V. I. Lenin

Concluding Speech at the Closing Session of the Congress
March 6

That we have been able to gather, despite all the persecution
and all the difficulties created by the police, that we have
been able without any serious differences and in a brief space
of time, reach important decisions on all the vitally urgent
questions of the contemporary revolutionary epoch, we owe to the
fact that the proletarian masses of the whole world, by their
action, have brought up these questions in practice and begun to
tackle them.

All we have had to do here has been to record the gains already
won by the people in the process of their revolutionary
struggle.

Not only in the East European but also in the West European
countries, not only in the vanquished but also in the victor
countries, for example in Britain, the movement in favor of
Soviets is spreading farther and farther, and this movement is,
most assuredly, a movement pursuing the aim of establishing the
new, proletarian democracy. It is the most significant step
towards the dictatorship of the proletariat to, towards the
complete victory of communism.

No matter how the bourgeoisie of the whole world rage, how much
they deport or jail or even kill Spartacists and Bolsheviks—all this will no longer
help. It will only serve to enlighten the masses, help rid them
of the old bourgeois-democratic prejudices and steel them in the
struggle. The victory of the proletarian revolution on a world
scale is assured. The founding of an international Soviet
republic is on the way. ( Stormy Applause. )

Endnotes

[A]
Most probably, it is not the Birmingham Workers’ Counsel that is
meant here, but the shop stewards committee . It is very likely that the
newspaper which Lenin read contained incorrect information.
Speaking at the First Congress of the Communist International on
March 3, 1919, J. Fineberg, a delegate from the British
Communist group, said:

“In industrial areas local workers’ committees were formed,
including representatives of the shop stewards committees, for
instance, the Clyde workers’ committee, London and Sheffield
workers’ committees and so on. The committees served as
organizational centers and representatives of organized labor
and localities. For some time the employers in the government
refused to recognize the shop stewards committees, but in the
end they had to enter into negotiations with these unregistered
committees. That Lloyd George agreed to recognize the
Birmingham committee as an economic organization proves the shop
stewards committees had become permanent factors in the British
movement. In the shop stewards committees, workers’ committees
and national conferences of shop stewards committees we have an
organization similar to the one forming the basis of the Soviet
republic"

[B]
Lenin was among those who were elected to the presidium .

[C]
Lenin refers to Rosa Luxemburg’s article “Der
Anfang” ( The Beginning ), published in Die Rote Fahne No. 3,
November 18, 1918.