# Speech at the Joint Session of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee, the Moscow Soviet of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies, the All-Russia Central Council of Trade Unions, and Factory Committees, Dedicated to the Second Anniversary of the October Revolution, November 7, 1919

Comrades! Two years ago, when the imperialist war was still raging, the uprising of the Russian proletariat and its conquest of state power seemed to all supporters of the bourgeoisie in Russia, to the masses of the people, and perhaps to the majority of workers in other countries, a bold but hopeless attempt. It seemed then that world imperialism was such an enormous, invincible force that the workers of a backward country, attempting to rise up against it, were acting like madmen. And now, looking back over the two years that have passed, we see that even our opponents are increasingly beginning to recognize our correctness. We see that imperialism, which seemed such an insurmountable colossus, has turned out before everyone's eyes to be a colossus with feet of clay, and these two years that we have lived through and struggled through mark ever more clearly the victory not only of the Russian but also of the international proletariat.

Comrades, in the first year of our power's existence, we had to observe the might of German imperialism, to suffer from the violent and predatory peace that was forced upon us, we had to cast our call to revolution alone, without meeting support or response to our call. And if the first year of our power was the first year of our struggle against imperialism, we could soon convince ourselves that the struggle among the various parts of this gigantic international imperialism is nothing other than a death agony, and that both German imperialism and the imperialism of the Anglo-French bourgeoisie are interested in this struggle. Over that year, we clarified that this struggle only strengthens, only increases and restores our forces and turns these forces against all imperialism. And if we created such a situation during the first year, then throughout the entire second year we came face to face with our enemy. There were pessimists who, even last year, strongly attacked us; even last year they said that England, France, and America were such an enormous, such a gigantic force that would crush our country. A year has passed, and you see that if this first year can be called the year of the might of international imperialism, then the second year will be called the year of the invasion of Anglo-American imperialism and the victory over this invasion, the victory over Kolchak and Yudenich, and the beginning of victory over Denikin.

And we know perfectly well that all the military forces that were launched against us were directed from a definite source. We know that the imperialists gave them all military supplies, all armaments; we know that they partially transferred their world military fleet to our enemies, and now they are helping and preparing forces in every way both in the south of Russia and in Arkhangelsk. But we know perfectly well that all these seemingly grandiose and invincible forces of international imperialism are unreliable, are not frightening to us, that they are rotten inside, that they strengthen us more and more, and that this strengthening will enable us to achieve victory on the external front and to carry this victory through to the end. I will not dwell on this, because Comrade Trotsky will outline this task.

It seems to me that we must now try to draw general lessons from the two years of heroic construction.

What, in my view, constitutes the most important conclusion from the two years of construction of the Soviet Republic, what is most important for us in my eyes, is the lesson of the construction of workers' power. It seems to me that in this respect we must not limit ourselves to those concrete, individual facts concerning the work of one or another commissariat, facts which are known to most of you from your own experience. It seems to me that we must now, casting a glance over what we have lived through, draw a general lesson from this construction, a lesson that we will assimilate and carry more broadly into the toiling masses. This is the lesson that only the participation of workers in the general administration of the state has enabled us to withstand such incredible difficulties, and that only by following this path will we achieve complete victory. Another lesson that we must draw is the correct attitude toward the peasants, toward the vast mass of the many-million-strong peasantry, for only this has allowed us to live successfully despite all difficulties, and only this points the path along which we move from success to success.

If you recall the past, if you recall the first steps of Soviet power, if you recall all the construction of the republic in all branches of administration, not excluding military affairs, you will see that the power of the working class two years ago, in October, was only a beginning, when the apparatus of state power was in fact not yet in our hands, and you, casting a glance over the two years lived through, will agree with me that in every branch—military, political, and economic—we had to conquer inch by inch every position in order to create a genuine apparatus of state power, sweeping from the path those who had previously been at the head of the workers and toiling masses.

It is especially important for us to understand the development that has taken place during this time, because in all countries of the world this development is proceeding along the same path. The workers and toiling masses take their first steps not with their true leaders—now the proletariat itself takes into its own hands the administration of the state, political power, and at its head we see everywhere leaders who are destroying the old prejudices of petty-bourgeois democracy, the old prejudices whose spokesmen in our country are the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, and throughout Europe—the representatives of bourgeois governments. Previously this was an exception, now it has become the general rule. And if in October, two years ago, the bourgeois government in Russia—its alliance, its coalition with representatives of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries—was smashed, we know how, in building our work, we subsequently had to remake every branch of administration in such a way that truly genuine representatives, revolutionary workers, that truly the vanguard of the proletariat took into its hands the construction of power. This was in October, two years ago, when the work proceeded with extraordinary tension; nevertheless, we know and must say that this work is not yet finished even now. We know how the old apparatus of state power resisted us, how the officials tried at first to refuse to administer—this crudest sabotage was smashed in a few weeks by proletarian power. It showed that not the slightest impression could be made on it by this refusal; and after we smashed this crude sabotage, the same enemy took another path.

Time and again it happened that even at the head of workers' organizations there were supporters of the bourgeoisie; we had to enter into this matter in such a way as to fully apply the force of the workers. Take, for example, the epoch we had to live through when at the head of the railway administration, of the railway proletariat, stood people who led it not along a proletarian but along a bourgeois path.{102} We know that in all branches where we could finish off the bourgeoisie, we did so, but what it cost us! In every area we conquered inch by inch and brought forward the forces of the workers, placing our advanced people, who had gone through the difficult school of organizing the administration of state power. Perhaps, from the outside looking in, this whole matter does not appear to be very difficult, but in reality, if you delve into it, you will see with what difficulty the workers, having lived through all the stages of the struggle, achieved their rights, how they set up the matter from workers' control to workers' administration of industry, or in railway affairs, starting with the notorious Vikzhel, set up a workable apparatus; you will see how representatives of the working class gradually enter into all our organizations, strengthening them with their activity. Take, for example, the cooperatives, where we see enormous numbers of workers' representatives. We know that previously it consisted almost entirely of representatives of the non-working class. Here too, in the old cooperatives, we encountered people imbued with the views and interests of the old bourgeois society. In this respect, the workers had to struggle a great deal to take power into their own hands and to subordinate the cooperatives to their interests, in order to carry out more fruitful work.

But the most important work we have done is in the area of restructuring the old state apparatus, and although this work was difficult, over the course of two years we see the results of the efforts of the working class and can say that in this area we have thousands of representatives of the workers who have passed through all the fire of struggle, step by step pushing out the representatives of bourgeois power. We see workers not only in the state apparatus, but we see their representatives in the food supply sector, in that area where there were almost exclusively representatives of the old bourgeois government, the old bourgeois state. The workers have created the food supply apparatus, and if a year ago we could not yet fully manage this apparatus, if a year ago the representatives of workers there were only 30%, now in the internal construction of the food supply apparatus we can count up to 80% representatives of workers. With these simple, clear figures we can express the step that the country has taken, and it is important for us that we have achieved great results in building proletarian power after the political revolution.

In addition, the workers have carried out and are carrying out important work—the creation of leaders of the proletariat. Tens and hundreds of thousands of brave workers are emerging from our midst and throwing themselves against the White Guard generals. Step by step we are wresting power from our enemy, and if earlier the workers did not fully master this matter, now we are gradually conquering one area after another from our enemy, and no difficulties will stop the proletariat. Every area, gradually, one after another, regardless of any difficulties, the proletariat conquers and attracts representatives of the proletarian masses so that in every branch of administration, in every small cell, from bottom to top—so that everywhere representatives of the proletariat themselves go through the school of construction, themselves produce tens and hundreds of thousands of people capable of independently conducting all affairs of state administration, of state construction.

Comrades! Recently we have observed a particularly brilliant example of the success that has accompanied our work. We know how widely subbotniks have spread among class-conscious workers. We know the most exhausted by hunger and cold representatives of communism, who in the rear bring no less benefit than the Red Army brings at the front; we know how at a critical moment, when the enemy was advancing on Petrograd and Denikin took Orel, when the bourgeoisie was inspired and resorted to its last favorite weapon—the sowing of panic—we then declared a Party Week. At such a moment, worker-communists went to the workers and toilers, to those who had suffered most from the hardships of the imperialist war and were tormented by hunger and cold, to those on whom the bourgeois sowers of panic most counted, to those who had borne the greatest hardships—to them during Party Week we turn and say: "You are frightened by the hardships of workers' power, by the threats of the imperialists and capitalists; you see our work and difficulties; we call you, and only to you, only to representatives of the toilers do we widely open the doors of our Party. In a difficult moment we count on you and call you into our ranks, to take upon yourselves the entire burden of state construction." You know that this was a terribly difficult moment both in material terms and in terms of the foreign policy and military successes of the enemy. And you know what an unprecedented, unexpected, and incredible success this Party Week ended with in Moscow alone, where we received over 14,000 new Party members. This is the result of that Party Week, which completely transforms, remakes the working class, and from an inactive, weak-willed tool of bourgeois power, of the exploiters, of the bourgeois state, creates through the experience of work genuine creators of the future communist society. We know that there are tens, hundreds of thousands of reserves of worker-peasant youth who have seen and know all the old oppression of landlord and bourgeois society, who have seen the unheard-of difficulties of construction, who have observed what heroes the first call-up of workers in 1917 and 1918 proved to be, who come to us all the more broadly, with all the greater self-sacrifice, the more difficult it is for us. These reserves give full confidence that in two years we have achieved a firm, ineradicable consolidation and have a source from which we can long draw on an even broader scale, so that the representatives of the toilers themselves take up the work of state construction. In this respect, over two years we have had such experience of applying workers' administration in all areas that we can here boldly and without any exaggeration say that now it only remains to continue what has been begun, and the matter will proceed as it has proceeded these two years, and at an ever faster tempo.

In another area, in the area of the relationship of the working class to the peasantry, we had far more difficulties. In 1917, two years ago, when power passed into the hands of the Soviets, the relationship was still completely unclear. The peasantry as a whole had already turned against the landlords, supported the working class, because it saw in it the executors of the desires of the peasant masses, genuine worker fighters, and not those who betrayed the peasantry in alliance with the landlords. But we know perfectly well that within the peasantry the struggle had not yet unfolded at that time. The first year was a year when the urban proletariat did not yet have a firm position in the countryside. We see this especially clearly in those borderlands where the power of the White Guards was temporarily consolidated. We saw this last summer, in 1918, when they achieved easy victories in the Urals. We saw that proletarian power had not yet formed in the village itself, that it is not enough to bring proletarian power from outside and give it to the village. It is necessary that the peasantry, through its own experience, through its own construction, arrive at the same conclusions, and although this work is immeasurably more difficult, slower, and harder, it is incomparably more fruitful in terms of results. This constitutes our main achievement during the second year of Soviet power.

I will not speak of the military significance of the victory over Kolchak, but I will say that if it were not for the experience of the peasantry, which compared the power of the dictators of the bourgeoisie with the power of the Bolsheviks, this victory would not have occurred. And yet the dictators began with a coalition, with the Constituent Assembly; in this power participated the same Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks whom we encounter at every step of our work, as people of yesterday, as builders of cooperatives, trade unions, teachers' organizations, and a mass of other organizations that we have to remake. Kolchak began in alliance with them, with people for whom the experience of Kerensky proved insufficient, and they carried out a second experiment. It was needed so that the borderlands, the most detached from the center, would rise up against the Bolsheviks. We could not give the peasants in Siberia what the revolution gave them in Russia. In Siberia, the peasantry did not receive landlord land, because there was none there, and therefore it was easier for them to believe the White Guards. All the forces of the Entente and of that army of imperialists which had suffered least in the war—the Japanese army—were drawn into this struggle. We know that hundreds of millions of rubles were used to help Kolchak, that all means were employed to support him. What was not on his side? Everything was. Everything that the mighty powers of the world have, the peasantry, and a vast territory where there was almost no industrial proletariat. Why then did all this collapse? Because the experience of the workers, soldiers, and peasants once again showed that the Bolsheviks, in their predictions, in their assessment of the correlation of social forces, were right in saying that the alliance of workers and peasants is difficult to achieve, but in any case is the only invincible alliance against the capitalists.

This is a science, comrades, if one can speak of science here. This experience is the most difficult, all-accounting, and all-consolidating experience of communism; we can build communism only if the peasantry consciously arrives at a definite conclusion. We can do this only if we enter into an alliance with the peasants. We could convince ourselves of this from the experience of Kolchak. The Kolchak epic was a bloody experiment, but it was not we who were to blame for it.

You now know perfectly well the second type of oppression that has fallen upon our heads; you know that hunger and cold have fallen most heavily upon our country. You know that the causes of this are blamed on communism, but you also know perfectly well that communism has nothing to do with it. We see in every country the expansion and deepening of famine and cold, and soon everyone will be convinced that this situation in Russia is not a consequence of communism, but a consequence of the four-year international war. This war created all the horror in which we live, created this hunger and cold. But we believe that we will soon emerge from this circle. The whole question is only that the workers must labor, but labor for themselves, and not for those who for four years have been cutting throats. And the struggle against hunger and cold is already underway everywhere. The mightiest powers are now subjected to this oppression.

We had to collect grain from our many-million-strong peasantry by means of state procurement, and we did this not by the path that the capitalists took, who acted alongside speculators. In resolving this question, we went with the workers, went against the speculators. We went by the path of persuasion; we went to the peasant and said to him: we do everything only for his support and that of the workers. The peasant who has surplus grain and delivers it at a fixed price is our comrade-in-arms. He who does not do this is our enemy, is a criminal, is an exploiter and speculator, and we can have nothing in common with him. We went to the peasant with propaganda, and this propaganda increasingly attracted the peasantry to us. In this sense, we have achieved quite definite results. If last year, from August to October, we procured 37 million poods of grain, this year we have procured 45 million poods, without special, thorough verification. Improvement, as you see, is occurring; improvement is slow, but improvement is undeniable. And even if we take into account the gaps that occurred due to Denikin's occupation of our fertile region, still the matter is moving toward our being able to carry out our procurement plan and distribution plan at state prices. And in this respect, our apparatus has been created in a certain sense, and now we are embarking on the socialist path.

Now we face the question of the fuel crisis. The grain question is no longer so acute for us; a situation has arisen where we have grain but do not have fuel. Denikin has taken the coal region from us. The loss of this coal region has created unprecedented difficulties for us, and in this case we are acting just as we acted in regard to grain. We turn to the workers just as we turned before. Just as we remade our food supply apparatus, which, having strengthened and adjusted itself, carried out quite definite work that yielded its brilliant results, so too now we are improving our fuel supply apparatus from day to day. We tell the workers from where this or that danger is approaching us, where and from which region new forces must be thrown, and we are confident that just as last year we overcame the difficulties with grain, so now we will overcome our difficulties in the fuel question.

Allow me for now to limit myself to this summary of our work. In conclusion, I will permit myself to point out in just a few words how our international position is improving. After we verified our path, the results showed that the path was straight and true. When we took power in 1917, we were alone. In 1917, in all countries it was said that Bolshevism could not be grafted. Now in those same countries there already exists a mighty communist movement. In the second year after we conquered power, and half a year after we founded the Third International, the Communist International, this International has already become in fact the main force in the workers' movement of all countries. In this respect, the experience we have carried out has yielded the most brilliant, unprecedented, rapid results. True, the movement toward freedom in Europe is not proceeding as it did with us. But if you recall the two years of struggle, you will see that in Ukraine, even in some Great Russian parts of Russia where the population was of a particular composition, for example, in the Cossack and Siberian parts, for example, in the Urals, there the movement toward victory did not proceed as quickly and not by the same path as it did in Petrograd and Moscow—in the center of Russia. It is understandable that we cannot be surprised by the movement in Europe, which is proceeding more slowly, where greater pressure of chauvinism and imperialism has to be overcome, but nevertheless the movement there is proceeding steadily, along the very same road that the Bolsheviks point to. Everywhere we see how this movement is advancing. The heralds of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries are giving way to the representatives of the Third International. These leaders are falling, and everywhere the communist movement has arisen, and therefore now, after two years of Soviet power, we can say that not only on the scale of the Russian state do we have the full right, proven by facts, to say that on the international scale as well we now have behind us all that is conscious, all that is revolutionary in the masses, in the revolutionary world. And we can say that no difficulties, after what we have withstood, are frightening to us, that we will bear all these difficulties, and after that we will conquer them all. (Stormy applause.)

Brief newspaper report published on November 9, 1919, in Izvestia VTsIK No. 251

Published in full on November 9, 1919, in the newspaper Pravda No. 251

Printed from the stenogram, verified with the text of the newspaper Pravda