Comrades, allow me first to dwell on several points raised by my co-reporter Paderin, who spoke against me. From the stenographic record I see that he said: "We must do everything possible so that the English and German proletariat, first and foremost, have the opportunity to act against their oppressors; but what must be done for this? Should we assist these oppressors? By stoking enmity within ourselves, by destroying and weakening our country, we infinitely strengthen the positions of the English, French, and German imperialists, who will, in the end, unite together to strangle the working class of Russia." These are arguments that show to what degree the Mensheviks have not always been steady in their struggle and their opposition to imperialist war, because this argument, read by me, can only be understood from the lips of a person calling himself a defensist, who places himself entirely on the position of imperialism (applause), a person justifying imperialist war by repeating bourgeois tricks, as if workers in this war are defending their fatherland. If one truly takes the point of view that workers should not destroy and weaken the country in this war, then this means calling upon workers to defend the fatherland in an imperialist war, and you know what the Bolshevik government did—it made its first duty to publish, expose, and hold up to public shame the secret treaties. You know that the Allies waged war because of the secret treaties, and that the government of Kerensky, which existed by means of the help and support of the Mensheviks and right Socialist-Revolutionaries, not only did not annul these treaties, but did not even publish them—[you know] that the Russian people waged war because of the secret treaties in which Russian landowners and capitalists were promised, in the event of victory, the seizure of Constantinople, the straits, Lvov, Galicia, and Armenia. Thus, if we take our stand from the point of view of the working class, if we are against war, how could we have tolerated these secret treaties? As long as we tolerated the secret treaties, as long as we tolerated the power of the bourgeoisie in our country, to that extent among German workers we supported chauvinist convictions that there were no conscious workers in Russia, that all of Russia was going with imperialism, that Russia was waging war in order to plunder Austria and Turkey. On the contrary, in order to weaken German imperialists, to tear German workers away from them, the worker-peasant government did as much as no government in the world has done, because when these secret treaties were published and exposed before the whole world—even German chauvinists, even German defensists, even those workers who follow their government, in their newspaper *Vorwärts*, which is the central organ, had to acknowledge that this is an act of a socialist government, which is a genuine revolutionary act{166}. They had to acknowledge this because none of all the imperialist governments entangled in war did this, and only our government tore up the secret treaties.

Of course, in the heart of every German worker, however much he has been driven into a corner, beaten down, bribed by imperialists, the thought stirs: surely our government does not have secret treaties? (Voice: "Tell us about the Black Sea Fleet!") Very well, I shall tell, although this is not relevant to the topic. In every German worker the thought stirred: if the Russian worker has gone so far as to tear up the secret treaties, does the German government not have secret treaties? When things came to the Brest treaties, then before the whole world came the exposures of Comrade Trotsky, and has not this policy led to the fact that in a hostile country, engaged in a terrible imperialist war with other governments, our policy provoked not bitterness, but the support of the popular masses? Our government was the only one to do this. Our revolution achieved the fact that during the war in a hostile country there arose a tremendous revolutionary movement, which was caused only by the fact that we tore up the secret treaties, that we said: we will not stop before any dangers. If we know, if we say—and not in words, but in deeds—that salvation from international war, the imperialist slaughter of peoples, can be given only by international revolution, then in our revolution we must move toward this goal, not looking at any difficulties, not looking at any dangers. And when we embarked on this path, for the first time in the world during war, in the most imperialist, in the most disciplined country—in Germany a massive strike broke out and flared up in January. Of course, there are people who think that revolution can be born in a foreign country by order, by agreement. These people are either madmen or provocateurs. We have lived through two revolutions in the last 12 years. We know that they cannot be made either by order or by agreement, that they grow when tens of millions of people come to the conclusion that life cannot continue as it is. We know what difficulties it cost to give birth to revolution in 1905 and 1917, and we never expected that with one blow, at one call, revolution would break out in other countries as well, but in the fact that it begins to grow in Germany and Austria, there is great merit of the Russian October revolution. (Applause.) Today we read in our newspapers that in Vienna, where the bread ration is still lower than ours, where no Ukrainian plundering can help, where the population says that it never experienced such terrible hunger, a Soviet of Workers' Deputies appeared. In Vienna again general strikes are arising.

And we say to ourselves: here is the second step, here is the second proof that when Russian workers tore up the imperialist secret treaties, when they drove out their bourgeoisie, they took a consistent step of conscious workers-internationalists, they helped the growth of revolution in Germany and Austria, as no revolution in the world ever helped revolution in a hostile state, in a state of war, in a state of the greatest bitterness.

To predict when revolution will grow, to promise that it will come tomorrow—this means deceiving you. You remember, especially those of you who lived through both Russian revolutions—could any of you vouch in November 1904 that in two months one hundred thousand Petersburg workers would go to the Winter Palace and open a great revolution?

Recall how we could vouch in December 1916 that in two months the tsarist monarchy would be overthrown in a matter of days. In our country, where we lived through two revolutions, we know and see that the course of revolution cannot be predicted, that it cannot be summoned. One can only work for the benefit of revolution. If you work consistently, if you work selflessly, if this work is connected with the interests of the oppressed masses constituting the majority, then revolution comes, but where, how, at what moment, over what issue—this cannot be said. Therefore in no case shall we permit ourselves to deceive the masses, to say: German workers will help tomorrow, they will blow up their Kaiser the day after. This cannot be said.

All the more difficult is our position because the Russian revolution turned out to be ahead of other revolutions, but that we are not alone—this is shown to us by news arriving almost every day of how all the best German social-democrats are coming out in favor of the Bolsheviks, how Clara Zetkin comes out in favor of the Bolsheviks in the open German press, then Franz Mehring, who now in a series of articles proves to German workers that only the Bolsheviks correctly understood socialism, as recently in the Württemberg parliament one social-democrat Hösch definitely declared that he sees in the Bolsheviks alone an example of consistency and correctly conducted revolutionary policy. Do you think that such things do not find their echo among dozens, hundreds, thousands of German workers, who will join them in advance? When things come to the formation of a Soviet of Workers' Deputies in Germany and Austria, and to a second mass strike, then we must say, without exaggerating a bit, not deceiving ourselves in the slightest, that this means the moment of the advent of revolution. We say to ourselves with perfect precision: our policy and our path were the correct policy and the correct path, we helped Austrian and German workers feel themselves not enemies strangling Russian workers for the sake of the Kaiser's interests, for the sake of German capitalists' interests, but we helped them feel themselves brothers of Russian workers, who are conducting the same revolutionary work. (Applause.)

I would also like to point to one place in Paderin's speech which seems to me all the more deserving of attention because it partly coincides with the thought of the previous speaker{167}. Here is that place: "We see that now civil war is being waged within the working class. Can we permit this?" You see, civil war is called war among the working class, or is called, as the previous speaker called it, war with peasants. But we know perfectly well that both of these are untrue. Civil war is in Russia a war of workers and the poorest peasants against landowners and capitalists, this war is prolonged, drawn out, because the landowners and capitalists of Russia were defeated in October and November with relatively small sacrifices, defeated by the uprising of the popular masses under such conditions that it was immediately evident to them that the people could not support them, when it came to the point that even in the Don region, where there are the most wealthy Cossacks living by the exploitation of hired labor, where there was the most hope for counter-revolution, even there Bogaevsky, the leader of the counter-revolutionary uprising, had to acknowledge and did publicly acknowledge: "our cause is lost because the vast majority of the population, even among us, is for the Bolsheviks." (Applause.)

That is how it was, how in their game, in their counter-revolutionary game, the landowners and capitalists lost in October and November.

That is what their adventure amounted to when they tried to form a white guard from junkers, from officers, from the sons of landowners and capitalists, against the worker-peasant revolution. And now do you not know—read today's newspapers—that the Czechoslovak adventure is fed by little kopecks from Anglo-French capitalists{168}, who bribe troops to drag us back into war; have you not read how the Czechoslovaks said in Samara: we will unite together with Dutov, Semenov, and force the workers of Russia and the Russian people to wage war again against Germany together with England and France, we will restore those same secret treaties and throw you, perhaps for another four years, into this imperialist war in alliance with the bourgeoisie. Instead of this we are now waging war against our own bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie of other countries, and only by waging this war do we attract to ourselves the sympathy and support of workers in other countries. If a worker in one warring country sees that in another warring country a close connection is being created between workers and the bourgeoisie, then this splits workers along national lines, merges them with their own bourgeoisie; this is the greatest evil, this is the collapse of the socialist revolution, the collapse and death of the entire International. (Applause.)

In 1914 the International perished because workers in all countries united with their national bourgeoisie and split from one another, and now this split is coming to an end. You have perhaps recently read how in England the Scottish people's teacher and trade union worker Maclean was imprisoned for the second time for 5 years; the first time he received 1½ years for exposing the war and speaking about the criminality of English imperialism. When he was released, there was already a representative of the Soviet government, Litvinov, in England, and he immediately appointed Maclean as consul, as representative in England of the Soviet Russian Federative Republic, and Scottish workers responded to this appointment with enthusiasm. The English government opened persecution against Maclean a second time, not only as a Scottish people's teacher, but as a consul of the Federative Soviet Republic. Maclean sits in prison for having come forward openly as a representative of our government, and we have never seen this man, he never belonged to our party, he is the beloved leader of Scottish workers, and we united with him, Russian and Scottish workers united against the English government, despite the fact that it buys Czechoslovaks and conducts a furious policy of dragging the Russian republic back into war. These are proofs that in all countries, regardless of their position in war, both in Germany, which wages war against us, and in England, which wants to grab Bagdad for herself, to finish off Turkey once and for all, workers are rallying together with Russian Bolsheviks, with the Russian Bolshevik revolution. When a speaker here, whose words I quoted, said that civil war is being waged by workers and peasants against workers and peasants, we know perfectly well that this is untrue. One thing is the working class, and another thing is small groups, small layers of the working class. The German working class from 1871 to 1914, almost half a century, was the model of socialist organization for the whole world. We know that it had a party of a million people, that it created trade unions with two, three, four million members, and yet throughout this half century there remained hundreds of thousands of German workers united in a clerical priestly union and standing firm for the priest, for the church, for their Kaiser. Who then really represented the working class: the gigantic German social-democratic party and trade unions, or hundreds of thousands of clerical workers? One thing is the working class, which unites the vast majority of conscious, advanced, thinking workers, and another thing is one factory, a plant, a locality, several groups of workers continuing to remain on the side of the bourgeoisie.

The working class of Russia in its gigantic, overwhelming majority—this is shown to you by all elections to the Soviets, to factory-plant committees, conferences—they stand 99 out of 100 percent on the side of Soviet power (applause), knowing that this power wages war against the bourgeoisie, against kulaks, not against peasants and workers. This is a big difference if there is found an insignificant group of workers who continue to remain in slavish dependence on the bourgeoisie. We are waging war not with them, but with the bourgeoisie, and so much the worse for those insignificant groups that continue to remain in alliance with the bourgeoisie. (Applause.)

There is a question that was posed to me here in a note; this question states: "Why do counter-revolutionary newspapers still come out?" One of the reasons is that there are also elements among printing workers who have been bribed by the bourgeoisie{169}. (Noise, shouts: "That's not true.") You can shout as much as you like, but you will not prevent me from saying the truth, which all workers know, which I have only just begun to explain. When a worker places high value on his personal earnings in bourgeois newspapers, when he says: I want to preserve my high personal earnings for helping the bourgeoisie sell poison, poison the people with poison, then I say: these workers are just the same as bribed by the bourgeoisie (applause), not in the sense that any one of them, an individual person, was hired. I wanted to say not in this sense, but in the sense in which all Marxists have spoken against English workers who conclude alliances with their capitalists. You all, who have read professional literature, know also the example that there are unions there not only of workers, but there are organized between workers of a given profession and capitalists of the same profession unions for the purpose of raising prices, plundering everyone else. All Marxists, all socialists in all countries point fingers at such examples and, beginning with Marx and Engels, spoke of workers bribed by the bourgeoisie through unconsciousness, through their guild interests. They sold their birthright, the right to socialist revolution, by entering into an alliance with their capitalists against the vast majority of workers and oppressed laboring strata in their own country, their own class. It is the same here. When we find individual groups of workers saying, what do we care that what we are gathering is opium, poison, bearing lies and provocation? I will get my higher earnings, I don't give a damn about others. We will brand such workers, we have always told such workers throughout our entire literature and said openly: such workers are withdrawing from the working class and crossing over to the side of the bourgeoisie. (Applause.)

Comrades! I shall now proceed to consider those questions posed to me, but first, so as not to forget, I will answer the question about the Black Sea Fleet{170}, which was posed as if to expose us. And I will tell you that Comrade Raskolnikov acted there, whom Petersburg and Moscow workers know well from his agitation, from his party work. Comrade Raskolnikov himself will be here and will tell you how he agitated for us to be better off by destroying the fleet than by letting German troops move on it against Novorossiysk. That is how it was with the Black Sea Fleet, and the People's Commissars—Stalin, Shlyapnikov, and Raskolnikov—are coming soon to Moscow and will tell us how it was. You will see that our policy was the only one which, just like the policy of the Brest Peace, brought us much terrible suffering, but which made it possible for Soviet power and the worker-socialist revolution in Russia to continue to hold its banner before the workers of all countries. If now in Germany the number of workers growing daily who are casting off old prejudices about the Bolsheviks and understanding the correctness of our policy, then in this is the merit of the tactic we have been conducting beginning with the Brest treaty.

Of the questions posed to me, I will dwell on two concerning the supply of grain. Individual workers say: why do you forbid the supply of grain to individual workers when they are transporting it for their own family? The answer to this is simple: think what would happen if thousands of poods, necessary for a given locality, for a given factory, for a given district, for a given quarter, were brought by thousands of people. If we agreed to this, there would begin a complete breakdown of food supply organizations. We do not at all blame the hungry, exhausted person who travels alone for grain and obtains it by any means possible, but we say: we exist as a worker-peasant government not in order to legalize and encourage disintegration and breakdown. For that a government is not needed. It is needed to unite them, to organize, to rally them consciously in the struggle against unconsciousness. One cannot blame those who in unconsciousness drop everything, close their eyes to everything in order to save themselves by any means—obtain grain—but one can blame those who are a party person and, preaching a grain monopoly, insufficiently support consciousness and cohesion of action. Yes, the struggle against bagmen, against individual grain transport, is a difficult struggle, because it is a struggle with darkness, with unconsciousness, with the disorganization of the broad masses, but we will never abandon this struggle. Every time people rush into individual procurement, we will again call them to proletarian socialist methods of struggle against hunger: united together, let us with new forces replace the sick food supply detachments, replace them with fresh, stronger, more honest, more conscious, more tested people, and we will bring that same quantity of grain, those same thousands of poods, which scattered efforts of 200 people drag along at 15 poods each, raising prices, strengthening speculation. But we will unite these 200 people, we will create a united strong worker army. If we do not succeed immediately, we will repeat our efforts; we will achieve it at every factory, at every plant, so that conscious workers give more strength, more reliable people for the struggle against speculation, and we are confident that the consciousness, discipline, and organization of workers will, in the end, overcome all heavy trials. That is when people, from their own experience, become convinced that as a result of individual bagman activity it is impossible to save hundreds of thousands of hungry people, we will see that the cause of organization and consciousness will triumph and that we will organize through rallying the struggle against hunger and achieve the proper distribution of grain.

I am asked here: why has monopoly not been introduced on other industrial products as necessary as grain? To this I answer: Soviet power is taking all measures toward this. You know that there is a tendency to organize, to unite textile factories, textile production. You know that in this organization in most directing centers sit workers, you know that Soviet power is beginning the nationalization of all branches of industry, you know that the difficulties that stand in the way of this matter are enormous, that much strength is needed to create all this in an organized manner. And we undertake this work not as governments do which rely on bureaucrats. It is so easy to govern: let one man receive 400, let another receive more, up to a thousand rubles, our task is to order, and they must obey. That is how all bourgeois countries govern; they hire themselves bureaucrats at high pay, they hire the same sons of the bourgeoisie and entrust them with management. The Soviet republic cannot govern that way. It has no bureaucrats to govern and direct the work of uniting all textile factories, the work of registration, the work of introducing monopoly on all necessities and their proper distribution. For this we call the same workers, we call representatives of the textile trade unions and say: you must constitute the majority of the directing board of Tsentrotekstil and you do constitute the majority in it, just as you constitute the majority in the directing boards in the Supreme Council of the National Economy. Comrade workers, undertake this most important state work yourselves, we know that this is harder than setting up efficient bureaucrats, but we know there is no other way. It is necessary to give power into the hands of the working class and teach the advanced workers, despite all difficulties, through their own experience, on their own shoulders, with their own hands, to reach an understanding of how to distribute all items, all manufactures in the interests of the laboring masses. (Applause.)

That is why in order to introduce state monopoly, to set fixed prices, Soviet power does all it can do given the present situation, does this through workers, together with workers, gives them the majority in every board, in every separate center, whether it is the Supreme Council of the National Economy, whether it is the union of metalworkers or sugar factories nationalized in a matter of weeks. This path represents a difficult path, but, I repeat, without difficulties it is impossible to achieve the fact that workers, accustomed before and trained by the bourgeoisie over the course of hundreds of years only to slavishly execute its orders, to work like convicts, would move to a different position, that they would feel that power is us. The owner of industry, the owner of grain, the owner of all products in the country—this is us. Only when this consciousness penetrates deeply into the working class, when through its own experience, its own work it increases its strength tenfold, only then will all difficulties of the socialist revolution be overcome.

I conclude with an appeal of the factory-plant conference once more to the effect that in the city of Moscow, where difficulties are especially great, because it is a tremendous center of trade and speculation, where tens of thousands of people have existed for many years only by gaining their means of livelihood through trade and speculation, where difficulties are especially great, but where, on the other hand, there are forces such as no small city possesses. Let only these worker organizations, let only the factory-plant committees remember well and firmly take into account what all present events teach, what present hunger overwhelming the laboring masses of Russia teaches. Only new and ever new organizations, broader organizations of conscious and advanced workers can save the revolution from the return of power to landowners and capitalists. Such workers are now the majority, but this is insufficient; it is necessary that they undertake more general state work. In Moscow there are countless cases when speculators play on hunger and profit from hunger, destroy the grain monopoly, when the rich have everything they desire. In Moscow there are 8,000 members of the Communist party, in Moscow the trade unions will provide 20–30 thousand people, for whom the unions can vouch, who will be reliable, steadfast exponents of proletarian policy. Unite them, create hundreds of thousands of detachments of people, undertake food supply work, undertake searches of all the wealthy population—and you will achieve what you need. (Applause.)

I told you last time what success was achieved in this matter in the city of Yelets, but in Moscow it is harder to do this. I said that Yelets is the city best organized in this respect, there are many cities much worse organized, because this work is difficult, because it is not a matter of lack of weapons—there are plenty—but the difficulties lie in putting forward for directing, responsible posts hundreds and thousands of workers, absolutely reliable, capable of understanding that they are doing not their own local business, but the business of all Russia, who are capable of standing at their post as representatives of the entire class, and organizing according to a well-planned, definite scheme the work, to execute what is prescribed, what the Moscow Soviet will decide, the Moscow organizations of all proletarian Moscow. All the difficulty lies in organizing the proletariat, in making it more conscious than it has been until now. Look at the Petersburg elections{171}—and you will see how, despite the fact that there hunger rages even greater than in Moscow, that there calamities have struck with even greater weight, there grows devotion to the worker revolution, there grows organization and cohesion, and you will then say to yourselves that together with the growth of those calamities that have struck us down, grows the determination of the working class to overcome all these difficulties. Take this path, strengthen your energy, move new thousands of detachments along this path, to assist the food supply work, and we together with you, relying on your support, will overcome hunger and achieve the proper distribution. (Stormy applause.)