(Prolonged applause.) Comrades, I must apologize that I was unable to attend all the sessions of the section on work in the countryside{53} that the congress selected. The speeches of the comrades who participated in this section from the very beginning will therefore serve as a complement. The section ultimately worked out theses that were submitted to the commission and will be reported to you. I would like to dwell on the general significance of the question as it has emerged before us in the course of the section's work and as it now appears, in my view, before the party as a whole.

Comrades, it is entirely natural that in the development of the proletarian revolution we must continually place first one, then another of the most complex and important questions of social life. It is entirely natural that in an upheaval that affects and cannot fail to affect the deepest foundations of life, the broadest masses of the population—no party, no government even closest to the masses is absolutely capable of grasping all aspects of life at once. And if we now find ourselves stopping to consider the question of work in the countryside and singling out predominantly the position of the middle peasantry from this question, there can be nothing strange or abnormal from the standpoint of the development of the proletarian revolution in general. It is understandable that the proletarian revolution had to begin with the fundamental relationship between two hostile classes, between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The fundamental task was to transfer power into the hands of the working class, to secure its dictatorship, to overthrow the bourgeoisie, and to seize from it those economic sources of its power that are undoubtedly an obstacle to all socialist construction in general. All of us, insofar as we are acquainted with Marxism, have never doubted the truth that decisive significance in capitalist society can belong, by the very economic structure of that society, to either the proletariat or the bourgeoisie. Now we see many former Marxists—for example, from the camp of Mensheviks—asserting that in the period of decisive struggle between the proletariat and bourgeoisie, democracy in general can prevail. So say the Mensheviks, who have completely made common cause with the Socialist Revolutionaries. As if the bourgeoisie itself does not create or abolish democracy, depending on what is more advantageous to it! And once that is so, there can be no talk of democracy in general during the acute struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat. One can only marvel at how quickly these Marxists, or would-be Marxists—for example, our Mensheviks—how quickly they expose themselves, how quickly their true nature emerges, the nature of petty-bourgeois democrats.

Marx fought against the illusions of petty-bourgeois democracy and bourgeois democratism his whole life more than anything else. Marx most of all ridiculed empty talk about freedom and equality when they mask the freedom of workers to starve to death, or the equality of a man selling his labor power with a bourgeois who, supposedly on a free market, freely and on an equal basis buys his labor, and so forth. Marx clarified this in all his economic works. One can say that all of Marx's *Capital* is devoted to clarifying the truth that the fundamental forces of capitalist society are and can only be the bourgeoisie and the proletariat: the bourgeoisie as the builder of this capitalist society, as its leader, as its motive force—the proletariat as its gravedigger, as the only force capable of replacing it. One would hardly find a single chapter in any work of Marx not devoted to this. One can say that socialists all over the world in the Second International swore countless times before workers in understanding this truth. But when it came to the real and, moreover, decisive struggle between the proletariat and bourgeoisie for power, then we saw that our Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, as well as the leaders of old socialist parties all over the world, forgot this truth and began to mechanically repeat philistine phrases about democratism in general.

Sometimes people attempt to give these words something apparently more "solid," saying: "Dictatorship of democracy." This is utter nonsense. We know perfectly well from history that the dictatorship of democratic bourgeoisie meant nothing other than reprisal against rebellious workers. This has been the case from 1848 onward—at any rate not before, though individual examples can be found earlier. History shows us that precisely in bourgeois democracy the most acute struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie unfolds widely and freely. We have had to convince ourselves of the correctness of this truth in practice. And if the steps of the Soviet government from October 1917 differed in their firmness on all fundamental questions, it is precisely because we have never departed from this truth, never forgotten it. Only the dictatorship of one class—the proletariat—can resolve the question in the struggle with the bourgeoisie for dominance. Only the dictatorship of the proletariat can defeat the bourgeoisie. Only the proletariat can overthrow the bourgeoisie. Only the proletariat can lead the masses against the bourgeoisie.

From this, however, it by no means follows—this would be a profound error—that in the further construction of communism, when the bourgeoisie has already been overthrown, when political power is already in the hands of the proletariat, we can further manage without the participation of intermediate, middle elements.

It is natural that at the beginning of the revolution—the proletarian revolution—all the attention of its activists is directed at the main thing, the fundamental: the dominance of the proletariat and the securing of this dominance by victory over the bourgeoisie—ensuring that the bourgeoisie cannot return to power again. We know very well that advantages still remain in the hands of the bourgeoisie, connected with its wealth in other countries, or consisting sometimes even here in monetary wealth. We know well that there are social elements more experienced than proletarians who aid the bourgeoisie. We know well that the bourgeoisie has not abandoned the idea of returning to power, has not ceased attempts to restore its dominance.

But this is far from all. The bourgeoisie, which above all propounds the principle: "Where it is good, there is the fatherland," the bourgeoisie, which in terms of money has always been international—the bourgeoisie on a world scale is still stronger than us. Its dominance is being rapidly undermined, it sees such examples as the Hungarian revolution—which we had the fortune to report to you yesterday and regarding which confirming information arrives today—it is already beginning to understand that its dominance is shaken. It has no freedom of action left. But now, if one takes into account material means on a world scale, one cannot but recognize that materially the bourgeoisie is now still stronger than us.

This is why nine-tenths of our attention, our practical activity have been and had to be devoted to this fundamental question—the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the assertion of proletarian power, the elimination of any possibility of the bourgeoisie's return to power. This is entirely natural, legitimate, inevitable, and much has been successfully accomplished in this regard.

Now we must place on the agenda the question of other strata. We must—this was our general conclusion in the agrarian section, and in this we are confident all party workers will agree, because we only summed up the experience of their observations—we must place on the agenda in all its scope the question of the middle peasantry.

Of course, there will be people who, instead of thinking through the course of our revolution, instead of reflecting on what tasks now stand before us, use every step of Soviet power for the snickering and carping criticism of the sort we observe from the Mensheviks and right Socialist Revolutionaries. These are people who still do not understand that they must choose between us and bourgeois dictatorship. We have shown them much patience and even goodwill; we will give them one more opportunity to experience this goodwill of ours, but in the near future we will put an end to this patience and goodwill, and if they do not make their choice, we will quite seriously propose that they go to Kolchak. (Applause.) We do not expect particularly brilliant intellectual abilities from these people. (Laughter.) But one might expect that, having experienced the atrocities of Kolchak themselves, they should understand that we have the right to demand from them that they choose between us and Kolchak. If in the first months after October many naive people had the stupidity to think that the dictatorship of the proletariat was something transitory, accidental, then now even Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries should understand that there is something lawful in the struggle that is going on under the onslaught of all international bourgeoisie.

In fact, only two forces have been created: the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Whoever has not read this in Marx, whoever has not read this in the works of all great socialists, was never a socialist, understood nothing in socialism, only called himself a socialist. We give these people a short period for reflection and demand that they decide this question. I mentioned them because now they are saying or will say: "The Bolsheviks have raised the question of the middle peasantry, want to court it." I know perfectly well that arguments of this sort, and much worse ones, find wide circulation in Menshevik publications. We reject it, we never attach significance to the talk of our opponents. People capable of running back and forth between bourgeoisie and proletariat can say what they wish. We go our own way.

Our path is determined first of all by a class assessment of forces. In capitalist society the struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat develops. As long as this struggle is not yet ended, our intensified attention will be concentrated on bringing it to completion. It is not yet completed. In this struggle much has already been accomplished. Now international bourgeoisie can no longer act with a free hand. The best proof of this is that the Hungarian proletarian revolution occurred. Therefore it is clear that our construction in the countryside has already gone beyond the bounds when everything was subordinated to the fundamental requirement of the struggle for power.

This construction has gone through two main phases. In October 1917 we took power together with the peasantry as a whole. This was a bourgeois revolution, insofar as class struggle in the countryside had not yet unfolded. As I have already said, it was only in the summer of 1918 that genuine proletarian revolution in the countryside began. If we had not been able to raise this revolution, our work would have been incomplete. The first stage was the seizure of power in the city, the establishment of the soviet form of rule. The second stage was what for all socialists is fundamental, without which socialists are not socialists: the isolation in the countryside of proletarian and semi-proletarian elements, their consolidation with urban proletariat for struggle against the bourgeoisie in the countryside. This stage is also essentially completed. The organizations we initially created for this purpose, the committees of poor peasants, have become so firmly established that we found it possible to replace them with properly elected Soviets, that is, to reorganize rural Soviets so that they become organs of class rule, organs of proletarian power in the countryside. Measures such as the decree on socialist land organization and on transitional measures toward socialist agriculture—which passed through the Central Executive Committee not long ago and is known to all—sum up what has been experienced from the standpoint of our proletarian revolution.

The main thing that is the first and fundamental task of the proletarian revolution, we have accomplished. And precisely because we have accomplished this, the task of a more complex nature has been placed on the agenda: the relationship to the middle peasantry. Whoever thinks that raising this task is something like a weakening of the character of our power, a weakening of the dictatorship of the proletariat, a change, if only partial, if only the slightest change in our fundamental policy, does not at all understand the tasks of the proletariat, the tasks of the communist upheaval. I am confident that no such people will be found in our party. I simply wanted to warn the comrades against those people who will be found outside the workers' party and will speak thus not because it follows from some worldview, but simply to spoil things for us and help the Whites—to put it plainly, to set the middle muzhik against us, who has always vacillated, cannot help but vacillate, and will go on vacillating for quite some time. To set him against us, they will say: "Look, they are courting you! That means they took account of your uprisings, means they wavered," and so on and so forth. It is necessary that all our comrades be armed against such agitation. And I am confident they will be armed if we achieve now the formulation of this question from the standpoint of class struggle.

It is entirely clear that this fundamental question is a task more complex, but no less urgent: how to determine precisely the relationship of the proletariat to the middle peasantry? Comrades, this question presents no difficulty for Marxists from the standpoint of theory, which the vast majority of workers have assimilated. I will remind you, for example, that in Kautsky's book on the agrarian question, written at a time when Kautsky correctly expounded the teaching of Marx and was recognized as an undisputed authority in this field—in this book on the agrarian question he says regarding the transition from capitalism to socialism: the task of the socialist party is to neutralize the peasantry, that is, to achieve such a situation that the peasant remains neutral in the struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie, that the peasant cannot render active aid to the bourgeoisie against us.

Throughout an enormous period of bourgeois dominance, the peasantry supported its power, was on the side of the bourgeoisie. This is understandable if one takes into account the economic strength of the bourgeoisie and the political means of its dominance. We cannot count on the middle peasant immediately taking our side. But if we conduct our policy correctly, then after some time these vacillations will cease, and the peasant will be able to take our side.

Engels himself, who together with Marx laid the foundations of scientific Marxism, that is, the teaching by which our party is guided constantly and especially during the revolution—Engels himself established a subdivision of the peasantry into small, middle, and large, and this division corresponds to reality for the vast majority of European countries even now. Engels said: "It may even be that we shall not everywhere have to use force against large peasants." And in order that we could ever apply force to the middle peasantry (the small is our friend), of this no sensible socialist ever thought. So spoke Engels in 1894, a year before his death, when the agrarian question was placed on the agenda{54}. This point of view shows us the truth which is sometimes forgotten, but concerning which we are all agreed in theory. In relation to landowners and capitalists, our task is complete expropriation. But we permit no violence toward the middle peasantry. Even in relation to rich peasants we do not speak with such decisiveness as in relation to the bourgeoisie: absolute expropriation of rich peasants and kulaks. In our program this distinction is drawn. We say: suppression of the resistance of rich peasants, suppression of their counter-revolutionary attempts. This is not complete expropriation.

The fundamental distinction that determines our relation to the bourgeoisie and to the middle peasantry is: complete expropriation of the bourgeoisie, alliance with the middle peasantry that does not exploit others—this fundamental line is recognized by all in theory. But in practice this line is observed inconsistently; in the localities they have not yet learned to observe it. When, having overthrown the bourgeoisie and consolidated its power, the proletariat undertook from various sides the work of constructing a new society, the question of the middle peasantry came to the forefront. No socialist in the world denied that the construction of communism will proceed differently in countries of large-scale farming and in countries of small-scale farming. This is the most elementary, abc truth. From this truth it follows that, as we approach the tasks of communist construction, our central attention must be concentrated to a certain extent precisely on the middle peasantry.

Much depends on how we determine our relation to the middle peasantry. Theoretically this question is resolved, but we have experienced excellently, we know from ourselves the difference between a theoretical resolution of a question and its practical implementation in life. We have come up against this very difference, which was so characteristic of the great French Revolution, when the French Convention made sweeping pronouncements while lacking the proper foundation for implementing them, not even knowing which class to rely on for implementing one measure or another.

We stand in immeasurably more fortunate circumstances. Thanks to a whole century of development, we know which class we rely on. But we also know that this class has very, very insufficient practical experience. It was basic for the working class, for the workers' party to be clear: overthrow the power of the bourgeoisie and give power to workers. But how to do it? Everyone remembers with what difficulties, through how many errors we passed from workers' control to workers' management of industry. Yet this was work within our own class, within the proletarian sphere with which we have always had to deal. But now we must determine our relation to a new class, to a class which the city worker does not know. It is necessary to determine a relation to a class which does not have a definite, stable position. The proletariat in the mass is for socialism, the bourgeoisie in the mass is against socialism—to determine the relation between these two classes is easy. But when we turn to such a stratum as the middle peasantry, it turns out that this is a class that vacillates. It is partly proprietor, partly laborer. It does not exploit other representatives of the laboring people. For decades it has had to defend its position with the greatest difficulty, it has experienced exploitation by landowners and capitalists, it has endured everything, and at the same time it is a proprietor. Therefore our relation to this vacillating class presents enormous difficulties. Basing ourselves on our more than one year's experience, our more than half-year's proletarian work in the countryside, on the fact that class stratification in the countryside has already occurred—we must above all be on guard here against haste, unskillful theoreticism, pretense that what we are working out, what we have not yet worked out, is ready. In the resolution that the commission, selected by the section, proposes to you, and which will be read by one of the subsequent speakers, you will find sufficient warning on this account.

From the economic standpoint it is clear that we must come to the aid of the middle peasantry. Theoretically there is no doubt about this. But with our customs, with our level of culture, with our lack of cultural and technical forces that we could offer the countryside, and with the helplessness with which we often approach the countryside, comrades all too often apply coercion, thus spoiling everything. Not long ago one comrade gave me a brochure called "Instructions and Regulations on Setting Up Party Work in Nizhny Novgorod Province," an edition of the Nizhny Novgorod Committee of the RKP (Bolsheviks), and in this brochure I read, for example, on page 41: "The decree on extraordinary taxation must bear its full weight on the shoulders of village kulaks, speculators, and in general the middle element of the peasantry." Well, this one can say, people "understood"! Either this is a misprint—but it is intolerable that such misprints be permitted! Or this is hasty, hurried work, which shows how dangerous any haste is in this matter. Or this—the worst supposition, which I do not want to make regarding the Nizhny Novgorod comrades—or this is simply a lack of understanding. It may very well be simply an oversight{55}.

In practice there occur cases like one comrade described in the commission. Peasants surrounded him, and each asked: "Determine: am I a middle peasant or not? I have two horses and one cow. I have two cows and one horse," and so on. And here this agitator, traveling through all districts, must possess such an infallible thermometer that it could be placed against a peasant and one could say whether he is middle peasant or not. For this one must know the whole history of this peasant's farm, his relations to lower and higher groups—and we cannot know this with precision.

Here much practical skill is needed, knowledge of local conditions. We don't have this yet. To admit this is not shameful at all; we must openly recognize it. We were never utopians and did not imagine that we would build communist society with the clean hands of pure communists who must be born and educated in a purely communist society. These are children's tales. We must build communism from the wreckage of capitalism, and only that class which has been tempered in the struggle against capitalism can do this. The proletariat—you know this perfectly well—is not free from the defects and weaknesses of capitalist society. It struggles for socialism, and at the same time struggles against its own defects. The best advanced part of the proletariat, which in the cities has waged desperate struggle for decades, was able to absorb in this struggle all the culture of urban and metropolitan life and has absorbed it to a certain extent. You know that the countryside was condemned even in the advanced countries to darkness. Of course, we will raise the culture of the countryside, but this is a matter of years and years. This is what comrades forget everywhere, and this is what is particularly vividly depicted before us by every word of people from the localities, not local intellectuals, not bureaucratic people—we heard many of those—but people who have practically observed work in the countryside. These voices were especially valuable to us in the agrarian section. These voices will be especially valuable now—I am confident of this—for the entire party congress, because they are taken not from books, not from decrees, but from life itself.

All this impels us to work in the direction of introducing greater clarity into our relations with the middle peasantry. This is very difficult because this clarity does not exist in life. This question is not only unresolved but is unresolvable if one wants to resolve it all at once and immediately. There are people who say: "There was no need to issue so many decrees," and they reproach the Soviet government for having undertaken to issue decrees without knowing how to implement them in life. These people essentially fail to notice how they are sliding toward the Whites. If we expected that by the issuance of a hundred decrees all village life would change, we would be utter idiots. But if we refused to map out in decrees the path forward, we would be traitors to socialism. These decrees, which practically could not be carried out immediately and completely, played a large role for propaganda. If in former times we propagandized through general truths, then now we propagandize through work. This too is preaching, but this is preaching by action—only not in the sense of individual actions of some upstarts, over which we laughed much in the epoch of anarchists and old socialism. Our decree is an appeal, but not an appeal in the former spirit: "Workers, rise up, overthrow the bourgeoisie!" No, it is an appeal to the masses, an appeal to them to practical work. Decrees are instructions calling for mass practical work. That is what is important. Let much in these decrees be worthless, much that will not work in life. But in them there is material for practical work, and the task of the decree is to teach practical steps to those hundreds, thousands, and millions of people who listen to the voice of Soviet power. This is an experiment in practical action in the sphere of socialist construction in the countryside. If we regard matters this way, then from the sum of our laws, decrees, and ordinances we will derive an enormous amount. We will not regard them as absolute ordinances that must, no matter what, immediately and all at once be carried out.

One must avoid everything that could encourage in practice individual abuses. We have attached to ourselves in some places careerists, adventurers, who called themselves communists and deceive us, who stuck to us because communists are now in power, because more honest "serving" elements did not come to work with us owing to their backward ideas, while careerists have no ideas at all, no honesty. These people, who strive only to get ahead, put coercion into practice in the localities and think this is good. But in reality it sometimes leads to peasants saying: "Long live Soviet power, but down with communism!" Such cases are not invented but taken from real life, from reports of comrades from the localities. We must not forget what gigantic harm any excess, any precipitousness and haste brings.

We needed to hurry at all costs, by a desperate leap, to exit the imperialist war that had brought us to collapse; we needed to use the most desperate efforts to crush the bourgeoisie and the forces that threatened to crush us. All this was necessary; without this we could not have prevailed. But if we act in a similar manner toward the middle peasantry, this will be such idiocy, such stupidity, and such ruin of the cause that only provocateurs could consciously work this way. The task must be posed quite differently here. Here it is not a matter of breaking the resistance of proven exploiters, of defeating them and overthrowing them—the task we posed before. No, as we solve this main task, more complex tasks come onto the agenda. With violence you can create nothing. Violence toward the middle peasantry represents the greatest harm. This is a numerous, many-million stratum. Even in Europe, where it nowhere reaches such force, where technology and culture, city life, railroads are developed gigantically, where it would be easiest to think about this—no one, not one of the most revolutionary socialists proposed violent measures against the middle peasantry.

When we took power, we relied on the entire peasantry as a whole. Then all peasants had one task—struggle with landowners. But until now they have retained a prejudice against large-scale farming. The peasant thinks: "If large-scale farming, then I am again a farmhand." Of course, this is mistaken. But in the peasant's mind large-scale farming is connected with hatred, memory of how the people were oppressed by landowners. This feeling remains; it has not yet died.

Most of all we must base ourselves on the truth that here by methods of violence, by the very nature of things, nothing can be achieved. Here the economic task stands quite differently. Here there is no upper layer that can be cut off, leaving all the foundation, the entire building. There is no such layer here as there was in the city in the form of capitalists. To act with violence here means to ruin the entire cause. Here is needed work of prolonged education. The peasant, who is not only here but throughout the world a practical person and a realist, we must give concrete examples to prove that "communism" is best. Of course, nothing will come of it if in the countryside there appear precipitous people who fluttered down from the city, arrived, chatted, staged several intellectual, or even non-intellectual squabbles, and, having spit, drove away. This happens. Instead of respect, they provoke ridicule, and completely justifiably so.

On this question we must say that we encourage communes, but they must be set up in such a way as to win the confidence of the peasant. And until then we are—students of the peasants, not their teachers. There is nothing more stupid than when people who do not know agriculture and its peculiarities, people who rushed to the countryside only because they heard about the advantages of collective farming, who are tired of city life and wish to work in the countryside—when such people consider themselves in everything teachers of the peasants. There is nothing more stupid than the very thought of violence in the sphere of economic relations of the middle peasant.

The task here consists not in the expropriation of the middle peasant, but in taking account of the special conditions of the peasant's life, in learning from the peasants the methods of transition to a better system, and not daring to command! This is the rule we have set for ourselves. (Applause of the entire congress.) This is the rule that we have attempted to set forth in our draft resolution, for in this respect, comrades, we have indeed erred not a little. To admit this is not shameful in the slightest. We had no experience. Our very struggle against exploiters was taken by us from experience. If we were sometimes condemned for it, we can say: "Gentlemen capitalists, you are to blame for this. If you had not put up such savage, such senseless, impudent, and desperate resistance, if you had not allied yourselves with the bourgeoisie of the whole world, the upheaval would have taken more peaceful forms." Now, having repelled the furious onslaught from all sides, we can turn to other methods, because we are acting not as a circle but as a party leading millions. Millions cannot immediately understand a change of course, and therefore blows intended for kulaks repeatedly hit the middle peasant. This is not surprising. One need only understand that this is caused by historical conditions that are exhausted, and that new conditions and new tasks in relation to this class require a new psychology.

Our decrees concerning peasant farming are fundamentally correct. We have no basis for renouncing any one of them, for regretting any one of them. But if the decrees are correct, it is incorrect to impose them on the peasant by force. No decree speaks of this. They are correct as outlined paths, as an appeal to practical measures. When we say: "Encourage association,"—we give directives that must be tried out many times to find the final form of their implementation. Once it is said that voluntary consent must be achieved, then the peasant must be persuaded, and must be persuaded in practice. They will not let themselves be persuaded by words and they are absolutely right not to. It would be bad if they let themselves be persuaded simply by reading decrees and agitation leaflets. If one could remake economic life this way, the entire remake would not be worth a plugged nickel. It is necessary first to prove that such association is better, to unite people so that they truly become united, and don't scatter—to prove that it is profitable. This is how the peasant poses the question, and this is how our decrees pose it. If we have so far been unable to achieve this, there is nothing shameful in it; we must openly admit it.

We have so far only resolved the task fundamental to any socialist upheaval—the task of victory over the bourgeoisie. This task we have essentially resolved, although now a terribly difficult half-year is beginning, when imperialists all over the world make final efforts to crush us. We can now say, without any exaggeration, that they themselves have understood that after this half-year their cause is absolutely hopeless. Either now they will take advantage of our exhaustion and defeat one country, or we will prove victorious not only in relation to our country. In this half-year, when food and transport crises have accumulated, and imperialist powers are attempting to advance on several fronts, our position is extraordinarily difficult. But this is the last difficult half-year. It is necessary as before to strain all forces in the struggle with the external enemy that is attacking us.

But when we speak of the tasks of work in the countryside, we must, despite all difficulties, despite the fact that all our experience is directed toward the immediate suppression of exploiters—we must remember and not forget that in the countryside in relation to the middle peasant the tasks stand otherwise.

All conscious workers—from Petrograd, Ivanovo-Voznesensk, Moscow—who have been in the countryside, all told us examples of how an entire series of misunderstandings, seemingly impossible to remove, an entire series of conflicts seemingly major, were removed or weakened by the appearance of sensible workers who spoke not in bookish fashion but in language understandable to the muzhik, spoke not as commanders, allowing themselves to command though they know nothing of village life, but as comrades, explaining the situation, appealing to their feeling as laborers against exploiters. And on this ground of comradely explanation there was achieved that which could not be achieved by hundreds of others who conducted themselves as commanders and chiefs.

This is the spirit that permeates our entire resolution, which we now present for your consideration.

In my brief report I have attempted to dwell on the principled side, on the general political significance of this resolution. I have attempted to prove—and I wish to believe that I have succeeded in proving—that from the standpoint of the interests of the entire revolution as a whole we have no turn, no change of line. The Whites and their helpers cry out or will cry out about this. Let them cry. We are not concerned. We are developing our tasks most consistently. We must transfer our attention from the task of suppressing the bourgeoisie to the task of arranging the life of the middle peasant. We must live in peace with him. The middle peasant in a communist society will only be on our side when we ease and improve the economic conditions of his life. If we could give tomorrow 100,000 first-class tractors, supply them with gasoline, supply them with drivers (you know perfectly well that for now this is fantasy), then the middle peasant would say: "I am for communism." But to do this, we must first defeat international bourgeoisie, must make it give us these tractors, or else we must raise our productivity so much that we ourselves can deliver them. Only this way will this question be correctly posed.

The peasant needs the industry of the city; without it he cannot live, and it is in our hands. If we undertake the matter correctly, then the peasant will be grateful to us for bringing him from the city these products, these tools, this culture. They will be brought to him not by exploiters, not by landowners, but by such fellow laborers as he values extremely deeply, but values practically, values only their actual help, rejecting—and perfectly rightly rejecting—command, "prescriptions" from above.

First help, then win confidence. If this matter is conducted correctly, if each step of each of our groups in the district, in the volost, in the food detachment, in any organization is correctly posed, if each of our steps is carefully examined from this standpoint, we will win the confidence of the peasant and only then will we be able to go further. Now we must give him help, give him advice. This will not be a commander's order, but a comrade's advice. The peasant will then be completely with us.

This is what, comrades, our resolution contains; this is what, it seems to me, should become the decision of the congress. If we adopt this, if this determines all the work of our party organizations, then we will cope with the second great task that stands before us.

How to overthrow the bourgeoisie, how to suppress it—we have learned this and we are proud of it. How to regulate relations with millions of middle peasants, by what path to win their confidence—we have not yet learned this—this must be said openly. But we have understood the task, we have posed it, and we say to ourselves with all hope, with all knowledge, and with all resolve: we will cope with this task, and then socialism will be absolutely invincible. (Prolonged applause.)

Printed from the stenographic record as corrected by V. I. Lenin