V. I. Lenin

Session Of The Petrograd
Soviet

March 12, 1919

I

Report On The Foreign And Home Policy
Of The Council Of People’s Commissars

Brief Newspaper Report (Lenin’s appearance on the platform is greeted by a lengthy ovation. All rise.)

“This hail reminds me of the first time I spoke at a meeting of the Petrograd Soviet, when the Mensheviks
and Socialist-Revolutionaries still ruled it. We have forgotten
the recent past too soon, but today, the way the revolution is
developing in other countries reminds us of what we experienced
not so long ago. Formerly it was assumed that in the West, where
class antagonisms are much more developed, because of the more
intensive development of capitalism, the revolution would proceed
on lines differing somewhat from those of this country, and that
power would pass directly from the bourgeoisie to the proletariat. Events in Germany, however, indicate the
contrary. The German bourgeoisie have united to counteract the
masses of the proletariat who have raised their heads; they
acquire strength from the greater experience gained by the Western
bourgeoisie, and are waging a systematic struggle against the
proletariat. The German revolutionary masses, however, still lack
experience, and can gain it only in the course of this struggle. Everybody remembers the revolution of 1905, when the
Russian proletariat entered the struggle without any previous
experience. In the present revolution, however, we have taken into
account and made use of the experience we gained in the revolution
of 1905.”

Lenin then proceeded to review the work of the Council of
People’s Commissars. He recalled the first period of therevolution when the masses did not yet know what to do and
still lacked sufficiently authoritative and powerful guiding
centres.

“We knew perfectly well,” Lenin continued, “that to achieve success in the struggle that had been
started the greatest possible cohesion of the exploited masses and
all elements of the entire working population was essential, and
this inevitably brought us face to face with the question of forms
of organisation. We remembered very well the part the Soviets had
played in 1905, and revived them as the most suitable means of
uniting the working people in their struggle against the
exploiters. Before the revolution in Germany we always said that
the Soviets were the most suitable organs of government for
Russia. At that time we could not say that they were equally
suitable for the West, but events have shown that they are. We see
that Soviets are gaining popularity in the West, and that the
fight for them is going on not only in Europe, but also in
America. Soviet-type councils are being set up everywhere, and
sooner or later they will take power into their own hands.

“The present situation in America, where such councils are being set up, is extremely interesting. Perhaps the movement
there will not develop as it is developing in this country, but
the important thing is that there, too, the Soviet form of
organisation has gained extensive popularity. This form has
superseded all other forms of proletarian organisation. The
anarchists were formerly opposed to all government but after they
had got to know the Soviet form they accepted it, and thereby
demolished the whole theory of anarchism, which repudiates every
form of government. Two years ago the compromising idea of
collaboration with the bourgeoisie was dominant in our Soviets. A
certain amount of time was required to clear the minds of the
masses of the old rubbish that prevented them from understanding
what was going on. This could be achieved only when the Soviets
had undertaken the practical work of building the state. The
masses of the workers in Germany are now in the same position, and
their minds, too, must be cleared of the same old rubbish,
although in that country the process is more intense, cruel and
bloody than in Russia.

“I have digressed somewhat from the subject on which the
Presidium of the Petrograd Soviet has asked me to speak, but this
could not be helped.

“The activities of the Council of People’s
Commissars during the past year can be understood only by
appraising the role of the Soviets in the light of the world
revolution. Often the minor daily affairs of administration and
the inevitable petty problems of the work of organisation distract
our attention and make us forget the great cause of the world
revolution. But only by gauging the role of the Soviets on a world
scale can we properly understand the minor details of the internal
life of our country, and regulate them in proper time. The bigwig
inspectors from Berne [1] say that we advocate violence, but
they deliberately shut their eyes to the practices of their own
bourgeoisie which governs exclusively with the aid of violence.

“Before we adopted the Soviet form of government there was a period of several months during which the masses prepared
themselves for this new, hitherto unprecedented form of
government. We tore the Kerensky government to shreds; we
compelled the Provisional Government to keep on changing its
Cabinet, to jump from right to left, up and down, and this
definitely proved to the masses that the clique of compromisers
with bourgeoisie who claimed the right to power at that time were
unfit to govern the country, and only after this did we take power
into our hands.

“The matter is much more complicated when taken on a world scale. In that case, revolutionary violence is not enough;
revolutionary violence must be preceded by a period of preparation, like the one we passed through, but of somewhat
longer duration, of course. At one time the Treaty of Brest was a vexed question, and certain gentlemen called it
a compromise and decided to take advantage of this step of the
Soviet government to serve their demagogic aims. But if this is
called a compromise, it would also be correct to say that we
compromised with the tsar when we went into the State Duma in
order to disrupt it from within. We concluded the Treaty of Brest
because we expected the development of conditions in Germany that
would bring about the overthrow of Wilhelm, and this shows how
correct our calculations were.

“In the Entente [2] countries we see the awakening of the
masses which the governments of these countries are doing their
utmost to prevent. For this purpose the thoughts of the as yet
politically unenlightened masses are being diverted to
‘patriotic’ channels. The masses are being lured by promises of the advantages of a victorious peace, they are being
promised incalculable blessings when peace is concluded. They are
being sustained with illusions. But the extent to which these
illusions are likely to become reality may be gauged by the
conversation I had recently with an American, a shrewd and
level-headed businessman, whose interests differ entirely from
ours. He described the situation in France as follows. The French
Government is promising the masses piles of gold which, it claims,
will be obtained from the Germans but the Germans have to have
something to pay with, for if a debtor has nothing, nothing can be
got front him and all the illusions based on the prospect of
concluding an advantageous peace with Germany will be dispelled,
for the peace that has been concluded will be a bankrupt
peace. Even the enemies of the revolution realise this, for they
see no way out of the present situation except the overthrow of
capitalism. In this respect the temper of the Paris crowds, which
are extremely sensitive and responsive, is typical. Six months ago
people were quite tolerant towards speakers at meetings who
roundly abused the Bolsheviks. But now, if any speaker dares to
say anything against the Bolsheviks, they refuse to give him a
hearing. The bourgeoisie have helped us a great deal to popularise
our ideas. Their attacks on us made the masses think and discuss
and, as a consequence, those of the masses of Paris who are able
to think for themselves have come to the conclusion that since the
bourgeoisie detest the Bolsheviks so much the Bolsheviks must know
how to fight them. The Entente has now turned its attention to its
and wants to pay the bills it owes out of our pocket. We have to
reckon with a powerful enemy whose military strength is superior
to ours, but not for long. Disillusionment with the victory is
bound to set in, and this will lead to the collapse of all the
‘Allied’ machinations, that is, if they do not quarrel with each other before that. All countries are now suffering from
hunger and no victory will hell) overcome it.. We are confronted
with complicated problems of foreign policy. In this respect we
have the experience of the Brest peace, time most important step
in the foreign policy of the Council of People’s
Commissars. The Brest peace was concluded with a powerful enemy
who was far superior to us in military strength, and this caused
disagreement even in our own ranks, but the proletarian state had
to take such a first step because it was surrounded on all sides
by imperialist predators. The Brest peace sapped the strength of
our powerful enemy. In a very short time the Germany which had
forced these predatory terms upon its collapsed, and the same fate
awaits the other countries, the more so that everywhere we see the
armies falling to pieces.

“We must recall the time when the disintegration of our
army was ascribed to the impatience of the Russians, but this
seems to be the lot of all countries that take the path of
revolution. The downright robbery now being perpetrated by the
‘democratic’ governments in Paris is opening the eyes of the masses, the more so that their bickering over the spoils,
which at times grows into a serious quarrel, is no longer a
secret. [3] Unfavourable though the conditions under which Soviet Russia exists may be, we have this one
advantage, which even the bourgeois Times lays stress upon. In an
article written by its military expert it spoke of the growing
disintegration of the armies of all countries except
Russia. According to time Times, Russia is the only country in
which the army is not falling to pieces but is being built
up. This has been one of the most important features of our
development during the past year. We are surrounded by enemies, we
are defending ourselves and fighting to regain every inch of
Soviet Russia’s territory, and every month of struggle brings us nearer and nearer to the world revolution. We were the
first in the world to take power, and today Soviets of working
people govern our country. Shall we succeed in retaining power? If
we do not, it will prove that historically we were not justified
in seizing power. But today we can be justly proud of having
withstood this test and of having upheld the power of the working
people in spite of the incalculable suffering we have been
compelled to undergo.”

Lenin then went on to deal with the question of the specialists.

Some of our comrades, he said, express indignation at the fact
that former officers and others who served the tsar are at the
head of the Red Army. “Naturally, in organising the Red
Army this question acquires special significance and success in
this work depends on its correct presentation. But the question
of specialists must be discussed on a broader scale. We must
make use of them in all spheres of organisation, wherever we,
lacking the experience and scientific training of the old
bourgeois specialists, are ourselves naturally unable to cope
with our tasks. We are not utopians who think that socialist
Russia must be built up by men of a new type; we must utilise
the material we have inherited from the old capitalist world. We
are placing people of the old type in new conditions, keeping
them under proper control, under the vigilant supervision of the
proletariat, and making them do the work we need. This is the
only way we can build. If you are unable to erect the edifice
with the materials bequeathed to us by the bourgeois world, you
will not be able to build it at all, and you will not be
Communists, but mere phrase-mongers. For the purpose of building
socialism, we must make the fullest use of the science,
technology and, in general, everything that capitalist Russia
bequeathed to us. Of course there will be great difficulties in
our way. Mistakes are inevitable. There are deserters and
deliberate saboteurs everywhere. Against these, force had to be
the primary weapon. But after that we must make use of the moral
weight of the proletariat, strong organisation and discipline. There is no need whatever to reject useful
specialists, but they must be kept within definite limits so
that the proletariat can keep them under control. They must be
entrusted with certain work, but a vigilant eye must also be
kept on them, commissars must be placed over them to thwart
their counter-revolutionary scheming. At the same time we must
also learn from them. Above all, no political concessions
whatever must be made to these gentlemen whose services we are
using wherever possible. We have already succeeded in doing this
to some extent. We have passed from the stage of suppressing the
capitalists to the stage of using their services, and this,
perhaps, is one of the most important achievements in the field
of internal development during the past year.

“One of the most serious problems affecting our cultural
development is that of the rural districts. Soviet power
presupposes the widest. possible support of the working
people. This sums up our entire rural policy during this
period. It was necessary to link up the urban proletariat with the
rural poor, and this we have done. Today they are most intimately
connected by thousands of imperceptible threads. Here, as
elsewhere, we encounter considerable difficulties, for the
peasants are accustomed to feel that they are independent
proprietors. They are accustomed to sell their grain freely, and
every peasant regarded this as his inalienable right. Now a
tremendous effort is needed to convince them definitely that only
by means of the communist organisation of production shall we be
able to cope with the devastation caused by the war. This must be
done by persuasion and not by force. Of course, among the peasants
too we have open enemies, the kulaks; but the bulk of the poor
peasants, and of the middle peasants who are close to them, are on
our side. Against the kulaks, who are our inveterate enemies, we
have but one weapon—force. When we began to carry out our
food policy on the principle that the peasants must surrender
their surplus stocks for the benefit of the famine-stricken, some
people began to shout to the peasants: ‘They’re robbing you!’ These were the inveterate enemies of the
peasants, workers and communism, enemies arrayed in Menshevik,
Left Socialist-Revolutionary, or other clownish costumes, and
these we shall continue to treat in the same way as we have
treated them up to now.”

2

Replies to Written Questions

Comrades, I now want to reply to the written quest ions, two of which are not quite clear. However, one of them
appears to contain two main ideas. In the first place, its author
has a grudge against the Bolsheviks who went at things with a
rush, and sympathises with the Mensheviks because of their love of
the gradual. Secondly, he asks about peasant revolts.

Insofar as concerns the first question, let me say that if you
make this sort of accusation against the Bolsheviks you must say
what they did in a rush, and what is good about gradualness. The
main thing that distinguishes us from the Mensheviks was our
insistence on the transfer of all power to the Soviets and we
rushed things to such an extent that in October of the year before
last we took power. The Mensheviks advocated procrastination since
they did not desire that transfer of power. The well-known
socialist Kautsky, for instance, a man who sympathises with the
Mensheviks, said in a pamphlet in August 1918 that the Bolsheviks
should not take power because they would not be able to hold out,
that they would perish and in that way destroy a whole party. I
think that view has been disproved by the course of events and
that it is not worth while wasting time on it, especially as there
have not been any clear objections. In Germany, Kautsky insisted
on democracy, on a Constituent Assembly. The German Mensheviks and
ours said that power should not be given to the Soviets. The
Constituent Assembly assembled in Germany, and in January and
March there were several huge workers’ revolts, a civil war,
the result of which was that the German Mensheviks, headed by
Hilferding, proposed in recent articles to combine the Constituent
Assembly with Workers’ Councils in such a way as to give the
Central Committee of the Councils the right to hold up decisions
made by the Constituent Assembly and submit questions to a
plebiscite. This shows that the German Mensheviks, even the best
of them, are in an absolute muddle. The idea of combining the
Constituent Assembly and the Workers’ Councils, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the dictatorship of the
proletariat, deserves nothing but ridicule.

With regard to the peasant revolts—there is a question on
that subject here. We have, of course, experienced a number of
kulak revolts and they are still occurring. Last summer there was
a whole string of them. The kulak is our implacable enemy. And
here we can hope for nothing unless we crush him. The middle
peasant is a different case, he is not our enemy. It is not true
that there have been peasant revolts in Russia that involved a
large number of peasants who were not kulaks. An individual
village or a volost does join the kulaks, but under Soviet power
there have been no peasant revolts that involved all the peasants
in Russia. There have been kulak revolts and there will be more
under a government that insists on surplus grain being sold to the
hungry at fixed prices. Such revolts are inevitable because the
kulak who has a big stock of grain can sell it at several hundred
rubles a pood; we all know what prices the food profiteers are
getting. If we allow the kulaks so much freedom, the rich man who
has a secret cache of Kerensky paper money [4] will fill his belly, but the majority who have nothing hidden will go
hungry. And so we do not close our eyes to the inevitability of
kulak revolts against Soviet power. When the capitalists were in
power workers’ revolts against them arid peasant revolts
against the landowners were inevitable. Now that the landowners
and capitalists have been smashed kulak revolts will occur less
and less frequently. You have to take your choice. If there is
anyone who wants everything to go smoothly without any revolts,
who wants the rich people to hand us a declaration of love on a
salver and promise to hand over all surpluses peacefully, I
don’t think we can take him seriously.

The other unclear note contains the following. What is to be
done when workers, misled by the appeals of the
Socialist Revolutionaries, do not work, go on strike, and come out
against Soviet power because of the food shortage? I cannot, of
course, count on all workers, down to the last, supporting Soviet
power. When the Paris workers revolted in 1871, quite a large
number of workers in other towns fought against them in the
whiteguard troops and crushed the Paris workers. That did not
prevent politically-conscious socialists from asserting that the
Paris Communards represented the entire proletariat, that is, all
that was best and honest—only backward sections of the workers served in the whiteguard troops. We, too, have backward
workers who are not politically conscious and who have not yet
understood Soviet power; we are doing our best to enlighten
them. No other government has satisfied the demands for standing
representative bodies of workers to the extent the Soviets have,
which are willing to give any representative of a factory a place
in a government institution. We are, as far as possible, drawing
workers into the implementation of the policy of the state; under
capitalism, even in republics, the workers were kept out of it but
Soviet power does its best to attract workers, although some of
them will feel the attraction of the old for quite a long time to
come.

There are very few people among you, probably only an individual or two, who remember serfdom; only very old people can
remember that, but there are people who remember what things were
like thirty or forty years ago. Anyone who was in the rural
districts knows that some thirty years ago there were quite a
number of old people in the villages who said, “It was better under serfdom, there was more order, things were strict and
the women did not dress extravagantly.” If you now read Gleb
Uspensky—we are erecting a monument to him as one of the
best writers about peasant life you will find descriptions dating
back to the eighties and nineties of honest old peasants and
sometimes just ordinary elderly people who said frankly that it
had been better under serfdom. When an old social order is
destroyed it cannot be destroyed immediately in the minds of all
people, there will always be some who are drawn to the old.

Some workers, printers, for instance, say that capitalism was
good, there were a lot of newspapers whereas now there are few, in
those days they earned a decent wage and they do not want any
socialism. There were quite a number of branches of industry that
depended on the rich classes or on the production of articles of
luxury. Under capitalism quite a number of workers in big cities
lived by producing articles of luxury. In the Soviet Republic we
shall have to leave those workers unemployed for a time. We shall
say to them, “Get down to some other, useful work.”
And the worker will say, “I did delicate work, I was a jeweller, it was clean work, I worked for gentlemen; now the
muzhik is in power, the gentlemen have been scattered and I want
to go back to capitalism.” Such people will preach going
back to capitalism, or, as the Mensheviks say, going forward to
healthy capitalism and sound democracy. A few hundred workers are
to be found who will say, “We lived well under a healthy
capitalism.” The people who lived well under capitalism were
an insignificant minority—we defend the interests of the
majority that lived badly under capitalism. (Applause.) Healthy
capitalism led to world slaughter in the countries with the
greatest freedom. There can be no healthy capitalism, there can be
capitalism of the sort obtaining in the freest republic, one like
the American republic, cultured, rich, technically developed; and
that democratic and most republican capitalism, led to the most
savage world slaughter over the plunder of the whole world. Out of
fifteen million workers you will find a few thousand who lived
well under capitalism. In the rich countries there are more such
workers because they work for a greater number of millionaires and
multimillionaires. They served that handful and received
particularly high wages from them. Take hundreds of British
millionaires—they have accumulated thousands of millions
because they have plundered India and a large number of
colonies. It meant nothing to them to make gifts to 10,000 or
20,000 workers, giving them double or higher wages so that they
would work well for them. I once read the reminiscences of an
American barber whom a multimillionaire paid a dollar a day to
shave him. And that barber wrote a whole book praising that
multimillionaire and his own wonderful life. For a daily visit of
one hour to his financial majesty he received a dollar,
wassatisfied and did not want anything but capitalism. We have to
be on our guard against such an argument. The vast majority of
workers were not in such a position. We, the Communists of the
whole world, defend the interests of the vast majority of working
people, and it was a small minority of working people whom the
capitalists bribed with high wages and made them the loyal
servants of capital. Under serfdom there were people, peasants,
who said to the landowners, “We are your slaves (that was
after emancipation), we hall not leave you.” Were there many
of them? An insignificant few. Can you deny that there was a
struggle against serfdom by reference to theni? Of course not. And
today communism cannot be denied by reference to the minority of
workers who earned good money on bourgeois newspapers, on the
production of articles of luxury and for their personal services
to multimillionaires.

I shall now deal with the questions that were presented
clearly, first of all with the question of concessions in general
and of the Great Northern Railways [5] in particular. It is
said that it would be allowing predators to plunder the wealth of
the nation. In answer to this I say that the question is closely
connected with bourgeois specialists and the question of world
imperialism. Can we smash world imperialism today? It would be our
duty to do it if we could, but you know that we cannot do it today
any more than we could have overthrown Kerensky in March 1917; we
had to wait for the Soviet organisations to develop, we had to
work for that and not revolt against Kerensky immediately. And
today, is an offensive war against world imperialism any more
possible? Of course not. If we had been strong enough, if we could
have obtained a lot of grain quickly, and had machinery and so on,
we would not have allowed the Scheidernanns to mow down the Spartacists
but would have kicked them out. Today, however, that is misplaced
fantasy, today our country alone cannot overthrow world
imperialism; other countries are experiencing a period in which
there is no Soviet majority and in many countries Soviets are only
just beginning to appear so that we have to make concessions to
imperialism. Today we cannot build railways on a large scale—God grant that we can handle those already
existing. We are short of grain and fuel, we have not got enough
locomotives, several million poods of grain are lying on
the Volga-Bugulma Railway and we cannot bring it away. In the
Council of People’s Commissars a few days ago we passed a
decision to send representatives with extensive powers to get the
grain away from there. The people are hungry in Petrograd and
Moscow while millions of poods of grain are stored there
and we cannot get them away because we have not got enough
locomotives and there is no fuel. And we say that it is better to
pay tribute to foreign capitalists as long as they build
railways. We shall not perish on account of that tribute but if we
do not organise railway transport we may perish because the people
are hungry; great as the endurance of the Russian worker may he,
there is a limit to it. It is, therefore, our duty to take
measures to improve railway facilities even at the expense of
paying tribute to capitalism. Good or had, there is so far no
choice. We shall not ruin Soviet power by paying tribute to world
capitalism until it is finally overthrown. We paid gold to the
German imperialists, we had to under the terms of the Treaty of
Brest, and now the Entente countries are taking that gold away
from them—the victorious bandit is robbing the defeated
bandit. We say today that as long as the world movement of the
proletariat does not bring victory we shall either fight or pay
those bandits to buy them off and do not see anything bad in
it. While we were buying off the German bandits by paying them a
few hundred million we strengthened our Red Army, but the German
bandits now have nothing left. That’s what will happen to
other imperialist bandits. (Applause.)

The comrade adds that lie was under arrest for four days for
opposing the ruin of the middle peasants; he asks what the middle
peasant is and refers to a number of peasant revolts. If the
comrade was arrested for protesting against the ruin of the middle
peasants that was, of course, incorrect, and judging by his speedy
release I imagine that either the one who arrested him or some
other representative of Soviet power found the action incorrect. Now about the middle peasant. He differs from the kulak
in not exploiting the labour of others. The kulak steals other
people’s money and other people’s labour. The poor peasants, the seini-proletarians, are those who are themselves
exploited; the middle peasant does not exploit other people, gets
his living from his own farni, has approximately enough grain, is
no kulak but is not to be classed as poor either. Such peasants
waver between us and the kulaks. A few of them may become kulaks
if they are lucky, that is why they are attracted to the kimlaks,
but the majority of then will never be kulaks. If the socialists
and Communists are able to talk intelligently to the middle
peasant they can prove to him that the Soviet government is more
advantageous than any other, because other governments oppress and
crush the middle peasant. The middle peasant, however, wavers. Today he is for us, tomorrow for some other power; partly
for us and partly for the bourgeoisie. In the programme we shall
adopt in a few days we are against any kind of force in respect of
the middle peasant. Our Party makes this declaration. If there are
arrests we condemn them and will put matters right. In respect of
the kulak we are for force but in respect of the middle peasant we
are against force. To him we say, “If you are oil time side
of Soviet power we shall not drive you into a commune by force, we
have never forced peasants into communes and no decree to that
effect exists.” If it happens in the localities, it is abuse
of power for which the people in office are removed and
indicted. This is a big question. The middle peasant stands
between two camps. But, comrades, in this case the policy is quite
clear—we are against force where the middle peasants are
concerned, we favour agreement with them we favour concessions to
them. The middle peasant can and will come to communism by a slow
journey. In the freest capitalist republic the middle peasant is
threatened by capital that oppresses and crushes him in some way
or other.

The next note asks my opinion of the Baltic Fleet. I have not
studied the question of the. Baltic Fleet and cannot answer at the
moment; the speech by the comrade from the fleet probably
exhausted that question.

Then there is a question about the mouldiness, moss and red
tape that has grown in the localities and about the need to fight
it. That is perfectly true. When the October Revolution kicked out
the old bureaucrats it did so because it had created the
Soviets. It turned out the old judges and made the court a
people’s court. The court could have been simplified; for
this there was no need to know the old laws but simply to be
guided by a sense of justice. It was easy to get rid of
bureaucratic methods in the courts. In other areas it was much
more difficult. We threw out the old bureaucrats, but they have
come back, they call themselves “commonists” when they can’t bear to say the word Communist, and they wear a red
ribbon in their buttonholes and creep into warm corners. What to
do about it? We must tight this scum again and again and if the
scum has crawled back we must again and again clean it up, chase
it out,keep it under the surveillance of communist workers and
peasants whom we have known for more than a month and for more
than a year. There is still another question here, a note which
says that it is a bad thing to give advantages to members of the
Party because scoundrels will worm their way in. We are fighting
against that and will continue to do so, comrades; we have passed
a decision not to allow members who have been in the Party less
than a year to be delegates to a Party congress; we shall continue
to adopt such measures. When a party is in power it has to give
preference to its members—let us suppose that two men apply,
one of them shows a Party membership card and the other has no
Party card and both of them are equally unknown; it is natural
that preference should be given to the Party member, the one who
has the Party card. How can one really decide whether a person is
in the Party because of his convictions or for gain? The date he
joined the Party must be entered on his Party card, he must not be
given the card until he has been tested, until he has been through
probation, etc.

There is also a note about the revolutionary tax [6] to the
effect that it is a burden on the middle peasant. There has been a
special session on this question, there were many complaints, and
in order to verify them we did the following. We have a Central
Statistical Board in which the best specialists in statistics in
Russia are employed, most of them Right Socialist-Revolutionaries,
Mensheviks and even Cadets; there are very few Communists,
Bolsheviks—they were more concerned with the fight against
tsarism than with practical work. As far as I have been able to
see these specialists are working satisfactorily, although that
does not mean that we do not have to fight against some
individuals. We gave them the job of making probes in a few
volosts to see how the peasants have distributed time revolutionary tax. There are very many complaints; when we
realise, however, that they amount to about a thousand for the
whole country, then we see that it is an insignificant number for
Russia—if there are a thousand complaints to several million
farms that is a mere bagatelle; if three people a day come to the
Central Executive Committee that makes 90 complaints a month, but
it creates the impression that we are snowed under with
complaints. To cheek up on this we decided to investigate a few
volosts and we got a precise answer in Popov’s report which
was repeated at a sitting of the Central Executive Committee in
the presence of workers. The report showed that in the majority of
cases the peasants distribute the tax justly. Soviet power demands
that the poor do not pay anything, the middle peasants a moderate
amount and the rich peasants a lot, although it is, of course,
impossible to determine exactly who is rich and who is poor and
there have been mistakes, but on the whole the peasants distribute
the tax correctly. That’s as it should be. (Applause.) There
have been mistakes, of course. For instance, there was a petty
clerk on the railway who complained that the house committee had
taxed him unjustly. He informed the Soviet authorities of
this. And they said, search his place, he is a profiteer. And they
found several sacks containing a million rubles in Kerensky
notes. This will continue until we have found a way of changing
all the old notes for new ones. When we change these notes for new
ones all the profiteers will be exposed. All of them will have to
change old notes for new. (Stormy applause.) If you present the
small amount of money necessary for a working man you will get a
ruble for a ruble, if you present one or two thousand—ruble
for ruble. If you present more we shall give you some of it in new
money and the rest will go into a bookyou can wait for it. (Applause.) In order to do that sort of thing we have to get
the new notes ready. There are about 60,000 million of the old
money. We do not need to change such a huge sum for new money, but
specialists have computed that we shall need no less than 20,000
million rubles’ worth. We already have 17,000 million. (Applause.) The question has been raised at the Council
of People’s Commissars of making the final preparations in
the near future for this measure that will strike a 1)10W at the
profiteers. This measure will expose those who are concealing
Kerensicy notes, The measure will require a lot of organisational
work, for it is no easy one.

Then there is a question on how matters stand with the sowing,
since it is difficult to get enough seed. That, of course, is
true. A Cultivated Land Committee [7] has been set up. Here, at the Commissariat of Agriculture, a Working
Committee [8] has been formed in accordance with a
Soviet decree and its work will be organised jointly with the
trade unions. Its job will be to see that the land is not left
vacant and that any land left vacant by the landowners is given to
workers. There is an order to the effect that if the peasants do
not take the land the government will try to adapt it to its
needs. There is a shortage of seed, of course. In this case the
poor peasants must drag out into the open those kulaks who have a
hidden surplus grain and have mot given it up for seed. It is
important to time kulak to conceal these surpluses because he will
get a thousand rubles a pood for it in time hungry months and it
does not worry him that grain will not be planted and that he will
be doing harm to thousands of workers. He is an enemy of time
people and lie must be exposed.

The next question is about wages; the specialist gets three
thousand, he goes from place to place and is difficult to catch. I
say this about the specialists—they are people who have a
knowledge of bourgeois science and engineering at a higher level
than the overwhelming majority of workers and peasants; such
specialists are needed and we say that at the moment we cannot
introduce equalitarian wages, and are in favour of paying more
than three thousand. Even if we pay several million a year in
wages it will not be too much as long as we learn to work well
with their help. We do not see any other way of arranging things
so that they do not work under time lash, and as long as there are
few specialists we are compelled to retain high wages. I recently
had a talk on this question with Schmidt, the Commissar for
Labour, and he agrees with our policy and says that formerly,
under capitalism, the wages of an unskilled worker were 25 rubles
a month and those of a good specialist not less than 500 rubles, a
ratio of 20 to 1; now the lowest wages amount to 600 rubles and
the specialists get 3,000, a ratio of 5 to 1. We have, therefore,
done a lot to equalise low and high wages and we shall continue in
the same vein. At the moment we cannot equalise wages and as long
as there are few specialists we shall not refuse to raise their
wages. We say that it is better to pay out an extra million or a
thousand million as long as we can employ all the specialists, for
what they will teach our workers and peasants is worth more than
that thousand million.

Next comes a question about agricultural communes and whether
former landowners can 1)0 allowed to remain in them. That depends
on what the landowner was like. There has been no decree
forbidding the landowner admission to the commune. The landowner,
of course, does not inspire confidence because lie has been
oppressing the peasants for centuries and they hate him, but if
there are landowners that the peasants know as decent people you
not only can but must admit them. We must use such specialists,
they are used to organising big farms and there is a lot they can
teach peasants and farm workers.

Then it is asked whether the middle peasants should be allowed
on public ploughiands. Of course they should. Whole uyezds have
recently decided to go over to collective ploughing—to what
extent it will be carried out I don’t know; for this it is
important to attract the middle peasants, because the poor
peasants are on our side but the middle peasantsriot always, and
they have to be won over. We are in favour of using force against
the capitalists and against the landowners, and are riot only in
favour of the use of force but of the confiscation of everything
they have accumulated; we are in favour of the use of force
against the kulak, but not of his complete expropriation, because
he farms the land and part of what he has accumulated comes from
his own labour. This is a difference that must be fully
understood. The complete expropriation of the landowner and
capitalists; not all the property of the kulak can be confiscated,
there has been no such order; we want to convince the middle
peasant and draw him over to us by example and persuasion. That is
our programme. If there are deviations from it in the localities,
they are infringements of the decrees of Soviet power either by
people who do not want to carry out our decrees or by those who do
riot understand them.

Then there is a question on how to smarten imp the railway
workers, and also about the cessation of traffic on the
railways. This question has been heatedly discussed by the Council
of People’s Commissars and many measures have been adopted. This is a fundamental question. Millions of
poods of grain are lying on the Volga-Bugulma Railway arid may be ruined because in some places the grain is lying in
the snow and when the thaw sets in the grain will be spoiled. It
is already damp (tip to 20 per cent humidity). This grain must he
brought away or it will be destroyed. The main thing is that the
railwaymen themselves are badly in need of grain. For this purpose
it will be necessary, according to the estimate of our comrades in
the Commissariat of Railways, to stop passenger traffic from March
18 to April 10. This cancelling of passenger traffic can give its
the three and a half million poods of grain that can be
brought out using even light passenger locomotives. If profiteers
were to carry grain on those trains they would, at most, bring
half a million poods . Those who complain about the cessation of passenger traffic are not in the right. Profiteers
would, at best, transport half a million poods and we shall bring in three and a half million, if we fill the cars with
grain and if the railwaymen help us, and in this way we shall
improve the food situation. That is why we say that all comrades
who are more developed and more organised must work for the war
and for food. Give us people again and again, no matter how
difficult it may be. We know very well that Petrograd has given
more people than any other town in Russia, because the most
developed arid best organised workers are in Petrograd. This,
however, is going to be a difficult six months. The first
half-year of 1918 produced 27 million poods , and in the
second we got 67 million poods . We have reached a hungry
half-year. March, April, May and June will he difficult months. We
must bend all efforts to prevent this. The question must he raised
at every factory and at every study circle of whether there is a
man who can be sent to work at a railway workshop and replaced by
a woman, and if there is, to send him to that work. In every study
circle, in every group and in every organisation thought must he
given to this, new workers must be supplied if we are to cope with
this difficult half-year. (Applause.)

Endnotes

[1]
This refers to a commission appointed to visit Soviet Russia by
the Borne Conference of the Second International which took place
from February 3 to February 10, 1919. In reply to a request for
the commission to be allowed to enter the country, the Soviet
Government said on February 10, 1910, that, although it did not
consider the Berne Conference to be in the least either socialist
or representative of the working class; it would nevertheless
permit the commission to visit Soviet Russia. The visit did not
take place.

[2]
Entente or the, “Allies’—Britain, France, the
U.S.A., Japan and other countries that took part in the
intervention against Soviet Russia. It should not be confused with
the Entente cordiale, the alliance of France and Great Britain
and, later, tsarist Russia.

[3]
This refers to the Paris Peace Conference that was called on the
conclusion of the First World War. The Conference opened on
January 18, 1919 and ended its deliberations on June 28, 1919 with
the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.

[4]
This refers to paper money that was issued by the Provisional
Government in the summer of 1917.

[5]
The question of granting a concesion to build the Great North-ern
Railway, to link the River Oh with Petrograd and Murmansk via
Kotlas was discussed at a meeting of the Council of Peoples
Commissars on February 4, 1919. The Council adopted Lenin’s
motion which recognised as permissible the granting of concessions
to foreign capital for the purpose of developing the country’s productive forces. No contract for this railway
was concluded.

[6]
The decree introducing this tax was passed by a session of the
All-Russia Central Executive Committee on October 30, 4918, The
extaerdinary tax to raise the sum of 10,000 million rubles was to
be imposed, mainly on the kulaks and the urban bourgeoisie; the
middle strata of the population were lightly taxed. The urban and
rural poor and persons whose wages constituted their only source
of income were exempted. On April 9, 1919, the All-Russia Central
Executive Committee adopted an additional decree granting certaik
exemptions from this tax to the middle peasants.

[7]
Cultivated Land Committee was at up at the People’s
Commissariat of Agriculture by it decree of the Council of People
s Commissars of January 28, 1919. The decree stated that all
unused arable land would be taken over by the state for the
purpose of grain production, The Committee’s duties included
general guidance and the implementation of measures to extend the
area under crops.

[8]
Working Committee was organised in February 1919 at the
People’s Commissariat of Agriculture on the basis of the
"Statuteon’ Socialist Land Settlement and the Measures for
the Transition to Socialist Farming" that had been approved by the
All-Russia Central Executive Committee. The Committee was
responsible for sending experienced organisers from among the
workers to gubernia and district state-farm boards and to
individual state farms, recruiting industrial workers for farm
work, arranging for all kinds of technical equipment for the
state farms and for the neighbouring rural population, helping
organise trade unions for farm workers, etc.