Thanks to the peace that has been achieved – despite all its painfulness and all its instability – the Russian Soviet Republic obtains the possibility of concentrating its forces for a certain period on the most important and most difficult aspect of the socialist revolution, namely – on the organizational task.

This task has been clearly and precisely set before all the laboring and oppressed masses in the 4th paragraph (4th section) of the resolution adopted on March 15, 1918 at the Moscow Extraordinary Congress of Soviets – in that same paragraph (or in that same section) of the resolution where there is discussion of the self-discipline of the laboring masses and of the merciless struggle against chaos and disorganization[21].

The instability of the peace achieved by the Russian Soviet Republic is conditioned, of course, not by the fact that it is now contemplating the renewal of military operations; – except for bourgeois counter-revolutionaries and their echoes (Mensheviks and others), no sane politician thinks about this. The instability of peace is conditioned by the fact that in the imperialist states bordering Russia on the west and on the east, possessing enormous military force, the war party may gain the upper hand at any moment, seduced by Russia's momentary weakness and goaded on by capitalists who hate socialism and are eager for plunder.

Given such a state of affairs, the real, not paper, guarantee of peace for us is exclusively the discord among the imperialist powers, which has reached its highest limits and is manifesting itself, on the one hand, in the renewal of the imperialist slaughter of peoples in the West, and on the other hand – in the extremely acute imperialist rivalry between Japan and America over dominion of the Great Ocean and its coasts.

It is understandable that, protected by such a precarious safeguard, our Soviet socialist republic finds itself in an extraordinarily unstable, absolutely critical international position. It is necessary to strain all our forces to the utmost in order to utilize the respite provided us by the concatenation of circumstances to heal the most severe wounds inflicted upon the entire social organism of Russia by war, and for the economic advancement of the country, without which there can be no question of any serious increase in defensive capacity.

It is also understandable that serious assistance to the belated, as a result of a series of causes, socialist revolution in the West we shall render only insofar as we succeed in resolving the organizational task set before us.

The basic condition for the successful resolution of the organizational task that confronts us in the first place is the complete assimilation by the political leaders of the people, that is, by members of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), and then by all conscious representatives of the laboring masses, of the fundamental distinction between the former bourgeois and the present socialist revolution in the respect under consideration.

In bourgeois revolutions the main task of the laboring masses consisted in the performance of negative or destructive work – the destruction of feudalism, monarchy, the Middle Ages. The positive or creative work of organizing a new society was performed by the propertied, bourgeois minority of the population. And it performed this task, in spite of the resistance of workers and the poorest peasants, relatively easily not only because the resistance of the masses exploited by capital was then, owing to their dispersion and lack of development, extremely weak, but also because the basic organizing force of the anarchically constructed capitalist society is the spontaneously expanding market, national and international.

On the contrary, the main task of the proletariat and the poorest peasantry led by it in every socialist revolution – and consequently also in the socialist revolution in Russia begun by us on October 25, 1917 – is positive or creative work of establishing an extraordinarily complex and delicate network of new organizational relations, encompassing planned production and distribution of products necessary for the existence of tens of millions of people. Such a revolution can be successfully carried out only through the independent historical creativity of the majority of the population, above all the majority of the laboring masses. Only if the proletariat and the poorest peasantry are able to find within themselves sufficient consciousness, ideological commitment, self-abnegation, and persistence – will the victory of the socialist revolution be assured. Having created a new, Soviet, type of state, opening up the possibility for the laboring and oppressed masses to take the most active part in the independent construction of a new society, we have resolved only a small part of the difficult task. The main difficulty lies in the economic sphere: to realize the strictest and universal accounting and control of production and distribution of products, to increase labor productivity, to socialize production in fact.

The development of the Bolshevik party, which is now the ruling party in Russia, shows especially clearly what consists the historical turning point we are experiencing and which constitutes the distinctive feature of the present political moment, requiring a new orientation of Soviet power, that is, a new formulation of new tasks.

The first task of any party of the future is to convince the majority of the people of the correctness of its program and tactics. This task stood in the foreground both under tsarism and in the period of the conciliationism of Chernovs and Tsereteli with Kerenskys and Kishkins. Now this task, which of course is far from being completed (and which can never be exhausted entirely), has been solved in its main aspects, because the majority of workers and peasants of Russia, as was demonstrated indisputably by the last Congress of Soviets in Moscow, are decidedly on the side of the Bolsheviks.

The second task of our party was the conquest of political power and the suppression of the resistance of the exploiters. And this task is far from exhausted entirely, and it is impossible to ignore it, because monarchists and Cadets, on the one hand, their echoes and hangers-on, Mensheviks and right Socialist-Revolutionaries, on the other, continue their attempts to unite for the overthrow of Soviet power. But, in its main aspects, the task of suppressing the resistance of the exploiters has already been solved in the period from October 25, 1917 until (approximately) February 1918 or until the surrender of Bogaevsky.

There is now coming to the fore, as the immediate task and constituting the distinctive feature of the moment we are experiencing, the third task – to organize the administration of Russia. Of course, this task was set and solved by us on the very day after October 25, 1917, but up to now, while the resistance of the exploiters still took the form of open civil war, up to now the task of administration could not become the main, central task.

Now it has become such. We, the party of Bolsheviks, have convinced Russia. We have conquered Russia – from the rich for the poor, from the exploiters for the laboring masses. We must now administer Russia. And the whole distinctive feature of the moment we are experiencing, all the difficulty consists in understanding the peculiarities of the transition from the main task of convincing the people and the military suppression of the exploiters to the main task of administration.

For the first time in world history a socialist party has succeeded in completing, in its main features, the conquest of power and the suppression of the exploiters, has succeeded in directly approaching the task of administration. We must prove ourselves worthy executors of this most difficult (and most grateful) task of the socialist transformation. We must think through what is necessary for successful administration – besides the ability to convince, besides the ability to win in civil war, the ability to organize practically. This is the most difficult task, because it is a matter of organizing anew the deepest, economic, foundations of the life of tens and tens of millions of people. And this is the most grateful task, because only after its resolution (in its main and basic features) will it be possible to say that Russia has become not only a Soviet but also a socialist republic.