason that in the past period of Soviet power the
war question has persistently been the one on which we have mostly
fixed our attention. The Civil War has involved everyone and
everything, of course, and it goes without saying that in our
struggle for existence we had to divert the Party’s best
forces from other work and other activities and use them for war
work. It was all we could do under war conditions. And no matter
how much we have suffered from this withdrawal of creative forces
from many spheres of government and Party activity, in the
military sphere we have actually managed to effect a concentration
of forces and achieve excellent results such as not only our
enemies, not only the waverers, but probably even most of our own
milieu would formerly have considered impossible. To hold out for
two years against all our enemies who were supported directly and
indirectly, first by German imperialism and then by the much more
powerful Entente imperialism that has mastered the whole
world—to hold out for two years in a country so badly ruined
and so backward was such a problem that its solution was an
undoubted “miracle”. It seems to me, therefore, that we must look closely to see how this “miracle” was
effected and what practical deductions are to be made from it,
deductions which will enable us to say conclusively—and I
think we may say conclusively that great as the difficulties of
internal organisation are we shall surmount them in the near
future with a success equal to that with which we have solved the
problems of military defence.

World imperialism, that in reality brought about the Civil War
in our country and is responsible for protracting it, has suffered
defeat in these two years, and we must first of all ask ourselves
the question, how could it have happened that we were able to
achieve such tremendous success in the struggle against world
imperialism that even today is undoubtedly many times stronger
than we are? To find an answer to this question we must make a
general review of the history of the Civil War in Russia, the
history of Entente intervention. In this war we must distinguish
two periods that differ radically according to the methods of
Entente activity employed, two periods or two basic methods of
conducting military operations against Russia.

When the Entente had defeated Germany, at first it naturally
relied on its own troops to crush the Soviet Republic in
Russia. It stands to reason that if the Entente had used but a
fraction of the gigantic armies that were released after the
defeat of Germany, if it had been able to use even one-tenth of
those armies in a proper manner against the Russian Soviet
Republic we should not, of course, have been able to hold out. It
is typical of the first period of the Civil War in Russia that the
attempt of the Entente to smash the Soviet Republic using its own
troops was a failure. The Entente had to withdraw the British
troops operating on the Archangel Front. The landing of French
forces in the South of Russia ended in a number of mutinies on the
part of French sailors, and today, no matter how frantically the
wartime censor may operate—there is no war but the former
wartime censor, now the non-war-time censor, continues to function
in the supposedly free countries, Britain and France—and
although copies of newspapers reach us on rare occasions we have
very precise documentary evidence from Britain and France to the
effect that information concerning, for instance, the mutiny of
the sailors on French warships in the Black Sea has got into the
French press, that the sentencing of several French sailors to
penal servitude has become known in France, that the entire
communist, the entire revolutionary working-class press in France
and Britain refers to the facts; the name of Comrade Jeanne
Labourbe, whom the French shot in Odessa for Bolshevik propaganda,
has become a slogan for the French working-class socialist press,
not only for the Communist wing, but even for a newspaper like l’Humanité
that in its basic principles is actually closer to the point of
view of our Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, even for
that newspaper the name of Labourbe has become a slogan of
struggle against French imperialism, for non-intervention in
Russian affairs. In the same way letters from British soldiers on
the Archangel Front have been discussed in the British working-class press. We have very exact documentary evidence of
this. It is quite obvious to us, therefore, that the tremendous
change that formerly we always spoke of and which we so deeply
hoped for has taken place; it has undoubtedly become a fact even
though the process is an unusually slow one.

This change had to be evoked by the very course of events. It
is specifically those countries that always have been and still
are regarded as the most democratic, civilised and cultured that
conducted a war against Russia by the most brutal means, without
even a shade of legality. The Bolsheviks are accused of violating
democracy—this is the most popular argument against us among
the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries and in the entire
European bourgeois press. But not one of those democratic states
has taken or would dare to take the risk under the laws of its own
country of declaring war on Soviet Russia. Parallel to this there
is a protest, outwardly unnoticeable but nevertheless a profound
protest on the part of the working-class press which asks where,
in their constitution, in the constitution of France, Britain or
America, are to be found laws permitting the conduct of war
without having declared war and without having consulted
parliament? The press of Britain, France and America has proposed
to arraign their heads of state for a crime against the state, for
declaring war without the permission of parliament. Such proposals
have been made, although it is true that it was in papers that
come out not more than once a week and are probably confiscated
not less than once a month and have a circulation of a few hundred
or a few thousand copies. The leaders of the responsible
government parties could afford to ignore such papers. But here we
have to consider two different tendencies; the ruling classes
throughout the world publish well-known capitalist dailies in
millions of copies and these are packed with unprecedented lies
and slander against the Bolsheviks. But down below, the
working-class masses learn about the falsity of that whole
campaign from the soldiers who have returned from Russia. That is
why it became necessary for the Entente to withdraw its forces
from Russia.

When we said at the very outset that we place our stakes on the
world revolution we were laughed at, and hundreds of times it was
said and is still being said that it cannot be realised. During
the past two years we have obtained precise material with which to
verify it. If we speak of that stake as meaning hopes for a rapid,
immediate insurrection in Europe, then we know there has not been
one. That stake, however, proved to be fundamentally a true one
and from the very outset it removed all possibility of an armed
intervention on the part of the Entente; after two years and
especially since the defeat of Kolchak and since the withdrawal of
British forces from Archangel and from the entire Northern Front
this has become an undoubted historical fact. A very small part of
the armies at the disposal of the Entente would have been enough
to crush us. But we were able to defeat the enemy because the
sympathy of the workers of the whole world made itself felt at the
most difficult moment. And thus we succeeded in emerging
honourably from this first period of the Entente invasion. I
remember some article, Radek’s I think, said that the
Entente troops’ contact with the hot soil of Russia, the
country that had started the fire of the socialist revolution,
would also set those troops on fire. Events showed that this
really did happen. It goes without saying, furthermore, that the
processes that are taking place among the British and French
soldiers and sailors who know the names of those who have been
shot for Bolshevik agitation, no matter how weak these processes
are, no matter how weak the communist organisations are over
there, are doing a gigantic job. The results are visible they have
compelled the Entente countries to withdraw their forces. This
alone gave us our first major victory.

The second method or second system employed by the Entente in
its struggle was to use small states against us. It was reported
in a Swedish newspaper [3] at the end of last August that the
British Secretary for War, Churchill, had said that fourteen
states would attack Russia so that the fall of Petrograd and
Moscow was certain in the near future, at any rate by the end of
the year. I believe Churchill later denied having made this
statement and said that the Bolsheviks had invented it. We have,
however, exact information as to which Swedish newspaper published
it. We therefore insist that the report came from European
sources. Furthermore it is supported by facts. We know from the
example of Finland and Estonia that the Entente has bent all its
efforts to force them to attack Soviet Russia. I personally read
one leading article in the British newspaper The Times on
the question of Finland [4] at the time when Yudenich’s
troops were a few versts from Petrograd and the city was in
tremendous danger. The article was seething with wrath and
indignation, and was written in an unprecedentedly impassioned
style, unusual for that newspaper (such newspapers usually write
in diplomatic language similar to that used in Milyukov’s Rech
in Russia). It was the wildest proclamation addressed to Finland
and presenting the question bluntly—the fate of the world
depended on Finland and the eyes of all civilised capitalist
countries were fixed on her. We know that that was the decisive
moment when Yudenich’s troops were a few versts from
Petrograd. It makes no difference whether Churchill made the
statement quoted or not, he certainly pursued that policy. It is
well known what pressure the Entente brought to bear on those
small countries that had been hastily formed, were weak and wholly
dependent on the Entente even in such basic questions as that of
food and in all other respects. They cannot break away from that
dependence. All kinds of pressure—financial, food, military—have been applied to force Estonia, Finland, and no
doubt Latvia, Lithuania and Poland as well, to force that whole
group of states to make war on us. The history of Yudenich’s
last campaign against Petrograd has shown to the full that the
Entente’s second method of conducting war has failed. There
can be no doubt that the least bit of aid from Finland or—a
little more aid—from Estonia would have been enough to decide the fate of Petrograd. Nor is there any doubt that the
Entente, realising the gravity of the situation, did everything it
could to obtain that aid but nevertheless suffered defeat.

This was the second major international victory that we
achieved and it was a more complicated victory than the first. The
first was achieved because it turned out that British and French
troops could not be retained on the territory of Russia; they did
not fight but provided Britain and France with rebels who raised
the British and French workers against their own governments. And
so it has happened that although Russia has been deliberately
encircled by a ring of small states obviously created and
maintained for the struggle against Bolshevism, this weapon, too,
has turned against the Entente. There are bourgeois governments in
all these states and almost everywhere there are bourgeois
collaborators in those governments, people who, because of their
class position, go against the Bolsheviks. Every one of these
nations, of course, is definitely hostile to the Bolsheviks, but
we, nevertheless, have managed to turn those bourgeois and
collaborators to our side. This seems improbable, but it is true,
because each of those states, after what it has experienced in the
imperialist war, is bound to hesitate on the question of whether
it is now worth its while to fight against the Bolsheviks when the
only other claimant to power in Russia—a claimant that they
have reason to consider serious—is either Kolchak or
Denikin, that is, representatives of old imperialist Russia; and
there is no doubt that Kolchak and Denikin represent old
Russia. We have, therefore, been given an opportunity to rely on
another crack in the imperialist camp. During the first months
following our revolution we were able to hold out because the
German and British imperialists were at each other’s throats, but after those six months we were able to hold out for
more than another six months because the troops of the Entente
were in no condition to fight against us; the following year,
however, the year that we now have mainly to render account for,
we held out successfully because the attempt of the Great Powers
under whose influence the small countries undoubtedly are, the
attempt of those Great Powers to mobilise the small countries
against us has been a failure because of the contradiction between
the interests of world imperialism and the interests of those
countries. The Entente has already had its paws on each of the
small countries. They know that when the French, American or
British capitalists say, “We guarantee you independence”, that means in practice, “We shall buy
from you all the sources of your wealth and shall hold you in
bondage. Furthermore, we shall treat you with the insolence of an
officer who has come to a foreign country to administer it and to
speculate in it and who will not consider anybody’s opinion”. They know that the British Ambassador in almost
all such countries is of greater significance than a local king or
parliament. And if petty-bourgeois democrats have so far been
unable to comprehend this verity, reality has now compelled them
to understand it. It has turned out that as far as concerns the
bourgeois and petty-bourgeois elements of the small countries the
imperialists are plundering, we are, maybe, not allies, but at any
rate more reliable and more valuable neighbours than the
imperialists.

That is the second victory over world imperialism that we have
won.

That is why we now have every right to say that the main
difficulties are behind us. There is no doubt that the Entente
will make many more attempts at armed intervention in our
affairs. Although the latest victories over Kolchak and Yudenich
have now given spokesmen of all those powers cause to say that a
campaign against Russia is hopeless and to offer us peace, we must
realise clearly the meaning of such statements. What I am now
going to say is not for the record ....

Since we have managed to extract admissions of this kind from
bourgeois intellectuals, from our merciless enemies, we have every
right to say that the sympathies, not only of the working class,
but also of extensive circles of bourgeois intellectuals are on
the side of Soviet power. The philistines, the petty bourgeoisie,
those who wavered in the savage fight between labour and capital,
have now come over definitely to our side, and we may to some
extent anticipate their support.

We must take this victory into consideration and if we link it
up with the way we, in the long run, achieved the victory over
Kolchak, the conclusion becomes more convincing ... now you may
begin writing again, the diplomacy is finished.

If we ask the question as to what forces made our victory over
Kolchak possible, we have to admit that the victory over Kolchak,
despite his having operated on territory where the proletariat was
in a minority and we were unable to give the peasantry direct,
real help to overthrow the power of the landowners as we did in
Russia, despite Kolchak’s having begun on a front supported
by Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries who established the
front of the Constituent Assembly, despite there having been the
most favourable conditions for the formation of a government that
could rely on the aid of world imperialism—despite all this
the experiment ended in the complete defeat of Kolehak. We have
the right to draw the following conclusion from this, a conclusion
that is very significant to us and should guide us in all our
activities—the class that can lead the mass of the population must triumph historically. The Mensheviks and
Socialist-Revolutionaries are still talking about the Constituent
Assembly, about the will of the nation, and so on, but during this
period experience has convinced us that in revolutionary times the
class struggle is carried on in the most terrible forms but can
lead to victory only when the class conducting the struggle is
capable of giving leadership to the majority of the people. In
this respect, the comparison that was made, not by voting with
tickets, but by more than a year’s experience of the most
arduous, most bloody struggle that demanded a hundred times more
sacrifices than any political struggle—this experience in
respect of Kolchak has shown that more than any other party we are
putting into effect the rule of that class the majority of which
we have proved capable of leading and that we are adding the
peasantry to our ranks as friends and allies.The example of
Kolchak demonstrated this. In the social sphere this exam ple has
been the latest lesson for us; it shows on whom we can depend and
who will go against us.

No matter how greatly the working class may have been weakened
by the imperialist war and the economic ruin it is nevertheless
effecting political leadership, but it would not be able to if it
had not gained the majority of the working population, under
Russian conditions the peasantry, as friends and allies. This has
taken place in the Red Army where we have been able to employ
specialists, the majority of whom were against us, and create the
army which, according to the admission of our enemies, the
Socialist-Revolutionaries, as evidenced by a resolution of the
last Council of their party, is a people’s and not a mercenary army. [5] The working class was able to build up
an army the majority of which does not belong to that class and
was able to employ specialists hostile to it only because it led
and made friends and allies of that mass of working people
connected with petty proprietorship, who have property connections
and who, therefore, have a profound interest in free trading,
i. e., in capitalism, in the return to the power of money. This is
at the bottom of everything we have achieved in the past two
years. In all our further work, in all our further activities, in
those activities that must be begun in the Ukraine now being
liberated, in all the organisational work that will he developing
in all its difficulty and importance after the victory over
Denikin, we must keep this basic lesson always before our eyes, we
must remember it more than anything else. This, in my opinion,
sums up the political results of all our work.

Comrades, it has been said that war is a continuation of
politics. We have experienced that in our own war. The imperialist
war that was a continuation of the politics of the imperialists,
of the ruling classes, of landowners and capitalists, brought
forth the hostility of the masses of the people and was the best
means of revolutionising them. Here in Russia the war helped
overthrow the monarchy, helped abolish landed proprietorship and
overthrow the bourgeoisie, all of which was done with unparalleled
ease only because the imperialist war was a continuation and an
aggravation of imperialist politics that had become more
insolent. And our war was a continuation of our communist
politics, the politics of the proletariat. We still read in the
Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary papers and we hear from
non-party and from wavering people, “You promised peace and
have given us war, you have deceived the working people.”And
we say that the masses of the working people who have not studied
Marxism have nevertheless learned full well the difference between
imperialist and civil war, learned it through their class
instinct, the instinct of oppressed people who have themselves for
decades experienced what the landowner and capitalist are. Those
who have experienced oppression for decades all realise that there
is a difference between wars. The imperialist war was a
continuation of imperialist politics; it aroused the masses
against their masters. The Civil War is a war against the
landowners and capitalists and is a continuation of the policy of
overthrowing the power of those landowners and capitalists, and
each month the development of the war has strengthened the bonds
between the mass of working people and the proletariat that has
assumed the leadership in the war. No matter how great the trials
may have been, no matter how frequent the big defeats, no matter
how serious those defeats have been, no matter how many times the
enemy has achieved tremendous victories and the existence of
Soviet power has hung by a thread—there have been such moments, and there is no doubt the Entente will again try to fight
against us—it must be said that the experience we have gained is a very sound one. That experience has shown that war
strengthens the political consciousness of the working people and
shows them the advantages of Soviet power. Nave people or
those who are wholly wrapped up in the prejudices of the old petty
bourgeoisie or of the old bourgeois-democratic parliamentarisrn
expect the peasant to decide through an election slip whether he
will follow the Bolshevik Communists or the
Socialist-Revolutionaries; they do not want to recognise any other
decision because they are in favour of rights for the people,
freedom, the Constituent Assembly, etc. Events made it necessary
for the peasant to verify the issue in practice. After having
given the Socialist-Revolutionaries the majority in the
Constituent Assembly, after the policy of the
Socialist-Revolutionaries had failed and the peasants had to deal
with the Bolsheviks in practice, they realised that our government
is a sound one, it is a government that demands rather a lot, it
is a government that is able to ensure the fulfilment of those
demands at all costs, it is a government that regards the loan of
bread to the hungry to be the absolute duty of the peasants even
if they receive no equivalent in return, they realised that ours
is a government that will ensure the supply of bread to the hungry
no matter at what cost. The peasant saw this and compared our
government with that of Kolchak and Denikin, and he made his
choice, not through the ballot-box but by deciding the issue in
practice when he ..ad had the experience of both kinds of
government. The peasant is deciding and will continue to decide
the question in our favour.

That is what the history of Kolchak’s defeat has taught
us and that is what our victories in the South have proved. That
is why we say that literally masses, millions of people living in
the villages, millions of peasants are coming over completely to
our side. I think this is the chief political lesson that we have
learned in this period and which we must apply to the problems of
internal organisation that will, with the victory over Denikin
near, be placed on the order of the day now that it has become
possible for us to concentrate on internal development.

The chief accusation made against us by the European petty
bourgeoisie concerns our terrorism, our crude suppression of the
intelligentsia and the petty bourgeoisie. “You and your
governments have forced all that upon us,” we say in reply. When people shout about terror we answer, “When
countries who have the world’s fleets at their disposal and
have armed forces that are a hundred times greater than ours
pounced upon us and compelled small states to make war on
us—was that not terrorism?”

That was real terrorism when all the powers united against a
country that was one of the most backward and most weakened by
war. Even Germany kept helping the Entente from the time before
her defeat when she was supplying Krasnov and up to the present
day, when that same Germany is blockading us and giving direct
help to our enemies. This attack by world imperialism, this
campaign against us, this bribery of conspirators inside the
country—was this not terrorism? The reason for our terrorism
was that we were attacked by armed forces against which we had to
bend all our efforts. Inside the country we had to act with all
persistence, we had to muster all our forces. In this case we did
not want to be—and we decided that we would not be—in the position in which those who collaborated with Kolchak in
Siberia found themselves, the position in which the German
collaborationists will find themselves tomorrow, those who imagine
they represent a government and are relying on the Constituent
Assembly although at any moment a hundred or a thousand officers
can push that government out of office. This can be understood
because those officers constitute a trained, organised mass with
an excellent knowledge of the art of war, that holds all the
strings in its hands, that is well informed about the bourgeoisie
and the landowners and enjoys their sympathies.

This has been demonstrated by the history of all countries
since the imperialist war, and today, when faced with such
terrorism on the part of the Entente, we have the right to resort
to terror ourselves.

It follows from this that the accusation of terror, insofar as
it is justified, should be against the bourgeoisie and not against
us. They forced terror upon us. And we shall be the first to take
steps to confine it to the lowest possible minimum as soon as we
put an end to the chief source of terrorism—the invasion of
world imperialism, the war plots and the military pressure of
world imperialism on our country.

While speaking of terrorism we must say something about our
attitude to that middle stratum, the intelligentsia, that mostly
complain about the brutality of Soviet power and that Soviet power
puts them in a worse position than before.

Whatever we, with the meagre means at our disposal, can do for
the intelligentsia we are doing. We know, of course, the little
significance of the paper ruble, but we also know the significance
of the black market as an aid to those who cannot get enough food
through our food organisations. In this respect we give the
bourgeois intelligentsia an advantage. We know that at the moment
when world imperialism pounced on us we had to introduce strict
military discipline and defend ourselves with all the forces we
could muster. When we are pursuing a revolutionary war we cannot,
of course, do what all bourgeois states do—leave the working
people to bear the brunt of the war. The burden of the Civil War
must be and will be shared by the entire intelligentsia, all the
petty bourgeoisie, and all middle-class elements—all of them
will bear the burden. It will naturally be more difficult for them
to bear that burden because they have been privileged for decades,
but in the interests of the social revolution we must place that
burden on their shoulders, too. This is the way we reason and the
way we act, and we cannot do otherwise.

The end of the Civil War will be a step towards improving the
conditions of those groups. We have already shown by our tariff
policy and by the declaration in our programme that we recognise
the need to give these groups better conditions because the
transition from capitalism to communism is impossible unless the
bourgeois specialists are used; and all our victories—all
the victories of the Red Army led by the proletariat that has
drawn over to its side the peasantry who are half labourers and
half property-owners—were achieved partly because of our
ability to use bourgeois specialists. This policy of ours as
expressed in matters military must become the policy of our
internal development.

The experience gained in this period tells us that while laying
the foundations of the building we have often undertaken work on
the dome, on all sorts of ornament, etc. Perhaps this was, to a
certain extent, necessary for a socialist republic. Perhaps we had
to build up in all spheres of national life. The craving to build
up in all spheres is perfectly natural. If we were to look at what
has been done in the sphere of state organisation we would see
almost everywhere many things begun and abandoned; these are the
sort that make one want to say when looking at them that they
could have waited and we should have begun with the main thing. It
is quite natural that all our leading people should be interested
in the tasks that can be carried out only after the foundations
have been laid. But on the basis of this experience we can now say
that in future we shall concentrate our efforts more on the main
job, on the foundation, on those simple problems that are the most
difficult to solve but which we shall nevertheless solve. These
are the problem of bread, the problem of fuel and the problem of
fighting the lice. These are three simple problems that will make
possible the building of a socialist republic and then our victory
throughout the world will be a hundred times more certain and more
triumphant than that with which we repulsed the attack of the
Entente.

The bread problem. We have achieved much with our requisitioning system. Our food policy has made it possible in the
second year to acquire three times as much grain as in the
first. During three months of the last campaign more grain was
procured than during three months of last year, although, as you
will hear in the report by the People’s Commissar for Food,
it was accompanied by what were, without doubt, great difficulties. One raid by Mamontov that took in the whole southern
part of the central agricultural zone cost us very dear. But we
have learned to carry out the requisitioning system, i.e., we have
learned to make the peasants sell their grain to the state at
fixed prices, without an equivalent in exchange. We know full
well, of course, that paper money is not the equivalent of
grain. We know that the peasant is loaning us his grain, and we
ask him, “Should you hold back your grain waiting for an
equivalent so that the workers can die of starvation? Do you want
to trade on a free market and take us thereby back to capitalism?” Many intellectuals who have read Marx do not
understand that freedom to trade is a return to capitalism; the
peasant, however, understands it more easily. He knows that to
sell bread at free prices, when the starving are prepared to pay
anything for it, are prepared to give up all they have to escape
death from starvation—he knows that this is a return to
exploitation, that it is freedom for the rich to make a profit and
ruination for the poor. We say that this is a crime against the
state and we shall not yield an inch in this struggle.

In this struggle to requisition grain the peasant will have to
loan his grain to the hungry worker—that is the only way to
begin proper organisation, to restore industry, etc. If the
peasant does not do this, there will be a return to capitalism. If
the peasant feels that he has ties with the workers he will be
prepared to surrender his grain surpluses at fixed prices, i. e.,
for a simple piece of coloured paper—this is something essential without which the starving worker cannot be saved from
death, without which industry cannot be rehabilitated. It is an
extremely difficult problem and it cannot be solved by force
alone. NO matter bow much shouting there may be about the
Bolsheviks being a party that coerces the peasantry, we still say,
“Gentlemen, it is a lie!” If we were a party that coerces the peasantry, how could we have held out against Kolchak,
how could we have formed a conscript army in which four-fifths of
the, soldiers are peasants, all of whom are armed and who have the
example of the imperialist war to show them that a rifle can
easily be turned in any direction? How can we be a party that
coerces the peasants—we, a party that is putting into effect
the alliance between the working class and the peasantry, a party
that tells the peasantry that the transition to free trading is a
return to capitalism and that our requisitioning of surpluses by
force is directed against the profiteer and not against the
working people?

The requisitioning of grain must be the basis of all our
activity. The food problem is at the basis of all problems. We
have to devote a great deal of effort to defeat Denikin. There
must not be the slightest hesitation or carelessness until the
victory is complete, for all sorts of turns are possible. Whenever
there is the slightest improvement in the war situation, however,
we must devote ’greater effort to the work of food supplies
because that is the basis of everything. The requisitioning must
be carried out in full. Only when we have solved that problem
shall. we have a socialist foundation, and on that socialist
foundation we shall be able to erect the splendid edifice of
socialism that we have so often begun to build from the top and
which has so often collapsed.

Another basic problem is tha’t of fuel, the main foundation for our development. This is the problem we have come
up against now, since we cannot take advantage of our successes in
food supplies, since we cannot transport the grain, cannot make
full use of our victories because there is no fuel. We still do
not have a proper apparatus to settle the fuel problem, but it is
possible to settle it.

There is a shortage of coal throughout Europe today. If the
fuel problem is so acute in the richest of the victor countries,
even those like America that has never been attacked or invaded,
it naturally affects us too. It will take us several years to
rehabilitate the coal industry, even under the best conditions.

We have to save ourselves with firewood. We are devoting more
and more Party forces to this work. During the last week the
greatest attention has been paid to this problem in the Council of
People’s Commissars and the Council of Defence and a number
of measures have been adopted that should effect a turningpoint in
this sphere similar to that effected by our armies on the Southern
Front. Our activities in this field must not slacken and every
step must bring us closer to victory in the battle against the
fuel hunger. The material supplies are available. Until we have
restored the coal industry we can manage with firewood and keep
industry supplied with fuel. We must devote all Party forces,
comrades, to that basic problem.

Our third problem is that of the fight against lice, against
the lice that carry typhus. Typhus among a population that is
exhausted by hunger, is ill, has no bread, soap or fuel, may prove
a calamity that will prevent our tackling any sort of socialist
development.

This is the first step in our struggle for culture and this,
too, is a struggle for existence.

These are the main problems. To these I should like to draw the
attention, more than to anything else, of comrades who are members
of the Party. So far the attention we have been paying to these
problems is so little as to be out of all proportion. Nine-tenths
of the forces that are not engaged in war activities—which
must not be lessened for a single minute—must be directed to
these priority tasks. We now have a clear picture of the issues at
stake. Everyone must make the best possible effort; all our forces
must be devoted to these tasks.

With this I shall end the political section of the report. As
far as the international, part is concerned, Comrade Chicherin
will report on that in detail and will read you the proposal we
should like to make to the belligerent countries in the name of
the Congress of Soviets.

I shall deal very briefly with Party tasks. In the course of
the revolution our Party has been confronted with a most important
task. It is natural, on the one band, that all the worst elements
should cling to the ruling party merely because it is the ruling
party. On the other hand, the working class is exhausted and is
naturally weak in a country that is in ruins. Nevertheless it is
only the advanced section of the working class, its vanguard, that
is capable of leading the country. To accomplish this task in the
sphere of state organisation we have employed subbotniks as one of
the means. The slogan we have put forward is this—the first
who can join our Party are those who have volunteered for the
front; those who cannot fight must show in their own places that
they understand what the workers’ party is, they must show
it by applying the principles of communism in practice. And
communism, if you take that word in its strict meaning, is
voluntary unpaid work for the common good that does not depend on
individual differences, that wipes out all memories of everyday
prejudices, wipes out stagnation, tradition, differences between
branches of work, differences in the rate of pay for labour,
etc. This is one of the greatest guarantees that we are drawing
the working class and all working people into the work of
peace-time organisation as well as into war-time activities. The
further development of communist subbotniks must be a school.. Every step must be accompanied by the attraction into the
Party of working-class elements and the most reliable people from
other classes. We achieve this by means of re-registration. We are
not afraid to remove those who are not fully reliable. We also
achieve this by trusting a Party member who comes to us in a
difficult time. Those Party members, as today’s Central
Committee report shows, who came to us in hundreds and thousands
when Yudenich was a few versts from Petrograd and Denikin was
north of Orel, when the bourgeoisie were already jubilant—those Party members are worthy of our trust. We
value the extension of the Party on these lines.

After we have carried out the expansion of the Party on these
lines we must shut the gates, we must be particularly cautious. We
must say that now the Party is victorious we do not need new Party
members. We know ’full well that in a disintegrating capitalist society a mass of harmful people will try to worm their
way into the Party. We must create a party that will be a party of
workers in which there is no place for alien elements, but we must
also draw the masses into the work, those who are outside the
Party. How is this to be done? The means to this end—workers’ and peasants’ non-party
conferences. An article on non-party conferences [6] was
recently published in Pravda. This article, written by Comrade
Rostopehin, deserves special attention. I do not know any other
way of solving this problem of profound historical importance. The
Party cannot throw its doors wide open, because it is absolutely
inevitable that in the epoch of disintegrating capitalism it will
gather to itself the worst elements. The Party must be so narrow
that it draws into its ranks only those elements from other
classes that it has an opportunity to test with great caution.

But we have several hundred thousand.Party members in a country
with a population of more than a hundred million. How can such a
party govern? In the first place there are, and must be, the trade
unions to assist it, and these have millions of members; the
second assistant is non-party conferences. At these non-party
conferences we must be able to approach the non-proletarian
section, we must overcome prejudice and petty-bourgeois
vacillation—that is one of our most important, fundamental
tasks.

We must assess the success of our Party organisations, not only
by the number of Party members engaged in some kind of work, not
only by the degree of success in carrying out the re-registration,
but by non-party workers’ and peasants’ conferences, whether they are arranged correctly and often enough, that is, by
the ability of the organisation to approach those masses that
cannot at the moment join the Party but which we must draw into
the work.

If we have beaten the Entente it is probably because we have
earned the sympathy of the working class, and of the non-party
masses. If we have succeeded in defeating Kolchak it is probably
because he was no longer able to draw more forces from the
reservoir of the working people. We have a reservoir that no other
government in the world has and which no government in the world
except the government of the working class can have, because only
the government of the working class can draw with absolute
confidence on the most downtrodden and most backward working
people. We can and must draw our forces from among the non-party
workers and peasants because they are our true friends. For the
solution of the bread and fuel problems and for the fight against
typhus we can draw forces from these masses that were the most
oppressed, by the capitalists and landowners. And we are assured
of the support of those masses. We shall continue to draw more and
more forces from these masses and we may say that in the end we
shall defeat all our enemies. And we shall work miracles in the
sphere of peaceful construction (to be developed in proper style
after Denikin has been defeated) that will be greater than those
we have worked in the military sphere in the past two years.

3

Concluding Speech On The Political
Report Of The Central Committee
December 2

I should have declined to reply to the discussion if Comrade
Sapronov had not egged me on; I want to polemise a little with
him. There is no doubt that we should listen to what experienced
local functionaries have to say. All their advice is valuable to
us. But I ask you, what is there bad in what is written here? I
was not acquainted with that point. Sapronov gave it to me. It
says here, “Draft Instructions to Gubernia, Uyezd and
Volost Committees on Work in the Countryside.” [7] So the
instructions are addressed to those local functionaries through
whom the work in the localities is carried on. When agitators,
commissars, agents or representatives of the Central Committee
are sent they are undoubtedly always given instructions. Clause
9 here says: “Obtain from state farms and from communes
help for the neighbouring peasants, immediate and real help.” I assumed that even an agent of the Central
Committee would have a head on his shoulders. If regulations
have been approved, how can he demand that they give up a cart,
a horse or something? On this score we have instructions
enough—some people say there are too many of them. And an
agent of the C.C. can make demands only insofar as the instructions allow it, and no commune manager would allow a
cart, a horse or a cow to be given away. But this is a serious
question, because it often spoils our relations with the
peasants, and in the Ukraine they may be spoiled a second time,
if we are unable to put our political line into effect. It is
not difficult to carry it out, and the peasant will he glad of
even a little help. It is not enough to adopt an instruction,
you must be able to carry it out. If Comrade Sapronov is afraid
that a state farm will be robbed of a cow, a horse or a cart,
let him share his tremendous experience in this field with us
and say “Let us give the peasants implements free of charge or at low cost”. That I can understand. And in any
case Clause 9 will not be abolished by that, it will, on the
contrary, receive confirmation. The relations between the
communes and state farms and the neighbouring peasants is one of
the most painful aspects of our entire policy. It will be still
more serious in the Ukraine and tomorrow it will be the same in
Siberia. Today we have won over the Siberian peasant ideologically by liberating him from Kolchak. But it will not be
of any duration unless we can so arrange matters that the
peasant gets real assistance, and it stands to reason that every
agent working in the countryside must be given the relevant
instructions. And when an agent makes his report he must be
asked: “Where and in what way did the state farms help time peasant?” Comrade Sapronov’s directives on this
point were incorrect. It is our basic, unconditional duty to
make use of the experience of local Party functionaries. (Applause.)

4

Draft Resolution On Foreign Policy [8]

The Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic wishes to live
in peace with all peoples and devote all its efforts to internal
development so as to put production, transport and government
affairs in order on the basis of the Soviet system; this has so
far been prevented by the intervention of the Entente and the
starvation blockade.

The workers’ and peasants’ government has made repeated peace proposals to the Entente powers—the message
from the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs to the
American representative, Mr. Poole, on August 5, 1918; to
President Wilson on October 24, 1918; to all Entente governments
through representatives of neutral countries on November 3, 1918;
a message from the Sixth All-Russia Congress of Soviets on
November 7, 1918; Litvinov’s Note in Stockholm to all
Entente representatives on December 23, 1918; then there were the
messages of January 12, January 17 and February 4, 1919, and the
draft treaty drawn up jointly with Bullitt on March 12, 1919; and
a message through Nansen on May 7, 1919.

The Seventh Congress of Soviets fully approves these many steps
taken by the Council of People’s Commissars and the
People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, once more confirms
its lasting desire for peace and again proposes to the Entente
powers, Britain, France, the United States of America, Italy and
Japan, individually and collectively, to begin immediately
negotiations on peace; the Congress instructs the All-Russia
Central Executive Committee, the Council of People’s
Commissars and the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs
to continue this peace policy systematically (or: to continue this
peace policy systematically, taking all appropriate measures to
ensure its success).

5

Speech Summing Up The Debate On Soviet Power In The Ukraine
December 3

Comrades, there is little for me to say, although unfortunately
I shall have to raise objections, not so much to Comrade
Yakovlev who spoke before me, as to Comrades Bubnov and Drobnis
who spoke after me. Nevertheless I shall have to make only a
partial comment.

Insofar as Comrade Rakovsky’s speech is concerned, I must
say that when he said that state farms must be the basis of our
communist construction he was wrong. Under no circumstances can we
organise our affairs in that way. We must accept the fact that we
should convert only a very small part of the progressive farms
into state farms, otherwise we shall not effect a bloc with the
petty peasants—and we need that bloc. When some of the comrades said that I recommend a bloc, with the Borotba Party64
they mistook my meaning. Here I compared the policy that must be
pursued in respect of the Borotba Party with the policy we had
pursued in respect of the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries. We were
then accused, in the first week after October—at peasant
congresses, incidentally—of not wanting to use the forces of
the peasantry once we had seized power. In reply I said that we
had taken over their programme in its entirety so as to use the
forces of the peasantry—we want to do that, but we don’t want an alliance with
Socialist-Revolutionaries. Comrade Manuilsky, like Comrades
Drobnis and Bubnov, was, therefore, making an extremely strange
mistake in asserting that I recommend a bloc with the Borotba
Party. My opinion is that we must demonstrate that we need a bloc
with the Ukrainian peasantry, and in order to achieve that bloc we
must polemise with the Borotba people in away that differs from
the present polemics. All those who spoke about the national
question—Comrades Drobnis and Bubnov and many others spoke
about it—show by their criticism of the C.C. resolution that
they are pursuing the very same policy of “independence” we reproved the Kiev people
for. Comrade Manuilsky is making a peculiar mistake in thinking
that we accused them of independence in the national sense, in the
sense of Ukrainian self-determination. We reproved them for their
“independence” in the sense of their not wanting to consider Moscow’s views, the views of the Central Committee
in Moscow. The word was used jokingly and had a completely
different meaning.

The issue is now the following. Do we need a bloc with the
Ukrainian peasantry, do we need a policy of the.type we needed at
the end of 1917 and for many months in 1918? I maintain that we do
and that for this reason most of the state farms must be handed
over for actual distribution. We need a struggle against kulak
farms, we need a struggle against petty-bourgeois prejudices, we
need a struggle against the guerrilla bands. The Borotba Party
talk a lot about the national question but they say nothing about
the guerrillas. We must demand that the Borotba people disband the
teachers’ union even though it uses the Ukrainian language
and bears the state seal of the Ukraine—it must be disbanded
for the sake of those principles of proletarian communist policy
for which we disbanded our own All-Russia Teachers’ Union;
we disbanded it because it did not implement the principles of
proletarian dictatorship but defended the interests and pursued
the policy of the petty bourgeoisie.

Endnotes

[1]
The Conference was held in Moscow, and was attended by 45
delegates with the right to vote. The agenda consisted of the
following items: (1) Report of the CC.; (2) Report on the
international situation; (3) The agenda of the Seventh All-Russia
Congress of Soviets (state organisation); (4) Soviet power in the
Ukraine; (5) The Party Rules; (6) Work with new Party members; (7)
Fuel question.

Lenin directed the work of the Conference. He made a speech at the opening session, delivered the political
report of the C.C. of the Party and closed the debate on it. Lenin
spoke on Soviet power in the Ukraine and closed the discussion on
this subject. The Conference delegates unanimously approved the
C.C. political line and organisational work. Chicherin, People's
Commissar for Foreign Affairs, delivered a detailed report on the
international situation explaining the foreign policy of the
Soviet state and the efforts being made for the immediate
conclusion of peace. Another important question discussed at the
Conference was state organisation. M. F. Vladimirsky made a report
on this subject on behalf of the CC., R.C.P.(B, and T. V. Sapronov
delivered a co-report. Vladimirsky summed up the results in
organising the Soviet state and submitted concrete proposals for
amending the Constitution of the R.S.F.S.R. Sapronov, Osinsky and
their adherents opposed the C.C. line; they rejected one-man
management and demanded preservation of “ the unlimited
corporate principle” . This group of opportunists tried to
impose their views on the Conference, which would have undermined
centralism and the leading role of the Party in the Soviets. The
Conference rejected the views of Sapronov and his followers as
being contrary to the interests of the Party, and approved Lenin's
principle of democratic centralism in the organisation of
government bodies and in the interrelations of those bodies.

The Conference adopted a number of decisions directed at consolidating the dictatorship of the proletariat and
at involving working masses in Soviet state development.

The Conference adopted new Party Rules which contained a new section on “Candidates” to Party
Membership" introducing a probationary period for all new members,
the length of which depended on social category; it was two months
for factory workers and peasants, and no less than six months for
other categories. A new section on “Groups in the
Extra-Party Institutions and Organisations” was added to the
Party Rules in order to spread Party influence to the extra-Party
organisations and institutions, conduct them in accordance with
the Party line and establish Party control over their activities. The new Party Rules had a special section on
“Party Discipline” , which stated that strict observance of Party discipline was the prime duty of all Party
members and all Party organisations.

The Conference approved the “Theses on the Employment of New Party Members” which outlined measures
to raise the educational and ideological level of Communists, give
them military training, and strengthen Party discipline. The
Eighth Party Conference was of great significance; it summed up
the experience gained by the Party in the two-year struggle to
consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat and implement the
decisions of the Eighth Party Congress. The decisions of the
Seventh All-Russia Congress of Soviets were based on the
Conference's decisions on state, economic and military organisation.

[2]
Lenin refers to the Seventh All-Russia Congress of Soviets held
from December 5 to 9, 1919 in Moscow.

[3]
Lenin refers to Folkets Dagblad Politikem, a newspaper of the
Swedish Left Social-Democrats, who in 1917 founded the Left
Social-Democratic Party of Sweden. It was published in Stockholm
from April 1916, at first every other day, subsequently, daily (up
to November 1917 it appeared under the name Politiken). In 1918-19
it was edited by Fredrik Strom. In 1921 the Left Social-Democratic Party joined the Communist International and became the Communist Party of Sweden, and the newspaper became its Central Organ.	After the Communist Party of Sweden split in October 1929 the newspaper was taken over by the Right wing. Its publication
ceased in May 1945.

[4]
Lenin refers to the article "Finland and the Bolshevists",
published in The Times No. 42239 on October 24, 1919.

[5]
This refers to the resolution of the Ninth Council of the
S.R. Party On the Attitude to the Red Army published in
the Supplement to Lislok Dyela Naroda No, 2.

[6]
Lenin refers to N. P. Rostopchin's article Peasants— Non-Party Conferences published in Pravda No. 20 on November 20, 1919.

[7]
The Draft Instructions to Gubernia, Uyezd and Volost Committees of
the R.C.P. on Work in the Countryside were drawn up by the
relevant department of the C.C., R.C.P.(B.) and published for
discussion in Bulletin of the C .C., R.C.P.(B.) on September 20,
1919; it defined the duties of local Party organisers who were to
secure help for local peasants from neighbouring state farms and
farming co-operatives. The draft was adopted with slight
amendments by the First All-Russia Conference on Party Work in the
Countryside and finally endorsed by the Eighth All-Russia
Conference of the R.C.P.(B.).

[8]
The draft resolution on foreign policy was written by Lenin at the
session of the Eighth All-Russia Conference of the R.C.P.(B.),
December 2, 1919. It was adopted by the Conference with slight
amendments, and afterwards (on December 5) read out by Lenin in
his report at the Seventh All-Russia Congress of Soviets (see
p. 231 of this volume), which adopted it unanimously as a peace
proposal to the countries of the Entente. The resolution of the
Congress was published in the press on December 6, 1919. The peace
proposal of the Congress was sent to the Entente powers on December 10, 1919. The governments of Britain, France, the U.S.A. and Italy refused to examine it.