V. I. Lenin

Seventh All-Russia Congress
Of Soviets [1]

December 5-9, 1919

1

Reportof The All-Russia Central Executive Committee And The Council Of Peoples Commissars

December 5 (Applause. Delegates greet Lenin with a standing ovation .)

Comrades, in accordance with a decision of the Presidium the
political report I am making is to he the joint report of the
All-Russia Central Executive Committee and the Council of
People’s Commissars. I trust that you are not expecting me
to enumerate the laws and administrative measures introduced by
us during the year under review. No doubt the newspapers have
made you familiar with them. Furthermore, small booklets
published by most of our commissariats and describing their main
activities during the period under review are being distributed
to all Congress delegates. I should like to draw your attention
to a number of summarised results, which in my opinion may be
deduced from our experience and which may serve as useful
instructions and material for the future work of all comrade
delegates in the localities.

When speaking of the political results and lessons of our
activities, the Soviet Republic’s international position
naturally takes first place. Both prior to October and during the
October Revolution, we always said that we regard ourselves and
can only regard ourselves as one of the contingents of the
international proletarian army, a contingent which came
to the fore, not because of its level of development and
preparedness, but because of Russia’s exceptional conditions; we always said that the victory of the socialist
revolution, therefore, can only be regarded as final when it
becomes the victory of the proletariat in at least several
advanced countries. It was in this respect that we experienced the
greatest difficulties.

Our banking on the world revolution, if you can call it that,
has on the whole been fully justified. But from the point of view
of the speed of its development we have endured an exceptionally
difficult period; we have seen for ourselves that the revolution’s development in more advanced countries has
proved to be considerably slower, considerably more difficult,
considerably more complicated. This should not surprise us for it
was naturally easier for a country such as Russia to start a
socialist revolution than it is for the advanced countries. But,
in any case, this slower, more complicated, more zigzag
development of the socialist revolution in Western Europe has
burdened us with incredible difficulties. The question that
primarily comes to mind is: how was it possible for such a miracle
to have occurred, for Soviet power to have held out for two years
in a backward, mined and war-weary country, in the face of the
stubborn struggle waged against it first by German imperialism,
which at that time was considered omnipotent, and then by Entente
imperialism, which a year ago settled accounts with Germany, had
no rivals and lorded it over all the countries on earth? From the
point of view of a simple calculation of the forces involved, from
the point of view of a military assessment of these forces, it
really is a miracle, because the Entente was and continues to be
immeasurably stronger than we are. Nevertheless, the year under
review is noteworthy most of all for our having won a tremendous
victory, so great a victory that I think we may say without
exaggeration that our main difficulties are already behind us. No matter how great the dangers and difficulties in store
for us, the main ones are evidently behind us. We must understand
the reasons for this, and, what is most important, must correctly
determine our future policy, since the future will almost
certainly bring many further attempts by the Entente at
intervention, and possibly a rebirth of the previous predatory
alliance between international and Russian capitalists to restore
the power of the landowners and capitalists, to overthrow Soviet
rule in Russia, in short, an alliance pursuing the old aim of
extinguishing the centre of the world socialist conflagration—the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet
Republic.

Examining the history of the Entente intervention and its
political lesson for us from this point of view, I would say that
it could be divided into three main stages, each of which has
successively given us full and lasting victory.

The first stage, naturally the most convenient and easiest for
the Entente countries, involved their attempt to settle matters
with Soviet Russia by using their own troops. Of course, after the
Entente countries had defeated Germany they had armies of millions
of men who had not yet openly declared for peace and who did not
immediately recover from the fright given them by the bogey of
German imperialism, which had been used to scare them in all the
Western countries. At that time, of course, from the military
point of view, and from the point of view of foreign policy, it
would have been easy for the Entente countries to take a tenth
part of their armies and dispatch them to Russia. Note that they
completely dominated at sea, that they had complete naval
supremacy. Troop transportation and supplies were always
completely under their control. Had the Entente countries, who
hated us as only the bourgeoisie can hate the socialist
revolution, then been able to fling even a tenth part of their
armies against us with any success, there cannot be the
slightest doubt that Soviet Russia would have been doomed and
would have met the same fate as Hungary.

Why did the Entente countries fail to achieve this? They landed
troops in Murniansk. The drive into Siberia was undertaken with
the aid of Entente troops, and Japanese troops continue to hold a
distant slice of Eastern Siberia, while there were military units,
even if not big ones, from all the Entente states in all parts of
Western Siberia. Then French troops were landed in the South of
Russia. That was the first stage of international intervention in
our affairs, the first attempt, so to speak, to crush the Soviets
with troops from the Entente’s own countries, i.e., with the
aid of workers and peasants of the more advanced countries, who
were splendidly equipped; generally speaking the Entente countries
lacked nothing in the way of technical and material means for the
campaign. There were no obstacles confronting them. How, then, are
we to explain the failure of that attempt? It ended in the Entente
countries having to withdraw their troops, because they proved
incapable of waging a struggle against revolutionary Soviet
Russia. That, comrades, has always been our main and principal
argument. From the very outset of the revolution we have said that
we constitute a party of the international proletariat, and that,
however great the difficulties facing the revolution, there would
come a time when, at the most decisive moment, the sympathy, the
solidarity of the workers oppressed by international imperialism
would make itself felt. For this we were accused of being
utopians. But experience has shown that while we cannot always and
in all cases rely on action by the proletariat, at any rate we may
say that during these two years of the world’s history we
have been proved correct a thousand times. The attempt by the
British and French to crush Soviet Russia with their own troops,
an attempt that promised them certain and very easy success in a
minimum of time, ended in failure: the British troops have left
Archangel, and the French troops that had landed in the South have
all been sent home. Despite the blockade, despite the ring drawn
around us, news does reach us from Western Europe, we do get
British and French newspapers, even if only sporadically, from
which we learn that letters sent by British soldiers from
Archangel Region have somehow reached Britain and been published
there. We know that the name of the Frenchwoman, Comrade Joanne
Labourbe, who engaged in communist activity among French soldiers
and workers and was shot in Odessa, became known to the entire
French proletariat and became a battle-cry, a name around which
all French workers united for action against international
imperialism despite the apparently insurmountable factional trends
of syndicalism. The words of Comrade Hadek, who fortunately, as
today’s reports state, has been liberated by Germany and
whom we shall perhaps see soon, that the soil of Russia, aflame
with the fire of revolution, would prove inaccessible to the
Entente troops—these words, which seemed to be just a writer’s flight of fancy, were actually realised. Despite
all our backwardness, despite all the burden of our struggle, the
troops of Britain and France proved incapable of fighting us on
our own soil. The result was a victory for us. The first time that
they tried to send massive military forces against us—and
without them victory is impossible—the only result was that,
thanks to their correct class instinct, the French and British
soldiers brought home from Russia the very ulcer of Bolshevism
that the German imperialists were fighting when they expelled our
envoys from Berlin. [2] They thought they would protect
themselves in this way against the ulcer of Bolshevism, which now
spreads over the whole of Germany in the shape of a strengthened
labour movement. The victory we won in compelling the evacuation
of the British and French troops was the greatest of our victories
over the Entente countries. We deprived them of their soldiers. Our response to the unlimited military and technical
superiority of the Entente countries was to deprive them of it
through the solidarity of the working people against the
imperialist governments.

This revealed how superficial and uncertain it is to judge
these so-called democratic countries by accepted criteria. Their
parliaments have stable bourgeois majorities. This they call
“democracy”. Capital dominates and weighs down everything and they still resort to military censorship. And they
call that “democracy”. Among the millions of copies of their newspapers and magazines you would be hard put to find any
but an insignificant few that contain even a hint of anything
favourable about the Bolsheviks. That is why they say: “We
are protected against the Bolsheviks, there is order in our
countries”, and they call it ‘democracy”. How could it happen that a small section of British soldiers and
French sailors were able to compel the withdrawal of the Entente
troops from Russia? There is something wrong here. It means that
even in Britain, France and America the mass of the people are for
us; it means that all these external features, as socialists who
refuse to betray socialism have always asserted, are a deception;
it means that the bourgeois parliamentary system, bourgeois
democracy, bourgeois freedom of the press are merely freedom for
the capitalists, freedom to bribe public opinion, to exert
pressure on it by all the power of money. That is what socialists
always said until the imperialist war scattered them to their
national camps and turned each national group of socialists into
lackeys of their own bourgeoisie. That was said by socialists
before the war, that was always said by the internationalists and
Bolsheviks during the war—and it all proved to be absolutely
correct. All the external features, all the window-dressings, are
a fraud; and this is becoming increasingly obvious to the
people. They all shout about democracy, but in no parliament in
the world did they dare to say that they were declaring war on
Soviet Russia. That is why we read in the numerous French, British
and American publications now available the proposal to
“place the heads of state in the dock for having violated
the Constitution, for waging war on Russia without declaring
war”. When and where was it sanctioned, what article of the
Constitution, what parliament sanctioned it? Where did they gather
their parliamentary representatives together, even after taking
the precaution to imprison all Bolsheviks and near-Bolsheviks, to
use the expression of the French press? Even under those
conditions they did not dare to state in their parliaments that
they were fighting Russia. That was why the splendidly armed,
previously undefeated troops of Britain and France were unable to
defeat us and departed from

Archangel Region in the North, and from the South.

That was our first and chief victory, because it was not only a
military victory, it was not really a military victory at
all—it was actually a victory of that international solidarity of the working people for which we began the whole
revolution, and which we pointed to and said that, however
numerous the trials we would have to undergo, all these sacrifices
would be repaid a hundredfold by the development of the world
revolution, which is inevitable. It was apparent from the fact
that in the sphere where the grossest material factors play the
greatest part, namely, in the military sphere, we defeated the
Entente countries by depriving them of the workers and peasants in
soldiers’ uniforms.

The first victory was followed by the second period of Entente
intervention in our affairs. Each nation is headed by a group of
politicians who possess wonderful experience, and that is why,
after losing this stake, they placed another, taking advantage of
their dominant position in the world. There is not a single
country, not a single bit of the earth’s surface, which is
not in fact totally dominated by British, French and American
finance capital. That was the basis for the new attempt they made,
namely, to compel the small countries surrounding Russia, many of
which had been liberated and had been able to declare themselves
independent only during the war—Poland, Estonia, Finland,
Georgia, the Ukraine, etc.—to compel these small states to
go to war against Russia on British, French and American
money.

You may remember, comrades, that our newspapers reported a
speech by Churchill, the well-known British Cabinet Minister, in
which he said that 14 states would attack Russia and that
September would see the fall of Petrograd, and December that of
Moscow. I heard that Churchill then disclaimed this report, but it
was taken from the Swedish Folkets Dagblad-Politiken of
August 25. But even if this source proved unreliable we know full
well that Churchill and the British imperialists acted precisely
in this way. We are perfectly well aware that everything was done
to exert pressure on Finland, Estonia and other small countries,
in order to persuade them to wage war on Soviet Russia. I happened
to read a leading article in The Times, the most influential bourgeois newspaper in Britain, a leader written when
Yudenich’s troops, obviously supplied, equipped and conveyed
on board Entente transports, were a few versts from
Petrograd, and Detskoye Solo had been taken. The article was a
veritable onslaught, in which the maximum pressure was exerted—military, diplomatic and historical. British capital
flung itself on Finland and faced her with an ultimatum: The eyes
of the whole world are on Finland, said the British capitalists,
the entire fate of Finland depends on whether she understands her
role, whether she will help to crush the filthy, dirty, bloody
wave of Bolshevism and liberate Russia. And in return for this
“great and moral” work, for this ‘noble, civilised” work, Finland was promised so many million
pounds, such-and-such a piece of territory, and such-and-such
benefits. And what was the result? There was a time when
Yudenich’s troops were a few versts away from
Petrograd, when Denikin stood to the north of Orel, when the
slightest assistance to them would have quickly settled the fate
of Petrograd to the advantage of our enemies, in a minimum of time
and at negligible cost.

The entire pressure of the Entente countries was brought to hear on Finland, a country that is up to
its neck ill debt to them. And not only in debt: Finland cannot
carry on for one month without the aid of these countries. But how
did the “miracle” of our having won the battle against such an enemy happen? And win it we did. Finland did not enter the
war, Yudenich was defeated, so was Denikin, and that at a time
when joint action by them would most surely, most swiftly have
settled the whole struggle to the advantage of international
capitalism. We won the battle with international imperialism in
this most serious and desperate trial of strength. But how did we
do it? How could such a ‘miracle” have taken place? It took place because the Entente backed the same card as all
capitalist states, which operate wholly and solely by deception
and pressure; that was why everything they did aroused such
resistance that the result was to our advantage. We were very
poorly armed, worn out, and we said to the Finnish workers, whom
the Finnish bourgeoisie had crushed, “You must not fight
against us.” The Entente countries appeared strong in their
armaments, with all their outward might, with the food they were
in a position to supply to these countries, and demanded that they
fight against us. We won this battle. We won because the Entente
countries had no troops of their own to fling against us, they had
to resort to the forces of the small nations, but here, not only
the workers and peasants, but even the considerable section of
that very bourgeoisie that had crushed the working class did not
in the end go against us.

When the Entente imperialists spoke of democracy and independence, these nations had the impudence from the Entente
viewpoint, and foolishness from our viewpoint, to take these
promises seriously and to understand independence as really
implying independence, and not a means of enriching the British
and French capitalists, They thought that democracy meant living
as free men, and not that all American multimillionaires would be
able to plunder their country, or that every tinpot aristocrat of
an officer should be able to behave like a swine and turn into a
brazen black-marketeer prepared, for the sake of a few hundred per
cent profit, to do the filthiest of jobs. That was how we won! The
Entente encountered opposition to its pressure on these small
countries, on each of these 14 countries. The Finnish bourgeoisie
who employed White Terror to crush tens of thousands of Finnish
workers know that this will not he forgotten, and that the German
bayonets that made it possible no longer exist these Finnish
bourgeois hate the Bolsheviks as intensely as an exploiter would
hate the workers who kicked him out. Nevertheless the Finnish
bourgeoisie said to themselves, “If we follow the instructions of the Entente, that means we shall undoubtedly lose
all hope of independence.” And this independence was given
to them by the Bolsheviks in November 1917, when Finland had a
bourgeois government. The attitude of wide sections of the Finnish
bourgeoisie, therefore, proved to be one of vacillation. We won
the battle with the Entente countries because they counted on the
small nations and at the same time repelled them.

This experience confirms, on an enormous, global scale, what we
have always said. There are two forces on earth that can decide
the destiny of mankind. One force is international capitalism, and
should it be victorious it will display this force in countless
atrocities as may be seen from the history of every small
nation’s development. The other force is the international
proletariat that is fighting for the socialist revolution through
the dictatorship of the proletariat, which it calls workers’
democracy. Neither the vacillating elements here in Russia, nor
the bourgeoisie of the small countries believed us; they called us
utopians or bandits or even worse, for there is no stupid and
monstrous accusation that they will not fling at us. But when they
faced up squarely to the issue of either going with the Entente
countries and helping thent to crush the Bolsheviks, or of helping
the Bolsheviks by neutrality, we proved to have won the battle and
to have got that neutrality. We had no treaties, whereas Britain,
France and America had all sorts of promissory notes, all sorts of
treaties; nevertheless the small nations did as we wanted them to;
they did so not because the Polish, Finnish, Lithuanian or Latvian
bourgeoisie derived satisfaction from conducting their policy in a
way that suited the Bolsheviks—that, of course, is nonsense—but because our definition of the historical forces
involved was correct, namely, that either brute capital would be
victorious, and then, even if it were in the most democratic
republic, it would crush all the small nations of the world—or the dictatorship of the proletariat would be
victorious, which is the sole hope of all working people and of
the small, downtrodden and weak nations. It turned out that we
were right not only in theory, but also in practical world
politics. When this battle for the troops of Finland and Estonia
took place we won it, although they could have crushed us with
insignificant forces. We won the battle despite the Entente
countries having thrown the enormous weight of their financial
pressure, their military might, and their food supplies into the
fray in order to compel Finland to take action.

That, comrades, was the second stage of international intervention, our second historic victory. First, we won the
workers and peasants away from Britain, France and America. These
troops could not fight against us. Secondly, we won away from them
these small countries, all of which are against us, and in which
not Soviet, but bourgeois rule dominates. They displayed friendly
neutrality towards us and acted contrary to the desires of that
mighty world force, the Entente, for it was a beast that wanted to
crush them.

We witness here on a world scale the same thing that happened
to the Siberian peasants, who believed in the Constituent Assembly
and helped the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks to join
forces with Kolchak and to strike at us. When they learned to
their own cost that Kolchak represented the dictatorship of the
very worst exploiters, a plunderous dictatorship of landowners and
capitalists which was worse than that of the tsar, they organised
the tremendous number of revolts in Siberia about which comrades
have

given us reliable information, and which now guarantee the
complete return to us of Siberia, this time politically
conscious. What happened to the Siberian peasant, with all his
backwardness and political ignorance, has now happened on a
broader scale, on a world scale, to all the small nations. They
hated the Bolsheviks; some of them had suppressed the Bolsheviks
with a bloody hand, with furious White Terror, but when they saw
their “liberators”, the British officers, they understood the meaning of British and American
“democracy”. When representatives of the British and
American bourgeoisie appeared in Finland and Estonia, the acts
of suppression they began were more brazen than those of the
Russian imperialists had been, because the Russian imperialists
had belonged to an older period and did not know how to suppress
properly, whereas these people do know, and go about it
thoroughly.

That is why this victory at the second stage is a far more
lasting one than is apparent at the moment. I am not exaggerating
at all, and consider exaggerations to be extremely dangerous. I
have not the slightest doubt that further attempts will be made by
the Entente to set against us now one, now another of the small
states that are our neighbours. Such attempts will occur because
the small states are wholly de pendent on the Entente, because all
this talk about freedom, independence and democracy is sheer
hypocrisy, and the Entente may compel them once again to raise
their hand against us. But if this attempt was foiled at such a
convenient moment when it was so easy to wage a struggle against
us, we may, I think, say definitely that in this respect the main
difficulty is undoubtedly behind us. We are entitled to say this,
and to say it without the slightest exaggeration, fully conscious
that the Entente countries possess a tremendous advantage in
strength. We have won a lasting victory. Attempts will be made
against us, but we shall defeat them with greater ease, because
the small states, despite their bourgeois system, have become
convinced by experience, not theory—these gentlemen are
theory-proof—that the Entente is a more brazen and predatory
brute than the one they have in their minds when they think of the
Bolsheviks, the bogey used to scare children and cultured
philistines all over Europe.

But our victories were not limited to this. In the first place
we won over to our side the workers and peasants of the Entente
countries; secondly, we gained the neutrality of the small nations
under the Entente’s domination and, thirdly, we began to win
over, within the Entente countries, the petty bourgeoisie and
educated townsfolk who had been completely opposed to us. To prove
this I will quote the newspaper I’Humanité of
October 26 which I have here. This newspaper has always belonged
to the Second International, was rabidly chauvinistic during the
war, adhered to the viewpoint of socialists similar to our
Mensheviks and Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, and still plays
the role of a conciliator; it now announces that it has become
convinced of a change in mood among the workers. The paper did not
see this in Odessa but on the streets and at meetings in Paris,
when the workers stopped everyone who dared say a word against
Bolshevik Russia. As politicians who have learned a fair amount
during the course of several revolutions, as persons who
understand what sort of force the people are, they dare not say a
word in favour of intervention, and are all speaking against
it. Moreover, it is not only the socialists who say this (they
call themselves socialists, but for a long time we have been aware
what sort of socialists they are); the same issue of l’Humanité of October 26, which I quoted,
contains a statement by a large number of French intellectuals,
representative of French public opinion. The signatories to this
statement are headed by Anatolo France and include Ferdinand
Buisson; altogether I counted the names of 71 bourgeois
intellectuals famed throughout France, who state that they are
against intervention in Russia’s affairs, because the blockade of Russia, the attempt to starve her out from which
children and the aged are perishing, cannot be tolerated it is
incompatible with culture and civilisation. The well-known French
historian Aulard, who supports the bourgeois point of view in
full, writes in his letter, “As a Frenchman I am an enemy of
the Bolsheviks, as a Frenchman I support democracy, it is
ridiculous to suspect me of the contrary, but when I read that
France has invited Germany to participate in the blockade of
Russia, when I read that France has approached Germany with this
proposal—then I feel myself blushing with shame.” It may he that this is just an expression of an intellectual’s
feelings but we are justified in saying that this is our third
victory, a victory over imperialist France within the country
itself. Such is the implication of this statement, feeble and
pathetic as it is, the statement of intellectuals whose bark, as
we know. from hundreds of examples, is far worse than their bite,
but who serve as a good barometer, an indicator of the trend
developing amongst the petty bourgeoisie, of the way in which
public opinion is reacting, permeated as it is with bourgeois
sentiment. If we have achieved such results within France herself,
where all the bourgeois papers write about us only in the most
lying terms, then we say to ourselves: it looks as if a second
Dreyfus case [3] is beginning in France,. only on a much larger scale. At that time the bourgeois intellectuals fought
against clerical and military reactionaries, while the working
class could not consider it their business, as the objective
conditions were absent, the deep revolutionary feeling of today
did not then exist. And now? If, after the recent electoral
victory of the most rabid reactionaries and in the face of a
regime hostile to the Bolsheviks, the French bourgeois intellectuals say that they are ashamed of the alliance between
reactionary France and reactionary Germany for the purpose of
starving out the workers and peasants of Russia, then we can say
to ourselves that this is the third and greatest of our
victories. And I should like to see how, with this situation
within the country, Clemenceau, Lloyd George and Wilson will carry
out the plan of fresh attacks on Russia they dream of. Just try
it, gentlemen! (Applause.)

Comrades, I repeat that it would be a great mistake to jump to
hasty conclusions because of all this. There can be no doubt that
the imperialists will resume their attempts, but we are absolutely
confident that these attempts, no matter by what powerful forces
they may be undertaken, will end in failure. We can say that the
Civil War which we conducted with such tremendous sacrifices has
ended in victory. It has been victorious, not only on a Russian
scale, but on a world-historical scale. Every argument I have
presented to you has been based on the results of the military
campaign. That is why, I repeat, new attempts are doomed to
failure because the imperialists have become much weaker and we
have become much stronger after our victory over Kolchak, over
Yudenich, and when there are signs that the victory over Denikin,
now in its early stages, is imminent. Did not Kolchak have the aid
of the all-powerful Entente? Did not the peasants of the Urals and
Siberia, who returned the smallest number of Bolsheviks to the
Constituent Assembly, solidly support the Constituent Assembly
front, which at that time was the front of the Mensheviks and
Socialist-Revolutionaries? Were not they the best human material
against the Communists? Is it not a fact that Siberia was a
country with no landed estates and where we were not immediately
able to assist the mass of peasants in the same way as we were
able to help all other Russian peasants? What did Kolchak lack to
defeat us? He lacked what all imperialists lack. He remained an
exploiter and had to act in the backwash of a world war, in
circumstances in which he could only babble about democracy and
freedom, but which made possible one of two dictatorships—either the dictatorship of the exploiters
which frenziedly defends their privileges and insists on payment
of interest on the bills, whereby they wish to squeeze millions
out of all peoples, or the dictatorship of the workers which
fights the power of the capitalists and wishes to establish firmly
the power of the working people. It was only because of this that
Kolchak came to grief. It was in this way—not by voting,
which is, of course, in certain circumstances not a bad
way—that the Siberian and Ural peasants actually determined
their destiny. In the summer of 1918 they were dissatisfied with
the Bolsheviks. They saw that the Bolsheviks forced them to sell
their surplus grain at a non-speculative price and so they turned
to Kolchak. Now the peasant has seen, compared and arrived at a
different conclusion. Despite all he was taught in the past, he
has understood, because he has learned from his own experience
what many Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks do not want to
understand from theory (applause) —that there must be one of two dictatorships, that he must choose either the
dictatorship of the workers—and this means to assist all
working people to throw off the yoke of the exploiters—or
the dictatorship of the exploiters. We have won the peasants to
our side, we have proved in practice through the most bitter
experience, through unprecedented difficulties that we, as
representatives of the working class, can give the peasants better
and more successful leadership than any other party. Other parties
like to accuse us of carrying on a struggle against the peasants,
of being unable to arrive at a proper agreement with them, and
they all offer their kind and noble services to reconcile us with
the peasants. We are most grateful to you, gentlemen, but we do
not think that you will manage it. We, at any rate, showed long
ago that we were able to do this. We did not paint the peasant
rosy pictures that told him he would be able to make the
transition from capitalist society without iron discipline and the
firm rule of the working class; or that merely gathering votes
would decide the world-historical problem of the struggle against
capital. We said openly that dictatorship is a harsh, severe and
even bloody word, but we said that the dictatorship of the workers
will ensure the end of the yoke of the exploiters, and we proved
to be correct. The peasant, having experienced both dictatorships,
chose the dictatorship of the working class, and will go forward
with it to complete victory. ( Applause.)

Comrades, from what I have said about our international
successes it follows—and, I think, it is not necessary to
dwell at length on this—that we must repeat our peace proposal in a manner that is calm and business-like to the maximum
degree. We must do this because it is a proposal we have made many
times, and each time we gained something in the eyes of every
educated man, even if he was our enemy, that made him blush with
shame. That was the case when Bullitt came here, was received by
Comrade Chicherin, talked with him and with me, and when we
concluded a preliminary agreement on peace in the course of a few
hours. And he assured us (those gentlemen like to boast) that
America is everything, and who would worry about France in face of
America’s strength? But when we signed the agreement the
French and British ministers did this. (Lenin makes an expressive gesture with his foot. Laughter.) Bullitt was
left with a useless piece of paper and he was told, “Who
would have thought you were naïve and foolish enough to believe
in the democracy of Britain and France?”
(Applause.) The result is that in the same issue I read
the full text of the agreement with Bullitt in French [4] —and it was published in all the
British and American newspapers. The result is that they are
showing themselves to the whole world to be either rogues or
infants—let them take their choice! (Applause.) All the sympathies even of the petty bourgeoisie, even of those
bourgeois who have any sort of an education and who recall how
they once fought their own tsars and kings, are on our side,
because we signed the hardest possible peace terms in a
business-like manner and said, “The price of the blood of
our workers and soldiers is too high for us; we shall pay you
businessmen a heavy tribute as the price of peace; we consent to a
heavy tribute to preserve the lives of our workers and peasants.” That is why I think there is no reason for us to
dwell long on this, and in conclusion I shall read a draft
resolution that will express, in the name of the Congress of
Soviets, our unwavering desire to pursue a policy of peace. (Applause.)

Now I wish to pass from the international and military to the
political section of the report.

We have gained three tremendous victories over the Entente, and
they were not only military victories. They were victories
achieved by the dictatorship of the working class, and each
victory strengthened our position, and not only because it
weakened our enemy and lost him his troops; our international
position was strengthened because on each occasion we won out in
the eyes of all working people and even of many bourgeois. In this
connection, the victories which we won over Kolchak and Yudenich,
and are now winning over Denikin, will make it possible in the
future to gain much greater sympathy by peaceful means.

We have always been accused of terrorism. This is a favourite
accusation that is never absent from the columns of the press. We
are accused of making terrorism a principle. To this we reply,
“You yourselves do not believe this slander.” The historian Aulard, who sent a letter to
i’Humanité, writes, “I have studied history and taught it. When I read that the Bolsheviks are freaks,
monsters and scarecrows, I say that the same things were written
about Robespierre and Danton. By no means do I compare these great
men to the present Russians, nothing of the sort, there is
absolutely no resemblance between them. But I say as a historian
that you must not believe every rumour.” When a bourgeois
historian begins speaking in this way we see that the lie being
spread about us is fizzling out. We say that terror was thrust
upon us. They forget that terror was provoked by the attack of the
all-powerful Entente Is it not terror for the world’s fleet
to blockade a starving country? Is it not terror for foreign
representatives, relying on their so-called diplomatic immunity,
to organise whiteguard insurrections? You must, after all, take
something of a sober view of things. It must be realised that
international imperialism has staked everything on suppressing the
revolution, that it stops at nothing, and says, “For one
officer—one Communist, and we shall win.” And they are right. If we had attempted to influence these troops, brought
into being by international banditry and brutalised by war—if we had attempted to influence them by words and
persuasion or by any means other than terror, we would not have
held out for even two months and we would have been fools. The
terror was forced on us by the terror of the Entente, the terror
of mighty world capitalism which has been throttling the workers
and peasants, and is condemning them to death by starvation
because they are fighting for their country’s freedom. Our
every victory over this prime cause of and reason for the terror
will inevitably and invariably mean that we shall be able to run
the country without this method of persuasion and influence.

What we say about terrorism also applies to our attitude
towards all waverers. We are accused of having created extra-ordinarily difficult conditions for the middle sections of
the population, for the bourgeois intellectuals. We reply that the
imperialist war was a continuation of the imperialist politics and
for this reason it led to revolution. During the imperialist war
everyone felt that the war was being conducted by the bourgeoisie
in their own selfish interests, that in this war the people died
while the bourgeoisie profited. Profit is the basic motive behind
the policy of the bourgeoisie in all countries, and it is ruining
them and will seal their fate. Our war is the continuation of the
politics of revolution, and every worker and peasant knows (and if
he does not know, then he instinctively feels and sees) that this
is a war of defence against the exploiters, a war demanding the
greatest sacrifices from the workers and peasants, but which stops
at nothing in order to ensure that these sacrifices are also borne
by the other classes. We know that it is more difficult for them
than it is for the workers and peasants, because they formerly
belonged to a privileged class. But we say that when it is a case
of freeing millions of working people from exploitation, a
government that did not make other classes bear the burden would
not be a socialist government but a traitor government. We have
burdened the middle classes because we have been placed in
extraordinarily difficult conditions by the Entente governments. Every step in our victories—as we see it from
the experience of our revolution, though I cannot deal with this in detail is
characterised by the fact that through all the waverings and
innumerable attempts to return to the past, more and more waverers
are becoming convinced that the only real choice is between the
dictatorship of the working people and the rule of the exploiters. If these waverers have had a hard time, it is not the
fault of the Bolshevik government, but the fault of the
whiteguards, the fault of the Entente; a victory over them will be
a real and sound condition for improving the lot of all these
classes. In this connection, comrades, I should like, in passing
on to the lessons of the political experience inside the country,
to say a few words about the significance of the war.

Our war is the continuation of the politics of revolution, the politics of overthrowing the exploiters,
capitalists and landowners. The workers and peasants are therefore
drawn to our side despite the infinite gravity of our war. War is
not only a continuation of politics, it is the epitome of
politics; this unprecedentedly difficult war which the landowners
and capitalists have brought down on us with the aid of the mighty
Entente is political education. The workers and peasants have
learned a great deal during this ordeal. The workers have learned
how to use state power, and how to utilise every step for
propaganda and education, how to make the Red Army, consisting
mainly of peasants, an instrument for their education, how to make
it an instrument for the employment of bourgeois specialists. We
know that in their overwhelming majority these bourgeois
specialists are, and must be, against us because of their class
character; we need have no doubts on this score. Hundreds and
thousands of these specialists have betrayed us, and tens of
thousands have come to serve us more faithfully, drawn to us in
the course of the struggle itself because that revolutionary
enthusiasm which did wonders in the Red Army came from our having
served and satisfied the interests of the workers and peasants. This situation, in which masses of workers and peasants
act in harmony and know what they are fighting for, has had its
effect, and still larger and larger sections of the people who
came over to our side from the other camp, some of them
unknowingly, have turned and are turning into our conscious
supporters.

Comrades, the task which now confronts us is to transfer our
war-time experience to the sphere of peaceful construction. There
is nothing which gives us so much pleasure or provides us with
such an opportunity of greeting the Seventh All-Russia Congress of
Soviets as the turning-point in the history of Soviet Russia, as
the fact that the main period of the civil wars we have been
fighting lies behind us, and that ahead of us lies the main period
of peaceful construction which means so much to all of us, which
we desire, which we must carry out and to which we shall dedicate
all our energies and our whole lives. We can now say, on the basis
of the severe ordeals of the war, that in the main, in the
military and in the international sphere, we have been victorious. The path of peaceful construction opens up before
us. We have, of course, to remember that the enemy is always
watching every step we take and will make many more attempts to
overthrow us by all the means in his powerforce, fraud, bribery,
conspiracies, etc. Our task is to direct all the experience gained
in war towards the solution of the main problems of peaceful
construction which I shall now enumerate. First and foremost there
is the question of food supplies, the question of grain.

We have pursued a most difficult struggle against prejudices
and old customs. On the one hand, the peasant is a working man,
who for decades suffered the oppression of the landowner and the
capitalist; with the instinct of the oppressed man he knows that
they are beasts who will walk through seas of blood to regain
their power. On the other hand, the peasant is a proprietor. He
wants to sell his grain freely, he wants “freedom of trade”, he does not understand that the free sale of grain
in a starving country means freedom to profiteer, freedom for the
rich to make profits. And we say that we shall never agree to
this, all of us would sooner die than make this concession.

We know that in this case we conduct a policy whereby the
workers persuade the peasants to loan them grain, because the
piece of paper the peasants receive in return is not the
equivalent of the grain’s value. The peasant sells us grain
at fixed prices but does not receive goods in return because we
have none; instead he receives a piece of coloured paper. He is
giving us the grain as a loan and we say to him “If you are
a working man, can you deny that this is fair? How can you not
agree that it is essential to loan the existing grain surpluses at
fixed prices and not to dispose of them by profiteering, which
means a return to capitalism, a return to exploitation, to all
that we have fought against?” It was extremely difficult to
do this, and we hesitated a good deal. We have taken many steps
gropingly and continue to do so but we have gained some
fundamental experience. When you hear the report of Comrade
Tsyurupa or of others concerned with food supplies you will see
that when the government says to the peasants they must loan their
grain they are becoming accustomed to this system of requisitioning, for we have information from a number of volosts
of its 100 per cent fulfilment. Although the successes are meagre,
they are nevertheless successes, and our food supply policy
enables the peasants to understand more and more clearly—if
you want free sale of grain in a ruined country, go back, try out
Kolchak and Denikin! We shall fight against this to the last drop
of blood. There can be no concessions in this matter. On this
fundamental question, the question of grain, we shall fight with
all our might to prevent profiteering, to ensure that the sale of
grain does not enrich the already rich, and that all grain
surpluses raised on state land by the efforts of generations of
working people become the property of the state and that now, when
the state is impoverished, these surpluses should be loaned by the
peasants to the workers’ state. If the peasant does this, we
shall emerge from all our difficulties, we shall rehabilitate
industry, and the worker will repay his debt to the peasant a
hundredfold. He, the worker, will guarantee the peasant and his
children a livelihood without their having to work for the
landowner and the capitalist. That is what we tell the peasant,
and he is becoming convinced there is no alternative. The peasant
is being convinced of this, not so much by us, as by our enemies,
Kolchak and Denikin. They, more than anybody else, are giving the
peasant practical lessons in living and sending him to our
side.

However, comrades, after the problem of grain comes the second
question— that of fuel. At the moment sufficient stocks of grain have been collected in the grain-growing regions
to feed the starving workers of Petrograd and Moscow.

But if you walk through the workers’ districts of Moscow
you will find them in the grip of the most frightful cold,
terrible privations intensified by the fuel problem. Here we are
suffering from a desperate crisis, we are lagging behind
requirements. Recently a number of meetings of the Council of
Defence and the Council of People’s Commissars were devoted entirely to the elaboration of measures to solve the
fuel crisis. Comrade Ksandrov has supplied me with figures for
my speech which show that we have begun to emerge from this
desperate crisis. At the beginning of October 16,000 railway
trucks were loaded in a week; by the end of October this figure
had dropped to 10,000 a week. This was a crisis, a catastrophe;
it meant hunger for the workers of a whole number of factories
in Moscow, Petrograd and many other places. The results of this
catastrophe are still being felt. And then we came to grips with
the problem, bent all our energies on solving it, and did the
same as we had done in military matters. We said that all
politically-conscious people must throw their full weight into
solving the fuel problem, not in the old, capitalist way, when
the profiteers were given a bonus and enriched themselves on
contracts, no, we said, solve this problem in a socialist way,
by self-sacrifice; solve this problem in the same way as we
saved Red Petrograd, liberated Siberia, the way we gained
victory in all those difficult moments, in the face of all the
difficult problems of the revolution, the way that will always
bring us victory. We have advanced from loading 12,000 trucks in
the last week of October and now load 20,000. We are emerging
from this catastrophe, but we are far from having solved the
problem. It is essential that all workers know and bear in mind
that without bread for the people, without bread for industry,
that is, without fuel, the country is doomed to calamity. And
this applies not only to us. Today’s newspapers carry the
news that in France, a victor country, the railways are grinding
to a halt. What can you expect of Russia? France will crawl out
of the crisis the capitalist way, that is, through the enrichment of the capitalists and the continued deprivation of
the people. Soviet Russia will emerge from the crisis through
the discipline and devotion of the workers, through a firm
attitude towards the peasants, that firm attitude which, in the
final analysis, the peasant can always understand. The peasant
is learning from experience that no matter how difficult the
transition, no matter how firm the state rule of the workers, it
is the rule of the working man who is fighting for the alliance
of the working people, for the complete abolition of all
exploitation.

A third scourge is assailing us, lice, and the typhus that is mowing down our troops. Comrades, it is impossible to
imagine the dreadful situation in the typhus regions, where the
population is broken, weakened, without material resources, where
all life, all public life ceases. To this we say, “Comrades,
we must concentrate everything on this problem. Either the lice will defeat socialism, or socialism will defeat the lice!” And here too, comrades, by using the same
methods as elsewhere, we are beginning t achieve success. There
are still some doctors, of course, who hold preconceived notions
and have no faith in workers’ rule, who prefer to draw fees
from the rich rather than fight the hard battle against
typhus. But these are a minority, they are becoming fewer, and the
majority see that the people are struggling for their very
existence, they realise that by their struggle the people desire
to solve the fundamental question of preserving civilisation. These doctors are behaving in this arduous and
difficult matter with no less devotion than the military
specialists. They are willing to put themselves at the service of
the working people. I must say that we are beginning to emerge
also from this crisis. Comrade Semashko has given me some
information about this work., According to news from the front,
122 doctors and 467 assistants had arrived at the front by October
1. One hundred and fifty doctors have been sent from Moscow. We
have reason to believe that by December 15 another 800 doctors
will have arrived at the front to help in the battle against
typhus. We must pay great attention to this affliction.

We must concentrate on consolidating our foundation—grain, fuel, and the battle against typhus. I
particularly wish to mention these matters because a certain lack
of co-ordination has been noted in our socialist construction, and
understandably so. When people have decided to transform the whole
world, it is only natural that inexperienced workers and
inexperienced peasants should be drawn into this work. There can
be no doubt that a considerable period must elapse before we are
able to determine where our chief attention should be concentrated. It is not surprising that such great historical
tasks frequently give rise to great visions, which develop side by
side with many small, unsuccessful dreams. There have been many
instances when we wanted to build a house from above, starting
from a small upper wing, a cornice, but paid no real attention to
the foundations. I must tell you that from my own experience, from
my observations of the work being performed, it is my opinion that
the essential task for our policy is to lay that foundation. It is
necessary for every worker, every organisation, every institution
to bear this in mind at every meeting. If we are able to supply
grain, if we succeed in increasing the fuel supply, if we devote
all our efforts to wiping out typhus in Russia—the typhus
which comes from a lack of culture, from poverty, backwardness and
ignorance—if we devote to this bloodless war all the strength and experience gained in a bloody war we can be certain
that we shall achieve ever greater successes in this work, which
is, after all, much easier and much more humane than a war.

We have carried out military mobilisation. The parties which
were our most uncompromising opponents, which to a far greater
extent than others supported and still support the ideas of
capitalism (the Socialist-Revolutionaries, for instance), have had
to recognise, despite all the accusations rained on us by the
bourgeois imperialists, that the Red Army has become a people’s army. This indicates that in this most difficult,
task we have achieved the alliance of the working class with the
great mass of peasants who are coming over to the side of the
working class, and we have, by this means, shown the peasants what
is meant by the leadership of the working’ class.

The words “dictatorship of the proletariat” frighten the peasants. In Russia it was a bogey for the peasants
but these words now recoil on the heads of people who try to use
them as a bogey. The peasants now realise that, while the words
“dictatorship of the proletariat” are perhaps too fancy Latin words, in practice they stand for that selfsame Soviet
power which transfers the state apparatus to the workers. This
being the case, the dictatorship is the true friend and ally of
the working people and the merciless enemy of any form of exploitation. That is why we shall ultimately defeat all
imperialists, for we possess a profound source of strength, a
deep and extensive reservoir of human material, such as has
never been accessible to any bourgeois government and never will
be. We possess the material from which we can draw ever greater
and more profound strength starting from the most advanced
workers and continuing with average workers, and even lower down
the scale, with labouring peasants, poor and greatly impoverished peasants. The Petrograd comrades have recently said
that Petrograd has given up all its workers and can supply no
more. But When a critical hour struck, Petrograd showed itself
to be remarkable, as Comrade Zinoviev justly said, it proved to
be a town that seemed able to give birth to new forces. Workers,
who had no experience in politics or government, who were
considered below the average in political consciousness, drew
themselves up to their full stature, provided the huge forces
for propaganda, agitation, organisation, and performed new
miracles. We still have a great deal of this source of new
miracles. Every new section of workers and peasants that has not
yet been drawn into our work is, nevertheless, our true friend
and ally. At the present moment we frequently have to rely on a
very small section of leading workers in government work. In the
course of our Party work and our Soviet practice we must
approach non-party people, non-party workers and peasants, more
boldly, approach them again and again, not for the purpose of
winning them over to our side immediately, or of drawing them
into the Party—that is not so important for us—but of making them understand that their help is needed to save the
country. When those whom the landowners and capitalists least of
all permitted to participate in running the state are brought to
realise that we are calling on them to join us in building the
solid foundation for the Socialist Republic our cause will be
really invincible.

That is why, on the basis of two years’ experience, we can say to you with absolute certainty that every one of our
military victories will greatly hasten the approach of the
time—now very near—when we can devote the whole of our energy to peaceful construction. On the basis of experience
gained, we can guarantee that in the next few years we shall
perform even greater miracles in peaceful construction than we did
in the two years of victorious war against the all-powerful
Entente. (Applause.)

Comrades, in conclusion, allow me to read to you the draft of a
motion which I now put before you.

“The Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic wishes
to live in peace with all peoples and devote all its efforts to
internal development in order to establish the smooth running of
production, transport and government affairs on the basis of the
Soviet system; this has so far been prevented by the intervention
of the Entente and the starvation blockade.

“The workers’ and peasants’ government has made frequent peace proposals to the Entente powers—the
message from the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs to
the American representative, Mr. Poole, on August 5, 1918; to
President Wilson on October 24, 1918; to all Entente governments
through representatives of neutral countries on November 3, 1918;
a message from the Sixth All-Russia Congress of Soviets on
November 7, 1918; Litvinov’s Note in Stockholm to all
Entente representatives on December 23, 1918; then there were the
messages of January 12, January 17 and February 4, 1919, and the
draft treaty drawn up jointly with Bullitt on March 12, 1919; and
a message through Nansen on May 7, 1919.

“The Seventh Congress of Soviets fully approves these many steps taken by the Council of People’s Commissars and
the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, once more
confirms its unwavering desire for peace and again proposes to the
Entente powers, Britain, France, the United States of America,
Italy and Japan, individually and collectively, to begin
immediately negotiations on peace; the Congress instructs the
All-Russia Central Executive Committee, the Council or
People’s Commissars and the People’s Commissariat of
Foreign Affairs to continue this peace policy systematically,
takingall appropriate measures to ensure its success,”

2

Concluding Speech On The Report
Of The All-Russia Central Executive Committee
And The Council Of People’S Commissars

December 6 (Voices: “Long live Comrade Lenin! Hurrah!” Applause.) Comrades, it seems to me that in his speech and
by his declaration, Martov has managed to give us an extraordinarily fine sample of the attitude towards Soviet power
of the groups and parties that formerly belonged, and still
belong, to the Second International, and against which we have
now founded the Communist International. The difference between
Martov’s speech and his declaration must have struck each
one of you—the difference that Comrade Sosnovsky stressed
in the remark he shouted to Martov from the presidium, “Isn’t that last year’s declaration you
have?” Martov’s speech, indeed, most certainly belongs to 1919, to the end of that year, but his declaration is
so compiled that it contains a complete repetition of what was
said in 1918. (Applause.) And when Martov replied to Sosnovsky
by saying that the declaration was “for all eternity” I was quite ready to take the Mensheviks under
my wing and defend them from Martov. (Applause. Laughter.) I,
comrades, have watched the development and activities of the
Mensheviks, probably longer and more attentively—which has
by no means been pleasant—than anybody else. On the basis
of this fifteen years of study I assert that the declaration,
far from being “for all eternity”, will not last a single year (applause), because the entire development of the
Mensheviks, especially in a great period such as has begun in
the history of the

Russian revolution, reveals the greatest vacillation among them
and, taken by and large, this boils down to their parting
company with the bourgeoisie and their prejudices, only with the
greatest difficulty and against their own will. A number of
times they have fought shy of the dictatorship of the proletariat but they are now beginning to approach it—to
approach it very slowly but very surely—and I am certain
that in another year they will take a few more steps. And then
it will be impossible to repeat that declaration, because if you
remove its envelope of general democratic phrases and parliamentary expressions that would do credit to the leader of
a parliamentary opposition, if you cast aside those speeches
that so many people like but which we find boring, and get down
to the real root of the matter, then the entire declaration says
“Back to bourgeois democracy” and nothing more. (Applause.) And when we hear people who profess sympathy
with us making such declarations we say to ourselves, “Yes, the terror and the Cheka [5] are absolutely
indispensable.” (Applause.)

Comrades, so that you will not now accuse me, and so that
nobody will be able to accuse me, of picking holes in that
declaration, I assert, on the basis of political facts, that a
Right Menshevik and a Right Socialist-Revolutionary would readily
subscribe to it with both hands. I have proof of this. The Council
of the Party of Right Socialist-Revolutionaries from which Voisky
and his group had to break away—Volsky is the Chairman of
the Constituent Assembly Committee, you heard him speak
here—the Council of the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries
which met this year has resolved that they wish to merge with the
Menshevik Party which they consider close to them. Why? Because
Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, who support Mensheviks whose
declaration is construed throughout on the same principles as that
of the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, stand behind the printing
of the things that are in the declaration and in Menshevik
publications (which are supposed to be purely theoretical and
which we are wrong in prohibiting, as the Bund representative said when she complained that the country does not
enjoy full freedom of the press). At that time, after a long
struggle, Voisky’s group had to break away. That is the mess
which shows quite clearly that the matter is not one of our
cavilling at the Mensheviks but of the real state of affairs—this is shown by the Socialist-Revolutionary
minority group. Here, quite rightly, the Menshevik Rozanov was
mentioned, whom Martov and the party would probably have
expelled—and it is this declaration the
Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks subscribe to.

This means that until now there are two different trends among
them—one of them is sorry, weeps, condoles and wishes to
return to democracy theoretically, while the other acts. And
Martov was wrong in saying I was trying to justify myself on the
question of terrorism. That one expression alone shows how
infinitely far the views of the petty-bourgeois democrats
are from ours and how close they are o those of the
Second International. Actually there is nothing at all socialist
in them, but the exact opposite. Now that socialism is near, old
bourgeois views are again being preached to us. I did not try to
justify myself, I spoke about a special party, a party that has
been created by the war, a party of officers who were in command
throughout the imperialist war, who have come to the fore in this
war and who know what real politics are. When we are told
“You must either abolish your Cheka or organise it better” we reply, comrades, by saying that we do not claim
that everything we are doing is of the best and we are ready and
willing to learn without the slightest bias. But as those people
who were in the Constituent Assembly want to teach us how
to organise a security force against sons of landowners, against
whiteguard officers, we tell them, “You were in power and
fought with Kerensky against Kornilov, and you were with Kolchak,
and those same whiteguards kicked you out like little children
without a struggle. And after that you still say that our Cheka is
badly organised!” (Applause.) Oh, no, our Cheka is magnificently organised. (Applause.) And when the
conspirators in Germany now mistreat workers, when officers led by
Field Marshals over there shout “Down with the Berlin government”, when, over there, they can murder Communist
leaders with impunity and when a crowd of whiteguards treats
leaders of the Second international like children, we see clearly
that this collaborationist government is nothing more than a
plaything in the hands of the group of plotters. When we have this
example before us, when we are only just stepping out on to the
road, these people say “You have exaggerated terror”. How many weeks is it since we discovered the
conspiracy in Petrograd [6] How many weeks is it since Yudenich
was a few versts from Petrograd and Denikin a few versts from Orel? Spokesmen of those wavering parties and
of that wavering democracy say to us “We are glad that
Yudenich and Kolchak have been defeated”. I am quite willing
to believe that they are glad because they know what Yudenichand
Kolchak had in store for them. (Applause.) I do not suspect these people of insincerity. But I ask them: when the
Soviet government is experiencing a difficult period and plots are
being hatched by bourgeois elements and when at a critical moment
we manage to lay bare these plots—do they think they are
discovered accidentally? Oh, no, not accidentally. They are
discovered because the plotters live among the masses, because
they cannot succeed in their plots without the workers and
peasants and it is there that, in the long run, they run up
against people who go to that badly organised, as they said here,
Cheka and say that exploiters are gathered in a certain
place. (Applause.) And when some people come to us a short time after we have been in mortal danger and when we are
faced with a conspiracy that is obvious to everyone, and tell us
that the Constitution is not being observed and that the Cheka is
badly organised, one may say that they have not learned any
politics during the struggle against the whiteguards, they have
not given any thought to their experience of Kerensky, Yudenich
and Kolchak and have not been able to draw any practical
conclusions from it. But since, gentlemen, you are beginning to
understand that Kolchak and Denikin constitute a serious danger,
that you must choose in favour o Soviet power, it is time for you
to drop Martov’s declaration “for all eternity”. (Laughter.) The Constitution contains
all the experience of our two years of rule, and without that
rule, as I said in my speech, and nobody even tried to refute it,
without it we could not have held out for two months, let alone
two years. Let anyone who wishes to be at all objective about
Soviet power, if only from the standpoint of an historian and not
of a politician who wishes to talk to the working-class masses,
act with them and influence them—let him try to refute that.

It is said that the Soviets meet rarely and are not re-elected often enough. It seems to me that such reproaches
should not be answered by speeches and resolutions but by
deeds. In my opinion the best answer would be for you to finish
the work begun by the Soviet government of assessing how many
elections to uyezd and urban Soviets there have been, how many
congresses of Soviets, etc. Comrade Vlaclimirsky, Deputy
People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs, has published material on the history of those congresses. When I saw that
material I said that this is historical material that proves,
among other things, that there has never been in the history of
civilised nations a country that has applied proletarian democracy
as widely as we have in Russia. It is said that Soviets are not
re-elected often enough, that we rarely convene congresses, but I
invite every delegate to apply to the relevant bodies for
additional questionnaires to be distributed at this Congress on
which every delegate can record on which day, month and year and
in which uyezd, town or village congresses of Soviets met. If you
do this simple job and each of you fills in a questionnaire of
that sort you will obtain material to complement our incomplete
data and which will show that in a time as difficult as war-time,
when the century-old European constitutions that have become a
matter of habit for the West-European people have been almost
completely suspended, the Soviet Constitution is in force in the
localities to a greater degree than a constitution anywhere else
in the world insofar as concerns the participation of the masses
in government and in the independent solution of government
matters at congresses, in the Soviets and at elections. And if it
is still said that this is not enough, and if there is criticism
and it is asserted that It is really a terrible crime if your
Central Executive Committee has not met”, well, Comrade
Trotsky gave a splendid answer to the Bund representative on this
score when he said that the Central Executive Committee was at the
front. The representative of the Bund—that Bund which upholds the Soviet platform and for that reason might really be
expected at long last to understand what the foundation of Soviet
power is—said this (I wrote it down), “How strange that the Central Executive Committee was at the front, it could
have sent others.”

We are fighting against Kolchak, Denikin and the others—there have been a lot of them! It ends with Russian
troops chasing them away like children. We are conducting a
difficult and victorious war. You know that with every invasion we
had to send all the members of the Central Executive Committee to
the front and then we are told “How strange, they should
have found others”. Were we functioning outside time and
space, or what? Or are we supposed to give birth to Communists
(applause) at the rate of a few every week? That is something we
cannot do; workers who have been tempered by several years of
struggle and who have acquired the necessary experience to be able
to lead are fewer in our country than in any other. We have to
adopt all measures to train young workers, trainees, and that will
take several months, years even. And when this is taking place
under very difficult circumstances, we are treated to grins for
our trouble. These grins only prove a complete failure to
understand these conditions. It is really a ridiculous intellectualist lack of understanding, when we are compelled in
these war conditions to act differently from the way we have acted
up to now. We have to strain our forces to the utmost and for this
reason have to give up our best officials and Central and local
Executive Committee members for the front. I am sure that nobody
who has any practical experience in administration will condemn
us; he will, on the contrary, approve of our having done the
maximum possible to reduce collegiate bodies belonging to
executive committees to a minimum until, under pressure of war,
only the executive committee itself was left, because the
functionaries hurried to the front in the same way as they are now
rushing in hundreds and thousands to engage in fuel supply
work. That is the foundation without which the Soviet Republic
cannot exist. And if the less frequent meetings of the Soviets for
a few months is the price at which this has to’be purchased,
then any sensible worker or peasant will understand the need for
it and will approve of it.

I have said that in respect of democracy and the democrats we
are still being offered the prejudices of bourgeois democracy in
their entirety. An opposition party has said here that the
suppression of the bourgeoisie must be stopped. One should think
of what one is saying. What does the suppression of the
bourgeoisie mean? The landowner could be suppressed and destroyed
by abolishing landed proprietorship and transferring the land to
the peasants. But can the bourgeoisie be suppressed and destroyed
by the abolition of big capital? Anyone who knows the ABC of
Marxism knows that the bourgeoisie cannot be suppressed in this
way, knows that the bourgeoisie is born of commodity production;
the peasant who has a surplus of hundreds of poods of grain that
he does not need for his family and does not deliver, to the
workers’ state as a loan to help the hungry worker, and
profiteers under the prevailing conditions of commodity
production—what is he? Is he not a bourgeois?Is the bourgeoisie not born in this way? On this issue, the grain issue,
and on the question of the torments of hunger being suffered by
all industrial Russia, do we get any assistance from those who
reproach us with not observing the Constitution, with having
suppressed the bourgeoisie? No! Do they help us in this respect?
They hide behind the words “concord of the workers and peasants”. That concord, of course, is necessary. We showed
how we achieve it on October 26, 1917, when we took that part of
the programme of the Socialist-Revolutionaries which supports the
peasants and put it into operation in full. In that way we showed
that the peasant who had been exploited by the landowners, who
lives by his own labour and does not profiteer, finds a true
protector in the worker sent to him by the central state
authority. In this way we have effected concord with the
peasants. When we pursue a food policy requiring that surplus
grain not needed by the peasant family be given to the workers as
a state loan, any objection to it supports profiteering. This
still exists among the petty-bourgeois masses who are accustomed
to living in the bourgeois way. This is a terrible thing, this is
a danger to the social revolution! Have the Mensheviks and
Socialist-Revolutionaries ever done anything to help us in this
respect, even the most Left of them? No, they never have! And
their publications, that we are supposed to permit for the sake of
“principles of liberty” and samples of which we have in our possession, show that they never by a single word—to
say nothing of deeds—do anything to help us. Until we have
fully conquered the old habit, the accursed old gospel of everyone
for himself and God for all, we have no alternative but to
requisition grain surpluses as a loan to the hungry workers. It is
terribly difficult to do this—we know that. Here nothing can
be accomplished by force. Nevertheless it is ridiculous to say
that we represent a minority of the working class—that can
only make one laugh. That could be said in Paris, although
workers’ meetings there would not listen to such statements
either. In a country where the government has been overthrown with
unusual ease, where the workers and peasants are defending their
own interests arms in hand, where they employ the rifle as the
instrument of their will—to say in such a country that we
represent a minority of the working class is absurd. I can
understand such statements on the lips of Clemenceau, Lloyd George
or Wilson. They are their words and their ideas! But when the
speeches of Wilson, Clernenceau, and Lloyd George, the worst of
the predators, the wild beasts of imperialism, are repeated hero
by Martov in the Dame of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour
Party (laughter), then I say to myself that we have to be
on the alert and to realise that the Cheka is indispensable!
(Applause.)

All the opposition speakers, the Bund representatives included,
accuse us of not abiding by the Constitution. I maintain that we
observe the Constitution most strictly. (Voice from a box: “Oho!”) And although I hear an ironic
“Oho!” from a box that was once the royal box arid is now the opposition box (laughter) I shall
nevertheless prove it. (Applause.) I will read to you the article of the Constitution that we observe most strictly
and which shows that in all our activities we stick to the
Constitution. Whenever I have had to speak’ about the
Constitution at meetings attended by followers of the Mensheviks
and Socialist-Revolutionaries there has always been difficulty
in finding the text of the Constitution to quote. The meetings,
however, were mostly held in halls where there was a
Constitution hanging on the wall. In this hall there is none,
but Comrade Petrovsky has saved the situation by lending me a
pamphlet entitled Constitution of the R.S.F.S.R. I shall read Article 23: “Guided by the interests of the
working class as a whole, the R.S.F.S.R, deprives certain
persons and certain groups of rights they use to the detriment
of the interests of the socialist revolution.”

I say once again, comrades, that we have never regarded our activity in
general and our Constitution in particular as models of
perfection. The question of changes to the Constitution has been
raised at this Congress. We agree to make changes, let us take a
look at the changes; they will not, however, remain constant
“for all eternity”. If you still want to fight, let it be a clean fight, If you want us to abide by the
Constitution, why don’t you want us to abide by Article
23? (Applause.) If this is not what you want, then let us
discuss whether it is necessary to annul the article which says
we should not go to the people with talk about universal freedom
and the universal equality of the working people. You have made
an excellent study of constitutional law, but you have learned
from old bourgeois text-books. You recall words about “democracy and freedom”, you refer to the
Constitution and you recall former words, and you promise the
people everything in order not to fulfil that promise. We do not
promise anything of the sort, we do not propose equality of
workers and peasants. You do, so let’s dispute the issue. There shall be complete equality, friendship and a
fraternal alliance with those peasants who were exploited by the
landowners and capitalists and who are now working to support
their families on land taken from the landowners. We shall not,
however, grant equality to those peasants who, because of their
old habits, ignorance and avarice, are pulling back towards the
bourgeoisie. You use general phrases about freedom of equality
for the working people, about democracy and alou the equality of
workers and peasants. We do not promise that the Constitution
will guarantee liberty and equality in general. Freedom—but for which class and for what purpose?
Equality—who shall be equal to whom? For those who labour,
who were exploited for dozens and hundreds of years by the
bourgeoisie and who are now fighting against the bourgeoisie? It
is so stated in the Constitution: “The dictatorship of the
workers and poor peasants for the suppression of the bourgeoisie.” When you speak about the Constitution, why
don’t you quote those words: “for the suppression of the bourgeoisie, for the suppression of the profiteers”?
Show us a model country, a model of your splendid Menshevik
constitution. Perhaps you will find such a model in the history,
say, of Samara, where the Mensheviks were in power. Perhaps you
will find it in Georgia where the Mensheviks are in power today,
where the suppression of the bourgeoisie, the profiteers, is
proceeding under conditions of complete freedom and equality,
under conditions of consistent democracy and without a
Cheka. Show us such a model and we shall learn from it. You
cannot, however, demonstrate such a model for you know that in
all places where the collaborationists hold power, where the
government is Menshevik or semi-Menshevik, feverish, unhampered
speculation reigns. And the Vienna that Trotsky justly spoke
about in his speech, where people like Friedrich Adler are in
the government and which does not know “the horrors of
Bolshevism”,js as hungry and tormented as Petrograd and
Moscow, but without the knowledge that the Viennese workers at
the cost of hunger are breaking a road to victory over the
bourgeoisie. Vienna is suffering more from hunger than Petrograd
or Moscow and right there the Austrian and Viennese bourgeoisie
are committing monstrous acts of speculation and, plunder in the
Viennese streets, in the Nevsky Prospekt and Kuznetsky Most [Nevsky Prospekt and Kuznetsky Most were the shopping centres of pre-revolutionary Petrograd and Moscow respectively. —Editor. ] of Vienna. You do
not abide by the Constitution, but we do when we recognise
freedom and equality only for those who help the proletariat
defeat the bourgeoisie. And in Article 23 we say that the land
will not flow with milk and honey during the transition
period.

We say that we have to hold out, not for months, but for years,
in order to complete the transition period. After two years we
can say (and we shall most likely be believed) that we are able
to hold out for several years only because we have inscribed in
the Constitution that certain persons and groups are deprived of
rights. We do not conceal from whom we have taken away the
rights, we say openly that it is the group of Mensheviks and
Right Socialist-Revolutionaries. The leaders of the Second
International condemned us for this, but we say outright to the
group of Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries that we are
ready to grant everything, but they must help us pursue the
policy of the working people against the profiteers, against
those who are helping food profiteering, those who are helping
the bourgeoisie. Insofar as you prove this to us by deeds we
shall free you from what has been done to you by the
Constitution, but until then your empty words are mere evasion. Our Constitution is not noted for its rhetoric, it says
to the peasants—if you are a labouring peasant you possess
all rights, but there can be no equality of rights for all in a
society in which workers are starving and where a fight against
the bourgeoisie is under way. And it says to the workers—equality for those peasants who are helping in the
struggle against the bourgeoisie, but no generalisations! In
this field there will be a hard struggle. We accept with the
greatest pleasure anyone who wants to help, irrespective of his
past and irrespective of all titles. And we know that more and
more such people are coming to us from other parties and from
among the non-party people and this is a guarantee of our
victory. (Loud applause. Shouts of “Bravo”.)

3

Speech In The Organisation
Section [7]

December 8

Comrades, I have received a number of notes from delegates
asking me to speak on this issue. I did not think there was any
need for it, and I refrained from speaking until I received these
invitations because I unfortunately have had no opportunity of
acquiring a practical knowledge of work in the localities and it
stands to reason that the knowledge obtained through work in the
Council of People’s Commissars is insufficient. I am, furthermore, in complete agreement with what Comrade Trotsky has
said and shall, therefore, confine myself to some brief
comments.

When the question was raised in the Council of People’s
Commissars of the state farms and their transfer to gubernia land
departments, and when the question of chief administrations and
central boards was raised, there was no doubt in my mind that
there are more than a few counter-revolutionary elements in both
types of institution. But when attempts are made to accuse the
state farms of being particularly counter-revolutionary
institutions it has always seemed to me, and still does, that it
is missing the mark, for neither the state farms, nor the chief
administrations and central boards, nor any kind of big industrial
establishment, or, in general, any central or local organisation
administering a branch of economy of any importance, can and does
manage without solving the problem of the employment of bourgeois
specialists. It seems to me that attacks on the chief administrations and boards, though fully justified because a
thorough purge of them is needed, are nevertheless mistaken,
because in the present case this type of institution is chosen
indiscriminately from a number of similar institutions. It is,
however, as clear as daylight from the work of the Economic
Council that on no account must the chief administrations and
boards and the state farms be specially selected in this matter
because all our Soviet work, whether in the military field, or in
the health services; or in education, has everywhere been up
against, and is still up against, problems of this sort. We cannot
recast the state apparatus and train a sufficient number of
workers and peasants to make them fully acquainted with the
government of the state without the aid of the old specialists. This is the main lesson to be learned from all our
organisational work, and this experience tells us that in all
spheres, including the military sphere, the old specialists—they are called old because of this—cannot
be taken from anywhere except from capitalist society. That
society made possible the training of specialists from far too
narrow strata of the population, those that belonged to the
families of landowners and capitalists, with only an insignificant
number of peasant origin and only from among the wealthy peasants
at that. If, therefore, we take into consideration the situation
in which those people grew up and that in which they are now
working, it is absolutely inevitable that these specialists, i.e.,
those skilled in administration on a broad, national scale, are to
nine-tenths permeated with old bourgeois views and prejudices and
even in those cases when they are not downright traitors (and this
is not something that happens occasionally but is a regular
feature), even then they are not capable of understanding the new
conditions, the new tasks and the new requirements. On these
grounds friction, failures and disorder are apparent everywhere,
in all commissariats.

It seems to me, therefore, that people are missing the mark
when they shout about reactionaries in the state farms, chief
administrations and boards, attempting to separate this question
from the general one of how to teach a large number of workers and
peasants to administrate on a broad national scale. We are doing
this at a speed that, if you take into consideration the
backwardness of the country and the difficulty of our conditions,
is certainly unknown in world history. No matter how great that
speed is, it still does not satisfy us, because our requirements
in workers and peasants capable of administrative work and
acquainted with special branches of administration are tremendous
and are not being met even ten, even one per cent. When we are
told, or when it is demonstrated at meetings of the Council of
People’s Commissars, that the state farms everywhere are
hiding-places for old landowners who are slightly disguised or are
not disguised at all, that nests of the bureaucracy are being
built there, and that similar things are often to be observed in
chief administrations and central boards, I never doubt that it is
true. But I did say that if you think you can remedy this evil by
handing the state farms over to the gubernia land departments you
are mistaken.

Why are there more counter-revolutionary elements left in the
chief administrations and central boards and in the state farms
than there are in the army? Why are there fewer of them among the
military? Because greater attention was, on the whole, paid to the
military sphere and more Communists, more workers and peasants
were sent there, political departments worked on a broader scale
there, in short, the influence of advanced workers and peasants on
the entire military apparatus was broader, more profound and more
regular. Owing to this we have succeeded, if not in eradicating
the evil, at least in being close to eradicating it. To this, I
say, the greatest attention should be paid.

We are taking only the first steps towards getting the state
farms in close contact with the neighbouring peasants and with
communist groups so that there will be commissars everywhere, not
only in the army and not only on paper. No matter whether they
will be called members of a collegiurn, assistant managers or
commissars, there must be individual responsibility—this and
individual management are as necessary as collectivism is
essential in discussing basic questions if there is to be no red
tape and no opportunity to evade responsibility. We need people
who will learn to administer independently in all cases. If this
is done we shall overcome the evil in the best manner.

I am in complete agreement, let me say in conclusion, with
Comrade Trotsky when he says that here many incorrect attempts
have been made to present our disputes as being between workers
and peasants and that the question of the administrations and
boards has been woven into the question of the dictatorship of the
proletariat. In my opinion this is radically wrong. The question
of the dictatorship of the proletariat may be raised when the
issue is that of suppressing the bourgeoisie. Then we have to
think about this question, then we need the dictatorship because
only through it can we suppress the bourgeoisie and place power in
the hands of that section of the working people that is capable of
acting unwaveringly and attracting to itself ever greater numbers
of the vacillating. In the present case we are not faced with
anything of the sort. We are discussing how much more or how much
less centralism is needed in a certain field at a certain
moment. Since the comrades from the localities assure us (and
Comrade Trotsky and many people’s commissars confirm it)
that in recent times in the gubernias and, to a considerable
degree, in the uyezds, functionaries of a higher type have
appeared (I am constantly hearing such an assertion also from
Comrade Kalinin who has visited many places, and from comrades
arriving here from the provinces), we shall have to take that into
consideration and ask ourselves whether the matter of centralism
is rightly understood in the present instance. I m sure we shall
have to undertake a very great deal of this sort of correcting in
the work of Soviet institutions. We are only now beginning to
acquire organisational experience in this field. Insofar as we can
see this experience from inside the Council of Defence arid the
Council of People’s Commissars, it is quite obvious that it
cannot be expressed by any figures and that it is impossible to
talk about it in a short speech. We are sure, however, that in the
localities work is being done in accordance with the general
instructions of the central authorities. This has been achieved
only in recent times.

This is by no means a question of a conflict between the
dictatorship of the proletariat and other social elements. It is a
matter of the experience of our Soviet organisational work,
experience which, in my opinion, does not even concern the
Constitution. Much has been said here about changes to the
Constitution. But I do not think it has anything to do with
this. The Constitution speaks of centralism s the basic
principle. This basic principle is so indisputable for all of us
(we all learned it from the impressive and even brutal object-lesson of Kolchak, Yudenih, Denikin and guerrilla bands)
that here it cannot come into question. Nor does Comrade Sapronov
reject the basic principle of centralism when it is a matter of
granting a people’s commissar or the Council of
People’s Commissars the right to challenge a candidate. It
is not a constitutional question but one of practical convenience. We have to bring pressure to bear, first in one, then
in another direction, in order to achieve positive results. When
we are talking about gubernia state farm boards, or gubernia land
departments, the stress is on placing them under the control of
workers and neighbouring peasants. This is irrespective of whom
they are subordinated to. It seems to me that no changes to the
Constitution will ever enable you to kick outthe hidden landowners
or the disguised capitalists and bourgeois. We must introduce into
our institutions a sufficient number of workers and peasants who
are loyal beyond all doubt and who have practical experience as
members of small collegiums, as assistants to some managers or as
commissars. That’s the crux of the matter! In this way you
will have an ever greater number of workers and peasants who are
learning to administer, and if they go through a complete
schooling side by side with the old specialists they will take
their places, carry out the same tasks and will train for our
civil business, for the management of industry, for the direction
of economic activities, a corps of officers to replace the
personnel in the same way as that is being done in our war
department. Therefore, I do not think there is any reason to
proceed from considerations of principle as has here sometimes
been the case; we must examine the question as one of practical
experience and not as a constitutional one. If the majority of
local functionaries, after an all-round discussion of the problem,
come to the conclusion that gubernia state farm boards should be
subordinated to the gubernia land departments—so well and
good, we’ll experiment on those lines and then decide the
issue from the point of view of practical experience. First of
all, however, we have to decide whether we shall get rid of the
disguised landowners in this way, whether we shall make better use
of the specialists. Shall we in this way train a larger number of
workers and peasants to take over the management themselves? Shall
we be drawing the neighbouring peasantry into the practical
check-up of the state farms? Shall we be elaborating practical
forms, for that check-up? That is what really matters! If we solve
these problems I do not think we shall have wasted our time and
our labour. Let us try different systems in the different
people’s commissariats; let us establish one system for
state farms, chief administrations and central boards and another
for the army or the Commissariat of Health. Our job is to attract,
by way of experiment, large numbers of specialists, then replace
them by training anew officers’ corps, a new body of specialists who will have to learn the extremely difficult, new
and complicated business of administration. The forms this will
take will not necessarily be identical. Comrade Trotsky was quite
right in saying that this is not written in any of the books we
might consider our guides, it does not follow from any socialist
world outlook, it has not been determined by anybody’s experience but will have to be determined by our own
experience. It seems to me that in this respect we must pool
experience of communist organisation and test it by its practical
implementation, so that we shall fully determine bow we must
tackle the problems that confront us.

4

Speech Delivered On The Closing Of The Congress

December 9 (Prolonged applause. Delegates and visitors rise and applaud stormily for several minutes.) Comrades, I should
like to say a few words apropos of the most important items we
have dealt with at this Congress.

We had a brief discussion, comrades, on the question of
democracy and Soviet power. Although it may seem at first glance
that this discussion was far removed from the burning, practical,
day-to-day problems of the Soviet Republic, I nevertheless think
that it was far from useless. Comrades, in workers’ organisations throughout the world and very often in bourgeois
parliaments, and, in any case, during elections to bourgeois
parliaments, there is today the same basic discussion on
democracy—which, although many people do not realise it, is
the old bourgeois democracy —and on the new, Soviet, power. Old or bourgeois democracy proclaims freedom and equality,
equality irrespective of whether a person owns anything or not,
irrespective of whether he is the owner of capital or not; it
proclaims freedom for private owners to dispose of land and
capital and freedom for those who have neither to sell their
workers’ hands to a capitalist.

Comrades, our Soviet power has made a determined break with
that freedom and that equality which is a lie (applause) and has
said to the working people that socialists who understand freedom
and equality in the bourgeois way have forgotten the germ, the ABC
and all the content of socialism. We, and all the socialists who
have not yet betrayed socialism, have always exposed the lies,
fraud and hypocrisy of bourgeois society that talk about freedom
and equality, or, at any rate, about the freedom and equality of
elections, although actually the power of the capitalists, the
private ownership of land and factories, predetermines not freedom
but the oppression and deception of the working people under every
possible kind of “democratic and republican” system.

We say that our aim, being the aim of world socialism, is the
abolition of classes and that classes are groups of people, one of
which lives by the labour of another, one of which appropriates
the labour of another. And so, if we are to speak of that freedom
and that equality we shall have to admit, as most of the working
people in Russia do, that no other country has as yet given as
much in such a short time for real freedom and real equality, no
other country has, in such a short time, given the working people
freedom from the main class that oppresses them, the class of
land-owners and capitalists, and no other country has granted such
equality in respect of the chief means of subsistence, the
land. It is along this road, that of emancipation from the
exploiting bourgeois classes up to the complete abolition of the
classes, that we have begun and are continuing a resolute struggle
for the complete abolition of classes. We know full well that
those classes have been defeated but not destroyed. We know full
well that the landowners and capitalists have been defeated but
not destroyed. The class struggle continues, and the proletariat,
together with the poor peasantry, must continue the struggle for
the complete abolition of classes, attracting to their side all
those who stand in the middle, and by their entire experience,
their example of struggle they must ensure that all those who
until now have stood in the ranks of the wavering are attracted to
their side.

Comrades, going over to the business of our Congress, I must
say that the Seventh Congress is the first that has been able to
devote a lot of time to the practical tasks of organisation, for
the first time we have succeeded in making a start on a practical
discussion, based directly on practical experience, of those tasks
that concern the better organisa-tion of Soviet economy and the
better organisation of Soviet government.

We have, of course, had too little time to deal with this
problem in great detail but we have, nevertheless, done a lot
here, and all the further work of the Central Executive Committee
and of the comrades in the localities will follow the lines laid
down here.

In conclusion, comrades, I should like to make special mention
of the way the present Congress is to become effective insofar as
our international situation is concerned.

Comrades, we have here repeated our peace proposal to all the
powers and countries of the Entente. We have here expressed
confidence based on experience that is already very rich and of a
very serious nature—our confidence that the main difficulties are behind us and that we are undoubtedly emerging
victorious from the war forced on us by the Entente, the war that
we have been fighting for two years against an enemy considerably
stronger than we are.

But I think, comrades, that the appeal we have just beard from
a representative of our Red Army was nevertheless very timely. If
the main difficulties have been left behind, comrades, we have to
admit that ahead of us, too, organisational tasks are developing
on an extremely broad scale. There can be no doubt that there are
still very influential and very strong capitalist groups, groups
that are obviously dominant in many countries and that have
decided to continue the war against Soviet Russia to the end, cost
what it may. There can be no doubt that now we have achieved a
certain decisive victory we shall have to devote additional
efforts, we shall have to bend still greater effort in order to
exploit that victory and carry it through to the end. (Applause.)

Comrades, there are two things you must not forget—first,
our general weakness connected, perhaps, with the Slav character—we are not stable enough, not persistent enough in
pursuing the aims we set ourselves—secondly, experience has
shown, once in the East and again in the South, that in a decisive
moment we were unable to press hard enough on a fleeing enemy and
have allowed him to rise to his feet again. There can be not a
shadow of doubt that governments and the military classes of
Western Europe are now drawing up new plans to save Denikin. There
cannot be the slightest doubt that they will try to increase
tenfold the aid they have been giving him because they realise how
great is the danger threatening him from Soviet Russia. We must,
therefore, tell ourselves at a time when the victories are
beginning, as we did in times of difficulty, “Comrades,
remember that it may now depend on a few weeks or perhaps two or
three months whether we end this war, not merely with a decisive
victory, but with the complete destruction of the enemy, or
whether we shall condemn tens and hundreds of thousands of people
to a lengthy and tormenting war. On the basis of the experience we
have acquired we can now say with full confidence that if we can
redouble our efforts the possibility of not only achieving a final
victory, but also of destroying the enemy and gaining for
ourselves a durable and lengthy peace depends on a few weeks or on
two or three months ....”

Therefore, comrades, I should like more than anything to ask
each of you on arriving in your locality to present this question
to every Party organisation, to every Soviet institution and to
every meeting of workers and peasants comrades, this winter
campaign will most certainly lead to the complete destruction of
the enemy if we, encouraged by success and by the clear prospects
for Soviet development that now open up before us, regard the
forthcoming weeks and months as a period of hard work in which we
must redouble our war effort and other work connected with it, and
we shall then in the shortest time destroy the enemy, and put an
end to the Civil War, which will open up before us the possibility
for peaceful socialist construction for a long time. (Applause.)

Endnotes

[1]
The Seventh All-Russia Congress of Soviets was held in Moscow. It
was attended by 1,366 delegates (1,002 with the right to vote and
364 with voice but no vote), of them 1,278 Communists. The agenda
of the Congress was the following: (1) Report of the All-Russia
Central Executive Committee and the Council of People’s
Commissars, (2) War Situation, (3) the Communist International,
(4) Food Situation, (5) Fuel Question, (6) Work of Soviet Bodies
in the Centre and the Provinces, (7) Elections to the All-Russia
Central Executive Committee.

On the opening day of the Congress Lenin delivered the report on the work of the All-Russia C.E.C. and the
C.P.C.; on the following day he closed the debate on the report,
on December 8 he took part in a discussion of the report on the
work of Soviet bodies at the session of the organisation section
and on December 9 he made a speech closing the Congress. Lenin
introduced addenda to the draft resolution on Soviet organisation.

The Congress of Soviets approved the home and foreign policy of the Soviet Government. The detailed discussion
of the reports on Soviet organisation, the food situation and the
fuel question was entrusted to respective sections in view of
their practical importance. The draft resolutions on the reports
submitted by the sections were approved by the closing plenary
meeting of the Congress on December 9. The resolution on "Soviet
Organisation" envisaged the further consolidation of Soviet,
government bodies, and gave an exact formulation of their rights
and duties in the centre and in the provinces.

On Lenin’s proposal the Congress adopted a resolution on peace and an appeal to the governments of Britain,
France, the U.S.A., Italy and Japan to begin peace negotiations
(see p. 231 of this volume). The Congress of Soviets passed a
resolution on ’Oppressed Nations" in which it once again
confirmed the principles of the Soviet national policy. In a
special resolution the Congress expressed its indignation at the
reign of White Terror in Hungary. The Congress greeted the
foundation of the Third International and stressed its tremendous
international significance

[2]
On November 5, 1918, the German Government broke off diplomatic
relations with the R.S.F.S.R. and expelled the staff of the Soviet
Embassy from Berlin on the pretext that official Soviet
representatives had been conducting revolutionary agitation in
Germany. Diplomatic relations were not resumed until 1922.

[3]
The Dreyfus case—a provocative trial engineered in 1894 by
reactionary French militarists. Dreyfus, a Jewish officer of the
French General Staff, was sentenced to life imprisonment by a
court martial on a clearly fictitious charge of espionage and high
treason. The trial was used by reactionary circles in France to
incite anti-Semitism and to attack the republican regime and
democratic liberties. When socialists and prominent bourgeois
democrats (Emile Zola, Jean Jaurès, Anatole France and others) launched a campaign in 1898 for a review of the Dreyfus
case, it immediately became a political issue and split the
country into two camps—republicans and democrats on one side
and the bloc of royalists, clericals, anti-Semites and nationalists on the other. In 1899 Dreyfus was pardoned and
released under pressure of public opinion, but it was not until
1906 that the Court of Cassation found him not guilty and
reinstated him in the army.

[4]
Lenin refers to the Texte integral des propositions accepiies par
Lénine published in l'Humanité No. 5669 of October 26, 1919

[5]
Cheka (the All-Russia Extraordinary Commission) was set up on
December 7 (20), 1917 by a decision of the Council of People's
Commissars for the, purpose of "ruthlessly combating counter-revolution, sabotage and profiteering". As one of the
most important levers of the dictatorship of the proletariat,
the All-Russia Extraordinary Commission played an important part
in checking counter-revolutionary sabotage and in protecting the
security of the Soviet Republic. Appraising the work of this
commission, Lenin pointed out in his report to the Ninth
All-Russia Congress of Soviets in December 1921, "... this is
the institution which has been our effective weapon against the
innumerable conspiracies, against the innumerable attacks on
Soviet power". In its resolution on the All-Russia Extraordinary
Commission the Ninth Congress noted the commission's heroic work
in protecting the gains of the October Revolution and, in view
of the consolidation of Soviet power, proposed curtailing the
commission's activity. This resolution reflected proposals made
by Lenin in a draft decision of the Political Bureau of the
C.C.of the R.C.P.(B.) on the All-Russia Extraordinary
Commission, which he wrote on December 1, 1921 (see Lenin
Miscellany XXXVI, p. 369). On February 6, 1922, the All-Russia
C.E.C. passed a decree abolishing the All-Russia Extraordinary
Commission.

[6]
Lenin refers to the counter-revolutionary conspiracy exposed in
Petrograd in November 1919. The conspiracy was organised by a
counter-revolutionary organisation linked, up with Yudenich and
subsidised by the Entente. Among its members were tsarist high
officials, generals and admirals of the tsarist army and navy,
Cadets, and people associated with the S .R .s and
Mensheviks. They aimed at timing their revolt to Yudenich's
offensive on Petrograd and setting up a white-guard government.

[7]
The organisation section was set up at the Seventh
All-Russia Con-gress of Soviets to examine the innovations in the
practical work of building up the Soviet state that took place
after the adoption of the Constitution of the R.S.F.S.R. by the
Fifth Congress of Soviets in June 1918. Lenin took part in the
debate on the report on Soviet develop-ment in the organisation
section. The resolution of the section was endorsed at the closing
plenary session of the Congress.