V. I. Lenin

Speech to Students of the Sverdlov University Leaving for the Front

C omrades, you know it is not only the desire to celebrate the completion of the course of
instruction at the Soviet school by the majority of you that has
brought us here together, but also the decision taken by about a
half the graduates to leave for the front to render fresh,
extraordinary and substantial aid to the troops in action
there.

Comrades, we are well aware of the great difficulties being
experienced by our entire administration in the towns and,
especially, in the rural areas because of the shortage of
experienced, knowledgeable comrades. We are also well aware that
the advanced workers of Petrograd, Moscow, Ivanovo-Voznesensk and
other towns, those advanced comrades who until now have been
bearing what one might call the main burden of administering the
country under unprecedentedly difficult conditions, who have been
bearing the main burden of uniting the workers and peasants and
giving them guidance—we are well aware that these comrades
are extremely exhausted by the superhuman efforts at times
required of them for the defence of the Soviet
Republic. Therefore, the opportunity to gather together here
several hundred workers and peasants and give them the possibility
of studying regularly for a few months, to complete a course of
Soviet studies and then leave here in a body, organised, mustered,
politically conscious to do the work of government and to make
good the tremendous defects that still remain—such an opportunity is of great value to us and it was with great
difficulty and reluctance, and after considerable wavering that we
took a decision to permit half the present graduation class to go
to work at the front. The conditions obtaining at the front,
however, are such that we were left with no other choice. And we
were of the opinion that the decision, adopted voluntarily and for
the purpose of dispatching to the front a number of the best
people who would have been valuable in all administrative and
organising work—this decision was called for by circumstances of undoubted necessity.

Comrades, permit me to give you a short review of the situation
now obtaining on the various fronts so that you may judge how
urgent this necessity has become.

On a number of fronts that were formerly extremely important
and on which the enemy had placed great hopes, victory for our
side has recently drawn nearer and it will, by all the signs, be
complete and irrevocable. On the Northern Front, where the
offensive against Murmansk promised the enemy particularly great
advantages and where the British had long ago mustered huge,
excellently equipped forces and where we had unbelievable
difficulty in fighting because of the lack of food and equipment—there, it seemed, the prospects for the British
and French imperialists were of the brightest. It was there,
however, that the enemy offensive collapsed completely. The
British had to withdraw their troops, and we now have full
confirmation that the British workers do not want war against
Russia and even now, when Britain is far from the revolutionary
struggle, they are able to bring such pressure to bear on their
government of predators and plunderers that they can force them to
withdraw their troops from Russia. They have been forced to
abandon this front which was particularly dangerous because the
enemy there was in possession of a sea route and was in a most
favourable position. There are Russian whiteguard forces of
practically no significance left there.

Take another front—the Kolchak front. You know that when
Kolchak's army advanced towards the Volga the capitalist press of
Europe hurried to inform the whole world of the collapse of Soviet
power and to recognise Kolchak as the Supreme Ruler of
Russia. Before the document announcing this recognition reached
Kolchak, however, our troops had pushed him back into Siberia and,
as you know, we approached Petropavlovsk and the River Irtysh and
Kolchak was compelled to deploy his forces differently from the
way he had intended. Time was when we had to withdraw because the
local workers and peasants were late in mustering their
forces. Information received from behind Kolchak's lines tells of
his undoubted debacle, and the population, even the affluent
peasants, are rising against him to a man. We are approaching the
time when the last stronghold of Kolchak's forces will be smashed
and that will bring us to the end of a year of revolution in the
course of which all Siberia was under Kolchak's rule and when he
was helped by the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks who
again went through the business of coining to an agreement with a
bourgeois government. You know that all the European bourgeoisie
helped Kolchak. You know that the Siberian line was held by the
Poles and Czechs, that there were also Italians there and American
officer volunteers. Everything that might paralyse the revolution
came to the aid of Kolchak. And it all collapsed because the
peasants, the Siberian peasants, who least of all submit to the
influence of communism because they see least of it, were given
such a lesson by Kolchak, such a practical comparison (and peasants like practical comparisons) that we may say that
Kolchak has given us a million supporters in districts the
farthest removed from industrial centres where we should have had
difficulty in winning them over. That is how Kolchak's power came
to an end and that is why we feel our position to be most stable
on that front.

We can see that the Polish offensive on the Western Front is
coming to an end. The Poles got help from Britain, France and
America who all tried to arouse Poland's ancient hatred towards
her Great-Russian oppressors, tried to transfer the Polish
workers' hatred of the landowners and tsars, a hundred times
deserved, to the Russian workers and peasants, and tried to make
the Polish workers think that the Bolsheviks, like the Russian
chauvinists, dream of conquering Poland. For the time being they
were successful in this. But there are definite signs that the
time when this fraud was effective is now over and that
disintegration has set in in the Polish army. American reports
that cannot be suspected of sympathy for communism affirm that
there is a growing demand among the Polish peasants to finish the
war by October 1 at all costs, and that this demand is supported
by even the most patriotic of the Polish social-chauvinists ( P.S.P. ) who
occupy the same position as our Mensheviks and
Socialist-Revolutionaries and are offering greater and greater
opposition to their government. In recent times the mood of the
Poles has changed considerably.

That leaves two other fronts, the Petrograd and Southern
fronts, where the most important events are taking place. Here,
too, all the signs indicate that the enemy is mustering his last
forces. We have precise information to the effect that Secretary
for War Churchill and the capitalist party in Britain undertook
this military venture against Petrograd to demonstrate the
possibility of making a speedy end of Soviet Russia, and that the
British press regards this venture as the last stake made by
Mr. Churchill and the chauvinists against the undoubted will of
the majority of the people.

We may regard the Petrograd attack as a measure of help to
Denikin; this conclusion may be drawn from the situation on the
Petrograd Front.

You know that the Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian governments
have agreed to our proposal to start peace negotiations. Naturally
this last piece of news has caused some wavering among our troops,
giving them hopes that the war is drawing to an end. The
negotiations have begun. In the meantime Britain collected her
remaining vessels and landed several thousand whiteguards equipped
with magnificent war materiel. They cannot transport them to us,
however, unless they lull the people by deception, because in both
Britain and France there have been cases of attempts to load war
materiel on to ships having failed because the dockers struck work
and said that they would not allow steamers carrying weapons of
destruction to Soviet Russia to be loaded. The British imperialists had to get armaments from other countries,
hoodwinking their own people. No wonder, then, that they
dispatched against Soviet Russia a few hundred or a few thousand
Russian whiteguard officers. There are camps in Britain where
these whiteguard officers are housed, fed and trained for the
invasion of Russia; and then they say that this is an internal war
brought about by the terrorism of the Bolsheviks. Camps that were
once full of Russian prisoners of war are now full of Russian
whiteguard officers. This accounts for the tremendous successes
achieved by the enemy when he brought these forces up to the
Petrograd Front at a time when we were expecting Latvia and
Lithuania to conclude an armistice. You now know that the
turning-point has been reached on the Petrograd Front. You know
from the reports of Zinoviev and Trotsky that losses have been
made up, that the former wavering has come to an end and that our
forces are attacking, and attacking successfully, overcoming the
most desperate resistance. These battles are outstanding in their
extraordinary ferocity. Comrade Trotsky informed me by telephone
from Petrograd that in Detskoye Selo, which we recently captured,
whiteguards, and bourgeois who had remained behind, fired from
individual houses, offering stubborn resistance, greater
resistance than in any previous battles. The enemy feels that a
turning-point has been reached in the entire war and that Denikin
is in a position in which he must be helped and our forces
attacking him diverted. It can be said definitely that they did
not succeed in doing this. Everything we sent to help Petrograd
was obtained without the slightest weakening of the Southern
Front. Not a single unit for Petrograd was withdrawn from the
Southern Front and that victory which we have begun to achieve and
which we shall pursue to the end will be achieved without any
weakening of the Southern Front where the outcome of the war
against the landowners and the imperialists is being decided. That
outcome will be there on the Southern Front, and in the near
future.

Comrades, you know that on the Southern Front on the one hand,
the enemy relied mainly on the Cossacks who were fighting for
their privileges, and on the other hand, more regiments of the
volunteer army had been formed there than elsewhere; these were
troops full of savage resentment who fought for the interests of
their class, for the restoration of the power of the landowners
and capitalists. It is here, therefore, that we have to engage
them in the decisive battle, and here we see the same as we saw in
the case of Kolchak; at first he achieved tremendous success, but
the longer the fighting went on, the thinner became the ranks of
the officers and politically-conscious kulaks who formed the
backbone of Kolchak's army, and the more workers and peasants he
had to enlist. They like other people to do their fighting for
them, they do not like making sacrifices themselves and prefer
that the workers risk their necks in their interests. And when
Kolchak had to expand his army, the expansion led to hundreds of
thousands coming over to our side. Dozens of whiteguard officers
and Cossacks who deserted to our side said that they had become
convinced that Kolchak was selling Russia right and left, and
although they did not share the views of the Bolsheviks they came
over to the side of the Red Army. That is how Kolchak finished up
and that is how Denikin will end up, too. Today you were able to
read in the evening newspapers that there had been risings behind
Denikin's lines—the Ukraine is aflame. We have reports of
the events in the Caucasus where the mountain people, driven to
despair, attacked Shkuro's regiments and took their rifles and
ammunition away from them. Yesterday we received a foreign
wireless message that admitted that Denikin's situation was a
difficult one—he had been compelled to send his best forces
into battle because the Ukraine was aflame and there was an
uprising in the Caucasus. The time is coming when Denikin will
have to stake everything. Never before have there been such
ferocious, bloody battles as that at Orel, where the enemy sent
his best regiments, the so-called "Kornilov" regiments, into
battle; one-third of them were the most counter-revolutionary
officers, the best trained and fiercest in their hatred of the
workers and peasants, officers who were defending the restoration
of their own landowners' rule. That is why we have every reason to
believe that the decisive moment is approaching on the Southern
Front. The victories at Orel and Voronezh where the pursuit of the
enemy continues, show that here, as on the Petrograd Front, the
turning-point has been reached. We must ensure that our offensive
will develop from a petty, partial attack into a gigantic mass
offensive that will bring us the final victory.

That is why, no matter how great this sacrifice may be for
us—the dispatch to the front of the hundreds of students
gathered here and very obviously needed for work in
Russia—we have nevertheless granted you your wish. There, on
the Petrograd and Southern fronts, the fate of the war will be
decided, if not in weeks, then at most in months. At such a moment
every politically-conscious Communist should say to himself, "My
place is there, ahead of the others at the front, where every
politically-conscious Communist who has graduated from this school
is of value."

If there has been some wavering among the troops it is only
because the people have become tired of war. You are well aware of
the hunger, ruination and torment that the workers and peasants
have endured during these two years of struggle against the
imperialists of the whole world. You know that those suffering
mostly from fatigue will not stand up to the tension for long, and
this is taken advantage of by the enemy who has better communications, a better staff and no traitors, and he attacks in
full force. This is the reason for our failures on the Southern
Front. That is why the most politically-conscious of the workers
and peasants, those who have had courses of military training or
courses similar to yours, must go to the front organised and
solid, dividing up into large or small groups as agreed upon by
the military authorities, and distributing duties among themselves
so as to help the troops among whom a certain instability is
manifest and where the enemy is pressing most strongly. Throughout
the two years' existence of Soviet power, whenever a certain
instability has made its appearance among the peasant masses who
have never seen and do not know Soviet work, we have always
appealed to the more organised section of the urban proletariat
for help and have received the most heroic support from them.

Today I saw comrades from among the Ivanovo-Voznesensk workers
who have allotted half the Party officials in responsible posts
for dispatch to the front. One of them told me today of the
enthusiasm with which tens of thousands of non-party workers saw
them off; one old man, a non-party worker, came up to them and
said, "Don't worry, you may go, your place is there, we'll work
for you here." When this mood makes itself apparent among
non-party workers, when the non-party masses who are not yet quite
clear on political questions see that we are sending the best of
the workers and peasants to the front where they undertake the
most difficult and most burdensome duties, duties of the greatest
responsibility, where they will fight in the front ranks and make
the greatest number of sacrifices, will die in desperate battles,
then the number of our supporters among the less-developed
non-party workers and peasants will increase tenfold and miracles
will occur among troops that are wavering, weak and tired.

That, comrades, is the magnificent, onerous and difficult task
with which you are faced. There is no choice for those who are
leaving for the front as representatives of the workers and
peasants. Their slogan must be victory or death. Each of you must
be able to approach the most backward, the least developed Red
Army men in order to explain the situation to them in the most
comprehensible language, from the standpoint of a man of labour,
help them in a moment of difficulty, eliminate all wavering, teach
them to fight against numerous manifestations of inertia,
sabotage, deception or treachery. You know that there are still
many such manifestations in the ranks and among the commanders. Here people are needed who have been through a certain
course of study, who understand the political situation and are
able to help the masses of workers and peasants in their struggle
against treachery and sabotage. Soviet power expects that you, in
addition to displaying personal courage, will afford all-round
help to those masses and so put an end to all wavering among them
and show them that Soviet power possesses forces to resort to in a
moment of difficulty. Those forces we possess in sufficient
numbers.

I repeat that we must now make this great sacrifice only
because this is the main and the last front where, by all the
signs, the fate of the whole Civil War will be decided within the
next few weeks or months. Here we can once and for all deliver the
enemy a blow that he will never recover from. After this bloody
struggle against the whiteguards, a struggle that they imposed on
us, we shall at last be able to get on with our own affairs, with
real development, more freely and with redoubled energy. That is
why I greet those of you, comrades, who have taken upon yourselves
the difficult and magnificent task of fighting to the end in the
ranks at the front, and I bid you farewell in the full confidence
that you will bring us complete and final victory.