Comrades, our agenda has been exhausted. Allow me now to say a few words in connection with the conclusion of the congress's work.

Comrades! We were forced to assemble at a moment that was difficult, not only because we have lost our best organizer and practical leader, Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov. We were forced to assemble at a particularly difficult moment because international imperialism—and there is now not the slightest doubt about this—is making its last, especially powerful attempt to crush the Soviet republic. For us there is no doubt that the intensified offensive from west and east, simultaneously with a whole series of White Guard uprisings, with attempts to dismantle the railways in several places—that all of this represents a completely deliberate and obviously decided step of the imperialists of the Entente, decided in Paris. We all know, comrades, the difficulties with which Russia, having endured a four-year imperialist war, has had to take up arms once again in order to defend the Soviet republic against the predatory imperialists. We all know how terrible this war is, how it exhausts us. But we also know that if this war is being waged with heightened energy, with heightened heroism, it is only because for the first time in the world an army has been created, an armed force that knows what it is fighting for, and for the first time in the world workers and peasants, bringing incredibly heavy sacrifices, clearly understand that they are defending the Soviet socialist republic, the power of the laboring masses over the capitalists, are defending the cause of the worldwide proletarian socialist revolution.

Under these difficult conditions, in a short time we have succeeded in accomplishing a very major task. We have succeeded in affirming—and unanimously at that, as with all the congress's essential decisions—we have succeeded in affirming the program. We are confident that it, despite numerous editorial and other shortcomings, has already entered the history of the Third International as a program that sums up the results of a new stage in the worldwide liberation movement of the proletariat. We are confident that in a whole series of countries where we have far more allies and friends than we know, a simple translation of our program will be the best answer to the question of what the Russian Communist Party, which represents one of the detachments of the worldwide proletariat, has accomplished. Our program will be the most powerful material for propaganda and agitation, will be that document on the basis of which workers will say: "Here are our comrades, our brothers, here our common cause is being conducted."

Comrades, we have also succeeded in passing other supremely important decisions at this congress. We approved the creation of the Third, the Communist International, which is founded here in Moscow. We came to a unanimous decision on the military question. However great the disagreements seemed at first, however contradictory were the opinions of many comrades who expressed themselves here with complete candor about the shortcomings of our military policy, we found it extraordinarily easy to arrive at a decision in commission that was absolutely unanimous, and we leave this congress confident that our chief defender, the Red Army, for which the entire country brings such incalculable sacrifices—that it in all the congress delegates, in all the party members will find the most devoted, selflessly loyal helpers, leaders, friends and collaborators.

Comrades, on the organizational question we solved the problems that stood before us so easily because the history of the party's relations to the Soviets has outlined all these decisions for us. We only had to sum them up. On the question of work in the countryside, with a unanimous and swift decision of the congress, we outlined a line on a particularly necessary and particularly difficult question—one that in other countries is even considered insoluble—the question of the relationship of the proletariat that has overthrown the bourgeoisie to the many-millions-strong middle peasantry. We are all confident that this congress resolution will strengthen our power. At the difficult time through which we are living, when the imperialists are making their last attempt to violently overthrow Soviet power, when acute food shortage, when transport collapse place again and again hundreds, thousands and millions of people in a desperate situation—we are confident that at this difficult time the resolution that we have passed, the spirit with which the congress delegates were animated, will help us endure this trial, will help us emerge from this difficult half-year.

We are confident that this will be the last difficult half-year. We are especially strengthened in this confidence by the news which we reported to the congress a few days ago—the news of the victory of the proletarian revolution in Hungary. If until now Soviet power has triumphed only within, among the peoples that comprised the former Russian Empire, if until now short-sighted people, particularly those who find it difficult to part with routine, with old habits of thought (even if they belonged to the camp of socialists), could think that only Russia's peculiarities brought about this unexpected turn toward proletarian soviet democracy, that in this democracy's peculiarities, perhaps, are reflected as in a distorting mirror the old peculiarities of tsarist Russia—if such an opinion could still be held, then now it is shattered to its foundations. Comrades, the news that has been received today paints for us a picture of the Hungarian revolution. We learn from today's reports that the Allied powers have presented the most brutal ultimatum to Hungary demanding the passage of troops. The bourgeois government, seeing that the Allied powers want to move their troops through Hungary, seeing that upon Hungary falls once again an unprecedented weight of a new war—the bourgeois-conciliationist government itself submitted its resignation, itself entered into negotiations with the communists, the Hungarian comrades who were in prisons, and itself recognized that there is no other way out except the transfer of power to the laboring people. (Applause.)

Comrades! If they said of us that we are usurpers; if at the end of 1917 and the beginning of 1918 the bourgeoisie and many of its supporters had no other words for our revolution than "violence" and "seizure"; if even now voices ring out, the complete senselessness of which we have repeatedly proven, claiming that Bolshevik power is maintained by violence; if such nonsense could be repeated before—then now the example of Hungary forces such talk to fall silent. Even the bourgeoisie has seen that there can be no other power except the power of the Soviets. The bourgeoisie of a more cultured country saw more clearly than our bourgeoisie on the eve of October 25 that the country is perishing, that ever heavier trials are falling upon the people—which means that power must be in the hands of the Soviets, which means that the workers and peasants of Hungary, the new soviet proletarian democracy, must save it.

The difficulties of the Hungarian revolution, comrades, are enormous. This small country, compared with Russia, can far more easily be strangled by the imperialists. But whatever the difficulties still standing before Hungary, we undoubtedly have here, beyond the victory of Soviet power, our moral victory. The most radical, most democratic, conciliationist bourgeoisie recognized that at the moment of the greatest crisis, when upon a country exhausted by war a new war bears down, Soviet power is a historical necessity, recognized that in such a country there can be no other power except the power of the Soviets, except the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Comrades, behind our backs stands a whole line of revolutionaries who sacrificed their lives for the liberation of Russia. The fate of most of these revolutionary figures was heavy. They endured the persecutions of tsarism, they were not granted the happiness of witnessing a victorious revolution. And we have been granted a still higher happiness. We not only saw the victory of our revolution, we not only saw how it, amid unprecedented difficulties, was strengthened and created new forms of power that attracted to us the sympathy of the entire world, but we also see that the seed sown by the Russian revolution is sprouting in Europe. This creates in us an absolute, unwavering confidence that, however terrible the trials that may still befall us, however great the disasters that the dying beast of international imperialism may yet bring upon us—this beast will perish and socialism will triumph throughout the world. (Prolonged applause.)

I declare the Eighth Congress of the Russian Communist Party closed.