Comrades, the written questions before me fall into two groups: one raises the question of the Constituent Assembly – that is one group. The other group concerns hunger and economic ruin. I shall answer these two groups, connecting the questions insofar as they relate to more or less similar topics. As regards the Constituent Assembly, we are asked: was it just to dissolve the Constituent Assembly, and should we not have convened a new Constituent Assembly? Or would it not have been more correct to put the question to a popular referendum before dissolving the Constituent Assembly? No, comrades, neither a referendum nor a new Constituent Assembly can help the cause. The parties in Russia have taken shape as they have. Whom the capitalists support, whom the workers and peasants support – we have seen this. Soviet power was not created by anyone's decree, nor by the decision of any party, because it stands above parties, because it is constituted on the basis of revolutionary experience, on the experience of millions of people; it is no accident that in 1905 Soviets were born, and in 1917 they grew and instituted such a new republic as does not exist in European countries and will not exist so long as capital holds dominion there. But the Soviet republic will triumph everywhere, and then a decisive blow will be struck against capital. I must point out that the Constituent Assembly and referendums are constructed on the old patterns of bourgeois parliamentarism, and popular voting, owing to the dominion of capital, is forced to reckon with it and bargain with it. But Soviet power does not produce such representatives as fence with words in parliaments and exchange brilliant speeches, thereby creating the stable dominion of capital and the bureaucratic apparatus. Soviet power proceeds from the laboring masses themselves; it gives not a parliament, but an assembly of labor representatives, which enacts laws that are executed directly, implemented in life, and sets itself the task of struggle against exploiters. The Constituent Assembly of the old type and referendums of the old type set themselves the task of uniting the will of the entire nation and creating the possibility of wolves and sheep, exploiters and exploited, living together peacefully. No, we do not want this. We have lived through and tried all of this. We have had enough of it. And we are convinced that the great majority of workers, peasants, and soldiers have had enough of it. At a time when war compels us to make a whole series of heroic efforts either to wrench ourselves from the hands of capital or to perish, we are being forced to conduct an experiment that has already been carried out in European countries and that would give us the old bourgeois capitalism and general national representation, and not representation of the laboring masses. We need not bourgeois representation, but representation of the exploited and oppressed, which will wage a merciless struggle against the exploiters. Such is the intention of Soviet power; it does not include either parliament or referendum. It stands above this; it gives the laboring people the possibility, if they are dissatisfied with their party, to re-elect their delegates, transfer power to another party, and change the government without the slightest revolution, because the experience of Kerensky – Kaledin and the bourgeois Rada showed that struggle against Soviet power is impossible. And if now there are found in Russia dozens of people who struggle against Soviet power, there are but few such eccentrics, and in a few weeks there will be none at all, and Soviet power will triumph as the organization of the oppressed class for the overthrow of oppressors and for the elimination of exploiters.

Now I turn to the terrible scourge of our time – the hunger that threatens us. What is the main cause of this ruin? The main cause of that ruin which threatens us with hunger in the cities and industrial regions lies in the dominion of wreckers, in the economic ruin that these wreckers maintain while blaming us for it. We know perfectly well that there is enough grain in Russia and that it lies in the Kaledin territory, in distant Siberia, and in the grain-producing provinces. I must say that never can the exploited classes liberate themselves if they do not create a firm, merciless, revolutionary power. Regarding the wreckers, I will say to you, comrades, that we know the addresses of apartments where wrecking officials came and signed for salary payments three months in advance, for which the Ryabushinskys were given five million, and the Anglo-French imperialists so much, and the Romanians so much. That is what wrecking is: it is bribed persons, high-ranking officials, pursuing only one goal: to overthrow Soviet power, although many of them do not know it. Wrecking is the striving to restore the old paradise for exploiters and the old hell for the laboring people. But in order that they should not achieve this goal, we must break their resistance.

Then we are told about the payment of railroad employees. This is sheer misunderstanding. It was only one commissar who perhaps interpreted this matter thus and issued this decree, but at the first indication from the Council of People's Commissars this decree was changed, and to say that this was part of the intention of Soviet power – that means not knowing the facts.

What must we do in order to eliminate hunger and anarchy? First, we must break the resistance of the capitalists and put the wreckers in such a position that they cannot resist. When the supporters of the "New Life" and other ostensibly socialist organs say that after two and a half months sabotage has not ceased, I say: why do you not help us to end this sabotage? The banks have already passed into the jurisdiction of the Soviets. Yesterday such an incident occurred: a writer by profession, Finn-Enotayevsky, came to me and declared on behalf of fifty thousand people that the banks are ready to work in complete submission to Soviet power. (Loud applause.) I reply to the delegate of bank employees: "It's about time." We will not refuse to conduct negotiations with any organization, be it an organization of bank employees or any other – if such recognition of Soviet power is truly recognized by the majority of the laboring people not in words but in deed. That is what declaration we heard from bank employees, who are accustomed to conducting unprecedented speculative dealings and, when the chance comes, to pocketing a kopeck from every ruble, so that their pockets bulge from million-ruble profits.

Now they offer us negotiations, but these will not be the negotiations that Kerensky conducted. We will not speak about the reform of banks. We first occupied the banks with armed force, and only then do we enter into negotiations and issue decrees and orders. From the very beginning it is important for us to break the resistance of the wreckers, and only then enter into negotiations. That is the path of struggle against hunger and anarchy, which alone can overcome the horror of capitalism and ruin. You know what unprecedented ruin has been brought into the whole world, and especially into Russia, where tsarism left bribery, violence, hatred, and mockery of the laboring people. And now they complain of anarchy; judge for yourselves, are those people capable, who have sat three years in the trenches and have been tormented by war, of fighting so that Russian capitalists might grow rich, for the reason that Russian capitalists need Constantinople? They see at every step that people use millions in order to overthrow Soviet power and obtain dominion over the land.

Comrades, such changes in the sense of their completion cannot happen in a single day. The socialist revolution has begun; now everything depends on the creation of comradely discipline, not barracks discipline, not capitalist discipline, but the discipline of the laboring masses themselves. When the railroad workers themselves take power into their own hands, then with the help of an armed organization they will break sabotage and speculation and will set themselves the task of persecuting all those who engage in bribery and violate proper railroad operation. Such people must be persecuted as the greatest criminals against the people's power. Only such organization, only Soviet organization, only its cohesion and energy can be relied upon in the struggle against capitalists, wreckers, swindlers, and the Ryabushinskys. That is the path that must be chosen to overcome hunger, because Russia has everything: both iron, and oil, and grain – in a word, everything necessary in order to live like human beings. If it proves possible to overcome the exploiters, then Soviet power and proper economic management will be established in Russia – and so it shall be. (Stormy applause.)

First published in 1918 in the book "Proceedings of the All-Russian Extraordinary Congress of Railroad Employees, Skilled Workers, and Laborers, held in Petrograd from January 5 to 30, 1918"

Printed from the text of the book