V. I. Lenin

À La Guerre Comme À La Guerre!

The landowners and capitalists, who have been over-thrown by the workers and peasants of Russia, have forced two
years of civil war upon us with the help of the capital-ists of
the whole world.

We are ending this war victoriously.

We have already gained the first peace, which has demon-strated
the superiority of our foreign policy over the pol-icy of the
united capitalists of all countries. These cap-italists did their
utmost to prevent peace between Estonia and us. We have beaten
them. We have concluded peace with Estonia—the first peace;
it will be followed by others, opening up for us the possibility
of trading with Europe and America.

The bloody war which the exploiters forced upon us we are
ending victoriously. During these two years we have learned how to
win; and we have won.

Now comes the turn of a bloodless war.

Let us work for victory on the front of the bloodless war
against hunger and cold, against typhus and destruction, against
ignorance and economic chaos!

This bloodless war has been forced upon us by the de-struction
caused by four years of imperialist war and two years of civil
war. In order to defeat the poverty and want, the hunger and
hardships caused by these wars, we must keep firmly in mind, must
thoroughly grasp and everywhere and at all costs observe the
maxim, à la guerre comme à la guerre!

The workers and peasants were able to create a Red Army without
the landowners and capitalists and against them, and were able to
defeat the exploiters.

The workers and peasants will be able to create Red armies of
peaceful labour—they will be able to win new happiness for
themselves by restoring agriculture and in-dustry.

The first and chief step towards this is the restoration of the transport rystern which must be done at all costs,
immedi-ately, with revolutionary energy, and must be carried out
with military determination, solidarity, speed and selfless
devotion.

Let’s get on with the job, comrades!

Let us show that in the sphere of peaceful labour we can
display even greater marvels of heroism and victory than in the
arena of war against the exploiters!

February 7, 1920