V. I. Lenin

Speech Delivered at the

First All-Russia Congress of Working Cossacks [1]

March 1, 1920

Comrades, allow me first of all to greet the
Congress on behalf of the Council of People’s Commissars. I
very much regret that I was unable to attend your meeting on the
opening day and did not hear Comrade Kalinin’s report. But
from what he has told me I conclude that many things relating to
the direct and immediate tasks of Soviet development, and
especially to the Cossacks, were dealt with in his speech. I
should, therefore, like to deal mostly with the international
situation of the Soviet Republic and the tasks which confront all
the working masses, including the Cossacks, because of this
situation.

Never has the international position of the Soviet Republic
been as favourable and as triumphant as it is now. If some thought
is given to the way our international situation has evolved in the
course of two years of untold difficulties and incredible
sacrifices, if some thought is given to the reasons for it, any
intelligent person will discern the main forces, the mainsprings,
and the chief alignment of forces in the incipient world
revolution.

When, over two years ago, at the very beginning of the Russian
revolution, we spoke about this approaching international, world
revolution, it was a prevision, and to a certain extent a
prediction. And the vast majority of the working people who did
not live in the large cities and who had no had a schooling in the
Party greeted this talk of an approaching world revolution with
either mistrust or indifference, and at any rate with scanty
understanding. And, indeed, it was impossible and would have been
unnatural to expect the vast mass of the working population,
especially the peasant, farming population, who are scattered over
an immense territory, to form in advance anything like a correct
idea of why world revolution was approaching, and whether it
really was international. Our experience during these two
incredibly difficult years and the experience of the working
masses of remote border regions are worthy of attention, and not
of merely being brushed aside with the remark that times were hard
but have now become easier. Yes, we must give thought to the
reason why things happened as they did, to the significance of
their happening as they did, and to the lessons that are to be
drawn from this; we must see which party’s views have been
borne out by what our own history and world history have
demonstrated during these two years. That is what I would like to
deal with first of all.

From the standpoint of the international situation the issue is
quite clear; when the matter is taken on a broad scale and
regarded not from the standpoint of one party or of one country,
but from the standpoint of all countries together, when the matter
is taken on a broad scale, then particular and trifling details
recede into the background and the chief motive forces of world
history become apparent.

When we began the October Revolution by overthrowing the power
of the landowners and capitalists, appealing for the termination
of the war, and addressing this appeal to our enemies; when after
this we came under the yoke of the German imperialists; when after
this, in October and November 1918, Germany was crushed, and
Britain, France, America and the other Entente countries became
the lords of the earth—what was our situation then? The vast
majority asked whether it was not then obvious that the cause of
the Bolsheviks was hopeless. And many added, “Not only is it
hopeless, but the Bolsheviks have turned out to be frauds. They
promised peace, but instead, after the German yoke had been thrown
off and Germany defeated, they were found to be enemies of the
whole Entente—that is, of Britain, France, America and
Japan, the most powerful countries in the world; and Russia,
ruined, weakened and exhausted by the imperialist war, and
moreover by the Civil War, has now to hold out in a fight against
the foremost countries of the world.” This was easy to believe; and it is not surprising that lack of faith made
indifference and often actual hostility to the Soviet government
more and more widespread. There is nothing surprising in it. What
is surprising is that we emerged victorious from the struggle
against Yudenich, Kolchak and Denikin who were supported in every
possible way by all the wealthiest powers in the world, powers
which no other military force on earth can even approximately
equal. The truth of this is clear to everybody, even to the blind,
and even to those who are worse than blind, those who refuse to
see at any price—even to them it is clear that we have emerged from this struggle victorious.

How did this miracle happen? It is to this question that I
would like most of all to direct your attention, because it most
clearly reveals the chief motive forces of the entire international revolution. By analysing this question in a
practical way, we can supply an answer to it, for this is
something we have already been through; we are able to say what
happened after the event.

We were victorious because we could be and were united, and
because we were able to win over allies from the camp of our
enemies. And our enemies, who are immeasurably stronger than we
are, suffered defeat because they were not, never could be and
never will be united, and because every month they fought against
us brought them further disintegration within their own camp.

I shall now speak about the fact which proves these statements.

You know that after Germany was defeated, there was nobody in
the world to oppose Britain, France and America. They had robbed
Germany of her colonies, and there was no corner on earth, there
was not a single country, where the military might of the Entente
did not prevail. It would seem that under such circumstances,
enemies of Soviet Russia as they were, they must have clearly
realised that Bolshevism aims at world revolution. We have never
made a secret of the fact that our revolution is only the
beginning, that its victorious end will come only when we have lit
up the whole world with these same fires of revolution. And we
realised quite clearly that the capitalists were frenzied enemies
of the Soviet government. It should be mentioned that when the
European struggle was over they had an army of millions, and a
powerful navy, to which we could not oppose even the semblance of
a navy or an army of any strength. And all they had to do was to
employ a few hundred thousand soldiers of this army of millions in
the war against us in the same way as they were employed in the
war against Germany, and the Entente would have crushed us. There
cannot be the slightest doubt of this in the minds of those who
have examined this question from the theoretical standpoint, and
especially of those who went through the last war and know it from
their own experience and observation.

Both Britain and France tried to seize Russia in this way. They
concluded a treaty with Japan, who had taken practically no direct
part in the imperialist war but who supplied a hundred thousand or
so soldiers to crush the Soviet Republic, acting from the Far
East. Britain at that time landed troops at Murmansk and
Archangel, not to mention the movement in the Caucasus, while
France landed soldiers and sailors in the South. This was the
first historical phase of the struggle we sustained.

The Entente at that time had an army of millions and its
soldiers were, of course, far superior to the whiteguard troops
which were mustering in Russia and which had neither organisers
nor arms. And it sent these soldiers against us. But what the
Bolsheviks had predicted happened. They said that it was not only
the Russian revolution that was concerned, but the world
revolution as well, and that the Bolsheviks had allies in the
workers of all civilised countries. These prophecies were not
realised in their direct form at the time we proposed peace to all
countries. [2] Our appeal did not meet with a general response. But the strike in Germany in January 1918 [3] showed
us that there we had the support of fairly large forces of workers
and not only of Liebknecht, who even in the days of the Kaiser had
the courage to declare publicly that the government and the
bourgeoisie of Germany were robbers. This strike ended in
bloodshed and the suppression of the workers. In the Entente
countries, of course, the bourgeoisie deceived the workers, either
lying about our appeal or not publishing it at all. For this
reason the appeal we made in November 1917 to all the nations
produced no direct result, and those who thought that this appeal
alone would call forth revolution were bound, of course, to be
bitterly disappointed. But we did not count only upon the appeal;
we counted upon more profound motive forces. We said that the
revolution would proceed differently in different countries, and
that of course it was not merely a matter of removing a
protégé of Rasputin or a villainous landowner, but of a
struggle against the more developed and enlightened bourgeoisie.

And so, when the British landed troops in the North and the
French in the South, the decisive test and the final denouement
began. The question of who was right was now to receive its
answer. Were the Bolsheviks right when they said that in order to
win the fight they had to rely upon the workers? Or were the
Mensheviks right when they said that an attempt to make a
revolution in one country would be senseless and foolhardy,
because it would be crushed by other countries? You heard this
kind of talk not only from Party people but even from people who
were just beginning to think about politics. And then came the
acid test. For a long time we did not know what the result would
be; for a long time we could not judge the result; but now, after
the event, we know what it was. Even in the English newspapers, in
spite of the frenzied lies about the Bolsheviks told by all the
bourgeois papers—even in those papers letters began to appear from British soldiers near Archangel, saying that on
Russian soil they had come across leaflets in English explaining
to them that they had been deceived, that they were being led
against workers and peasants who had set up their own state. These
soldiers wrote that they did not want to fight. As for France, we
know that there was a mutiny in the navy for which tens, hundreds,
and perhaps thousands of Frenchmen are still doing penal
servitude. These sailors declared that they would not fight the
Soviet Republic. We can now see why neither French troops nor
British troops are fighting us at present, why the British
soldiers have been removed from Archangel, and why the British
Government dare not bring them on to our soil.

One of our political writers, Comrade Radek, wrote that the
Russian soil would prove to be such that no soldier from any other
country who set foot on it would be able to fight. This seemed to
be too boastful a promise, it seemed a delusion. But it proved
correct. The soil on which the Soviet revolution had taken place
proved to be very dangerous to all countries. It seems that the
Russian Bolsheviks were right; they had already managed to bring
about unity among the workers during the time of the tsar, and the
workers had managed to create small cells, which greeted all who
believed them, whether French workers or British soldiers, with
propaganda in their own languages. True, we had only tiny sheets,
whereas in the British and French press propaganda was carried on
by thousands of newspapers and every phrase was publicised in tens
of thousands of columns. We issued only two or three quarto sheets
a month; at best it worked out at only one copy for every ten
thousand French soldiers. [4] I am not certain whether even that many reached their destination. Why, then, did
the French and British soldiers believe them? Because we told the
truth, and because when they came to Russia they saw that they had
been deceived. They had been told that they were to defend their
own country; but when they came to Russia they found that they
were to defend the rule of the landowners and capitalists, that
they were to crush the revolution. The reason we were able to win
over these people in two years was that although they had
forgotten that they had once executed their own kings, the moment
they stepped on to Russian soil, the Russian revolution and the
victories of the Russian workers and peasants reminded the
soldiers of France and Britain of their own revolutions, and,
thanks to the events in Russia, they recalled what had once
happened in their own countries.

And this showed that the Bolsheviks were right, that our hopes
were better founded than those of the capitalists, although we had
neither funds nor arms, while the Entente had both arms and an
invincible army. But we won the sympathy of these invincible
armies, so much so that they dare not bring either British
soldiers or French soldiers against us, knowing from experience
that every such attempt turns against them. That is one of the
miracles that have occurred in Soviet Russia.

Now, after four years of war, when ten million people have been
killed and twenty million crippled, when the imperialists are
asking themselves what the war was for—such questions lead
to some very interesting revelations. Certain negotiations which
took place in 1916 were recently made public in France—the
Austrian monarch began peace negotiations with France as early as
1916, but France kept quiet about it, and Albert Thomas, who
called himself a socialist and who was then a member of the
Cabinet, came to Russia to promise Constantinople, the Dardanelles
and Galicia to Nicholas II. All these facts have now become widely
known, they have been published in a French newspaper. The French
workers are now saying to Albert Thomas: “You said that you
had joined the Cabinet in order to protect our French fatherland
and the interests of the French workers; yet in 1916, when the
Austrian monarch proposed peace, you, Albert Thomas, concealed the
fact, and as a result millions of people perished in order that
the French capitalists might make more profit.” These exposures are not ended yet. We began them by publishing the
secret treaties, and the whole world saw why millions of people
had perished, why rificed in order that Nicholas II might secure
the Dardanelles and Galicia. All the imperialists knew this. So
did the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries; and if they did
not, they were downright idiots not to have studied politics and
diplomacy enough to have known what has now been made public in
the French papers. These exposures are now becoming more profound,
and there will be no end to them. Thanks to this, the workers and
peasants in every country are beginning more and more keenly to
sense the truth and to realise what the imperialist war was
about. That is why they are beginning to believe us, to see that
we spoke the truth, and to see that the imperialists were lying
when they led them to defend the fatherland.

That explains the miracle of our having won the sympathies of
the soldiers of Britain and France, weakend helpless as we were
from the military standpoint. It is no longer a prediction, but a
fact. True, the victory cost us untold hardships and incredible
sacrifices. During the past two years we have suffered untold
torments of starvation which became particularly acute when we
were cut off from the grain of the East and the
South. Nevertheless, we gained a victory, and a victory that is
not only for our country, but for all countries, for all
mankind. Never before has there been a case in history when
powerful military states have been unable to fight a country so
helpless in the military field as the Soviet Republic. Why did
this miracle happen? Because when we, the Bolsheviks, led the
Russian people into the revolution, we knew very well that this
revolution would be a painful one, that it would cost millions of
lives; but we knew that we would have the working masses of all
countries behind us, and that our truth, by exposing all lies,
would triumph more and more as time went on.

After the campaign of the powers against Russia had failed,
they tried another weapon. The bourgeoisie of those countries have
hundreds of years of experience, and were able to replace their
own unreliable weapons by others. At first they tried to use their
own soldiers to crush and stifle Russia; now they are trying it
with the help of the border states.

Tsarism, the landowners and the capitalists used to oppress a
number of the border nations—Latvia, Finland, and so on,
where they aroused hatred by centuries of oppression. “Great
Russian” became a most hateful word to all these nations,
which had been drenched in blood. And so the Entente, having
failed in fighting the Bolsheviks with the help of its own
soldiers, is now banking on the small states, hoping to strangle
Soviet Russia with their help.

Churchill, who is pursuing the same sort of policy as Nicholas
Romanov, wants to fight, and is fighting, without paying the
slightest heed to parliament, He boasted that he would lead
fourteen states against Russia—that was in 1919—and that Petrograd would he captured in September and Moscow in
December. He was a little too boastful. He banked on the hatred of
Russia in all these small states; but he forgot that in these
small states there is a clear understandiiig of what Yudenich,
Koichak and Denikin mean. They were once within a few weeks of
complete victory.

During Yudenicii’s campaign, when he was quite close to
Petrograd, an article appeared in The Times, the richest
of the British newspapers— I read this editorial myself—which implored, ordered, demanded that Finland help
Yudenich—the eyes of the whole world are upon you; you will
save liberty, civilisation and culture all over the world. Take
the field against the Bolsheviks! This is what Britain said to
Finland, and Britain has Finland completely in her pocket; it was
said to Finland, who is up to her ears in debt, and who dares not
utter a squeak because without Britain she has not enough grain to
last her a week.

Such was the pressure brought to bear on all these small states
to make them fight Bolshevism. And it failed twice. It failed
because the peace policy of the Bolsheviks turned out to be a
serious one, and was judged by its enemies to be more honest than
the peace policy of any other country, and because a number of
countries thought, “Much as we hate Great Russia, which used
to suppress us, we know that it was Yudenich, Koichak and Denikin
who suppressed us, and not the Bolsheviks.” The former head
of the Finnish white-guard government has not forgotten that in
November 1917 he personally received a document from my hands in
which we said without the slightest hesitation that we unreservedly recognised Finland’s independence. [5]

At that time this seemed a mere gesture. It was thought that
the revolt of the Finnish workers would cause it to be forgotten. But no, such things are not forgotten when they are
corroborated by the whole policy of a definite party. And even the
Finnish bourgeois government said, “Let’s think it over. After all, we have learned something during a hundred and
fifty years of oppression by the Russian tsars. If we take the
field against the Bolsheviks, we shall help to install Yudenich,
Kolchak and Denikin. And who are they? Don’t we know? Are
they not the same breed of tsarist generals who stifled Finland,
Latvia, Poland and many other nationalities? And shall we help
these enemies of ours to fight the Bolsheviks? No, let us
wait!”

They did not dare to refuse outright—they are dependent
on the Entente. They did not help us directly; they waited,
temporised, wrote Notes, sent delegations, formed commissions, sat
in conference, and did so until Yudenich, Kolchak and Denikin had
been crushed and the Entente defeated in the second campaign
too. We were the victors.

If all these saall states had taken the field against us—they were supplied with hundreds of millions of dollars
and the finest guns and weapons, and had British instructors who
had been through the war—if they had taken the field against
us, there is not the slightest doubt that we would have been
defeated. Everybody knows that very well. But they did not take
the field against us, because they realised that the Bolsheviks
are more honest. When the Bolsheviks say that they recognise the
independence of any nation, that tsarist Russia was based on the
oppression of other nations, and that the Bolsheviks never
supported this policy, do not support it and never will support
it, and that they will never go to war to oppress other
nations—when they say that, they are believed. We know this
not from the Latvian or Polish Bolsheviks, but from the
bourgeoisie of Poland, Latvia, the Ukraine and so on.

Here the international significance of the Bolshevik policy had
its effect. It was a test on international and not on Russian
soil. It was a test by fire and sword, and not by words. It was a
test in the last decisive struggle. The imperialists realised that
they had no soldiers of their own, that they could strangle
Bolshevism only by mustering international forces; but all
international forces were beaten.

What does imperialism mean? It means that a handful of rich
powers have a stranglehold on the whole world, when they know that
they have the fifteen hundred million people of the world in their
hands and have a stranglehold on them, and when these fifteen
hundred million feel what British culture, French culture and
American civilisation mean—rob for all you are worth! Today
three-quarters of Finland has already been bought up by American
multimillionaires. The officers who came from Britain and France
to our border states to instruct their troops behaved like
insolent scions of the Russian nobility in a defeated country. They all profiteered right and left. And the more the
Finnish, Polish and Latvian workers starve, the more they are
squeezed by a handful of British, American and French multimillionaires and their henchmen. And this is going on all
over the world.

The Russian Socialist Republic alone has raised the standard of
war for real emancipation; and sympathy is turning in its favour
all over the world. Through the small countries, we have won the
sympathy of all the nations of the world, and they represent
hundreds of millions of people. They are at present oppressed and
downtrodden, they are the most backward part of the population;
but the war has enlightened them. Huge masses of people were drawn
into the imperialist war. Britain brought regiments from India to
fight the Germans. France called millions of Africans to the
colours to fight the Germans. They were formed into shock units
and hurled into the most dangerous sectors, where they were mown
down like grass by machine-guns. But they learned something. Under
the tsar the Russian soldiers said, “If die we must, then
let it be fighting the landowners”—now the Africans say, “If die we must, then let it not be to help the French
predators rob the German capitalist predators, but to emancipate
ourselves from the capitalists, German and French.” In every
country of the world, even in India, where three hundred million
people are oppressed and treated as labourers by the British,
minds are awakening and the revolutionary movement is growing from
day to day. They all look towards one star, the star of the Soviet
Republic, because they know that it made tremendous. sacrifices in
order to fight the imperialists, and that it has withstood the
most severe trials.

This was the significance of the second card of the Entente to
he beaten—victory on an international scale. It means that
our peace policy is approved by the vast majority of people all
over the world. It means that the number of our allies in all
countries is growing—much more slowly than we would like, it
is true, but growing nevertheless.

The victory we won in the offensive engineered against us by
Churchill shows that our policy was right. And after that we won a
third victory—a victory over the bourgeois intelligentsia,
over the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks, who in all
countries were rabidly hostile to us, They all began to oppose the
war against Soviet Russia. In all countries the bourgeois
intelligentsia, the Socialist Revolutionaries and
Mensheviks—this breed, unfortunately, is to be found in all
countries (applause) —condemned interference in Russian
affairs. They declared in all countries that it was a disgrace.

When Britain proposed that the Germans blockade Soviet Russia,
and Germany refused, this exhausted the patience of the British
and other Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. They said,
“We are enemies of the Bolsheviks and regard them as violators and robbers. But we cannot support the proposal that the
Germans join us in strangling Russia by a hunger blockade.”
And so, within the camp of the enemies, inside their own
countries, in Paris, London and so on, where Bolsheviks are being
hounded and treated in the way revolutionaries were treated under
the tsar—in all cities, the bourgeois intelligentsia have
issued the call “Hands off Soviet Russia I” In Great
Britain this is the slogan under which the bourgeois intelligentsia are summoning meetings and issuing manifestos.

That is why the blockade had to be lifted. They could not
restrain Estonia, and we have concluded peace and can trade with
her. We have cut a window open on the civilised world. We have the
sympathy of the majority of the working people, and the
bourgeoisie are anxious to start trade with Russia as soon as
possible.

Now the imperialists are afraid of us and they have reason to
be, for Soviet Russia has emerged from this war stronger than
ever. British writers have written that the armies all over the
world are disintegrating, and that if there is any country in the
world whose army is gaining strength, that country is Soviet
Russia. They tried to slander Comrade Trotsky and said that this
was so because the Russian army is being kept under iron
discipline, which is enforced by ruthless measures, as well as by
skilful and widespread agitation.

We have never denied this. War is war, and it demands iron
discipline. Have you capitalist gentlemen not employed the same
methods? Have you not carried on agitation? Have you not a hundred
times more paper and printing works? To compare our literature
with yours is like comparing a molehill to a mountain. Yet your
propaganda has failed, and ours has succeeded.

The
Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks tried an experiment to
see whether it was not possible to get along with the capitalists
peacefully, and to pass from them to social reform. In Russia they
wanted to go over to social reform in an amicable way, so as not
to offend the capitalists. They forgot that capitalists are
capitalists, and that the only thing to do with them is to
vanquish them. They say that in the Civil War the Bolsheviks have
drenched the country in blood. But, my dear
Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, did you not have eight
months to experiment in? Were you not in power with Kerensky from
February to October 1917, during which period you had the help of
all the Cadets, of the whole Entente, of all the richest countries
in the world? Your programme then was one of social reform,
without civil war. Is there a fool in the. world who would have
resorted to revolution if you had really begun social reform? Why
did you not do so? Because your programme was a blank, an absurd
dream. Because it is impossible to come to terms with the
capitalists and secure their obedience peacefully, especially
after four years of imperialist war. Do you think there are no
clever people in Britain, France and Germany who understand that
they went to war for the division of colonies, and that ten
million people were killed and twenty million crippled over the
division of the spoils? That is what capitalism means. How can you
expect to persuade, how can you expect to come to terms with this
capitalism which has crippled twenty million people and killed ten
million? And we say to the Mensheviks and
Socialist-Revolutionaries, “You had the opportunity of trying your experiment. Why did nothing come of it? Because your
programme was a sheer utopia, a utopia not only for Russia, but
even for Germany, the Germany where the German Mensheviks and
Socialist-Revolutionaries, whom nobody will listen to, are now in
power, the Germany where a German Kornilov, armed from head to
foot, is preparing reaction, [6] the German republic where fifteen thousand workers have been slaughtered in the
streets of the cities. And this is called a democratic republic!” Yet the German Mensheviks and
Socialist-Revolutionaries have the hardihood to say that the
Bolsheviks are a wicked lot, that they have reduced the country to
a state of civil war, whereas in their own country social peace
prevails and only fifteen thousand workers have been killed in the
streets!

They say that the Civil War and bloodshed in Russia are due to
the fact that it is a backward country. But tell us, why is the
same thing happening in countries like Finland which are not
backward? Why is there a White Terror in Hungary which has shocked
the whole world? Why were Luxemburg and Liebknecht assassinated in
the German republic, where, since the overthrow of the Kaiser, the
Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries have been in power? And
why is it not the Mensheviks who are strong there, but
Kornilov—and the Bolsheviks too, who, although they are
crushed, are strong because of their faith in the justice of their
cause and because of their influence over the masses?

There you have the world revolution—which they said the
Bolsheviks were using to deceive the people with, when as a matter
of fact all hopes of compromise proved to be sheer nonsense.

A big tussle is developing among the bourgeois countries
themselves. America and Japan are on the verge of flinging
themselves at each other’s throats because Japan sat snug
during the imperialist war and has grabbed nearly the whole of
China, which has a population of four hundred million. The
imperialist gentlemen say, “We are in favour of a republic,
we are in favour of democracy; but why did the Japanese grab more
than they should under our very noses?” Japan and America
are on the verge of war, and there is absolutely no possibility of
preventing that war, in which another ten million will be killed
and twenty million crippled. France, too, says, “Who got the
colonies?—Britain.” France was victorious, but she is up to her ears in debt; she is in a hopeless position, whereas
Britain has piled up wealth. Over there, new combinations and
alliances are already being engineered. They want to fling
themselves at each other’s throats again over the division
of colonies. And an imperialist war is again brewing and cannot be
prevented. It cannot be prevented, not because the capitalists,
taken individually, are vicious—individually they are just
like other people —but because they cannot free themselves
of the financial meshes in any other way, because the whole world
is in debt, in bondage, and because private property has led and
always will lead to war.

All this is causing the roots of the international revolution
to strike deeper and deeper. Because of this we have won over the
French and British soldiers; because of this we have won the
confidence of the small states, and our international position is
now better than ever before. And on the basis of a simple
calculation we can say that though many hardships still await us,
the worst difficulties have already been overcome. The all-powerful Entente no longer holds out any terrors for us: we
have defeated it in decisive battles. (Applause.)

True, they may still incite Poland against us. The Polish
landowners and capitalists are growling and threatening, saying
that they want to get back the territory of I772, [7] that they want to subjugate the Ukraine. We know that France is
inciting Poland, flinging millions into that country, because
France is bankrupt anyhow and is now putting her last stake on
Poland. And we say to the comrades in Poland that we respect her
liberty as we respect the liberty of every other nation, and that
the Russian workers and peasants, who have experienced the yoke of
tsarism, know very well what that yoke meant. We know that it was
a heinous crime to divide Poland up among the German, Austrian and
Russian capitalists, and that this division doomed the Polish
nation to long years of oppression, when the use of the native
language was regarded as a crime, and when the whole Polish nation
was brought up in one idea, namely, to throw off this treble
yoke. We therefore understand the hatred the Poles feel, and we
declare to them that we shall never cross the line on which our
troops are now stationed—and they are stationed a long way
from any Polish population. We are proposing peace on this basis,
because we know that this will be a tremendous acquisition for
Poland. We do not want war on account of frontiers, because we
want to obliterate that accursed past when every Great Russian was
regarded as an oppressor.

But since Poland responds to our peace proposal by silence,
since she continues to give a free hand to French imperialism,
which is inciting her to a war against Russia, since fresh
trainloads of munitions are arriving in Poland every day and the
Polish imperialists threaten to start a war on Russia, we say,
“Just try it! You’ll get a lesson you’ll never forget.” (Applause.)

When soldiers died during the imperialist war for the enrichment of the tsar and the landowners, we said frankly and
openly that defence of the fatherland in the imperialist war was
treachery, that it meant defence of the Russian tsar, who was to
get the Dardanelles, Constantinople and so on. But now that we
have published the secret treaties, now that we have embarked on a
revolution against imperialist war, now that we have borne untold
hardships for the sake of that revolution, now that we have shown
that the capitalists in Russia have been suppressed and dare not
even dream of returning to the old system, we say that we are not
defending the right to plunder other nations, but are defending
our proletarian, revolution, and will defend it to the very
end. The Russia which has been emancipated and which for two years
has borne untold suffering for the sake of her Soviet revolution—that Russia we shall defend to our last drop of
blood! (Applause.)

We know that the time is gone when we were pressed on all sides
by imperialist armies and when the working folk of Russia still
did not understand the tasks that confronted us. Guerrilla methods
prevailed then, each tried to grab a weapon for himself without
consideration for the cause as a whole, and disorder and robbery
prevailed in the localities. In the course of, these two years we
have created a united and disciplined army. It has been a very
difficult task. You know that the science of war cannot be learned
all at once and you also know that only the officers, the colonels
and generals, who have remained from the tsarist army, know that
science. You have heard, of course, that these old colonels and
generals have been responsible for a great deal of treachery,
which cost us tens of thousands of lives. All such traitors had to
he cleared out, and at the same time we had to select a corps of
commanders from among the former officers, so that the workers and
peasants might learn from them; for a modern army cannot be built
up without science, and we have had to put it in the hands of
military experts. It has been a difficult task, but that, too, we
have accomplished.

We have created a united army, an army which is now directed by the advanced section, by experienced Communists,
who have everywhere succeeded in putting agitation and propaganda
on a proper footing. True, the imperialists are also carrying on
propaganda, but the peasants are already beginning to understand
that there are different kinds of propaganda. They are beginning
to tell by instinct what is true and what is false. At any rate,
the propaganda which is being carried on by the Mensheviks and
which was carried on by Kolchak and Denikin is no longer as
successful as it was. Take their posters and pamphlets. They talk
about a Constituent Assembly, they talk about liberty and a
republic. But the workers and peasants, who have secured liberty
at the price of their blood, now understand that the term
“Constituent Assembly” serves as a screen for the capitalists; and if anything decided the issue of the struggle
against Kolchak and Denikin in our favour, despite the fact that
they were supported by the Great Powers, it was that both the
peasants and working Cossacks, who for a long time remained in the
other camp, have in the end come over to the workers and
peasants—and it was only this that finally decided the war
and brought about our victory.

With this victory behind us, we must now do our utmost to
consolidate it on another front, the bloodless front, the front of
the war against the economic chaos to which we have been reduced
by the war against the landowners and capitalists, against Kolchak
and Denikin. You know what this victory has cost us; you know what
a desperate fight we had to put up when we were cut off from the
graingrowing regions, from the Urals and Siberia. At that time the
Moscow and Petrograd workers had to suffer intolerable torments of
hunger. Attempts were made to frighten you with the term
“dictatorship of the proletariat”, to frighten the peasants and working Cossacks, and instil into their minds the
idea that dictatorship meant the arrogant rule of the worker. Actually, however, while Britain and America were doing
all they could to support Kolchak and Denikin, the workers of the
central cities, exercising their dictatorship, did their best to
show everyone by their example how to break away from the
landowners and capitalists and march with the working people; for
labour unites, while property disunites.
That was the thesis we stuck to throughout these two years, and it
led us to victory. We were united by labour, whereas the Entente
is steadily disintegrating, because property has turned the
imperialists into wild beasts, who from first to last are always
squabbling over the division of spoils. Labour has made us a force
that is uniting all the working people. And now “dictatorship” is a word that can frighten only
utterly ignorant people, if such are still to be found in
Russia.

I do not know if any person still remains who has not been
taught a lesson by Kolchak and Denikin, and who has not come to
realise what the dictatorship of the proletariat means—it
means that never has the proletariat of Petrograd, Moscow and the
industrial centres suffered such hardships as during these past
two years. The peasants of the producing gubernias are now in such
a position that they, having possession of the land, get the whole
product for themselves. Since the Bolshevik revolution the Russian
peasants, for the first time in thousands of years, are working
for themselves and can feed better. Yet at the same time, during
these two years of struggle the workers, the proletariat, while
exercising their dictatorship, have been suffering untold torments
of hunger. You now see that dictatorship means leadership, the
union of the disunited and scattered working masses, a single,
closely—knit whole directed against the capitalists in order
to defeat them and to prevent a recurrence of the bloodshed in
which ten million people perished and twenty million were
crippled. The union of all the labouring people, a single iron
will is required to defeat a force like this, which can rely on
mighty armies and modern culture. This single iron will can be
furnished only by the working masses, only by the workers, the
proletariat, only by those class-conscious workers whom decades of
strikes and demonstrations have trained in struggle, and who have
succeeded in overthrowing tsarism. It can be furnished only by the
workers who have borne the brunt of the two years of unparalleled
civil war, fighting in the front ranks and creating a united Red
Army, which has been joined by tens of thousands of the finest
workers, peasants and military and political students, who have
been the first to perish and who, in Moscow, Petrograd, I
vanovo-Voznesensk, Tver, Yaroslavi and all the industrial cities,
have been suffering the terrible torments of hungers And this
hunger has welded the workers together and brought the peasants
and working Cossacks of the producing gubernias to see for
themselves that the Bolsheviks were right, for the workers were
thus enabled to hold their own in the struggle against the
whiteguards.

That is why the working class is entitled to say that by these
two years of sacrifice and war it has proved to all the working
peasants and to every working Cossack that we must unite and join
forces. We must fight those who are profiteering on the famine
because they find it more profitable to sell grain at a thousand
rubles a pood than to sell it at the fixed price. There is money
to be made that way, but it leads back to the old times, and we
shall once more find ourselves in that accursed pit where tsarisin
ruled and where the capitalists condemned humanity to the
imperialist slaughter for the sake of their profits. It would turn
us back, and that i something that cannot be allowed. After the
struggle against Kolchak and Denikin, the working peasants and
Cossacks came to realise the truth that we need unity, and they
are taking their places by the side of the workers and looking
upon the working class as their leaders. The working peasants saw
that no injury derived from the workers’ government for
there was none to see; it was only the landowners, capitalists and
kulaks who did, but then, they are the worst enemies of the
working people, they are the allies of those imperialists who were
the cause of the bloody war and all the miseries of the
people. All working people must unite—only then shall we be
victorious.

The bloody war is over and we are now waging a bloodless war, a
war against the economic chaos, ruin, poverty and disease to which
we have been reduced by four years of imperialist war and two
years of civil war. You know that the economic chaos is
terrible. In the border regions of Russia, in Siberia and in the
South there are today tens of millions of poods of grain; millions
of poods have already been collected and transported, yet there is
a terrible famine in Moscow, people are dying of starvation
because grain cannot be delivered; and it cannot be delivered
because the Civil War has completely devastated the country,
wrecked the railways and destroyed scores of bridges. Locomotives
have broken down, and we are unable to repair them quickly. We are
now trying with great difficulty to secure aid from abroad. We
know, however, that it is now possible to start on the complete
restoration of industry.

How are we going to restore industry when we cannot exchange
manufactured goods for grain because there aren’t any?

We know that when the Soviet government takes grain from the
peasants at a fixed price it pays them only in paper. What is this
paper worth? Although it is not the price of the grain we can only
pay in paper money. But we say that this is essential, that the
peasants must give their grain as a loan. Is there a single
well-fed peasant who would refuse bread to a hungry worker if he
knew that this worker, once he had been fed, would repay him in
goods? No honest and politically-conscious peasant would refuse to
give grain as a loan. Peasants who have surplus grain must let the
state have it for paper money—and that means a loan. The
only people who do not understand, who do not realise this, are
the supporters of capitalism and exploitation, those who want the
well-fed man to profit even more at the expense of the hungry
man. The workers’ government cannot tolerate that, and we
shall stop at no sacrifice to combat it. (Applause.)

We have now concentrated all our forces on the restoration of
industry and are steadfastly waging this new war, in which we
shall be as victorious as we have been hitherto. We have
instructed a commission of scientists and engineers to draw up a
plan for the electrification of Russia. The plan will be ready in
two months and will enable us to got a full and clear picture of
how, in a few years, the whole of Russia will be covered by a
network of electric transmission lines, will be restored in a new
way, not the old way, and how she will achieve that culture which
our prisoners of war saw in Germany.

That is the way we must restore our industry, and that is the
way we shall return a hundredfold the loan of grain we are taking
from the peasants. We know that this cannot be done in a year or
two; the minimum programme of electrification is calculated for a
period of not less than three years, and the complete success of
this advanced industry will require not less than ten years. But
if we were able to I hold on for two years in such a bloody war,
we shall be able to hold on for ten years and more in face of any
difficulties. We have gained that experience in leading the masses
with the help of urban workers which will carry us through all
difficulties on this bloodless front of struggle against economic
chaos and will lead to greater victories than those we gained in
the war against international imperialism. (Applause .)

Endnotes

[1]
The First All-Russia Congress of Working Cossacks was held
February 29-March 6, 1920. It was attended by 339 delegates from
nearly all Cossack regions. The agenda of the Congress was the
following: Soviet development in Cossack regions; food policy;
organisation of national economy, etc. Lenin took part in the work
of the Congress, and showed the true road for the working Cossacks
in his speech on March 1. The Congress denounced the attempts of
the upper strata of Cossacks, in company with the landowners and
bourgeoisie, to separate the Cossacks from the common cause of all
the working people . The Congress resolution stressed that the
chief task of the working Cossacks was to unite with the workers
and peasants of Soviet Russia. The Congress expressed in favour of
the participation of working Cossacks in Soviet governmental
bodies on the same conditions as all workers and peasants, called
upon the Cossacks to strengthen the union of workers and peasants
and concentrate all efforts on overcoming the economic devastation
in the country.

[2]
Lenin refers to the Decree on Peace adopted by the Second
All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and
Soldiers’ Deputies on October 26 (November 5), 1917 (see
present edition, Vol. 26, pp. 249-53).

The Decree on Peace proposed to all belligerent nations and their governments that they immediately
sign an armistice and start negotiations on a just democratic
peace.

[3] Lenin refers to a strike of workers in Germany
which began on January 28, 1918 in protest against the rapacious
peace terms pro-posed by the German delegation during the
Brest-Litovsk peace talks. Over 500,000 workers at armaments
factories went on strike. The strikers demanded peace without
annexations and indemnities as proposed by the Soviet delegation,
the participation of worker representatives of all countries in
peace talks, the repeal of the war-time laws in the country and
granting of democratic civil rights to the people. The workers of
Hamburg, Kid, Leipzig, the Ruhr region and other industrial
centres also went on strike. All in all, over 1,000,000 people
took part in the January political strike. Arbeiterrkte were set
up in a number of cities during the strike.

At the head of the strike were revolutionary stewards elected by workers mainly from among the active trade
unionists. However, the majority of revolutionary stewards were
members of the Independent Social-Democratic Party, the activities
of which were directed by collaborators. This weakened the forces
of the strikers.

Though the January political strike ended in the defeat of the workers, its significance was very great. Lenin
considered that this strike "marks a turn of sentiment among the
German proletariat (see present edition, Vol. 27, p. 546)

[4]
This refers to the newspapers published in 1918-19 in English
German and French by the groups of foreign Communists set up at
the C.C., R.C.P.(B.); they were for distribution among soldiers of
the interventionist armies and among prisoners of war. The
English newspaper The Call was distributed on the Northern
Front. Two German publications, Der Vdlkerfriede (Peace
of the Peoples and Revolution (World Revolution), were distributed among the German prisoners of war and in the
Ukraine. The French weekly La Lanserne was distributed in
the South of Russia

[5]
On December iS (31), 1917, Lenin handed Svinhufvnd, head of the
Finnish bourgeois government, the decree of the Council of
People’s Commissars granting independence to Finland. The
decree was endorsed by the All-Russia Central Executive Committee
on December22, 1917 (January 4, 1918).

[6]
Lenin refers to the preparations for a military-monarchist putsch
in Germany. The leader of the German reactionaries, Kapp, gave his
name to the revolt known as the "Kapp putsch" to which the Social
Democratic government offered no resistance. On March 13, 1920,
army units were moved to Berlin and meeting with no resistance
from the government declared it dissolved and set up a military
junta. The German working class responded with a general strike
and on March 17, under pressure from the working class,
Kapp’s government fell and state power again passed into the
hands of the Social-Democrats, who by deceit succeeded in
frustrating the general strike.

[7]
The slogan calling for restoration of the 1772 frontiers implied
the seizure of Byelorussia, Lithuania, part of the Ukraine as far
as the middle Dnieper, and the southern part of Latvia; it
reflected the aggressive tendencies of the Polish bourgeoisie and
landowners.