AT THE VIII CONGRESS OF THE RCP(b)

MARCH 21, 1919

Comrades, I have attempted carefully to examine the disagreements that are evident in the two groups, in the two different proposals of the military section, which have led to passionate speeches and to an extraordinary exacerbation of the section's work up to the point of the departure of part of the section—a departure which, of course, is incorrect. In examining these theses, I must first of all refute the notion that everything is proceeding smoothly with us. There can be no question of this. The fact that our situation is menacing now and will be menacing further—this was told to you by comrades Okulov and Aralov, who work in the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic. There was no doubt about this in the Central Committee either, when we made the decision that Comrade Trotsky would not be at the Congress but rather where the situation is dangerous. We understood what harm we were doing to the party congress, but we said: the situation is menacing. But let us see how the criticism of these shortcomings goes beyond the limits of permissible criticism. Here is paragraph 6 of the first part of the theses which have been proposed on behalf of Comrade Smirnov (reads). Yes, comrades, if one rises to such pathos, if you have spoken of autocratic-serf-like orders, then there is nothing surprising that passions have become so exacerbated. Can one speak thus within the limits of a party of communists? When I had occasion to converse with Comrade Smirnov, who told me about the state of affairs, he, among other things, complained about this very statute. I have never seen this statute with my own eyes, but I conversed with comrades, and they told me: they force one to render salute. I must confess, I was frightened. I became frightened and began to ask. I began to ask comrades who work in the military department: how is this? Tell me; is it not possible to obtain the statute? Here we have an enormous shortcoming—I searched for this statute for more than a week and only now have obtained it. (Applause.) And having obtained it, I read paragraph 16 (reads).

I read this point. It struck me in the eye. Since I am not only not a military specialist but not a military man either—it struck me precisely because I had occasion to encounter it practically. When I heard that this point restores autocratic-serf-like order in the fact that a commander, addressing a subordinate, places his hand to his headdress—in my opinion, this is absolutely wrong. Apart from this point, I have read no other. If Comrade Sokolnikov says it needs to be corrected, then there is no doubt whatsoever that this is necessary; there are certainly particular shortcomings. But to arrive at the conclusion about autocratic-serf-like order and the old army on the basis of this point—well, gentlemen, if you have arrived at this conclusion, something is not right. If you write such things, and at the beginning say that we are dealing with the middle peasant—you want to deal not with the middle peasant but want to pour water on the mill of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. For heaven's sake, where could they find better material—autocratic-serf-like order? It is clear here that you have overdone it somewhat in the theses, that something is not right with you. No one denies shortcomings. No one defends the statute. Further in paragraph 10 we read (reads).

How is this so? It turns out we acted badly in establishing the Council of Defense alongside the Revolutionary Military Council—what sort of accusation is this? The Council of Defense has never, not a single time, interfered in operational operations—its task is to accelerate—we pass 20-30 questions there concerning the supply of the Red Army with foodstuffs. And this accusation, that alongside the Revolutionary Military Council there exists the Narkomvoyen—but he is the chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council. Here the ends are clearly not tied together. The foundation is different. You are not writing what you think. When Comrade Goloshchekin spoke here, he said: the policy of the Central Committee is not being carried out by the military department. If you pose such accusations, if you, speaking as a responsible orator at the party congress, can accuse Trotsky of not carrying out the policy of the Central Committee—this is an insane accusation. You have not presented the slightest proof. If you prove this, then neither Trotsky is suitable nor the Central Committee. What sort of party organization is it when it cannot achieve the implementation of its policy? This is the most incredible nonsense. Not a single serious member of the congress thinks this.

We have had disagreements, errors—no one denies this. When Stalin shot people in Tsaritsyn, I thought this was an error, thought that the shooting was being done incorrectly, and the documents which Comrade Voroshilov cited—they show what a mass of heroism there was in the 10th Army and, in particular, in the conduct of Comrade Voroshilov—our error was exposed. My error was revealed, and yet I had telegraphed: be careful. I made an error. We are all human beings after all. Of course, it would have been better if we had shot Krasnov when Dybenko signed the peace treaty in Smolny. This was, of course, an error. The credit belongs to the Tsaritsyn group that they uncovered this plot of Alekseev. There were disagreements between Stalin and me. Stalin proved his point, and no one will draw the conclusion from this that the policy of the Central Committee is not being carried out in the military department. This is such an accusation that throws a great shadow over the entire military department and over the Central Committee. You do not wish to say this, but you had in mind to say this. The foundation is clear to everyone. First, about the second part of this paragraph 10. "As a result, there is a constant shortage..." Do you think we do not know this? At every session of the Central Committee on every major question of strategy—there was never a time when there was not a session of the Central Committee or the Bureau of the Central Committee—there was never a time when we did not resolve the fundamental questions of strategy. For example, here it is a closed session—if the west is threatened, they move north, all at once—not enough reserves in one place or the other. We must proceed from the necessity of holding out the coming months, knowing that the enemy cannot hold out long. When you accuse us here that as a result of incorrect policy there is a constant shortage of reserves—this is absurd and ridiculous. We suffer immensely from this, but when there are no reserves, we always transfer from one front to another. There have been times when we have had to decide in the Central Committee: not a single military unit is to be touched in the south, whatever danger may threaten in other places.

I must add on the question of the middle peasant. Of course, a policy of ideological influence is necessary, but it cannot be sufficient, since the proletarian part of the army is not large. Here iron discipline is needed. And if you will say that this is autocratic-serf-like order and protest against the rendering of salute by commanders, you will not get an army in which the middle peasant will fight. Without iron discipline, without discipline implemented, by the way, by the proletariat over the middle peasant, nothing can be done. We must do everything to attract this middle peasant, but to think that by presenting theses about autocratic-serf-like discipline because a commander places his hand to his headdress, to think to conduct the business of creating this army from the middle peasant in this way—this means to saw through the branch on which everything rests. Otherwise than with iron discipline, nothing can be done here.

When we read in paragraph [number not specified] and Comrade Safarov comments here (reads). Comrade Safarov ridicules Sokolnikov thereby, for having seen traces of syndicalism here. One cannot do this in an army where centralization is needed. Here you have corrected something, but the end still remained in your proposal. How can one accept such theses after this? Or take paragraph 10. What was there before the correction (reads)?

So, collective command. This is staggering, a complete return to guerrilla warfare. They corrected it so that they threw this out, but they voted as before. That part of the section left is not good, this is a violation of discipline which cannot be approved. But that you introduce such a point deliberately and can vote for it, can gather 37 votes for it—this is more than not good. This is not only not good but conceals danger. What is the issue here? What is the entire foundation here? The foundation is that old guerrilla warfare lives in you, and this echoes in all the speeches of Voroshilov and Goloshchekin. When Voroshilov spoke of the enormous services of the Tsaritsyn army in the defense of Tsaritsyn, of course, Comrade Voroshilov is absolutely right; such heroism is difficult to find in history. This was indeed enormous, outstanding work. But Voroshilov himself, now recounting this, was citing such facts which indicate that there were terrible traces of guerrilla warfare. This is an indisputable fact. Comrade Voroshilov says: we had no military specialists whatsoever and we had 60,000 losses. This is horrible. In the history of the revolutionary movement of Russia, the heroism of the Tsaritsyn army will occupy the greatest place, but 60,000 losses—and they managed without military specialists. On the one hand, paragraph 10, which says: military specialists with collective command, that is to say their elimination; on the other hand—the speech of Comrade Voroshilov, who says: we managed without military specialists, and we had 60,000 losses. The heroism of the Tsaritsyn army will enter the masses, but to say, we managed without military specialists—is this a defense of the party line? The Central Committee is guilty in that the party line is not being carried out. Comrade Voroshilov is guilty in that he does not wish to abandon this old guerrilla warfare. That it is connected with a historically necessary period—this is true. He says: in Ukraine we managed without specialists. And here lies the error of Pyatakov and Bubnov, that Pyatakov and Bubnov approve of guerrilla warfare. We have spoken about this. One must understand that when there is an uprising for Soviet power, guerrilla warfare is necessary. But can these conditions of a country in which an uprising for Soviet power is only occurring be transferred to our conditions? It is completely natural that they cannot. And Comrade Voroshilov forgets this and thereby completely defeats his own theses. It is time to rid ourselves of these remnants of guerrilla warfare, which were necessary in a certain period. Such statements indicate that these comrades have not yet shed their guerrilla warfare background, and the entire error of the opposition consists in that you, being connected through your experience with this guerrilla warfare, being connected through those traditions of heroism which will be remembered with gratitude with this guerrilla warfare, you do not wish to understand that [the text cuts off in the stenographic record].

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now a different period has begun. Now regular army must come to the fore, we must transition to a regular army with military specialists.

When you, on the one hand, in your theses say — we are for military specialists — and on the other hand speak of collective command, you contradict yourselves. You speak of the fact that military specialists defect, desert. Did we not say in the draft program that they are imbued with bourgeois worldview and that our task is to suppress every counterrevolutionary attempt. Everyone knows this. I am amazed at how you view the matter from the perspective of your parochial bell tower. You say: we heroically defended Tsaritsyn. That is true. But once you come to the tribune with this and speak to the congress, you violate the entire party line and the entire party program, you defend the old partisanship.

When you propose theses that are wholly directed against military specialists, you violate the entire all-party tactics. This is the source of the disagreement. But such unfounded accusations as you make, speaking of the establishment of autocratic-serfdom discipline, are useless. Incidentally, Goloshchyokin even said that this dead weight is ruining us. Well, you know, this is such a negation of bourgeois culture and technique itself that I do not know what to say. We say in the program that military specialists must be attracted, while you say they must be utilized. One can utilize them even with collective command. No, that is not so. They will command, and we will place our people alongside them. And we know from experience that this leads to successful results. Comrade Voroshilov has gone so far as monstrous things that he destroyed the army — Okulov. This is monstrous. Okulov was carrying out the line of the Central Committee, Okulov reported to us that partisanship had persisted there. Okulov proved this with objective facts. One can lay aside 60,000, but from the perspective of our general line can we give 200,000? (Voroshilov: "And how many did we kill?"). I know perfectly well that you killed many, but comrade Voroshilov, therein lies the trouble — all your attention is fixed on this Tsaritsyn. In terms of heroism this is a tremendous fact, but in terms of party line, in terms of the consciousness of the tasks set before us, it is clear that we cannot surrender 60,000 and that perhaps we would not have had to surrender these 60,000 if there had been specialists there, if there had been a regular army with which one must reckon. This is a historical transition from partisanship to regular army, which has been discussed dozens of times in the Central Committee, and here they say we must abandon all this and go back. Never and in no case. We have lived through the period of partisanship. Perhaps in some places, even in Siberia, there may yet be an epoch of partisanship, but for us this epoch is already exhausted, and if here they speak of returning to partisanship, then we say most decisively: never and never! (Applause.)

Published according to the stenographic record

1 Lenin's speech on the military question at the VIII Congress of the RCP(b) was delivered by V. I. Lenin on March 21, 1919 at a closed plenary session of the congress. The basic principles of the military policy of the Communist Party were worked out by V. I. Lenin and formulated by him in the report of the Central Committee to the VIII Congress (see V. I. Lenin. Complete Collected Works, vol. 38, pp. 131—150), in his speeches at the congress, in the program of the RCP(b) adopted by the congress and given concrete form in the theses and report of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) on the military question. G. Ya. Sokolnikov delivered a report to the congress on the military situation and military policy.

At the congress, the so-called "military opposition" spoke out against the Central Committee line on the military question, which included former "Left Communists" (V. M. Smirnov, G. I. Safarov, G. L. Pyatakov and others), and there were also people who had no connection to opposition groupings. V. M. Smirnov delivered a counter-report to the congress, which set forth the views of the "military opposition," which spoke out against the construction of a regular Red Army, the introduction of iron discipline in the army, and denied the necessity of attracting old military specialists. In his report Smirnov insisted that bourgeois military specialists should not be entrusted with command posts, but their functions should be limited to advisory ones. On the other hand, he proposed granting military commissars broader rights in the operational management of the army, which in essence led to the establishment of collegial management of troops.

He subjected to sharp criticism the new military statutes, which in his opinion created privileges for the command staff. The platform of the "military opposition" in large measure reflected in military policy the views of the "Left Communists," who in the first half of 1918 spoke out against the attraction of old specialists to the work of socialist construction, against the establishment of strict discipline throughout the work of the party and state.

Due to the large number of delegates registered to speak in the discussion, the congress decided to transfer the discussion to meetings of the military section, in which 85 delegates participated. At three sessions of the section 23 delegates spoke. In the speeches of a whole series of congress delegates, both those who participated in the "military opposition" and those who stood on the positions of the Central Committee, the activities of military institutions and also the actions of L. D. Trotsky were sharply criticized.

In the evening of March 21, the discussion of the military question was transferred to a closed plenary session of the congress. At the beginning of the session a report on the military situation of the country was heard from S. I. Aralov, a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic. Representatives of the opposition spoke here too, defending their erroneous line. V. I. Lenin spoke to the congress with a profound substantiation of the party line in the construction of a regular strictly disciplined army. Lenin's speech made a deep impression on the delegates to the congress.

At the congress 174 delegates voted for the Central Committee resolution, and 95 delegates voted for the resolution of the "military opposition." In order to achieve a unanimous decision on the military question, the congress elected a conciliation commission, which included three representatives of the majority (G. E. Zinoviev, B. P. Pozern and I. V. Stalin) and two from the opposition (G. I. Safarov and E. M. Yaroslavsky). The resolution on the military question worked out by the conciliation commission, based on Leninist positions, was unanimously adopted by the congress (with one abstention).

2 Some of the congress delegates who spoke in defense of the theses of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) on military policy left the sessions of the military section during the item-by-item discussion of the theses of the "military opposition." At the session of the section the opposition theses were adopted as the basis by a majority vote. The supporters of the theses of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) demanded that the discussion be transferred to the plenary of the congress. This demand was rejected, which caused their departure.

3 Meant here are the theses of the "military opposition" proposed by V. M. Smirnov at the session of the military section.

4 Before the congress L. D. Trotsky had submitted a petition to the Central Committee requesting that he himself and all military delegates to the congress be sent to the front in connection with the aggravation of the situation on the Eastern and other fronts. Against this proposal the delegates from front party organizations spoke out. This question was discussed at a plenum of the Central Committee, which recognized the participation of delegates from the front at the congress to be necessary. Trotsky was permitted to go to the front, and he did not participate in the work of the congress.

5 Here and below the text of documents cited by V. I. Lenin in the stenographic record is not given.

6 In paragraph six of the theses V. M. Smirnov subjected to sharp criticism the forms of relations between superior and subordinate introduced by military statute (see footnote 7) and called them "remnants of autocratic-serfdom order."

7 Reference is made to the "Statute of Internal Service," confirmed by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on November 29, 1918.

8 In the "Statute of Internal Service" in § 10 the following was recorded: "In case of a superior's service address to a subordinate not in formation, the superior, if wearing headgear, always brings his hand to it and immediately lowers it, to which the subordinate responds to him, also bringing his hand to his headgear and lowering it. The same rule is observed also when a subordinate addresses a superior in service matters."

9 In paragraph ten of the theses V. M. Smirnov, criticizing the activities of military institutions, wrote that alongside the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic there exist a number of other central institutions — the Council of Defense, the People's Commissariat for Military Affairs and others, that there is no precise distribution of their functions and their work exhibits lack of coordination and duplication.

10 In connection with the fact that on the part of individual persons and organs of the press there were attempts to present the policy of the military department as the expression of the views of individual of its responsible workers, which in essence was a denial of the guiding role of the party in the state, the Central Committee of the RCP(b) in December 1918 adopted a special resolution. In it, in particular, it was said: "Given that in some quarters of the party the opinion is spreading that the policy of the military department is a product of the personal views of individual comrades or an individual group — and such statements penetrate the pages of party publications — the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party considers it necessary in the most categorical form to confirm that which could not have been in doubt for the most responsible and experienced workers in the party, namely, that the policy of the military department, like that of all other departments and institutions, is conducted on the precise basis of general directives given by the party in the person of its Central Committee and under its direct control" ("The CPSU on the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union. Documents. 1917-1968." Moscow, 1969, p. 35).

In his speech on the military question at the VIII Congress of the party V. I. Lenin again emphasized that all the principal questions of military strategy were discussed and decided in the Central Committee of the RCP(b).

However, the so-called "military opposition" that spoke at the congress repeated accusations against the Central Committee, as though its policy was not being carried out in the military department. V. I. Lenin decisively rejected these absurd accusations and profoundly substantiated the proposition about the guiding role of the party in relation to the military department. Clearly distinguishing the collectively worked out policy of the party on military questions and its practical implementation, V. I. Lenin emphasized at the congress that in the activities of the military department there are many shortcomings, for which in the first place Trotsky, as chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, bore responsibility. He, in particular, ignored the role of party organizations in the armed forces, treated experienced military party workers dismissively, was subservient to old military specialists, and so forth.

The Central Committee systematically controlled the activities of the military department and of Trotsky who stood at its head, correcting distortions of the party's military policy that were permitted. Thus, the first plenum of the Central Committee after the VIII Congress of the party noted in its resolution that sharp criticism from the congress delegates was a "serious warning" to Trotsky. In the resolution of the next session of the Central Committee of the party it was said: "point out to comrade Trotsky the necessity of the most attentive possible relation to communist workers at the front, without complete comradely solidarity with whom it is impossible to carry out the Central Committee's policy in military affairs" ("History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union," vol. 3, book 2, p. 279). The Central Committee of the party, as is known, rejected Trotsky's proposal for stopping the offensive against Kolchak in the spring of 1919 and issued a directive for a decisive offensive of the troops of the Eastern Front right up to the complete defeat of Kolchak's army.