Comrades! I have received several notes from delegates with a proposal that I speak on this question. It seemed to me that there was no necessity for this, and I refrained from doing so until receiving these invitations, because, unfortunately, I have not had the opportunity to become practically acquainted with local work, and the acquaintance one gains from activity in the Council of People's Commissars is, of course, insufficient. Moreover, I fully agree with what Comrade Trotsky said, and therefore I shall confine myself to a few brief remarks.

When the question of Soviet state farms and their transfer to provincial land departments{141} was raised before us in the Council of People's Commissars, when the question of the chief administrations and centers was raised, it never left any doubt in my mind that these institutions of both kinds contained not a few counterrevolutionary elements. But when attempts are made to accuse Soviet state farms of the fact that these institutions are particularly counterrevolutionary, it has always seemed to me, and I think so now as well, that this means shooting wide of the mark, because neither state farms, nor chief administrations and centers, nor any large-scale industrial enterprises whatsoever, in general not a single central or local organization administering any considerable branch of the national economy, can manage without, does manage without, and cannot manage without deciding the question of the participation of bourgeois specialists. And it seems to me that attacks on the chief administrations and centers, attacks that are entirely legitimate from the point of view that careful purging is needed here, are nonetheless erroneous, because in this case this type of institution is being singled out from among other similar institutions. Meanwhile, from the work of the Supreme Economic Council one sees as clear as day that it is in no way permissible to single out on this point the chief administrations, centers, and state farms, because all our Soviet work, both in the military sphere and in the sphere of public health, and in the sphere of education—everywhere and always—has encountered and encounters questions of this kind. We cannot reconstruct the state apparatus and educate a sufficient number of workers and peasants well acquainted with the business of state administration without the help of old specialists. This is the fundamental lesson we draw from all our construction, and this experience tells us that in all spheres, including the military, old specialists—and they are old precisely because they are old—cannot be obtained from anywhere except from capitalist society. It afforded the possibility of converting into specialists far too small layers belonging to the families of landowners and capitalists, and only the most negligible number of representatives of peasants, and then only from the well-to-do. Therefore, if one takes into account the milieu in which these people grew up and in which they now operate, it will turn out to be completely inevitable that these specialists, that is, people with the habit of administration on a broad state scale, are nine-tenths permeated with old bourgeois views and prejudices, and that even in those cases where they are not direct traitors (and this is not a chance phenomenon, but a constant one), even in these cases they are unable to understand the new conditions, new tasks, new demands. On this basis, friction, failures, and disorder are observed everywhere, in all commissariats. It therefore seemed to me that one shoots wide of the mark when one cries out about the reactionary character precisely of the state farms, chief administrations and centers, attempting to single out this question from our general question of how to train a large number of workers and peasants in administration on a broad state scale. We are doing this with a speed which, if one takes into account the backwardness of the country and the difficulty of the conditions, is absolutely unprecedented in world history. But however great it may be, it does not satisfy us, because our need for workers and peasants capable of administering and familiar with specialized branches of administration is enormous and has not been satisfied even one-tenth, one-hundredth part. Therefore, when we were told, or when there were sessions in the Council of People's Commissars at which it was demonstrated that state farms constantly serve as places where slightly repainted, and sometimes not repainted, old landowners hide out, that centers of bureaucratism are created there, that similar phenomena are constantly observed in the chief administrations and centers—I never doubted the correctness of this. But I said that if you think you can eliminate this evil by subordinating the state farms to the provincial land department, then you are mistaken.

Why have more counterrevolutionary elements and more bureaucratism remained in the chief administrations and centers and in the state farms than in the military sphere? Why are there fewer of these elements in the military sphere? Because on this sphere, as a whole, more attention was directed, more Communists, more workers and peasants were sent into it, political departments worked there more broadly, in short, the influence of advanced workers and advanced peasants on the entire military apparatus was broader, deeper, and more systematic. Thanks to this, we have achieved that, even if the evil has not yet been completely eradicated, we are nonetheless closer to its eradication. I say: the greatest attention must be directed to this.

We are taking only the first steps toward having state farms stand in close connection both with the surrounding peasant population and with Communist groups, toward having commissars everywhere, not only in the military sphere, and not only on paper. Whether these will be members of a collegium, assistants to administrators, or commissars—we need individual responsibility: just as collegiality is necessary for discussing fundamental questions, so individual responsibility and individual authority are necessary in order to prevent red tape, in order that one cannot evade responsibility. We need such people who in any case would be learning independent administration. If this is done, then we shall correct the evil in the best possible way.

I am, I shall say in conclusion, completely in agreement with Comrade Trotsky when he said that here very incorrect attempts were made to present our disputes as a dispute between workers and peasants, and the question of the proletarian dictatorship was dragged into the question of chief administrations and centers. This, in my view, is fundamentally wrong. The question of the dictatorship of the proletariat can be raised when it is a matter of suppressing the bourgeoisie. Then we conceive this question, then we need this dictatorship, for only through it can we suppress the bourgeoisie and transfer power into the hands of that part of the toiling masses which is capable of acting steadfastly and of drawing more and more of the wavering to itself. In the present case we have nothing of the sort before us. We have a dispute about how much more or less centralism is needed in a given sphere and at a given moment. If comrades from the localities say, and Comrade Trotsky and many commissars confirm, that of late the level of workers in the provincial and, to a considerable degree, the county administrations has risen extraordinarily (I constantly hear confirmations of this kind both from Comrade Kalinin, who travels widely about the localities, and from comrades arriving from the localities), then one must reckon with this; one must raise the question whether the question of centralism is being correctly understood in this case. I am convinced that we shall have to make many, many more such corrections in the work of Soviet institutions. In this respect we are only now beginning to acquire building experience. And insofar as one looks at this experience from within the Council of Defense and the Council of People's Commissars, so far is it clear that this cannot be expressed in any figures, it is impossible to relate in a brief speech. But we are convinced that work is being carried on at the localities according to the basic directives of the central authority. This has come about only of late.

Here the question does not at all stand as one of conflict between the dictatorship of the proletariat and other public elements. Here the question is about the experience of our Soviet construction, about an experience that is, in my view, not even constitutional. Much was said here about changing the Constitution. It seems to me that the question is not in this. The Constitution speaks of the fundamental principles of centralism. This fundamental principle is so indisputable for all of us (we have all learned it from the vivid, impressive, and even cruel lesson of Kolchak, Yudenich, Denikin, and guerrilla warfare) that there can be no question about this. From this fundamental principle of centralism Comrade Sapronov does not back away either, when the matter concerns granting the right to challenge a commissar or the Council of People's Commissars. This is not a constitutional question, but a question of practical convenience. We need to press now on one side, now on the other, in order to achieve positive results. When we speak of provincial state farms and provincial land departments, the center of gravity is in placing them under the control of workers and surrounding peasants. This is completely independent of whom they are subordinated to. It seems to me that by no constitutional changes will you ever root out either the hidden landowners or the repainted capitalists and bourgeoisie. We must introduce into institutions as members of small collegia, as assistants to individual administrators, or as commissars, a sufficient number of practically experienced and absolutely devoted workers and peasants. That is the crux of the matter! In this way you will create an ever-growing number of workers and peasants who learn administration and, having passed through all periods of training alongside the old specialists, take their places, perform the same tasks, and prepare in our civil sphere, in the sphere of managing industry, in the sphere of managing economic activity, such a change in the commanding staff as is occurring in our military department. Therefore I think that here there are no grounds whatsoever for proceeding from those considerations of principle which were sometimes made here, but rather this question must be examined not as a constitutional one, but as a question of practical experience. If the majority of local workers, after thorough discussion, finds that the provincial state farms must be subordinated to the provincial land departments—very well, we shall conduct an experiment in this respect, we shall decide the question from the point of view of practical experience. But first and foremost we must decide: shall we eliminate in this way the hidden landowners, shall we better arrange the utilization of specialists? Shall we in this way prepare a greater number of workers and peasants to manage themselves? Shall we involve the surrounding peasants in checking the state farms in practice? Shall we work out the practical forms of this checking? That is the crux of the matter! If we solve these problems, then I cannot consider that our time and labor have been wasted. Let us even try different systems in different commissariats: let us create one system with respect to the state farms, chief administrations, and centers, another with respect to military affairs or the Commissariat of Public Health. Our task is, through experience, to draw in specialists on a broad scale, to replace them while preparing a new commanding staff, a new circle of specialists who must learn the extraordinarily difficult, new, and complex business of administration. This must proceed in forms not necessarily uniform. Comrade Trotsky was absolutely correct in saying that this is not written in any books which we would regard as guiding for ourselves, does not follow from any socialist ideology, is not determined by anyone's experience, but must be determined by our own experience. In this respect, it seems to me, we must gather this experience and in its practical implementation in life check our Communist construction, so as to finally determine how we must proceed with respect to the questions that confront us.