The Soviet Republic, in the arduous and glorious struggle which it is waging at the forefront of all peoples, is entering the most difficult period of its existence. The coming months will be months of crisis. The Entente is making its final desperate efforts to crush us with arms. The food situation is becoming acute to an extreme degree. Transport has been heavily destroyed.

Only the utmost exertion of our forces can save us. Victory, however, is entirely possible. The revolution in Hungary is conclusive proof of the rapid growth of the Soviet movement in Europe and its coming victory. We have more allies in all countries of the world than we ourselves suppose. Until our complete victory, we need only hold out for another 4 or 5 months, perhaps the most dangerous and bitter ones. And in such days madmen and adventurers, calling themselves Mensheviks, Left and Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, while professing adherence in words to Soviet power and protesting against the military intervention of the Entente, agitate for strikes or for concessions to free trade, or for the cessation of civil war, forgetting that we have offered peace to all and that our war is a just, lawful, and inevitable defense. It is evident that this agitation represents the most active and effective aid to the White Guards, who in their final desperate effort are preparing disaster for us. The Assembly mercilessly brands these disguised enemies of the people.

It declares to all Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries truly prepared to help us in our difficult struggle that the worker-peasant power will grant them complete freedom and guarantee them all the full rights of citizens of the Soviet Republic.

The Assembly declares that the task of Soviet power is now merciless war against those Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries who, like the literary and political groups "Always Forward!" and "The People's Cause," in reality hamper our struggle and are allies of our sworn enemies. The Assembly calls upon all workers' organizations, all proletarians and laboring peasants to exert all their strength to repel the enemies of Soviet power, to defend it, and likewise to put in order the supply of food and transport.

For this purpose the Assembly considers it necessary:

1) To draw in the middle peasants, i.e., representatives of these classes who are less experienced than the advanced workers and peasants, in place of the exhausted advanced elements.

2) To intensify even more the dispatch of both advanced workers and the broad masses of workers to food procurement, to transport, to work in the armed forces.

3) To draw in as many conscious workers and peasants as possible for work in the People's Commissariat of Ways of Communication, in State Control, with the aim of improving their work and rooting out bureaucratic red tape and procrastination.

4) To move as many forces as possible from the hungry cities to agricultural work in the countryside—to vegetable gardens, to the Ukraine, to the Don, and so forth, to increase the production of grain and other agricultural products.

5) To exert all strength in aiding the middle peasant and putting a stop to those abuses from which he so frequently suffers, to provide him with comradely support. Such Soviet workers who do not understand this one and only correct policy or are unable to carry it out in practice must be immediately removed from their posts.

6) On the agenda for all stands the struggle against all manifestations of exhaustion, faintheartedness, and wavering. It is necessary to instill courage in hearts, to call for firmness of spirit, to increase consciousness, and to strengthen comradely discipline.

The working class and peasantry of Russia have endured incredible hardships. Their sufferings have become even more acute in the recent months. But the Assembly declares that the will of the workers has not broken, that the working class stands as before at its post, that it is filled with confidence in overcoming all difficulties, that it will defend at all costs the victory of the Soviet Socialist Republic in Russia and throughout the world.

*Pravda* No. 73, April 4, 1919

Printed from the text of the newspaper *Pravda*