V. I. Lenin

Speech Delivered at a

Non-Party Conference in Blagusha-Lefortovo District

February 9, 1920

Newspaper Report

In his speech Lenin dealt with two burning questions of present-day Soviet life—the international
situation and the labour front.

“By its victories,” Lenin said, “our Red
Army has consol-idated the position of Soviet Russia and has
secured for us the first victory over the Entente imperialists. How is this victory to be explained? It is clear
that it was not achieved by the victories at the front alone,
but by our having won over the soldiers of the countries warring
against us. The Allies corrupted their own armies by landing
troops in our country and were soon forced to withdraw them. The
sol-diers refused to fight us. The very expression’Soviet
gov-ernment,’ that is, a government of the working people,
brings joy to the hearts of the proletarians all over the
world.

“By means of agitation and propaganda, we deprived the
Entente of its own troops. We defeated the imperialists not only
with the aid of our soldiers, but also by relying on the
sympathy the Entente soldiers felt for us. On the other hand, we
gave a practical demonstration to the small neighbouring states
that our policy is a peaceful one. Britain, through its
mouthpiece, Churchill, threatened to send fourteen states
against us; but this campaign collapsed when concurrently with
our victories, we kept making proposals for peace. We proposed
peace to Estonia without insisting on any particular frontiers,
knowing only that we did not want to shed the blood of workers
and peasants for the sake of any frontiers.

“The removal of the blockade is exclusively to be attrib-uted to the sympathy which Soviet power inspires among
the workers of the hostile countries. In Italy, matters have
gone so far that a congress of socialist parties has unanimously
adopted a resolution demanding the raising of the blockade of
Soviet Russia and the resumption of trade relations. Although
they do not love the Bolsheviks, the bourgeois gov-ernments of
the small countries have become convinced that the Bolsheviks
want to live on good-neighbourly terms with them, whereas those
on whose side General Denikin or any other general is, would
tear up all the scraps of paper prom-ising independence to the
small nations immediately after gaining victory. Without a
single gun, without a single machine-gun, without firing a
single shot, we have concluded peace; we have laid the foundation for the conclusion of peace with all the countries
that are waging war on us. We have shown that all governments
have to lay down their arms in face of the peace policy of the
Soviet government.

“We have already cut a window opening on to Europe, and
we shall try to make wide use of it. Attempts are being made to
incite Poland against us. But these attempts will fail, and the
time is not far off when we shall conclude peace with all of
them, although they say that they will not recognise us. They
are mortally afraid of the spread of the Bolshevik infection at
home; but although they have surrounded themselves with a
Chinese Wall the Bolshevik infection already exists in each of
these countries, it lurks in their midst. This infection was
brought by the French and British soldiers who had been to
Soviet Russia and had breathed her air. We have thus gained two
victories. We have smashed the whiteguard hordes on all fronts,
and we are winning peace on a world scale, winning it not with
guns, but by the sympathy we have been able to inspire not only
in the workers but even in the bourgeois governments of the
small nationalities.”

Lenin then went on to deal briefly with the labour front.

“Comrades,” he said, “spring is approaching; we have been through an extraordinarily difficult
winter of cold, hunger, typhus and railway chaos. We must be
victorious on this front too. Just as we were able to sacrifice
everything during the war and to give our best forces—the
advanced workers, Communists and political and military students
died in the front ranks and thus raised the morale of the whole
army—so now we say that we must win on the front of eco-nomic chaos; the Communists and the advanced workers, the
most honest and conscientious, the finest and staunch. est, must
be in the forefront, as they were then; every train, every
locomotive must be won by struggle, must be fought for. That is
my appeal to the non-party conference.

“Comrades, before concluding my speech I would like to say a few words about the measures decided on at the last
session of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee. The
session decided on a number of measures which will shortly be
published in the newspapers, and which should be read and
discussed at all meetings of workers, in clubs, factories and
Red Army units. One of the most important decisions of the
All-Russia Central Executive Committee, one to which in my
opinion the most profound attention should be directed, concerns
the fight against red tape in our institutions. One of the
measures is the decision of the All-Russia Cen-tral Executive
Committee to transform our state control into a workers’
and peasants’ control, or a workers’ inspection.”0 We shall not drive out the old
officials—just as we did not drive the experts out of the
army, but attached worker com-missars to them—we must attach groups of workers to these bourgeois experts, to look on,
to learn and to take this work into their own hands. Workers
must enter all the govern-ment establishments so as to supervise
the entire government apparatus. And this should be done by the
non-party work-ers, who should elect their representatives at
non-party conferences of workers and peasants. They must come to
the assistance of the Communists who are being overtaxed by the
tremendous burden they have to bear. We must pour as many
workers and peasants as possible into this apparatus. We shall
tackle this job and accomplish it, and thus drive red tape out
of our institutions. The broad non-party masses must keep a
check on all government affairs, and must themselves learn to
govern.”