(Comrade Lenin's appearance at the podium is accompanied by stormy applause. Everyone stands.) This hall, says comrade Lenin, reminds me of my first appearance in the Petrograd Soviet{1}, in which Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries still held sway at that time. We have forgotten too quickly about the recent past. Now the course of revolutionary development in other countries refreshes our memory of what we have recently experienced. It was believed that in the West, where class contradictions are developed much more intensely, corresponding to more developed capitalism, the revolution would proceed somewhat differently than with us, and power would pass directly from the bourgeoisie to the proletariat. However, what is happening now in Germany speaks to the contrary. The German bourgeoisie, having united to resist the rising proletarian masses, draws its strength from the greater experience of the Western bourgeoisie and conducts a systematic struggle against the proletariat. The German revolutionary masses, meanwhile, do not yet have sufficient experience, which they will acquire only in the process of struggle. Everyone remembers the revolution of 1905, when the Russian proletariat entered into struggle without any experience whatsoever. In our current revolution, however, we have taken into account and utilized the experience given us by the 1905 revolution.

Then comrade Lenin gives a review of the activity of the Council of People's Commissars. He recalls the first period of the revolution, when the masses did not yet know what to do and lacked sufficiently authoritative and strong guiding centers.

We knew well, says comrade Lenin, that for success in the struggle we had begun, it was necessary to unite as closely as possible all exploited masses and all working elements of the country, and therefore the question of forms of organization inevitably arose before us. And we, remembering perfectly well the role of the Soviets in 1905, resurrected them as the most suitable instrument for uniting the working people and their struggle against exploiters. Before the revolution in Germany, we always said that Soviets were the most appropriate organs for Russia. We could not then assert that they would prove equally suitable for the West, but life has shown otherwise. We see that Soviets are acquiring ever greater and greater popularity in the West and people are fighting for them not only in Europe, but also in America. Soviets are being created everywhere, which sooner or later will seize power into their own hands.

America is experiencing an interesting moment now, where Soviets are being created. It is possible that the movement there will not proceed along the same paths as with us, but what is important is that the Soviet form of organization has also won itself wide popularity there. This organization has now replaced all other forms of proletarian organizations. Anarchists, who were opponents of authority in general, after becoming acquainted with the Soviet form of power, recognized Soviet power. In doing so, they left not one stone standing upon another in the theory of anarchism, which negates any authority whatsoever. Two years ago, the idea of conciliationist cooperation with the bourgeoisie flourished in the Soviets. It was necessary to experience a certain period so as to sweep from the consciousness of the masses that old rubbish which prevented them from understanding what was happening. This could be achieved only through the practical work of the Soviets in state-building and life. Now the German working masses find themselves in the same situation, from whose consciousness it is necessary to remove that same rubbish, but there this process proceeds in sharper, crueler, and bloodier forms than with us.

I have strayed somewhat from the topic assigned to me by the presidium of the Petrograd Soviet, but this was necessary.

The activity of the Council of People's Commissars over the past year can be understood only by evaluating the role of Soviets on the scale of world revolution. Often the everyday petty details of administration and inevitable particularities in construction work divert us to the side and force us to forget the great cause of world revolution. And only by evaluating the role of Soviets on a world scale will we be able to correctly understand the petty details of our internal life and regulate them in a timely manner. Notable reviewers from Bern{2} speak of us as adherents of the tactics of violence, but in doing so, they completely close their eyes to what the bourgeoisie is doing among them, which governs exclusively through violence.

Before we moved to the Soviet form of administration, we lived through several months in which the masses were being prepared for a new, never-before-seen form of state administration. We tore apart the Kerensky government thread by thread, we forced the Temporary Government to perform a ministerial carousel to the right and to the left, up and down, which finally proved to the masses the incapacity for governing the country of the bourgeois-conciliationist clique that then claimed power – and only after this did we seize power into our own hands.

The matter is far more complicated on a world scale. In this case, revolutionary violence alone is insufficient, and revolutionary violence must be preceded by the same preparatory work as with us, but naturally for a longer period. At one time, the Brest Peace caused much discussion, and some gentlemen decided to use this step of Soviet power for their demagogic purposes, calling it conciliationist. But if this is to be called conciliationism, then one must also reason about conciliationism with the tsar when we went to the State Duma in order to blow it up from within. We concluded the Brest Peace while awaiting the onset of those necessary internal conditions in Germany which led to the overthrow of Wilhelm, and this shows how correctly our step was calculated.

In the countries of the Entente{3}, there is currently an awakening of the masses, which their governments are trying to extinguish in every way. For these purposes, all the attention of the still unconscious masses is directed toward "patriotism." The masses are fed promises and enticed by the advantages of a victorious peace; they are promised countless benefits after peace is concluded. They are nourished with illusions. But as to how correct is the calculation on the realization of these illusions, one can conclude from a recent conversation I had with one American, soberly and commercially-minded merchant, alien to our interests. He characterizes the position of France as follows: the French government promises the masses mountains of gold which are supposedly to be obtained from the Germans, but the Germans must have something from which to pay, and from a debtor who has nothing, there is nothing to be obtained, and all these illusions, based on concluding an advantageous peace with Germany, will come to ruin, because the peace concluded will be a peace of collapse. Even the enemies of the revolution sense this, who find no other way out of the situation created except the overthrow of capitalism. In this respect, the current mood of the Parisian crowd is characteristic—the most sensitive and responsive of all. While now it does not allow someone speaking against the Bolsheviks to open his mouth, half a year ago it listened to those who slandered them in every way. The bourgeoisie has rendered us a great service in the matter of propaganda for our ideas. Through their attacks, it has forced the masses to think and reason, and as a result, the directly thinking masses of Paris came to the conclusion that if the bourgeoisie so hates the Bolsheviks, then they must know how to fight them. The Entente has now directed its attention toward us; it wants to settle its accounts out of our pocket using bills presented against it. We must reckon with a powerful enemy superior to us militarily, but this will not last long: disillusionment in victory will come, as a result of which there will be a complete collapse of all the combinations of the "allies," if they do not quarrel among themselves before then. Now all countries are experiencing hunger, and no victories will help eliminate it. We stand before complex tasks which foreign policy has posed for us. In this case, we have the experience of the Brest Peace—the most essential step of the foreign policy of the Council of People's Commissars. The Brest Peace was concluded with a powerful enemy superior to us militarily, and this caused disagreements even in our midst, but such had to be the first step of a proletarian state surrounded on all sides by imperialist predators. The Brest Peace undermined our strong and mighty enemy. In the shortest period, Germany, which had imposed plundering conditions on us, fell, and the same should be expected in other countries, all the more so because everywhere there is observable the decomposition of armies.

One must recall the time when the decomposition of our army was explained by the impatience of the Russians, but as it turned out, this is the fate of all countries entering upon the path of revolution. The obvious robbery in which the "democratic" governments in Paris are now engaged opens the eyes of the masses, all the more so because their quarrels in dividing the spoils, often turning into serious disputes, have ceased to be a secret{4}. Despite all the unfavorable conditions in which Soviet Russia must live, we have one plus, which is even emphasized by the bourgeois newspaper "The Times"{5}. In an article by a military correspondent, it notes the rapidly developing decomposition in the armies of all countries, which is unknown to Russia. Only in Russia, according to the newspaper "The Times," does the army not decompose, but is being built. This is one of the essential parts of our construction over the past year. Surrounded on all sides by enemies, we defend ourselves, reconquering every inch of Soviet Russia, and every month of our struggle brings us ever closer and closer to world revolution. Throughout the whole world, we were the first to seize power, and now Soviets of working people govern us. Will we be able to hold power? If not, then the conquest of power was historically illegitimate. But now we can already take pride in the fact that we have withstood this test, and despite incalculable sufferings, we have defended the power of the working people.

Further, comrade Lenin turns to the question of specialists.

Some of our comrades, says comrade Lenin, are indignant that the Red Army is headed by servants of the tsar and old officer corps. Naturally, in organizing the Red Army, this question acquires special significance, and its correct formulation will determine the success of the army's organization. The question of specialists must be posed more broadly. We must use them in all areas of construction where, naturally, lacking the experience and scientific preparation of the old bourgeois specialists, we cannot cope by our own forces alone. We are not utopians, thinking that the task of building socialist Russia can be accomplished by some new people; we use the material left to us by the old capitalist world. Old people we place in new conditions, surround them with appropriate control, subject them to the vigilant supervision of the proletariat, and force them to perform the work necessary to us. Only in this way can one build. If you cannot construct a building from the material left us by the bourgeois world, then you cannot construct it at all, and you are not communists but empty phrase-mongers. For socialist construction, it is necessary to utilize fully science, technology, and in general everything left to us by capitalist Russia. Of course, we will encounter great difficulties on this path. Mistakes are inevitable. Everywhere there are deserters and malicious saboteurs. Here violence was necessary above all. But after that, we must use the moral weight of the proletariat, strong organization, and discipline. It is absolutely unnecessary to throw away specialists useful to us. But they must be placed within definite limits, which provide the proletariat with the possibility of controlling them. They must be entrusted with work, but at the same time we must vigilantly monitor them, placing commissars over them and suppressing their counter-revolutionary designs. Simultaneously, it is necessary to learn from them. With all this—not the slightest political concession to these gentlemen, utilizing their labor everywhere it is only possible. We have already achieved this to some extent. From the suppression of capitalists we have moved to their utilization, and this is perhaps the most important conquest achieved by us during the year of internal construction.

One of the serious questions of our cultural construction is the question of the village. Soviet power presupposes the broadest support for the working people. To this all our policy toward the village during all this time has been reduced. It was necessary to link urban proletarians with the village poor, and we have done this. Now the closest connection is established through thousands of invisible threads. As everywhere, we encounter great difficulties here because peasants have grown accustomed to feeling themselves independent masters. They have grown accustomed to freely selling their grain, and every peasant considered this his inalienable right. Now it is necessary to do a colossal amount of work to finally convince them that with the ruin left us by the war, we can cope only through communist organization of the economy. Here we must act not through violence, but only through persuasion. Of course, among the peasantry there are open enemies of ours—kulaks—but among the masses, the poor and the middle peasants adjoining them follow us. Against the kulaks, as our avowed enemies, we have only one weapon—violence. When we began to implement our food policy on the principle of turning over surpluses to the hungry, there were those who began to cry out to the peasant: "You are being robbed!" These are avowed enemies of the peasants, workers, and communism dressed up in Menshevik, Left Socialist-Revolutionary, or some other buffoonish costumes, and we shall deal with them in the future just as we have dealt with them.

"Severnaya Kommuna" No. 58, March 14, 1919

Printed according to the text of the newspaper "Severnaya Kommuna"