Comrades, the first word at our congress must be dedicated to Comrade Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov. Comrades, if for the party as a whole and for the whole Soviet republic Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov was the chief organiser, as many comrades stated today at the funeral, then for the party congress he was much more valuable and closer. Here we have lost a comrade who during these last days devoted himself entirely to the congress. Here his absence will be felt in the whole course of our work, and the congress will feel his absence particularly keenly. Comrades, I propose that we honour his memory by rising. (All rise.)

Comrades, we have to open the proceedings of our party congress at a very difficult, complex and peculiar moment of the Russian and world proletarian revolution. If in the first period after October the forces of the party and the forces of Soviet power were almost entirely absorbed in the task of direct defence, of direct repulse of the enemies, the bourgeoisie both external and internal, which would not entertain the thought of any prolonged existence of a socialist republic—then gradually we did nevertheless become stronger, and the tasks of construction, the organisational tasks, began to advance to the foreground. It seems to me that our congress will have to proceed entirely under the sign of this work of construction and organisational work. And the questions of the programme, which in theoretical respect present enormous difficulty, mostly boil down to questions of construction, and the organisational question specially placed on the congress order of the day, the question of the Red Army and especially the question of work in the countryside—all this demands of us an effort and concentration of attention on the main question, which presents the greatest difficulties but also the most rewarding task for socialists: on the organisational question. In particular, it must be emphasised here that one of the most difficult tasks of communist construction in a country of small peasant farming now precisely faces us: that is the task of the attitude to the middle peasantry.

Comrades, it is natural that in the first period, when we had to defend the right of the Soviet republic to live, naturally that at such a time this question could not be brought to the foreground on a broad scale. The merciless war against the rural bourgeoisie and kulaks advanced to the forefront the tasks of organising the proletariat and semi-proletariat of the countryside. But the next step for the party, which wants to create firm foundations of communist society, is the task—to correctly resolve the question of our attitude to the middle peasantry. This task is of a higher order. We could not pose it in all its breadth as long as the foundations of the existence of the Soviet republic were not secured. This task is more complex. It requires a definition of our attitude to a numerous and strong stratum of the population. This attitude cannot be defined by a simple answer: struggle or support. If in relation to the bourgeoisie our task is formulated by the words “struggle”, “suppression”, if in relation to the proletarians and semi-proletarians of the countryside this task is formulated by the words “our support”—then here the task is undoubtedly more complex. Here the socialists, the best representatives of the socialism of the old days—when they still believed in revolution and served it theoretically and ideologically—spoke of the neutralisation of the peasantry, i.e. of making of the middle peasantry, if not a social stratum actively helping the revolution of the proletariat, then at least one not hindering it, neutral, not taking the side of our enemies. This abstract, theoretical formulation of the task is fully clear to us. But it is insufficient. We have entered a stage of socialist construction when it is necessary to work out concretely, in detail, tested by the experience of work in the countryside, the basic rules and instructions by which we must guide ourselves in order to, in relation to the middle peasantry, take the stand of a firm alliance, in order to rule out the possibility of those repeatedly occurring deviations and incorrectnesses that detached the middle peasant from us, whereas in actual fact we, as the leading communist party, which for the first time helped the Russian peasant to throw off completely the yoke of the landlords and to establish for him genuine democracy—we could fully count on his complete confidence. This task is not of the type that requires ruthless, rapid suppression and offensive. It is undoubtedly more complex. But I will take the liberty to express confidence that after a year’s preliminary work we shall cope with this task.

A few words more about our international position. Comrades, you all, of course, know that the founding of the Third, Communist International in Moscow is, in the sense of defining our international position, an act of the greatest significance. Against us there still stands in full armour a huge real military force—all the strongest powers of the world. And, nevertheless, we say to ourselves with confidence that this outwardly gigantic force, and from the physical point of view incomparably more powerful than we, that this force—has been shaken. It is no longer a force. It has lost the solidity it once had. Therefore our task and aim—to emerge victorious in the struggle against this giant—is not utopian. On the contrary, despite the fact that we are now artificially cut off from the whole world, not a day passes without the newspapers bringing news of the growth of the revolutionary movement in all countries. More than that, we know, we see, that this growth is taking a Soviet form. And in this lies the pledge that, by establishing Soviet power, we have hit upon the international, world-wide form of the dictatorship of the proletariat. And we are full of firm confidence that the proletariat of the whole world has taken the road of such a struggle, the path of creating such forms of proletarian power—the power of the workers and toilers—and that no force in the world can hold up the march of the world communist revolution toward the world Soviet republic. (Prolonged applause.)

Comrades, allow me now on behalf of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party to declare the Eighth Congress open and to proceed to the election of the presidium.