РЕЧЬ НА БЕСПАРТИЙНОЙ КОНФЕРЕНЦИИ БЛАГУШЕ-ЛЕФОРТОВСКОГО РАЙОНА 9 ФЕВРАЛЯ 1920 г. Газетный отчет
Date: 1920 (February 9)
Source: ru:PSS vol 40
Translated by: AI (Claude)

In his speech Comrade Lenin touches on two burning questions of Soviet contemporaneity: the international situation and the labor front.

"Our Red Army," says Comrade Lenin, "with its victories has strengthened the position of Soviet Russia and gave us the first victory over the imperialists of the Entente. What explains this victory? It is clear that this was achieved not only by victories at the front, but by the fact that we attracted to our side the soldiers of the countries at war with us. The allies, by landing troops, themselves decomposed their army and were soon forced to remove it. The soldiers refused to act against us. The one word 'Soviet power', that is, the power of the working people, overflows with joy the hearts of proletarians of the whole world.

"Through agitation and propaganda we took away from the Entente its own troops. We defeated the imperialists not only with the help of our soldiers, but also relying on the sympathy for us of their own soldiers. On the other hand, we have proved not in words but in deeds our peace-loving policy toward the small states neighboring us. Through the mouth of Churchill, England threatened us with a campaign of 14 states, but this campaign broke down when, alongside our victories, we invariably repeated our peaceful proposals. We offered Estonia peace, not counting any borders, but counting only on the fact that we do not want to shed worker-peasant blood over any borders whatsoever.

"The lifting of the blockade is explained exclusively by the sympathy that Soviet power inspires in the workers of countries hostile to us. In Italy it reached the point that the congress of socialist parties unanimously adopted a resolution on lifting the blockade of Soviet Russia and resuming trade relations with it. The bourgeois governments of small countries, although they do not love the Bolsheviks, have become convinced that the Bolsheviks want good-neighborly relations with them, while those with whom General Denikin or some other general, all papers on the independence of small nationalities on the very day after victory would destroy them. We without a single cannon, without a single machine gun, without a single shot concluded peace and laid the foundation for concluding peace with all countries at war with us. We have shown in practice that against the peaceful policy of Soviet power all governments must lay down their arms.

"We have already cut a window to Europe, which we will try to use widely. They are trying to set Poland against us, but these attempts will fail, and not far off is the time when we will conclude peace with all, although they say that they do not recognize us. They fear like fire the spread at home of the Bolshevik contagion, but although they have surrounded themselves with a Chinese wall, still in each of these countries the Bolshevik contagion already exists, it sits inside them. This contagion was brought by French and English soldiers who visited Soviet Russia and breathed its air. Thus, we have won two victories. We have smashed on all fronts the White Guard bands, we are winning peace on an international scale and we are winning not with cannons, but with the sympathies that we have managed to inspire not only in workers, but even in bourgeois governments of small nationalities."

Then Comrade Lenin briefly touches on the labor front.

"Comrades," he says, "we are approaching spring, having survived an unprecedentedly difficult winter of cold, hunger, typhus and railway ruin. We must conquer this front as well. If during the war we were able to sacrifice everything, to give all the best forces — advanced workers, communists and cadets ahead of all perished, thereby raising the mood of the whole army — then now too we say: we must withstand this front of economic ruin; as then, communists and advanced workers, the most conscientious, the most honest, the best, the most firm, forward! For every train, for every locomotive one must fight, one must struggle. To this I call the non-party conference.

"Comrades, before finishing my report, a few more words about the measures adopted by the last session of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. The session adopted a series of measures that will be published in the newspapers in the coming days, which must be read and discussed at all workers' meetings, clubs, in factories, plants and Red Army units. One of the important resolutions of VTsIK, to which, in my opinion, serious attention should be paid, is about the fight against bureaucracy in our institutions. As one of the measures, there is a resolution of VTsIK on the reorganization of our apparatus of State Control into an apparatus of workers' and peasants' control or workers' inspection{54}. Without dispersing the old officials, just as we did not expel specialists from the army, but assigned workers' commissars to them, we must assign to these bourgeois specialists groups of workers who would themselves observe, learn and take this work into their own hands. It is necessary that workers enter all state institutions, that they control the entire state apparatus, and this should be done by non-party workers, who should elect their representatives at non-party worker-peasant conferences. It is necessary to come to the aid of the communists, who are weary under an unbearable burden. We must infuse into this apparatus as many workers and peasants as possible. We will undertake this, we will do this and thereby expel bureaucracy from our institutions. It is necessary that the broad non-party masses check all state affairs and learn to govern themselves."

Pravda No. 32, February 13, 1920

[Published from the text of the newspaper Pravda]