(Prolonged applause. Congress delegates and guests rise from their seats and applaud vigorously for several minutes.) Comrades! I would like to dwell briefly on the main matters that have come before us at this present congress.

We have had, comrades, a somewhat limited discussion on the question of democracy and Soviet power. And although at first glance it might seem that this discussion was far removed from the practically urgent and burning tasks of the Soviet republic, I nonetheless believe that it has been far from useless. Comrades! Throughout the world now, in all workers' organizations, and very often also in bourgeois parliaments and, in any case, in elections to bourgeois parliaments, that same fundamental discussion is taking place about democracy—old bourgeois democracy, which many do not understand—and about the new Soviet power. Old, or bourgeois, democracy declares freedom and equality, equality regardless of whether a person owns property or not, regardless of whether he possesses capital or not, declares the freedom of private property owners to dispose of land and capital, and for those who have none—the freedom to sell their labor-power to the capitalist.

Comrades! Our Soviet power has resolutely broken with this freedom and this equality as with a lie (applause) and has said to all working people that socialists who understand freedom and equality in this way have forgotten the fundamentals, the alphabet, and the entire content of socialism. For we have always and socialists who have not yet betrayed socialism have always exposed the lie, deception, and hypocrisy of bourgeois society, which speaks of freedom and equality, even of freedom and equality in elections, when in reality the power of capitalists, private property in land, factories, and plants determines not freedom but oppression and deception of the working people under all manner of "democratic and republican" arrangements.

We say: our goal, like the goal of worldwide socialism, is the abolition of classes, and classes are such groups from which one can live from the labor of another, one appropriates to itself the labor of another. And so, if we speak about this freedom, about this equality, then we must acknowledge, as the vast majority of working people in Russia acknowledge, that no country in the world has yet given so much in such a short period for actual freedom and for actual equality, no country has given the working people in such a short period freedom from their chief exploiting class—landowners and capitalists, no country has given equality to such a degree with regard to the chief source of means of subsistence—land. And on this path, on the path of liberation from the exploitation of bourgeois classes toward the complete abolition of classes, we have begun to struggle resolutely and will continue the struggle for the complete abolition of classes. We know perfectly well that these classes are defeated but not destroyed. We know perfectly well that landowners and capitalists are defeated but not destroyed. Class struggle continues, and the proletariat together with the poorest peasantry must continue the struggle for the complete abolition of classes, drawing to itself all those who stood in between, striving with all their experience, their example of struggle, to draw to itself all those who until now stood among the waverers.

Comrades, turning to the work of our congress, I must say that for the first time the Seventh Congress has been able to devote so much time to the practical tasks of construction, for the first time we have been able to lay the foundation for practical, discussion drawn directly from experience, of those tasks which concern the better organization of Soviet economy, the better organization of Soviet administration.

Of course, we had too little time to dwell on this question in greater detail, but nonetheless much has been accomplished here, and all further work both of the Central Executive Committee and of comrades in the localities will proceed under the sign of the foundation laid here.

Finally, comrades, I would like to dwell especially on that which consolidates the present congress regarding our international position.

Comrades, we have repeated here our peaceful proposal to all the Allied powers and countries. We have expressed here confidence, based on experience which we already possess in great abundance and great seriousness—confidence that the main difficulties lie behind us and that from the war which the Entente has imposed upon us, from the war which we have been waging for two years against an enemy many times stronger than we are, we are unquestionably emerging victorious.

But, comrades, I think that the appeal which we have just heard from the representative of our Red Army was, nevertheless, entirely timely. Comrades, if the main difficulties lie behind us, then it must be said that before us the tasks of construction are unfolding to an unprecedented degree. There is no doubt whatsoever that there still exist very influential and very powerful capitalist groups, in many countries undoubtedly predominant, which have resolved at all costs to continue the war against Soviet Russia to the end. There is no doubt whatsoever that now, when we have achieved some decisive victory, we must yet again and again exert additional efforts, strain our efforts once more, in order to take advantage of this victory and carry it through to the end. (Applause.)

Comrades! Do not forget two things: first, our general weakness, perhaps connected with Slavic character—we are insufficiently firm, insufficiently disciplined in pursuing the goals we have set for ourselves—and second, experience has shown once in the East, another time in the South, that at the decisive moment we did not know how to deliver sufficiently strong pressure against the fleeing enemy and allowed him to get back on his feet. There is not the shadow of a doubt that right now the governments and military classes of Western Europe are preparing new plans in order to save Denikin. There is not the slightest doubt that they will now attempt to increase tenfold the aid they have been rendering him, because they understand how great is the danger threatening him from Soviet Russia. And therefore now, just as we spoke in difficult times, we must say to ourselves also in this time of beginning victories: "Comrades, remember that at the present time it may depend on several weeks, it may depend on two or three months, whether we end the war not only with a decisive victory but with the complete destruction of the enemy, or whether we again doom tens and hundreds of thousands of people to prolonged and agonizing war. Now, on the basis of the experience we have lived through, we can say with complete confidence that on several weeks or two or three months depends, if we are able to triple our efforts, the possibility not only of winning to the end but of destroying the enemy and conquering for ourselves a firm and lasting peace."

Therefore, comrades, more than anything I would like to ask each of you, upon returning to your localities, in each organization of the party, in each soviet institution, before each assembly of workers and peasants, to pose the following question: comrades, this winter campaign can surely give us the complete destruction of the enemy if we, encouraged by success and by the now clearly opening perspectives of soviet construction, look upon the coming weeks and months as that crucial period when we must triple our forces devoted to military work and to work connected with it—and then in the shortest possible time we will achieve such destruction of the enemy, such an end to civil war, which will open for us the possibility of peaceful socialist construction for a long time to come. (Applause.)