V. I. Lenin

Extraordinary Plenary Meeting

Of The Moscow Soviet Of Workers’ And Red Army Deputies

April 3, 1919

I

Report On The Domestic And Foreign Situation
Of The Soviet Republic

Comrades, I must commence my report on the domestic and foreign situation of the Soviet Republic by stating that in the coming few months, with the approach of spring, we shall again be faced with an extremely grave situation. I think that the conditions both of the Civil War and of the war against the Entente—I will deal with them when I speak of the international situation—enable us to say, even if we are very cautious, that the half-year, the middle of which we have now reached, will be the last difficult half year; the French and British capitalists will not be strong enough to launch another attack similar to the one they are now developing in full. On the other hand, all our Red Army’s achievements in the Ukraine and the Don, which we are able to consolidate, will greatly alleviate our internal situation, will provide grain and coal, food and fuel. For the time being, however, while the struggle is still going on and we are encountering enormous difficulties in collecting grain in the Ukraine with the roads now impassable owing to the spring thaw, the situation is extremely grave.

We have said more than once that the whole strength of Soviet power rests on the confidence and class-consciousness of the workers. We have more than once demonstrated that numerous as may be the enemies that surround us now, and the spies that the Entente sends into this country and who are assisted by people who are actually helping the whiteguards, probably without realising it, we have never for a moment shut our eyes to the fact that every word uttered here will be misinterpreted, that the agents of the whiteguards will carefully take note of our admissions. But we say: let them! We shall benefit far more from the straightforward and candid truth, because we are sure that although this truth is harsh, nevertheless, if it is clearly heard, every class-conscious worker, every working peasant, will draw the only correct conclusion that can be drawn from it.

In the long run, they will draw from it the only possible conclusion that our cause is close to victory all over the world, and desperately hard as the conditions of the masses of the working people may be, weary, starving and exhausted as they are by four years of imperialist war and another two years of the most frightful Civil War—grave and acute though the situation may be at the present time, we have the most serious chances of gaining victory not only in Russia, but all over the world. That is why, although the next four or five months will be very severe, we shall once again succeed in overcoming our difficulties, and thus prove to our enemies, prove to the combined capitalists of the whole world, that their attack on Russia must fail.

At the present moment they are undoubtedly operating according to a preconceived plan, making attempts in the West and the East to crush us by force of arms so as to save Krasnov’s doomed gangs. Yesterday we received news of the capture of Mariupol. Thus, Rostov is caught in a half-circle. In short, the Entente countries are exerting all their efforts to rescue Krasnov and to strike us a severe blow this very spring. They are undoubtedly operating in agreement with Hindenburg. A comrade from Latvia told us about the conditions under which our Lettish comrades are living. The greater part of the country has suffered misfortunes such as Moscow workers cannot conceive—the misfortunes of invasion and the repeated devastation of the countryside by hordes of moving troops. The Germans are now marching on Dvinsk in order to cut off Riga. In the North they are being assisted by the Estonian whiteguards using money sent by Britain, and with the aid of volunteers sent by the Swedes and Danes, who are entirely in the pay of the multimillionaires of Britain, France and America. They are operating according to a common plan which is quite clear to us; they are taking advantage of the fact that by their bloody sup pressions in Germany they have weakened the movement of the Spartacists and revolutionaries. And although they real ise that they are at their last gasp, they, nevertheless, find the situation sufficiently opportune to place some troops at Hindenburg’s disposal, to step up the attack on tormented and tortured Latvia from the west, and to threaten us. On the other band, Kolchak has achieved a series of victories in the east, and is thus paving the way for the last and most decisive onslaught of the Entente countries.

And as has always been the case, they are not confining
themselves to an attack from without, they are operating inside
this country by means of plots, rebellions, attempts at
bomb-throwing and blowing up the water main in petrograd, which
you read about in the newspapers, attempts to dismantle railway
lines, such as those made not far from Samara, which is now the
main line that supplies us with grain from the East. Part of
this grain we lost; it was cap tured by Koichak. Attempts were
made to damage the permanent way of the Kursk-Kharkov Railway,
on which we were beginning to transport the coal the Red Army
had recaptured in the Donets Basin. When all this is taken to
gether, it becomes clear that the Entente countries, the French
imperialists and multimillionaires, are making their last
attempt to crush Soviet power by force of arms.

And the Mensheviks and the Right arid Loft Socialist
Revolutionaries still fail to realise that the struggle is
drawing to a close and that we are engaged in a most despe rate
and relentless war; they continue to advocate either strikes or
the cessation of the Civil War, which in any case is helping the
whiteguards. I shall speak about them later on; at present I
merely want to show that the situation i really grave.

This spring all the forces of the international capitalists want
to fight the last battle with us. Fortunately, they are the
forces of a decrepit, dying, hopelessly sick old man—international capitalism. But be that as it may, very
big military forces have been mustered against us; Koichak, in
particular, is now bringing up all his reserves against us, his
gangs of volunteer whiteguards are of imposing dimensions, and
he is receiving the assistance of Britain and America in the
form of vast quantities of arms and munitions. That is why the
present situation demands a clear realisation of the difficulties that face the Soviet Republic.

We are convinced that the masses of the working people understand what the war is about. They know that the next few
months will decide the fate of our revolution, and to a large
extent of the world revolution. They understand that the attempts
of the capitalists to crush Soviet Russia have become so fierce,
that they are attacking us so furiously, because they realise that
in their own countries they are faced by the same enemy—the
Bolshevik movement. The growth of the movement in those countries
is equally rapid and irresistible.

Our difficulties in food and transport make our position
particularly grave and compel us again and again to appeal for the
aid of all class-conscious workers. For four years the transport
system was gradually ruined by the imperialist war, and in Russia,
a backward country, traces of this have not yet been removed, and
it will take many months, if not years, of persevering effort to
remove them. But it is impossible to work without fuel. Only
lately have we begun to receive coal from the Donets Basin. You
know that the British have robbed us of our Baku oil supplies. They have captured many of the ships in the Caspian Sea,
they have occupied Grozny and are preventing us from using the
oil. Neither industry nor the railways can work without fuel. We
must exert our efforts to the utmost.

Once again we say to all our comrades that we must enlist
larger forces for work on food supplies and transport. The
transport situation is such that in Eastern Russia, beyond the
Volga, we have accumulated millions of poods of grain10 to 20
million poods have already been acquired and are in store—but cannot transport it. We lost part of this grain as
Kolchak’s troops advanced, captured Ufa and compelled our
forces to retreat. This loss is a very severe one, and we feel it
very much. Transport work calls for the utmost exertion of effort;
at every meeting the workers should ask themselves how they can
help to improve transport. Cannot women do the work here in place
of the men, and the men he sent either to the repair shops or to
help the railwaymen? The workers are the best judges of what
should be done, because they know which men to put on which
job. Practical people know best, and they must devise new ways and
means of assisting. We hope, we are convinced, that our
Commissariat of Railways, in conjunction with the Commissariat of
Food, have already achieved a certain degree of success. No matter
what lies our enemies may spread, this goods transport month
during which passenger traffic is suspended has already brought
about an improvement; but ten times more effort must be exerted to
achieve greater success. Some figures were published in
yesterday’s issue of Izvestia, the most important of which I
will here quote. At the beginning of March, an average of 118
carloads of food of which 25 consisted of grain, were arriving in
Moscow every day. By the end of March, the average daily arrivals
had increased to 209 carloads of food, of which 47 contained
grain. This is an almost twofold increase. It proves that the
stern measure of suspending passenger traffic is correct and
justified, and shows that we have assisted the starving population
of Moscow, Petrograd and of the whole industrial region. But this
is by no means all that can be done. And later, when the roads
become quite impassable, we shall be faced with a much more
difficult and hungry time. That is why we say that in this field
the most unrelaxing, energetic efforts must be made. Mainly, we
must rely upon the masses of the workers and not count upon the
intellectuals who, although they have come to work for us, have a
large number of useless people among them.

We must also reckon with the situation in the Ukraine. During
the year, when the entire Ukraine was occupied by the Germans, and
the whole of the Don region was in a sorry state, we suffered a
great deal. Now, however, our position is improving. In the
Ukraine there are 258 million poods of grain, of which 100 million
have already been earmarked for delivery. But the whole trouble is
that the Ukrainian peasants have been frightfully intimidated by
the Germans and by German looting. I have heard that the peasants
there have been so intimidated by the Germans that although they
know what the position of the Soviet Power is here, they still
hesitate to seize the landed estates.

Meanwhile, the time is approaching for spring field work; but
the Ukrainian peasants have suffered the horrors of German looting
to such an extent that to this day they are extremely irresolute. I must say that guerrilla warfare has been going on
there all the time. In the South it is still going on. There are
no regular troops there, owing to which complete victory has not
yet been won. We have moved our regular troops in, but this is not
enough. We must greatly intensify our efforts, and that is why I
insist that at every meeting of workers the question of food
supplies and the question of transport definitely must be
raised. In the very near future we have to decide the question of
how to relieve the situation, and how to utilise what is now
available.

We must bear firmly in mind that only with the aid of the
forces of the working class can we stand firmly on our feet, and
achieve our brilliant victories; and that is why we must send the
best forces of the proletariat to the front. We must send leading
functionaries to the front and if some office suffers as a result
of it, we shall, of course, sustain some loss, but it will not be
fatal. If there is a shortage of workers in the army, however,
that will certainly be fatal. A defect in our army up to now has
been that it lacks cohesion and is not sufficiently organised; all
help in this sphere must come from the workers, and on them we
must place all our hopes. Only those workers who have gone through
the whole struggle, who can relate all their experiences and all
they have suffered can influence the army and turn the peasants
into the politically-conscious fighters that we need.

That is why we have come here again and decided to call you all
together to inform you of the serious state of our transport
system, due to the general grave position that we are in. We
stress the importance of our holding out for another three or four
months, and that only then will complete victory be ours. But for
this we need forces. Where are these forces to be found? Is it not
clear that only the workers, those who have borne the whole burden
of the chaos, bore the whole burden when the struggle changed to
whiteguard invasions and thereby acquired great experience—is it not clear that only these workers, only
these vanguard contingents, can help us? We know perfectly well
that they are terribly exhausted, that they are worn out by the
superhuman efforts they are called upon to make. We know all this,
but nevertheless, we now say to you here that we must strain every
nerve, we must concentrate our minds on rallying all forces to
achieve a brilliant victory for the revolution. We are now
entering the most difficult, the most trying period, and we must
act like revolutionaries. We must recruit our forces from the
masses of the working people.

Yesterday a meeting was held of the influential leaders f the
trade union movement—both the Moscow and the national leaders. And at this meeting everybody agreed that it is
necessary, at the present moment, to enlist for this work the
middle stratum of workers, whom everybody has up to now regarded
as being incapable of this type of work. Now, however, it is
perfectly clear that we must send this middle stratum to relieve
our exhausted functionaries. Before doing so, however, those who
have been engaged in this work up to now must instruct the
newcomers. We must husband our forces, and for a time we must send
the middle stratum of workers to take the place of our leading
functionaries. We must send tens of thousands of such workers into
the field. We must not be afraid that they will not do the work as
well as the experienced functionaries did. If we put them into
responsible positions, then the mistakes that they may make at
first will not have serious consequences. The important thing for
us is to put them in the foremost responsible posts. There they
will be able to exert an effort and develop their activities,
because they will be able to operate confidently, they will know
that they are backed by experienced leading workers who have
already had a year’s experience of work in Russia. They will
know that at critical moments these more experienced comrades will
come to their aid and ease their task. This new stratum of workers
will be able to do their work well if the advanced workers promote
them to leading positions. We can do this without causing any
damage, because this large stratum has a proletarian instinct, a
proletarian understanding and sense of duty. We may rely upon it,
and we may say that it will help us in a time of difficulty. It is
a specific feature of Russia that in every critical situation she
has always been able to find masses of people who could be moved
forward, who Were a reserve in which she could find new forces
when the old forces began to grow thin. Yes, the advanced workers
are overtired, and the next contingent will not do the work so
well; but that is not disastrous, we shall not suffer from it, we
shall not ruin our cause if we send these new forces into the
field, guide them, and not allow our cause to die.

Under these circumstances I must speak about the
Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. Lately, the Soviet
government has begun to close down their newspapers and to arrest
them. Some worker comrades, seeing this, say: “So those
Bolsheviks”—I among that number—“who induced us to make certain concessions to the petty-bourgeois
democrats were wrong. What was the use of making these concessions
if we must now close down their newspapers and arrest them? Is
this consistency?”

My answer is this. In a country like Russia, where agriculture
is concentrated in the hands of the petty-bourgeois elements, we
cannot hold out for long without the support of this petty-bourgeois stratum. At the present time, this stratum is
marching towards the goal not by a straight road, but in
zigzags. If I am pursuing an enemy who is retreating not by a
straight road but in zigzags, then I, too, must proceed in zigzags
in order to overtake him. To speak in the language of politics,
the petty-bourgeois masses stand between labour and capital, and
these masses must be beaten a hundred times to make them
understand that the alternative is either the dictatorship of the
bourgeoisie or the dictatorship of the working class. Those who
are aware of this, understand the present situation. The workers
understand it. Experience and a whole series of observations have
taught them that only one or the other of these two systems of
government is possible—either the absolute power of the
working class, or the absolute power of the bourgeoisie—there can be no middle, or third, course. The
working class learned this long ago from its strike and
revolutionary struggle. The petty bourgeoisie cannot learn this at
once; hundreds of everyday facts have failed to teach and accustom
the petty bourgeoisie to this idea, and they continue to dream of
uniting with the big bourgeoisie; for they cannot understand that
either the dictatorship of the proletariat or the dictatorship of
the bourgeoisie is inevitable.

Experience of Koichak taught the Socialist-Revolutionaries and
Mensheviks that it was no accident that in the midst of a furious
and desperate struggle conducted with foreign assistance,
democracy had nothing to give. Two forces are operating upon
them—and there are no other forces but these—either the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, or the power and complete
dictatorship of the working class; no middle course was ever of
any use, nothing came of it anywhere. Nor did anything come of the
Constituent Assembly. This the Socialist-Revolutionaries and
Menshievjks and the petty bourgeoisie learned from their own
experience.

When the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks said:
“We shall abandon Koichak and all those who support him and
the intervention of the Entente,” it was not only hypocrisy. It was not only a political ruse, although some of
these people did think they would fool the Bolsheviks and get an
opportunity to play the old game again. We saw through this ruse
arid, of course, took measures against it. But when the Mensheviks
and Socialist-Revolutionaries said this, it was not only hypocrisy
and cunning; many of them did it in good faith. Among them there is not only the group of writers, but also a
petty-bourgeois stratum of technicians, engineers, and so
forth. When the Mensheviks announced that they were opposed to the
intervention of the Entente, we Invited them to work with us, and
they willingly accepted our invitation. But now we are quite right
in persecuting them, persecuting the petty-bourgeois stratum,
because this stratum is extremely obtuse. This was revealed in the
Kerensky period and also by their present conduct. When they came
to work for us they said they had abandoned politics, and would
work willingly. We told them in reply that we needed Menshevik
officials, because they were not embezzlers of state funds, and
not Black Hundreds who worm their way into our ranks, call
themselves Communists and do us mischief. If these people believe
in the Constituent Assembly we tell them to go on believing, not
only in the Constituent Assembly, but even in God, but do their
work properly and keep out of politics. An increasing number of
them realise that they have disgraced themselves in politics. They
howled that Soviet power was a monstrous invention, possible only
in barbarous Russia. They said that the dissolution of the
Constituent Assembly was an act by barbarians whom tsarism had
produced. And this was repeated in Europe. Now news comes from
Europe that Soviet power is coming to take the place of bourgeois
Constituent Assemblies all over the world. These are lessons that
are being taught to all intellectuals who come to work for us. We
now have twice as many civil servants working for us as we had six
months ago. We have gained by accepting these civil servants who
do their work better than Black Hundreds. When we invited them to
come to work for us they said they were afraid of Kolchak, they
preferred us, but would not help us, they said they would talk
like pure parliamentarians, just as if they were sitting in a
Constituent Assembly; and we shouldn’t dare to touch them,
because they were democrats. But we say to these groups who talk
about the Constituent Assembly that if they talk like that much
longer we shall pack them off to Koichak and to
Georgia. (Applause.) Polemics are started, and the opposition of a
legal group takes shape. We shall allow no opposition. The
imperialists of the whole world have got us by the throat, they
are trying to defeat us by all the force of an armed attack and we
must fight a life-and-death struggle. If you have come here to
help us, then do so, but if you are going to publish newspapers
and incite the workers to strike, and these strikes cause the
death of our Red Army men at the front, and every day of a strike
causes tens of thousands of our factory workers to suffer
privations, pangs of hunger—the pangs which are causing us
so much concernthen you may be right from the Constituent Assembly
point of view, but from the standpoint of our struggle and the
responsibility we bear, you are wrong, you cannot help us, so get
out, go to Georgia, go to Kolchak, or else you will go to
prison. And that is what we shall do with them.

Comrades, I hope we shall all unanimously adopt the resolution
to be submitted to you at the end of the meeting. In it we have
endeavoured to formulate the necessary instructions, the reasons
for which I have given in my report.I should now like to deal with
two questions—the position of the middle peasants, and the
international situation, which is extremely important.

We discussed the question of the middle peasants at our Party
Congress and decided on the line our Party should pursue towards
them. Our Party elected to a responsible posts the post of
Chairman of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee, a post
which is all the more responsible for the fact that until recently
it was occupied by that exceptionally talented organiser Comrade
Sverdlov, for this post our Party chose Comrade Kalinin, a
St. Petersburg worker who still has connections with the rural
districts. There is a report in the newspapers today that a
certain Comrade Kalinin was assassinated by the
Socialist-Revolutionaries, but it is not this Kalinin. This shows
what methods the Socialist-Revolutionaries resort to. Comrade
Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin is a middle peasant from Tver Gubernia,
which he visits every year. The middle peasants constitute the
largest stratum of the population, and their numbers have
increased since our revolution owing to the fact that we abolished
the landed estates. The peasantry benefited by our revolution
because they seized all the landed estates and, as a consequence,
the number of middle peasants greatly increased. If there is
discontent among the middle peasants, we say that it is caused
from above, and we must ascertain to what extent it is legitimate,
considering our lack of forces. You, here in the capital, know how
difficult it is to combat bureaucracy and red tape. We are obliged
to employ the old civil servants because no other are available. They must be re-educated, taught; but this takes
time. We may appoint new workers to responsible posts in the food
supply organisations, but there is still an exceedingly large
number of old civil servants in the State Control Commission, and
we suffer from red tape and bureaucracy. We are trying to appoint
new workers to take part in control in the Commissariat of
Railways and to work side by side with the experts. This is the
way we are combating bureaucracy and red tape. What effort it
costs, even here in Moscow! And what is going on in the rural
districts? There, people who call themselves members of the Party
are often scoundrels, whose lawlessness is most brazen. And how
often we have to contend with inexperienced people, who confuse
the kulaks with the middle peasants! A kulak is one who lives on
the labour of others, who robs others of the fruits of their
labour, arid takes advantage of their poverty. The middle peasants
do not exploit others and are not exploited themselves; they earn
their livelihood on their small farms by their own labour. Not a
single socialist in the world ever proposed that the small farmer
should be deprived of his property. The small farmer will exist
for many years to come. No decrees will have any effect here; we
must. wait until the peasants have learned to be guided by
experience. When they see that collective farming is far better,
they will come over to our side. We must win their confidence. Here we must wage a struggle against abuses. We can
fight only with the aid of the urban workers, because they have
close connections with the peasants, and they can supply us with
hundreds of thousands of functionaries. We know perfectly well
that no appointments of comrades to high posts, no circulars, and
no decrees will be of any avail, and that the workers of every
group, of every circle, must set to work themselves—they
have special connections with the rural districts.

I said that the first rule for the workers must be—exert
all efforts to help to prosecute the war. The second rule should
be—help the middle peasants by keeping in contact with them,
so as not to allow a single serious enemy attack in the rural
districts to go unpunished. We must point out that the urban
workers are bringing assistance to the middle peasants, their
comrades, because the middle peasants are also workers, but
workers who have been reared under other conditions, who live
isolated from each other in rural ignorance from which it is more
difficult forthem to extricate themselves. And we must know that
the perseverance of our comrades will establish contacts with the
middle peasants. An infinitesimal number of peasants will become
kulaks, will foment rebellion—that we know. That being the
case, how can we help, how can we win the confidence of the middle
peasants, how can we help them to combat all sorts of abuses? If
we have done little in this field it is not our fault, for we had
to fight the bourgeoisie. This has to be realised. Every worker
must put the question this way—we, the workers as a whole,
have contacts with the middle peasants, and we will utilise these
contacts, and see to it that every middle peasant learns of our
help not only from the appointment of Comrade Kalinin, but also
from the fact that he is obtaining some real assistance, if only
slight, if only in the form of slight but comradely advice. The
peasants will now appreciate such assistance more than anything
else. They must be made to understand why the difficulties of our
position prevent us from giving them the assistance they need,
assistance in the form of urban culture. The peasants need
city-made goods, urban culture, and we must give them these
things. Only when the proletariat gives the peasants this form of
assistance will they realise that the help of the workers is
different from that of the exploiters. To help the peasants to
rise to the urban level—this is the task that every worker
who has connections with the rural districts must set himself. The
urban workers must say to themselves that now, in the spring, when
the food situation has become particularly acute, they must go to
the peasants’ assistance. And if everybody does even a tiny
share of this work, we shall see that our edifice has not merely a
façade, and that our cause of safeguarding Soviet power will be
achieved; for the peasants say: “Long live Soviet power,
long live the Bolsheviks, but down with the communia!” They
curse the “communia” that is being organised in a stupid way and forced upon them. They are suspicious of everything
that is forced upon them, and quite rightly so. We must go to the
middle peasants, we must help them, teach them, but only in the
field of science and socialism. In the field of agriculture we
must learn from them. There you have the task that confronts us
directly.

We now come to the international situation. I say that the
imperialists of Britain, France and America are making their last
attempt to bring us to our knees, but they will fail. Difficult as
the situation is, we can say with confidence that we shall defeat
international imperialism. We shall defeat the multimillionaires
of the whole world. There are two reasons why we shall beat
them. First, because they are WII d beasts who are so absorbed in
fighting among themselves, that they continue to bite each other
and fail to see that they are on the brink of a precipice;
secondly, because Soviet power is growing uninterruptedly all over
the world. Not a day passes but what we read about this in the
newspapers. Today we read a message wirelessed from an American
press office in Lyons to the effect that the Committee of Ten has
now been reduced, and that there are now only four—Wilson,
Lloyd George, Clemenceau and Orlando. These are the leaders of
four nations, but even they cannot reach an agreement. Britain and
America do not want France to have the coal profits. They are wild
beasts who have plundered the whole world and are now quarrelling
over the prey. These four men have shut themselves up in close
conclave so that, God forbid, rumours may not get about—they
are all such great democrats—but they themselves set rumours
afloat by sending out wireless messages about not agreeing to give
up the coal profits. A French comrade who saw the French prisoners
of war told me that these prisoners say: “We were told that
we must go to Russia to fight the Germans because the Germans had
destroyed our country. But now there is an armistice with Germany;
whom are we going to fight?” They were not told a word about
that. The number of people who are asking themselves this question
is day by day growing into millions and millions. These people
have experienced the horrors of the imperialist war, and they say:
“What are we going to fight for?” In the past, the
Bolsheviks taught them what they were fighting for in underground
leaflets; but now the imperialists send out wireless messages
saying that Britain does not agree to allow France to have the
coal profits. Thus, as a French journalist expressed it, they are
rushing from room to room in a vain effort to solve the
problem. They are trying to decide who should get most, and they
have been fighting each other for five months. These wild beasts
have lost their self-control, and will go on fighting until
nothing is left of them except their tails. And we say that our
international position, which at first was so precarious that they
could have crushed us in several weeks, is now, when they are
quarrelling over the loot and are beginning to fly at each
others’ throats—now our position is much better. They promised the soldiers that if they conquered Germany they would
receive untold benefits. They are arguing whether to compel
Germany to pay sixty or eighty milliard. This is an extremely
important question of principle, an extremely interesting one,
especially if the workers or peasants are told about it. But if
they go on arguing for long they will not get even one milliard. This is what is most interesting!

That is why we say, without exaggerating in the least, not even
as socialists, but simply and soberly weighing up the forces that
are mustered against us, that the position of the Soviet Republic
is improving day by day and hour by hour. Our enemies cannot agree
among themselves. Five months have passed since they won their
victory, but they have not concluded peace. Recently, the French
Chamber again voted hundreds of millions for war preparations. They are digging their own grave, and there are
people over there who will lower them into this grave and pile
plenty of earth over them. (Applause.) This is because the Soviet
movement is growing in all countries. And the Hungarian revolution
has shown that when we say that we are fighting not only for
ourselves, but for Soviet power all over the world, that blood of
the Red Army men is being shed not only for the sake of our
starving comrades, but for the victory of Soviet power all over
the world—the example of Hungary has shown that this is not
merely prophecies and promises, but the most actual and immediate
reality.

In Hungary the revolution was most unusual in form. The
Hungarian Kerensky, who over there is called Kdrolyi, voluntarily
resigned, and the Hungarian compromisers—the Mensheviks and
Socialist-Revolutionaries—realised that they must go to the
prison where our Hungarian comrade Bela Kun, one of the best of
the Hungarian Communists, was confined. They went to him and said:
“You must take power!” (Applause.) The bourgeois government resigned. The bourgeois socialists, the Hungarian
Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, merged with the Hungarian
Bolshevik Party and formed a united party and a united government. Comrade B61a Kun, our comrade, and a Communist who had
trodden the whole practical path of Bolshevism in Russia, said to
me when I spoke to him by wireless: “I have not got a majority in the government, but I shall win because the masses are
behind me, and we are convening a congress of Soviets.” This
is a revolution of world—historical importance.

Up to now all the European workers have been told lies about
Soviet Russia. They have been told that there is no government but
sheer anarchy in Russia. The Bolsheviks are just a crowd of
quarrelsome people. Recently, the French Minister, Pichon, said
about Soviet Russia, “It is anarchy, they are violators,
usurpers!” “Look at Russia,” said the Gerluau
Mensheviks to their workers. “War, famine and ruin!

Is this the sort of socialism you want?” And in this way
they have been intimidating the workers. But Hungary was a example
of a revolution born in a different way. Hungary will undoubtedly
have to go through a severe struggle against the bourgeoisie—that is inevitable. But the fact is that when
those beasts, the British and French imperialists, foresaw the
possibility of revolution in Hungary they wanted to crush it, to
prevent its birth. The difficulty of our position was that we had
to give birth to Soviet power in opposition to patriotism. We had
to break down this patriotism and conclude the Brest peace. This
was a most desperate, furious and sanguinary operation. The
bourgeoisie in the neighbouring countries realised who would have
to govern. Who, if not the Soviet? It was like the old days when
kings, kinglets and princes saw that their power was waning and
they said, “We must have a constitution; let the bourgeoisie
come and govern!” And if the king was feeble, he was given a
pension, or a sinecure. What the kings or kinglets experienced
fifty or sixty years ago, the world bourgeoisie is now experiencing. When the British and French imperialists submitted
unprecedented demands to the Hungarian capitalists, the latter
said, “We cannot fight. The people will not follow us; but
we are Hungarian patriots and we want to resist. What kind of
government should we have? A Soviet government.” The
Hungarian bourgeoisie admitted to the world that it had resigned
voluntarily and that the only power in the world capable of
guiding the nation in a moment of crisis was Soviet power. (Applause.) That is why the Hungarian revolution, owing to
its having been born in a totally different way from ours, will
reveal to the whole world that which was concealed in
Russia—i.e., that Bolshevism is bound up with a new, proletarian, workers’ democracy, that is taking the place of
the old parliament. Time was when the workers were deceived and
enslaved by capital. Today, world Soviet power is coming into
being to take the place of the old bourgeois parliament; and this
Soviet power has won the sympathies of all workers because it is
the power of ,the working people, the power of millions who rule
and govern themselves. Perhaps they govern badly, as we do in
Russia, but our conditions are exceedingly difficult. In a country
where the bourgeoisie will not offer such furious resistance, the
tasks of the Soviet government will be easier; it will he able to
operate without the violence, without the bloodshed that was
forced upon us by the Kerenskys and the imperialists. We shall
reach our goal even by this, more difficult, road. Russia may have
to make greater sacrifices than other countries; this is not
surprising considering the chaos that we inherited. Other
countries will travel by a different, more humane road, but at the
end of it lies the same Soviet power. That is why the example of
Hungary is of decisive importance.

People learn from experience. It is impossible to prove merely
by words that Soviet power is just. The example of Rusia alone was
not sufficiently intelligible to the workers of all countries. They knew that there was a Soviet there, they were all
in favour of the Soviet, but they were daunted by the horrors of
the sanguinary struggle. The example of Hungary will be decisive
for the proletarian masses, for the European proletariat and
working peasants. In a moment of difficulty there is no one to
rule the country but the Soviet government.

We remember what old people say, “The children have, grown up, they have made their way in the world, now we can
die.” But we do not intend to die. We are marching to victory. But when we see children like Hungary, where Soviet power
already exists, we say that we have done our work not only on a
Russian, but also on an international scale; that we shall
surmount all our desperate difficulties and win full victory, so
that we shall live to see the day when the world Soviet republic
will be added to the Russian and the Hungarian Soviet
Republics. (Applause.)

Resolution On The Report On The Domestic And Foreign Situation Of The Soviet Republic

The Soviet Republic, in the harsh but glorious struggle it is
waging at the head of all peoples, is entering the most
difficult period of its existence. The next few months will be
months of crisis. The Entente is making its last, desperate
effort to crush us by force of arms. The food situation is
becoming extremely acute. The transport system is in a serious
state.

Only the greatest effort can save us. Victory is nevertheless
fully possible. The revolution in Hungary provides conclusive
proof of the rapid growth of the Soviet movement in Europe, and of
its impending victory. We have more allies in all countries than
we ourselves imagine. To achieve the final victory we must hold on
for another four or five months, which, perhaps, will be the
bitterest and most dangerous. And in days like these, reckless men
and adventurers who call themselves Mensheviks and Left and Right
Socialist-Revolutionaries, while paying lip-service to Soviet
power and protesting against the armed intervention of the
Entente, are fomenting strikes or agitating for concessions to
freedom to trade or for the cessation of the Civil War, forgetting
that we have offered peace to all, and that our war is a just,
legitimate and unavoidable war of defence. Obviously, by this sort
of agitation they give most active and effective assistance to the
whiteguards, who are making a last effort to force us into
disaster. The meeting condemns these masked enemies of the
people.

It declares to all those Mensheviks and
Socialist-Revolutionaries who are really prepared to help us in
our difficult struggle, that the workers’ and peasants’ government will grant them full liberty, and
guarantee them all the rights of citizens of the Soviet
Republic.

This meeting declares that the task of the Soviet Government at
the present time is to wage relentless war upon those Mensheviks
and Socialist-Revolutionaries who, like the literary and political
groups, Vsegda Vperyod and Dyelo Naroda, are actually impeding our struggle and are the
allies of our inveterate enemies. This meeting calls upon all
working-class organisations, all proletarians, and all working
peasants to exert every effort to repel the enemies of Soviet
power, to defend that power and to improve the food supply and
transport systems.

For this purpose, this meeting deems it necessary:

(1) To enlist members of the middle section—i.e., people
who are less experienced than the advanced workers and peasants—to replace the weary advanced section.

(2) To engage still further contingents of the advanced and
other sections of workers on food supplies, transport, and in the
army.

(3) To enlist the largest possible number of politically
conscious workers and peasants to work at the People’s
Commissariat of Railways and at the State Control Commission, in
order to improve the functioning of these bodies and to eliminate
bureaucracy and red tape.

(4) To transfer the largest possible number of people from the
starving cities to agricultural work in the rural districts—to vegetable gardens, to the Ukraine, to the Don
region, and so forth, so as to increase the output of grain and
other agricultural produce.

(5) To exert all efforts to help the middle peasants, to put a
stop to the abuses from which they suffer so often, and to render
them comradely assistance. Those Soviet officials who fail to
understand this policy—which is the only correct policy—or who are unable to pursue it, must be immediately
dismissed.

(6) The task that confronts everybody at the present time is to
combat all signs of weariness, faint-heartedness and vacillation. We must imbue all hearts with courage and firmness,
increase political consciousness, and strengthen comradely
discipline.

The working class and the peasantry of Russia have borne
incredible burdens. During the past few months their sufferings
have been more acute than ever. But this meeting declares that the
will of the workers is not broken, that the working class is still
at its post, that it is convinced that it will overcome all
difficulties, and that it will maintain at all costs the victory
of the Soviet Socialist Republic in Russia, and throughout the
world.