V. I. Lenin

Speech at a Meeting of

The Railwaymen of Moscow Junction [1]

February 5, 1920

Brief Newspaper Report

V. I. Lenin, greeted with stormy applause, delivered a long
speech.

“The most outstanding fact in the world situation,” said Comrade Lenin, “is the peace with Estonia. This peace
is a window into Europe. It opens up before us the possi-bility of
beginning an exchange of goods with the West. Our enemies
maintained that the revolution in the West is far away and that we
would not be able to hold out without it. We have not only held
out, however, we have won a vic-tory.

“We won without obtaining a single cartridge from any-where, we won only because the workers and Red Army sol-diers
know what they are fighting for.

“If the small nations that are playthings in the hands of the Entente begin to wish for peace
with Soviet Russia, this is to be explained by our having shown in
practice how the imperialists have deceived them and how gladly
the Russian proletariat extends to them the hand of peace. Poland
will follow Estonia. Information has been received that Soviet
Russia’s peace proposals will be discussed in Poland. This
bloodless victory is of tremendous importance.”

Lenin went over to the internal situation and showed that it
boiled down to a struggle against chaos on the rail-ways. Railway
transport was hanging by a hair. If the trains stopped running
that would mean the end of the proletar-ian centres. Heroic
efforts on the part of the masses of workers would be needed to
maintain transport and facilitate the struggle against hunger and
cold. Unparalleled heroism proved possible during the Civil War
which claimed so many victims, and that heroism and those
sacrifices that decided the war in our favour were still essential
now that the war had shifted to another front, the industrial
front. Victory was now essential on this bloodless front.

“It must be understood that sacrifices are also needed here,” continued the speaker. “Sacrifices must be made
to restore the country’s economy. ’Victory or
Death’ must be-come the slogan on the industrial front. It
is necessary for workers to be conscious of the need for the
tensest struggle for victory on this front. There is a hard
struggle ahead and it will have to be carried on by tired and
hungry workers; If, however, they realise that the fate of the
working class depends on the outcome of this struggle, they will
win out.”

The question of transport was being discussed by the Council of
Defence, but the workers themselves would have to muster for the
struggle against the transport chaos and the profiteering that
intensified the chaos. Those who did not give their grain
surpluses to the state were turning the railways into an
instrument for profiteering, they were enemies, and politically-conscious workers should muster for the struggle
against them.

“We led the Red Army to victory by strict, iron disci-pline as well as agitation. What has been organised in the
Red Army must also be created on all the fronts of labour The
entire experience of the creation of the Red Army must be
transferred to the army of railway workers so that it can rise to
the same heights as the Red Army. Without sacrifice, without iron
discipline, without the employment of special-ists the Red Army
would not have been victorious, and with-out them the railway army
will not be victorious.” (Ap-plause.)

Endnotes

[1]
The meeting was held in Moscow, February 5-6, 1920. It was
attended by more than 1,000 people. The agenda was the following:
the international situation; the fight against economic
dislocation; labour conscription; transport; social security;
tasks of the B.C.P. in the proletarian revolution; public health
services; food problem.

The Conference was held at a time when transport was the main
sector of the labour front. The supply of raw material and fuel to factories and food for the population depended on the work of the railways. In a very short time thousands of locomotives and trucks and many railway lines and bridges had to be repaired. The Party mobilised Communists and assigned them to work on the railways; Lenin delivered the opening speech at this Conference. The resolution adopted by the Conference proposed to concentrate the entire attention of the country and the efforts of the working class on the internal development of Soviet Russia and particularly on the industrial and economic front. The Conference called upon all railwaymen to form “the Red Labour Transport Army with strict labour discipline”.