For the accomplishment of even a part of the work briefly outlined in the preceding, we need new and ever more workers, and moreover from among the most reliable, devoted, energetic communists. But where are we to find them when there are universal complaints about the shortage of such workers and their exhaustion?

There is no doubt that these complaints are in many respects justified. If someone were to calculate with precision what a thin layer of advanced workers and communists, making use of the support and sympathy of the working and peasant masses, has governed Russia over the last 20 months, it would seem directly incredible. Yet we have governed with enormous success, creating socialism, overcoming unprecedented difficulties, vanquishing enemies rising from everywhere, directly or indirectly connected with the bourgeoisie. And we have already vanquished all our enemies save one: save the Entente, save the world-mighty imperialist bourgeoisie of England, France, America; and even against this enemy we have already broken one of its arms – Kolchak; we are threatened only by its other arm – Denikin.

New labor forces for the administration of the state, for the realization of the tasks of the dictatorship of the proletariat, are growing rapidly in the form of that working and peasant youth which most sincerely, ardently, selflessly learns, assimilates new impressions from the new order, casts off the shell of old, capitalist and bourgeois-democratic prejudices, forges itself into even firmer communists than the old generation.

But however rapidly this new layer grows, however rapidly it learns and matures in the fire of civil war and fierce resistance from the bourgeoisie, nevertheless for the coming months it cannot provide us with ready-made workers for the administration of the state. But the issue concerns precisely these coming months, the summer and autumn of 1919, because the decision of the struggle against Denikin is required and must be accomplished immediately.

In order to obtain a large number of ready workers for the strengthening of military work, we must reduce a whole series of spheres and institutions of non-military, or rather, not directly military, Soviet work; we must restructure in this direction (i.e., in the direction of reduction) all institutions and enterprises which are not absolutely necessary.

Let us take as an example the scientific-technical department of the Supreme Council of the National Economy. This is the most useful institution, necessary for the complete construction of socialism, for the proper accounting and distribution of all scientific-technical forces. But is such an institution absolutely necessary? Of course not. To assign to it people who can and must be immediately employed on the pressing and urgently vital communist work in the army and directly for the army would be at the present moment directly criminal.

There are very many institutions and departments of this kind at our center and in the localities. In striving for the complete realization of socialism, we could not but begin at once the construction of such institutions. But we would be fools or criminals if, in the face of Denikin's menacing invasion, we were unable to restructure our ranks in such a way as to suspend and reduce everything that is not absolutely necessary.

Without succumbing to panic and without falling into organizational fussiness, we must not restructure any institutions whatever, nor close them entirely, nor – what is especially harmful when working in haste – begin to construct new institutions. We must suspend for three, four, five months all institutions and departments of institutions that are not absolutely necessary, both at the center and in the localities, or, if we cannot suspend them entirely, reduce them for such (approximately) a period, reduce them to the greatest possible extent, i.e., leave only the minimum of work that is absolutely necessary.

Since our main goal is to obtain immediately a large number of ready, experienced, devoted, tested communists or those sympathetic to socialism for military work, we can run such a risk as to leave many of the greatly reduced institutions (or departments of institutions) for a time without a single communist, to hand them over to workers of exclusively bourgeois character. This risk is not great, because the question concerns only institutions that are not absolutely necessary; there will be damage from the weakening of their (half-suspended) activity, but it will be insignificant, it will not destroy us in any case. But the lack of energy for the strengthening of military work, immediate and significant strengthening, can destroy us. This must be clearly understood and all conclusions must be drawn from it.

If each leader of a department or departmental section in a province, district, and so forth, if each cell of communists, without losing a moment, poses to itself the question: is such-and-such an institution absolutely necessary? Such-and-such a department? Will we perish if we suspend it or reduce its work by 9/10, leaving it entirely without communists? – If the posing of such a question is followed by rapid and decisive reduction of work and the withdrawal of communists (with their absolutely reliable assistants from among sympathizers or non-party members), then we shall be able in the shortest time to obtain hundreds and hundreds for work in the political departments of the army, in the posts of commissars and so forth. And then we shall have serious chances of vanquishing Denikin just as we have vanquished the more powerful Kolchak.