Comrades, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to greet, on behalf of the Council of People's Commissars, the congress of agricultural workers, which has as its task the founding of a trade union of agricultural workers.

Comrades, we in the Central Committee of the party and in the All-Russian Council of Trade Unions have already held, on more than one occasion, joint meetings with the People's Commissar of Labor, comrade Schmidt, and members of the All-Russian Council of Trade Unions and others on the question of how to begin organizing agricultural workers. Nowhere in the world, not even in the most advanced capitalist countries, which have known the history of trade union formation not only for decades but for centuries, have agricultural workers succeeded in creating any sort of permanent trade union. You know what an obstacle the conditions of peasant, agricultural worker life present here, what an enormous obstacle it is that agricultural workers are scattered, dispersed, and therefore it is immeasurably more difficult for them to unite in a union than for urban workers.

At the same time, the worker-peasant government has set about, across the board, constructing a communist society. It has set itself the task not only of finally sweeping away the landlords and capitalists – we have already accomplished this task almost entirely – but of building a society into which neither landlord nor capitalist could re-enter. It has happened more than once in revolutions that landlords and capitalists were swept away, but from the kulaks, from rich peasants, from speculators, new capitalists were born in a relatively short time, who sometimes oppressed workers even more than the old landlords and capitalists. Here is the task we must solve: to ensure that not only are the old capitalists swept away, but that new ones cannot arise, so that power is consolidated fully, entirely, exclusively in the hands of those who labor, who live by their own work. How is this to be done? For this there is one path – the path of organizing rural workers, proletarians; this organization must be permanent; only in a permanent mass organization will agricultural workers be able to learn to conduct their own affairs, to manage large rural estates, for if they themselves do not learn this, then – as everyone has long heard in the song "The Internationale" – no one else can come to their aid. The very most that the power of the Soviets, Soviet power, can do – is to render every kind of assistance to such an organization. Capitalist organizations with all their force, all their lawful means, with various tricks, police stratagems, carping objections, through fair means and foul, opposed this. In the most advanced European country – in Germany – there is still no freedom of association for rural workers; there the servile labor law still remains in force, and rural workers continue to exist under conditions of servitude. Only recently I happened to have a conversation with a prominent Englishman who came to Russia during the war. He had previously been a supporter of capitalism, and then, during our revolution, splendidly developed – first into a Menshevik, and now into a Bolshevik. And so, when I happened to speak with him about working conditions in England – and there are no peasants in England, only large capitalists and agricultural workers – he says: "I do not view this optimistically, because our rural workers live under conditions of feudalism, not capitalism – they are so beaten down, so dulled, so crushed by work, that it is so difficult for them to unite." And this – in the most advanced country, in which an attempt at creating a union of rural workers by one of the English rural workers was made half a century ago.{15} That is the progress in free capitalist countries! In our country, state power from the very beginning decided to render assistance to the organization of rural and other workers. We must render every kind of assistance. I am especially gratified to see that here, in Petrograd, where there are so many magnificent buildings, palaces, that had a thoroughly incorrect purpose, the comrades have acted rightly, having seized these palaces and transformed them into places of assembly, congresses, and meetings precisely of those classes of the population who worked on these palaces and throughout centuries created these palaces and whom they would not allow within a verst of these palaces! (Applause.) I think, comrades, that now, when almost all Petrograd palaces have been transformed into meeting halls and unions for urban workers, above all, and for rural workers, for the laboring part of the peasantry – I think that in this we have grounds to see the first step toward the fact that the laboring, exploited part of the population will obtain the possibility of organizing itself. I repeat, Soviet power will do everything in its power, immediately and unconditionally, to help such an organization to remake rural life, so that there is no place for the kulak, so that speculation cannot occur, so that comradely common labor becomes the general rule in the countryside. That is the task which we all set for ourselves. You understand well how difficult this task is, that it is impossible to remake all the conditions of rural life through decrees, laws, or orders. Through orders and decrees one could overthrow landlords, capitalists, one could curb the kulaks, but if there is not the organization of millions of rural workers themselves, if they do not learn in this organization step by step to decide all their own affairs themselves, not only political but economic – and economic affairs are the most important – if they do not learn to manage large estates, if they do not transform them – since they are now placed in better conditions than other estates – from examples of exploitation, where before they wrung blood and sweat from workers, into examples of comradely economy, then in this there will be the fault of the laboring people themselves. But it is now impossible to restore the old estates; it is impossible to achieve the situation where on 100 desyatinas with us (if we take 10 desyatinas per 10 small holdings) we would have 10 good horses, 10 good ploughs. We do not have such a quantity of horses or ploughs left. But if one works on a large estate, those same 100 desyatinas, through comradely or communal ploughing of the land or voluntarily organized agricultural communes, then perhaps on those same 100 desyatinas one would need not 10 horses, not 10 ploughs, but rather 3 horses, 3 ploughs. That is how one can conserve human labor and achieve better results. But there is only one path leading to this – the path of union of urban and rural workers. Urban workers have taken power in the city; everything created in the city that is best in terms of palaces, facilities, in terms of culture, all this urban workers bring to the countryside, knowing that the power of urban workers cannot be firm if there is not a firm union with agricultural workers. Only such a union, which you are laying the foundation for here, can lead to a firm transformation. Into this union, middle peasants too will voluntarily enter. Of course, it will require much labor – nothing can be done all at once. If your union is founded, if it grows, develops, spreads throughout all of Russia, if it is in the closest unity with the union of urban workers, then this difficult task through joint efforts, through the efforts of millions of organized agricultural and urban workers, we will solve and we will emerge from that ruin into which the four-year war has cast all peoples and us; we will emerge, but we will not emerge to the old economy in isolation, scattered – such an economy condemns people to darkness, to poverty, to dispersal – but rather we will emerge to a common, large-scale, comradely economy. Then all that human science has conquered, human technique, all improvements, all knowledge of specialists – all of this must go into the service of the united worker. Workers must become masters of everything, they must learn to manage themselves and to manage those who until now, for example many agronomists, have acted as agents of capitalists, against workers. This task is not easy, but in cities much has been done to resolve it. The first steps now you are taking to resolve this task in the countryside. I allow myself to conclude by once again expressing greetings from the Council of People's Commissars, expressing firm confidence that your union, which you are laying the foundation for here, will transform in the near future into a single All-Russian trade union of agricultural workers. It will be the true support of Soviet power in the countryside, it will be the support, the vanguard force of the transformation of all rural, countryside life so that no exploitation, no domination of the rich over the poor could be reborn on the soil of common, united, comradely labor. Such are my wishes, comrades! (Applause.)

A brief report was printed on March 14, 1919 in the newspaper "Severnaya Kommuna" No. 58

First published in full in 1923 in the journal "Worker of the Land and Forest" No. 4–5

Printed from the stenographic record, collated with the journal text