V. I. Lenin

Speech At A Public Meeting In Simonovsky Sub-District [1]

June 28, 1918

Brief Newspaper Report (The workers gave Lenin a rousing welcome.) Lenin spoke of the
necessity of civil war and called upon the Moscow proletariat to organise solidly in the
struggle both against the forces of counter-revolution and against famine and disruption.

He touched in passing on the Saratov and Tambov events, and pointed out that wherever
revolts inspired by the Mensheviks and Right Socialist-Revolutionaries broke out, the working
class rapidly became disillusioned with the views of these parties and no less rapidly
overthrew the usurpers of the power of the workers and peasants.

We would receive telegrams; he said, appealing for aid, but before our troops could get
half-way, the workers who had sent the appeal would inform us that the need for immediate
assistance had passed as the usurpers had been defeated by local forces. Such was the case in
Saratov, Tambov and other cities.

Lenin stated that, in general, war ran counter to the aims of the Communist Party. But the
war that was being preached today was a sacred war; it was a civil war, a war of the working
class against its exploiters.

Without effort, without tremendous expenditure of energy, he said, we should never set
foot on the road to socialism. A successful fight for the ideals of the working class
entailed organisation. Organisation was also needed to consolidate the gains we had won at
the cost of such severe sacrifice and effort.

It was harder to retain power than to seize it, and we knew of many cases in history when
the working class had taken power into its hands but had been unable to retain it merely
because it did not possess strong enough organisations.

The people were worn out, Lenin continued, and they might, of course, be driven to any
folly, even to the acceptance of a Skoropadsky; for, in their mass, the people were
ignorant.

Famine was imminent, but we knew that there was grain enough even without Siberia, the
Caucasus and the Ukraine. There was enough grain in the provinces surrounding Moscow and
Petrograd to last us until the new harvest, but it was all hidden away by the kulaks. We must
organise the poor peasants, so as to get this grain with their help. A ruthless struggle with
words, as well as action, must be waged on profiteering and profiteers.

Only the working class, knit together by organisation, could explain to the common people
the need for war on the kulaks. The Russian people must know that the poor peasantry had a
powerful ally in the shape of the organised urban proletariat.

The working class and the peasantry must not place too much hope in the intelligentsia, as
many of the intellectuals beginning to side with us were expecting our downfall any
moment.

Lenin concluded with an appeal to organise for the struggle of the workers and peasants
against the kulaks, the landowners and the bourgeoisie. (Lenin’s speech ended amid a general ovation.)

Endnotes

[1] On June 28, 1918, on the
instructions of the Moscow Party Committee meetings on the subject of the Civil War were held
in all districts of Moscow. These enthusiastic mass meetings showed the working
people’s growing trust in the Communist Party, their support for its policy and
condemnation of the parties of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, who were
supporting the bourgeoisie whose actions had led to civil war. The meetings were addressed by
prominent Party workers and also delegates from the Urals, the Volga country and other areas,
who had come to Moscow for the Fifth All-Russia Congress of Soviets. The delegates described
the counter-revolutionary activities of the Mensheviks and S.R.s and the fierce struggle the
kulaks were waging against Soviet power.

Lenin spoke at the AMO Works (Simonovsky Sub-District), the former
Mikhelson Works (Zamoskvorechye District) and in the Soviet Gardens in Rogozhsky
District.

Four thousand workers and other employees at the former Mikhelson Works
listened to Lenin’s speech and stated in their resolution that they approved the Moscow
Soviet’s decision of June 25, 1918 on the, expulsion “for ever from the
Soviets” of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries (Right and Centre), who, as
members of the Soviets, had sabotaged their work and tried to overthrow Soviet power with the
aid of foreign imperialists. The meeting appealed to all working people to “recall from
all Soviets and their institutions the Right S.R.s and Mensheviks, who criminally and
shamefully reside in the camp of the dark forces of the counter-revolution in order to betray
our workers’ cause”.