(Applause.) Comrades, I was unable to coordinate with Comrade Bukharin on this part of the question in such detail as we had done previously by consulting beforehand regarding the report. Perhaps this will not even be necessary. It seems to me that the discussion that has unfolded here has demonstrated chiefly one thing: the absence of any definite and formulated counter-proposal. Much was said in fragments, in scattered form, but no counter-proposal was forthcoming. I shall dwell on the main objections, which were directed above all against the introductory section. Comrade Bukharin indicated to me that he belongs to those who defend the idea of combining in the introduction a characterization of capitalism and a characterization of imperialism into one coherent whole, but that in the absence of such a solution we must accept the existing draft.

Many of those who spoke advanced the point of view — particularly decisively did Comrade Podbelsky advance it — that the draft in the form presented to you is incorrect. Comrade Podbelsky's proofs were of the highest degree strange. For instance, that in the first paragraph the revolution is named as a revolution of such-and-such a date. This somehow reminded Comrade Podbelsky that even this revolution has a number. I can say that we in the Council of People's Commissars have to deal with very many papers bearing numbers and we often tire of it, but why transfer this impression here? What does the number have to do with it, really? We determine the date of the holiday and we celebrate it. How can one deny that it was precisely on October 25 that power was seized? If you try to change this somehow, it will be artificial. If you call the revolution October-November, you thereby give occasion to say that the deed was not accomplished in one day. But of course it occurred over a longer period — not in October, not in November, and not even in a year. Comrade Podbelsky attacked the fact that in one of the paragraphs it is said that a social revolution is impending. On this basis he depicted the program as almost some sort of insult to "Her Majesty" — the social revolution. We are in a social revolution, and we are told of it as something impending! Such an argument is patently untenable, because our program speaks of a social revolution on a world scale.

We are told that we are approaching revolution economically. Is this necessary or not? Here many enthusiastic comrades have gone so far as to speak of a world council of the national economy and of subordinating all national parties to the Central Committee of the RCP. Comrade Pyatakov almost reached this point. (Pyatakov [from the floor]: "And why do you think that would be bad?") If he now throws out the remark that this would not be bad, then I must answer that if anything of the sort stood in the program, then there would be no need to criticize it: the authors of such a proposal would have killed themselves. These enthusiastic comrades did not take into account that in the program we must proceed from what exists. One of these comrades, I believe it was Sunica, who criticized the program very decisively as impoverished and so on, one of these enthusiastic comrades said that he cannot agree that what exists should be, but proposes that what does not exist should be. (Laughter.) I think that this formulation of the question by its obvious incorrectness legitimately provokes laughter. I did not say that only what exists should be. I said that we must proceed from what is absolutely established. We must say to the proletariat and to the laboring peasantry and prove it to them, that communist revolution is inevitable. Did anyone here say that this should not be stated? If anyone had tried to make such a proposal, they would be shown that this is not so. No one said anything of the sort and no one will, because it is beyond question that our party came to power relying not only on the communist proletariat, but also on the entire peasantry. Are we really to limit ourselves only to saying to all these masses, which are now marching with us: "The business of the party is only to conduct socialist construction. Communist revolution has been accomplished, implement communism." Such a point of view is fundamentally untenable and theoretically incorrect. Our party has absorbed directly, and still more indirectly, millions of people who are now sorting out the question of class struggle, the question of the transition from capitalism to communism.

Now one can say — and there will be no exaggeration in this, of course — that nowhere, in no other country, has the laboring population been so interested in the question of the transformation of capitalism into socialism as it is now with us. We think about this far more than in any other country. Is the party really not obliged to give an answer to this question? We must scientifically show how this communist revolution will proceed. In this respect all the remaining proposals are half-measures. No one wanted to strike this out completely. They spoke indefinitely: perhaps one could shorten it, not cite the old program, because it is incorrect. But if it were incorrect, how could we have proceeded from it in the course of so many years of our work? Perhaps we will have a general program when a world Soviet republic is created, but until then we will surely write several more programs. But to write them now, when there exists only one Soviet republic in place of the old Russian empire, would be premature. Even Finland, which is undoubtedly moving toward a Soviet republic, has not yet realized it — Finland, which differs from all the other peoples who inhabited the former Russian empire by greater cultural development. So to claim now that we should give expression in the program to a finished process would be the greatest error. This would be like if we now set down in the program a world council of the national economy. And meanwhile we ourselves have not yet managed to get used to this ugly word "sovnarkhoz," and foreigners, it is said, sometimes happen to look in a reference book to see if there is such a railway station. (Laughter.) We cannot decree such words to the whole world.

To be international, our program must take account of those class elements which are economically characteristic of all countries. For all countries it is characteristic that capitalism in most localities is still developing. This is true for all of Asia, for all those countries transitioning to bourgeois democracy, this is true for a whole series of parts of Russia. Here Comrade Rykov, who in economic matters knows facts very well, told us about the new bourgeoisie which exists among us. This is true. It is born not only from our Soviet officials — in a negligible way it can be born from there — it is born from among the peasantry and artisans, freed from the yoke of capitalist banks and now cut off from railway transport. This is a fact. How do you want to get around this fact? You are only amusing your illusions or introducing an insufficiently thought-out book into a reality that is far more complex. It shows us that even in Russia capitalist commodity economy lives, acts, develops, gives birth to the bourgeoisie, as in any capitalist society.

Comrade Rykov said: "We struggle with the bourgeoisie being born among us because peasant economy still has not disappeared, and this economy gives birth to the bourgeoisie and capitalism." We have no precise data on this, but that it is happening is beyond question. Throughout the world the Soviet republic exists so far only within the bounds of the former Russian empire. In a whole series of countries it is growing and developing, but in no other country does it yet exist. Therefore, to claim in one's program something we have not yet lived through — this is fantasy, this is a desire to jump out of the unpleasant reality showing that the pangs of childbirth of the socialist republic in other countries are undoubtedly more severe than what we experienced. It came easy to us because on October 26, 1917, we legalized what the peasants demanded in the Socialist Revolutionary resolutions. This does not exist in any other country. A Swiss comrade and a German comrade pointed out that peasants armed themselves against strikers in Switzerland as never before, and that in Germany there is no free breeze visible in the village in the sense of the emergence of Soviets from hired laborers and small peasants. With us, after the first months of the revolution, Soviets of peasant deputies covered almost the entire country. We, a backward country, created them. Here a gigantic problem looms that the capitalist peoples have not yet solved. And what capitalist nation are we supposed to be? Until 1917 we still had remnants of serfdom. But no capitalistically constructed nation has yet shown how this question is resolved in practice. We achieved power under exceptional conditions, when the oppression of tsarism forced a sweeping and rapid radical change to be made, and we managed under these exceptional conditions to rely for a few months on the entire peasantry as a whole. This is a historical fact. We held power no less than until the summer of 1918, until the committees of the poor were established, because we relied on the entire peasantry as a whole. This is impossible in any capitalist country. This fundamental economic fact you forget when you speak of a radical restructuring of the entire program. Without this your program will not rest on a scientific foundation. We are obliged to proceed from that Marxist position which all recognize, that a program must be built on a scientific foundation. It must explain to the masses how communist revolution arose, why it is inevitable, what its significance is, its essence, its force, what it must resolve. Our program must be a compendium for agitation, the same sort of compendium that all programs were, such as, for example, the Erfurt Program.{50} Every paragraph of that program contained hundreds of thousands of speeches and articles by agitators. In our program every paragraph is something that every laborer must know, master, and understand. If he does not understand what capitalism is, if he does not understand that small peasantry and artisanal economy inevitably and necessarily constantly generate this capitalism — if he does not understand this, then even if he declared himself a communist a hundred times and shone with the most radical communism, this communism is not worth a kopeck. We value communism only when it is grounded economically.

Socialist revolution will change very much even in some advanced countries. The capitalist mode of production continues to exist throughout the world, often preserving its less developed forms, although imperialism has gathered and concentrated financial capital. In no even single most developed country can one find capitalism exclusively in its most perfect form. Nothing of the sort exists even in Germany. When we were gathering material regarding our concrete tasks, a comrade heading the Central Statistical Bureau informed us that in Germany the German peasant concealed 40 percent of his potato surpluses from the food organs. In a capitalist state where capitalism is in all its development, there continue to exist small peasant holdings, with small free sales, with small speculation. Such facts cannot be forgotten. How many out of the three hundred thousand party members represented here are such people who fully understand this question? It is laughable self-conceit to suppose that because we who had the good fortune to write the draft know all this, therefore the mass of communists has also gotten there. No, they need these fundamentals, they need them a hundred times more than we do, because there cannot be communism among people who have not mastered, have not achieved an explanation of what communism is and what commodity economy is. Every day, on every question of practical economic policy, food policy, agricultural policy, or matters concerning the Supreme Council of the National Economy, we run up against these facts of small commodity economy. But we are supposedly not to speak of this in the program! If we did so, we would only show that we are unable to solve this question, that the success of the revolution in our country is explained by exceptional conditions.

Comrades come to us from Germany to clarify for themselves the forms of the socialist order. And we must act in such a way as to prove to foreign comrades our strength, so that they see that in our revolution we do not in the slightest exceed the bounds of reality, so that we give them material that will be irrefutable for them. It would be laughable to present our revolution as some sort of ideal for all countries, to imagine that it made a whole series of brilliant discoveries and introduced a heap of socialist innovations. I have heard this from no one, and I affirm that we will hear it from no one. We have practical experience in the implementation of the first steps in the destruction of capitalism in a country with a special relationship between the proletariat and the peasantry. There is nothing more. If we start to play the frog, huffing and puffing ourselves up, this will be a laughingstock to the whole world, we will be mere braggarts.

We educated the proletarian party on a Marxist program, and we must likewise educate the tens of millions of laborers we have. We have gathered here as ideological leaders and must say to the masses: "We educated the proletariat and we always and above all proceeded from precise economic analysis." This task is not the business of a manifesto. The Manifesto of the Third International — this is a call, this is a proclamation, this is drawing attention to what confronts us, this is an appeal to the feelings of the masses. You must endeavor to scientifically prove that you have an economic base and that you are not building on sand. If you cannot do this, do not undertake to draw up a program. And to do this, we must act in no other way than to review what we have experienced in fifteen years. If fifteen years ago we said we were marching toward an impending social revolution, and now we have arrived, does this weaken us? It strengthens us, reinforces us. Everything comes down to the fact that capitalism is transitioning into imperialism, and imperialism leads to the beginning of socialist revolution. This is tedious and lengthy, and no capitalist country has yet passed through this process. But it is necessary to note this process in the program.

This is why the theoretical objections that were made and even the shadow of criticism do not stand up. I have no doubt that if one were to set 10–20 experienced writers, skilled in expressing their thoughts, to work three or four hours a day, in the course of a month they would construct a program better and more integrated. But to demand that this be done in one or two days, as Comrade Podbelsky said, is ridiculous. We worked not one or two days and not even two weeks. I repeat, if it were possible to select a commission of 30 people for a month and set them to work several hours a day, and if there were no telephone interruptions disturbing them, then undoubtedly they would give five times better a program. But no one disputed the substance of the matter. A program that will not speak of the foundations of commodity economy and capitalism will not be a Marxist international program. To be international, it is not enough for it merely to proclaim a world Soviet republic, or the abolition of nations, as Comrade Pyatakov proclaimed: nations are not needed at all, what is needed is the unification of all proletarians. Of course, this is a magnificent thing, and it will be, only at a completely different stage of communist development. Comrade Pyatakov with evident superiority says: "You were backward in 1917 and you have advanced now." We advanced when we inserted into the program what became corresponding to reality. When we said that nations are moving from bourgeois democracy to proletarian power, we said what is, while in 1917 this was what you wished for.

When we have with the Spartacists that complete comradely trust which is necessary for unified communism, that comradely trust which is born every day and perhaps in a few months will be created, then it will be enshrined in the program. But until this happens, to proclaim it means to draw them toward something their own experience has not yet brought them to. We say that the Soviet type has acquired international significance. Comrade Bukharin pointed to English factory committees. This is not quite the same as Soviets. They are growing, but they are still in the womb. When they come to light, then we "will see." But to say that we Russians grant our Soviets to English workers — this does not stand up to the slightest criticism.

Further, I must dwell on the question of the self-determination of nations. This question in our criticism has been given inflated significance. Here the weakness of our criticism revealed itself in that such a question, which in essence plays in the general construction of the program, in the general sum of programmatic demands a significance of less than secondary importance — that this question received in our criticism a special significance.

When Comrade Pyatakov spoke, I marveled what this was: a discussion of the program or a dispute between two organizational bureaus. When Comrade Pyatakov said that Ukrainian communists act according to the directives of the Central Committee of the RCP(b), I did not understand the tone in which he spoke. In a tone of regret? I do not suspect Comrade Pyatakov of this, but the sense of his speech was as follows: what is the need for all these self-determinations when there is a magnificent Central Committee in Moscow! This is a childish point of view. Ukraine was separated from Russia by exceptional conditions, and national movement did not take deep root there. Insofar as it manifested itself, the Germans knocked it out. This is a fact, but an exceptional fact. The situation with language there is such that it is unclear whether Ukrainian is a mass language or not. The laboring masses of other nations were full of distrust toward the Great Russians, as a nation of kulaks and oppressors. This is a fact. A Finnish representative told me that among the Finnish bourgeoisie, which hated the Great Russians, voices were heard: "The Germans turned out to be a great beast, the Entente — a greater beast, let us have the Bolsheviks instead." Here is an enormous victory which we gained in the national question over the Finnish bourgeoisie. This will in no way prevent us from struggling with it as a class enemy, choosing appropriate means for this. The Soviet republic, formed in that country whose tsarism oppressed Finland, must say that it respects the right of national independence. With the red Finnish government, which existed for a short time, we concluded a treaty,{51} we made certain territorial concessions, against which I heard not a few objections of a purely chauvinistic character: "There," it was said, "are good fisheries, and you gave them away." These are the sort of objections regarding which I said: scratch a communist and you will find a Great Russian chauvinist.

It seems to me that this example regarding Finland, as well as regarding the Bashkirs, shows that in the national question one cannot reason in such a way that one needs economic unity at all costs. Of course it is needed! But we must achieve it through propaganda, agitation, voluntary union. The Bashkirs have distrust toward the Great Russians because the Great Russians are more cultured and used their culture to plunder the Bashkirs. Therefore in these remote places the name of a Great Russian means to the Bashkirs "oppressor," "rogue." One must take this into account, one must struggle against it. But this is a long-term affair. You cannot eliminate it by any decree. In this matter we must be very cautious. Caution is especially necessary on the part of such a nation as the Great Russian, which provoked wild hatred in all other nations, and only now have we learned to correct this, and even then poorly. We have, for example, in the Commissariat of Enlightenment or near it, communists who say: a unified school, therefore do not you dare teach in any language but Russian! In my view, such a communist is a Great Russian chauvinist. He sits in many of us and must be struggled against.

This is why we must say to other nations that we are internationalists to the end and strive for a voluntary union of workers and peasants of all nations. This in no way excludes wars. War is another question, flowing from the essence of imperialism. If we fight with Wilson, and Wilson turns a small nation into his instrument, we say: we are struggling against this instrument. We never spoke against this. We never said that a socialist republic can exist without military force. Under certain conditions war can present itself as necessary. But now in the question of the self-determination of nationalities the substance of the matter is that different nations travel the same historical road, but in the highest degree by diverse zigzags and paths, and more cultured nations travel assuredly otherwise than less cultured ones. Finland traveled otherwise. Germany travels otherwise. Comrade Pyatakov is a thousand times right that we need unity. But one must struggle for it through propaganda, party influence, the creation of unified trade unions. However, here too one cannot act according to a single pattern. If we had eliminated this point or edited it otherwise, we would have struck out the national question from the program. This could have been done if there were people without national characteristics. But no such people exist, and otherwise we cannot build a socialist society.

I think, comrades, that the program proposed here should be taken as the basis, turned over to a commission, supplemented by representatives of the opposition, or rather, by comrades who made substantive proposals here, and from this commission should come: 1) the listed corrections to the draft and 2) those theoretical objections regarding which no agreement can be reached. I think that this will be the most businesslike formulation of the question, which will give us the correct solution in the fastest possible way. (Applause.)