## March 13, 1920

V. I. Lenin, in response to this note from N. N. Krestinsky, wrote:

"I have not finished reading Bergman's communication and therefore cannot vote.
Let comrade Dzerzhinsky decide, after conferring with Krestinsky."

F. E. Dzerzhinsky wrote in the margin of this text: "I am against intervention. F. Dzerzhinsky."

## REPORT ON THE INTERNATIONAL AND ECONOMIC SITUATION OF RUSSIA AT THE XVII MOSCOW GUBERNIAL CONFERENCE

**March 13, 1920**

The international situation of our Republic has never been as favorable as it is at present — strange as this may sound to an assembly of people who know perfectly well and feel keenly the full weight of the contemporary situation, especially when the end of winter has brought unprecedented intensification of cold and every kind of deprivation. Paradoxical though it may be, the objective fact testifies that we have won the most serious victory over the entire Entente — that is, over all the richest capitalist countries. And the more often one reads the reviews of the bourgeois press — Western European and American — particularly the reviews of the capitalist press and especially that portion most hostile to the Soviet Republic — the clearer becomes the enormous victory we have achieved.... When they resolved to help with all their strength Yudenich, Kolchak, and Denikin, they were conscious that they were fighting against the revolution at home, fighting against the world revolution. During two years of struggle they threw hundreds of millions in gold to assist the Russian White Guards, organized schools for Russian officers, and dispatched thousands of their own people to the White Guard armies and sent tens of thousands of Russian prisoners there. The White Guards received support from all the most powerful states that dominate the entire globe. There is not a corner to which America's power does not extend — financial power, bank power, and military power alike. The German fleet was the only rival to America, but now, when America is constructing an enormous quantity of vessels and when England is in alliance with it, no struggle against them at sea would be possible for any state. From the point of view of military strength, the struggle seemed hopeless, for these powers are many times stronger than us even now. Had they been able to deploy against us the military force they possess, the fate of Soviet Russia would have been decided in a matter of months. And yet, despite all this, we have achieved victory, because all the powers were compelled to withdraw their troops, and now, after the lifting of the blockade, after the removal of the cordons sanitaires, they get in each other's way, and the only one who remains against us is Poland.

Polish landowners are rattling weapons with all their might. We know well that trains with weapons arrive in Warsaw from Western Europe almost every day. Here, of course, it is clear that Western European imperialism does not wish to discard the quantity of iron and steel that has been fashioned into shells, cannons, and so forth. They reason as a journalist in one newspaper put it: if we want to sell these cannons and shells on the market, we won't get a kopeck; if we sell them to Kolchak and Denikin, we'll make a profitable deal, because if we made a ruble for every ruble we supplied to our own state, now, perhaps, we'll make ten rubles for every ruble. From the commercial point of view, from the standpoint of free trade — our Mensheviks still hold to this point of view — there could be no other calculation: after all, they would lose the entire supply anyway. And when recently all this ended up in our hands, the capitalists threw up their hands and said: our merchants miscalculated, they threw away hundreds of millions of rubles; it would have been better if they had sunk them all, as the Germans did with their ships, but instead they did something worse — they gave them to the Bolsheviks *(applause)*. Now trade amounts to this: cannons and rifles are dispatched day after day to Warsaw and handed over to Polish landowners and capitalists, who cannot pay for them with anything except by giving up land, selling shares wholesale and retail.

So far they have managed to hoodwink the Polish masses; they manage this because Poland was oppressed under tsarism, and the hatred for "Muscovites" is still alive there. But Poland is a country ruined to the extreme degree. You know that Poland suffered from the imperialist war far more than other countries. Russian and German armies passed through its territory many times, entire villages were destroyed, and in this ruined country landowners and capitalists attempt to maintain themselves by accepting weapons from the Entente, giving up land and shares and banking on receiving reinforcement for their troops, but they themselves do not know whether they will fight or not. The situation is such that no one — neither we nor the Polish representatives — knows whether they will fight or not. But in order to obtain more supplies, they pretend they want to fight. Many parties there preach that war with the Bolsheviks is necessary; they say to us, as a capitalist country cannot live beside Soviet Russia; it's either us or them. This is how Polish landowners reason. From this point of view they preach war against Russia, sacrificing their interests, the interests of their money bags. But the Polish petty bourgeoisie do not want war, nor does the Polish proletariat. For if the entire Polish petty bourgeoisie wanted to fight, then, common sense tells us, they would have helped Denikin when he stood at Oryol. But what would have been the result then? Denikin — in Russia, he is a tsarist general, a landowner, he would again establish the policy of Russian capitalists, which Kerensky continued with the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, a policy of refusing to recognize autonomous small states, a policy that concluded a secret treaty, exposed by the Bolsheviks, when landowners were promised Constantinople and the Dardanelles for victory over the Germans. Denikin's victory would have been Poland's defeat, for France would never have defended Poland.

France needs tsarist Russia so that it could defend her, so that it could be a threat to Germany. France desires nothing so much as the restoration of the monarchy in Russia. England fears tsarist Russia because England was Russia's chief rival. In time they divided Persia, but now England will "devour" it all, England strives to "devour" almost all the Caucasus, and our victory over Denikin brought it about that France began to struggle against England. Between France and England intrigues appeared, and although they call themselves the League of Nations, in reality these are two dogs fighting over a bone. In words they have a union of nations, a League of Nations and so forth, but in fact they have no unity whatsoever.

We enjoy the support of workers in all countries. Workers in France and Germany refused to fight against us. English soldiers have been withdrawn from Arkhangelsk. Our broad front grows stronger, while our enemies fight among themselves like mad dogs. This is what brought it about that for two years we struggle in the country that was most ruined of all, that after the imperialist war we endured a civil war supported by all the landowners and capitalists of the entire world, and yet we won.

Many ask — what was the war for? Previously people did not want to raise this question, but one cannot maintain censorship indefinitely. And so exposures begin. What we did immediately is now slowly coming to light in all European countries and in America.

Last year there was an American here, Bullitt, to whom we said that we were prepared to make territorial concessions in concluding peace.... When Lloyd George was asked whether it was true that such a peace had been proposed to him, he lied, saying he had never heard of any such peace. And then a book by Bullitt came out in America, in which he publishes the text of our draft treaty. The imperialists were thus exposed by Bullitt as utter fools. They did not accept peace and staked hundreds of millions of money and hundreds of thousands of people and lost the wager. Recently in France, negotiations have been published that the former Austrian monarch began with France, offering her peace. Albert Thomas was in France at the time. He knew of these negotiations but concealed them, and France lost so much that no country can repay her. The exposures show that peace in 1916 was possible, but the capitalists did not want it. And now the imperialist countries find themselves in a position where they do not want to conclude peace with the Bolsheviks. But we say that there is not a single country where people do not know the word "Bolshevik" and the word "Soviet" and where workers do not stand on the side of Soviet power. This is what deprived the Entente of the ability to wage war against us. This is what it all comes down to — the international situation.

Externally they all appear strong, in reality they are powerless; they have no soldiers. Exposures between them go on day after day, the struggle goes on in such a way that they expose each other. Japan participated least in the war and enriched herself most. America of all countries saw not a single soldier on its own soil, and the richest of all countries — France and England — are in debt to it, deeply in debt. Before the war America was indebted to France and England; after the war they remained in debt to America. Until now workers and peasants have been told: the Germans will pay. Now even fools see how much they have robbed Germany, Germany will pay nothing, you cannot rob a man who is already naked and starving. Bankruptcy approaches with each year. Billions in interest alone must be paid to capitalists and landowners for allowing workers to cut their own throats. They approach crash far more rapidly than could have been supposed. They are all fragmented, while we prove to be united not only within Soviet Russia but also outside it.

Poland continues to threaten us, Finland has replaced its more peaceful ministry with a more military one, and there too weapons are rattling. How much serious intent is there, one cannot tell, but they maintain military readiness. Therefore we cannot demobilize our army and must move all forces to the west, and this is extraordinarily difficult because the transport question is grave, transport is destroyed. We know that the Poles are waiting for the moment when our soldiers will be further away, but the war with Kolchak makes it difficult to transfer forces to the Western Front. And we must tell our soldiers: *wait!*

It is pleasant to liberate Chita after Nizhneudinsk, this is pleasant, of course, but we have to endure struggle with our commanders, who want to advance still further, another hundred versts, and then, they say, we'll finish them off completely. But we must say: it doesn't matter if we get Siberia in half a year — that is unimportant, but salvation from war with Poland — that is important. If such a situation arises, Polish landowners will rattle weapons, but they will not dare to fight. An old saying says: if you prepare for war, you will get peace.

But the destruction of transport has reached monstrous proportions. In the richest countries the condition of transport has reached the point where they are reducing passenger traffic. Countries, as victors, which collect tribute from the vanquished — even in these countries the war has caused transport destruction. In Russia this destruction is aggravated by the fact that both White and Red blew up bridges. The Don region and the North Caucasus and many other localities passed from hand to hand, which each time was accompanied by destruction. In connection with the impossibility of demobilizing our army, in connection with the difficult situation, when the country has sacrificed everything to war and when all is ruined, it is natural that our slogans must be based on this situation. The condition of our economy is grave, and this does not allow us to undertake major work. If French and English soldiers fought us and we won, then all the more will we win on the domestic front; but this struggle is far more prolonged, a struggle one cannot wage on the battlefield.... Two years ago, after the October Revolution, we had ten — twelve million bayonets, but we did not have an army. The old army had disintegrated, and it was good that it did — it could only support landowners and capitalists — and new armies did not appear at once, and months passed before we learned, on new foundations, guided by communists, to create an army for which unprecedented sacrifices were made. No section of the population has made such sacrifices as communist workers; never has the number of the dead been so great as the number of fallen cadet-communists; and officers, colonels of the old army who served with us, expressed amazement and said: the soldier would not have endured even a tenth of what he now endures under the tsar and capitalist. And officers who look soberly at things and consequences, not being communists themselves, said that this army wins because it knows what it is fighting for. Our army knew that it was fighting precisely for its own interests. This decided the war. But this required months of long labor, and on no front did we achieve victory at once. Denikin reached Oryol, and after a tremendous defeat, straining all our forces, we were able to achieve victory.

Now all the experience we accumulated during the war must be transferred to the front of labor. This cannot be done mechanically; the fundamental relationship between classes remains. In the war we won because the masses followed the workers, with the old military specialists — the old tsarist generals, colonels of the old bourgeois army — who committed betrayals and treacheries hundreds of times, and with each betrayal thousands of soldiers perished from this treachery, and yet we obtained tens of thousands of generals and officers, and they formed our army, without being communists, preserving sympathy for capitalists, preserving a negative attitude toward Bolshevism; living in a military atmosphere, consciously supporting peasants and workers, they were regenerated. This is the fundamental relationship between the communists who led the proletariat and the bourgeois specialists — this fundamental relationship we applied in practice and must apply with appropriate modifications to the tasks before us.

I have, unfortunately, gone somewhat far, and now must speak in brief outline about economic labor, about the significance of labor armies, about trade unions, about combining principles and about the collegial system of administration. Concerning labor armies, why is militarization necessary? It is necessary for two reasons. Our armies are large, we cannot move them at once, because our transport is destroyed, we must use them where they are, taking into account the habits that have developed, and it is necessary to restore economic life. We have grain, millions of poods, and we cannot transport it, and the absence of grain creates not only the torment of hunger but the impossibility of any construction. When we have achieved victories on the front, we must move on to other tasks, and one cannot fail to account for this situation in the present struggle. Enormous numbers of errors are made by reasoning about the general situation while accounting for the present given situation. We have large armies, larger than necessary, but we cannot either disband them or quickly move them to the necessary front. Therefore we must use them. This is one of the reasons why we stripped all institutions, saying: everything for the Red Army. We spared nothing for the Red Army and said: however great the sacrifices, we must defeat those who carry capitalist victory in their wake, for then we can preserve the economy of the country. This is correct reasoning; the workers and peasants proved their sympathy for Soviet power precisely in this — that they went over to the side of Soviet power. Thus the working masses accomplished the deed of sympathy; this sympathy was given, and for the sake of the Red Army we could take the last from the country, which was already in the most extreme state of ruin. Now, after we have endured two years of struggle, the country has found itself in an even more ruined condition. We said: everything for the war. If war is just for the sake of victory for workers and peasants — everything for complete victory, spare nothing, act with military discipline. If we say — dictatorship of the proletariat — this means a single will, so that all measures, clearly set, firmly established goals go toward it, so that no one can distract or hold us back. We are in a life-and-death struggle with our mortal enemy, and whoever is not with us is against us. Now [we must] conquer ruin; this is an enemy no less mortal, it brings hunger and cold, and an even more dangerous enemy because the country is in even deeper exhaustion than before. The war has ended on the bloody front, the war continues on the bloodless front. This war is as merciless and cruel as any other war, and there is no time for doubt or argument, and we will not permit it.... In a word, everything must be sacrificed to this goal, because it is clear to all that the country, after two years of war, suffers even greater hunger. We did not experience such a tormenting end as the end of the nineteenth* year. And now the country is so ruined, hunger is so great, everyone is naked and barefoot, Russia has never reached such proportions of ruin, and it cannot continue to exist in this way. Therefore the war continues; it is necessary to muster all forces with full energy and to act as the proletariat has done: whoever interferes, we will eliminate; the proletariat must lead so as to tear the working masses from under the yoke of landowners and capitalists.... Therefore, when need has reached the extreme degree, this militarization becomes a necessary foundation; to act by means of the masses at once, so exhausted, ruined, reduced to despair — this is difficult, and here one must act as on war, when one went firmly ahead and did not allow anyone the slightest wavering. We could not discuss whether victory or not, and the front ranks of communists went and achieved victory over an enemy more powerful. In exactly the same way we must act now, and this is why the militarization of labor is not invented — it is a necessity dictated by the extreme degree of ruin. If we won, it is only because the advance workers, communists rose above guild and group and local interests; they were able to go in the front ranks and perish, and only thus drew along the unconscious workers. By these same means we must proceed [toward the liquidation of] economic ruin. This victory is more difficult; here self-sacrifice, an explosion of enthusiasm cannot bring victory. Here a prolonged organization is needed; here the Russian person has always been weak, and we must preserve all those organizational skills, all that power of unity, that unity of will which workers and peasants demonstrated during the civil war, at any cost, must strain all efforts against the disintegration that is threatening in grave form — hunger, cold, disorder of transport — stand against all this and lead the country from it to prosperity. If we have grain, salt, we will begin to give it to the muzhik not in the form of colored paper, when they are barefoot and naked, but in the form of exchange for goods. In Siberia, in Ukraine there are wealthy peasants who have richest surplus grain, which they did not hand over to Soviet power and, after switching through two dozen governments, they do not wish to recognize any power now. Here a long, stubborn struggle is needed, a struggle which we endured in conditions of the greatest military strain; we must spread it to the enormous sphere of our broad task. We lack people, we lack workers; we know that the forces in Petrograd and Moscow are exhausted, depleted, and we say: in no other way than through militarization, military valor, military concentration of forces can we emerge from the crisis. And this is where trade unions must play a major role; power must be in their hands, but one must keep in mind that the Soviets are the leaders. If we say that trade unions [should handle] economic questions while the Soviets [handle] political power, this would be absurd. We know that trade unions proved themselves equal to the task because they gave forces, sparing the best workers, they surrendered them at the state's demand for military work. Just as now we must help the trade unions, reinforce them, give them support; they cannot stand on a narrow point of view.

It is necessary that Soviet power hold firm in the struggle against ruin; it is necessary that Soviet power be able to be supreme in any production whatsoever with collective, conscious interests, with unity of will. This is why hesitation on this score should not occur. This lies on the obligation of the trade unions; otherwise they always risk bringing it about that people transfer the interests of the socialist state to the interests of separate groups. All this must be kept in mind during ruin, when nine-tenths of our economy is destroyed.... All this existed during the war, and we won because we sacrificed everything for one goal. If we do not solve this task in a short time, then no branch of industry, nothing will save us from destruction. This is why in matters of collegiality we say that we must base ourselves on the unity of the proletariat; had we not had absolute unity of will, absolute firmness of will, is it not clear that they would have knocked us down just as they did in Hungary — everyone understands this. And if firmness was needed during the war, this firmness is needed now. If they say that we must have colleges, that there must be a collegial system in the administration of the economy, [then we must determine] to what degree this structure is possible; otherwise the danger will be that collegiality will mean loss of time in discussion. We will select people from the workers who administered, keeping in mind the new order, but from Moscow and Petersburg there is an insignificant number, and each of them occupies the highest level of administration. We are told that collegiality is needed in order to better understand [matters of] administration. But for administration one must take assistants. This is discussed in the theses of the CC, in which this question has been decided; it gives a definite position as to how one must place specialists. We did not fear to place generals, who shot workers under the tsar, hundreds of them were traitors, yet tens of thousands created the Red Army. If we cannot place them properly, then we will be unable to create any communism.... In order to learn administration, we must [place commissars] and assistants with [specialists]. In all decisions it is proclaimed that members of the college must divide the work, not only according to separate types of work, but so that each assignment corresponds to a definite person. With worker administration it is necessary for each worker to clarify for himself the mechanics of this administration, so that the worker who has shown some ability as an administrator be advanced from lower posts to higher ones, be placed in an administrative position, be tested and advanced, so that dozens of workers are on record. We have not learned to do this, and every hesitation, where it exists, where it appears, must be eradicated, and I think at the party congress this will be eradicated.

Our situation remains difficult: the war on the bloody front ends, while on the bloodless front it continues. Ruin and calamities are so great that unprecedented strain is necessary; not the slightest loss of forces can be allowed to slip by. Here there must be maximum unity of will, and to this correspond the tasks that are set before us, and when we achieve elementary conditions of existence, defeating typhus, hunger, cold, defeating the difficult conditions of transport — difficulties are aggravated — we will emerge from this grave situation. It is necessary that our victory give us what exists in Siberia and the Caucasus, where there is the most grain and the most salt. Only one must not forget that in war the matter was simpler; in economic ruin one cannot win so easily. Here a prolonged struggle is needed over a number of years, a long struggle that would teach us not to waste a single hour or minute in vain, not to lose a single person who has shown some ability as an administrator. Let us have not the slightest loss of time, not the slightest hesitation in resolving these questions, not the slightest vagueness, indefiniteness, which often occur in a college — this we must not permit. Let our party conference, our congress turn itself into business decisions; not only will we cease to argue about general questions, but we will decide business questions...

**CHAIRMAN:** Perhaps someone will want to ask Comrade Lenin some questions.

**LENIN:** Permit me to read a note: is it possible that.... (reads).

In the apparatus for the exchange of products stand specialists; I do not know whether they stand more firmly than in the Red Army. All specialists remain from the bourgeoisie, imbued with a bourgeois worldview; the overwhelming majority of the bourgeois intelligentsia was against us and remains so. And in the army we observed this tendency, which expressed itself in betrayals. We know that Yudenich's march on Petrograd was conceived because there were direct connections with the "National Center," and yet we did not consider it necessary to throw out the bourgeois specialists.... In a capitalist country it turned out that people had learned communist worldview, only for this reason were they able not to confine themselves to uprising against capitalists but to defeat them. But perhaps defeating capitalists will be easier than being able to conduct matters in struggle with peasant-capitalists — against each capitalist stand hundreds or thousands of workers, and it amounts to throwing them off, but here stand peasants in far greater quantity. And each peasant who sells grain is a capitalist. Here workers appeared and threw down the power of tsarism. This always happens because the proletariat knows how to organize large-scale production. To unite the peasantry is far more difficult because there is no such production here; in this lies the communist peculiarity. If we can create communism, it is only because the peasantry is already sufficiently educated. We need special people — specialists, and we have placed them in our state. If the devoted proletariat understands this clearly, then here is an enormous difficulty; one must take specialists into work. Which of us learned to command? We learned to conduct underground propaganda against tsarism, but where and when did workers learn to administer? We had no experience; we began to acquire this experience from October 1917, when the bourgeois specialists were acquiring it over decades. The task seems insoluble, but in the Red Army we solved it, and so here not one specialist without a People's Commissar should be. If we ourselves oversleep, then they will beat us. If so, then our party organization must be such that the bourgeois specialist works for us, not we for him. But without bourgeois specialists we cannot build any branch. The capitalists say: we did not succeed in conquering us with war, it will succeed better with trade.... They will bring goods, come and say: please, take from us, and what is this Soviet power of yours — Moscow or Petersburg — what is that to us. If Soviet power had not been centralized, if the proletariat had not learned during the war what proletarian power is — but we have learned something in two years. Of course, if we had oversleep and not monopolized foreign trade.... they would have brought goods to the peasants, manufactures, footwear, taken grain, and left Russian industry to die. They do this, therein lies their power in India, where England has three hundred million people in her hands. But when there is the power of the proletariat, when they have learned that there can be no help from the White Guards, we say that the war has not ended...

**Printed for the first time, from an unrevised transcript**

**EDITORIAL NOTE:**

The XVII Moscow Gubernial Conference of the RKP(b) was held March 13—14, 1920 in the building of the Gubernial Soviet Commissariat at 10 Sadovaya Triumfalnaya Street. The conference discussed the theses of the CC RKP(b) for the IX Party Congress, which provided for the mobilization of skilled workers, the implementation of compulsory labor service, the militarization of the economy, and the utilization of military units for economic needs.

The conference devoted considerable attention to discussion of the question of organizing the administration of production, attracting specialists to the sphere of economic construction, and the significance and role of trade unions in fulfilling economic tasks.

On the first day of the conference's work, V. I. Lenin delivered the present report on the international and economic situation of Russia.

The numbering of gubernial party conferences represented a continuation of the numbering of district conferences held after the party's emergence from underground. The first District Conference was held April 17, 1917.

From the ninth (January 1919) through the seventeenth (March 13—14, 1920) conferences were designated as Moscow Gubernial Conferences of the RKP(b). During this period independent Moscow general city party conferences also took place.

In May 1920 a merger of the city party organization with the gubernial organization occurred; in connection with this, city party conferences were not held until 1931. Gubernial party conferences from May 1920 through February 1929 had their own new numbering. The first gubernial conference took place May 21, 1920, and the last (XVII) took place February 23 — March 6, 1929.

**2** American journalist and diplomat William Christian Bullitt came to Soviet Russia in March 1919 to ascertain the conditions on which the Soviet government would agree to conclude peace. Through Bullitt were transmitted proposals originating from U.S. President Wilson and British Prime Minister Lloyd George. The Soviet government, seeking to conclude peace as speedily as possible, agreed to conduct negotiations on the proposed conditions, introducing, however, substantial amendments. (For the text of the peace proposal project worked out by the representative of the U.S. government Bullitt and the government of the RSFSR, see the collection "Documents of Soviet Foreign Policy," vol. II, 1958, pp. 91—95). Soon after Bullitt's departure from Soviet Russia, Kolchak achieved some successes on the Eastern Front, and the imperialist governments, hoping for the overthrow of the Soviet state, refused to negotiate peace. Wilson forbade publication of the draft agreement brought by Bullitt, and Lloyd George, speaking in parliament, declared that he had nothing to do with negotiations with the Soviet government.

**David Lloyd George** — English statesman and diplomat, leader of the Liberal Party. From 1916—1922 — Prime Minister of Great Britain. One of the inspirers and organizers of military intervention and blockade against the Soviet state.

**3** Albert Thomas — French political figure, right-wing socialist. From 1910 one of the leaders of the parliamentary faction of the Socialist Party. Served in the bourgeois government of France as Minister of Armaments.

**4** This refers to the suppression by interventionists of the Soviet Republic in Hungary, which was established March 21, 1919.

The imperialists of the Entente received with hostility the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat in Hungary; the Soviet Republic was subjected to economic blockade. Military intervention against the Hungarian Soviet Republic was organized. The advance of interventionist forces activated Hungarian counter-revolution. The betrayal of the right social-democrats, who entered into alliance with international imperialism, was also one of the causes of the death of the Hungarian Soviet Republic.

The unfavorable international situation that developed in summer 1919, when Soviet Russia was besieged by enemies on all sides and could not render assistance to the Hungarian Soviet Republic, also played a negative role. August 1, 1919, as a result of the combined actions of external imperialist intervention and internal counter-revolution, Soviet power in Hungary was overthrown.

**5** This refers to the forthcoming IX Congress of the RKP(b). The congress took place March 29 — April 5, 1920 in Moscow (see V. I. Lenin. Complete Collected Works, vol. 40, pp. 233—287).

*In the transcript it is erroneously written "twentieth."