V. I. Lenin

Speech Delivered At The First (Inaugural)

All-Russia Congress Of Mineworkers [1]

Comrades, allow me first of all to convey the greetings of the Council of People’s Commissars to the First
Congress of Mineworkers.

Comrades, this Congress and this whole branch of industry are
of the highest importance to the Soviet Republic. You all know, of
course, that without the coal industry there would be no modern
industry, no factories. Coal is the veritable bread of industry;
without it industry comes to a standstill; without it the railways
are in a sorry state and can never be restored; without it the
large-scale industry of all countries would collapse, fall to
pieces and revert to primitive barbarity; today the coal shortage
and crisis are having the most dire effects even in the victor
countries, even in countries far more advanced than Russia and
which have suffered far less in the war. It is, therefore, all the
more necessary to us that you, comrades, who have assembled to
form a solid, strong, powerful and class-conscious union of
mineworkers, should clearly realise the tremendous tasks with
which the entire Soviet Republic, the workers’ and peasants’ government confront this Congress, confront the
mineworkers. After two years of desperate struggle against the
whiteguards and capitalists, who were supported b the capitalists
of the whole world, today, after all the victories we have won, we
are again faced with a stern struggle, as severe as the previous
one but a more grateful one—the struggle on the bloodless
front, on the front of labour.

When, on the bloody front of war, the landowners and capitalists tried to break the Soviet power in Russia, itseemed as
if the cause of the Soviet Republic was hopeless, as if Soviet
Russia, the weakest, most backward and most devastated of all
countries, would be unable to hold its own against the capitalists
of the whole world. The richest powers in the world assisted the
Russian whiteguards in this struggle, assigned hundreds of
millions of rubles to help them, supplied them with munitions,
established special camps abroad for the training of officers—and to this day these recruiting bureaus still
exist abroad, where, with the help of the richest capitalists in
the world, Russian prisoners of war and volunteers are being
recruited for the war against Soviet Russia. It naturally looked
as if this was a hopeless undertaking, as if Russia could not hold
out against the military powers of the world, who are stronger
than we are. Nevertheless, this miracle proved possible; Soviet
Russia performed this miracle in two years.

Soviet Russia proved to be the victor in a war against all the
richest powers in the world. Why? Not because we were stronger
from the military standpoint, of course—that is not the
case—but because in the civilised countries there were soldiers who could no longer be deceived, although reams of paper
were devoted to proving to them that the Bolsheviks were German
agents, usurpers, traitors and terrorists. As a result of this, we
find that soldiers returned from Odessa either convinced
Bolsheviks or declaring that they “would not fight the workers’ and peasants’ government”. The chief
reason for our victory was that the workers of the advanced
West-European countries understood and sympathised with the
working class of the world so strongly that, despite the lies of
the bourgeois press, which in publications issued in millions of
copies showered disgusting calumnies on the
Bolsheviks—despite all this, the workers were on our side;
and this fact determined the issue of our war. Everybody realised
that if hundreds of thousands of soldiers had fought against us as
they had fought against Germany, we would not have been able to
hold on. This was obvious to anybody who knows what war
means. Nevertheless, a miracle happened: we defeated them, they
were split owing to their wrangling, and their famous League of
Nations turned out to resemble a league of mad dogs who are
snatching each other’s bones and cannot come to terms over a
single question; however, the number of Bolshevik supporters,
direct and indirect, conscious and not altogether so, is growing
daily and hourly in every country.

Everybody who sympathises with socialism knows what happened to
the Second International: for twentyfive years, from 1889 to 1914,
it directed the socialist movement in all countries, but when the
imperialist war broke out the socialists of the Second
International went over to the side of their governments, each
defending his own. All those who called themselves republicans,
Socialist-Revolutionaries or Merisheviks, in every country, took
the side of their own governments, defended their own fatherland
and helped to conceal the secret treaties—did not publish
them. The socialists who were considered the leaders of the
working class went over to the capitalists, went against the
Russian working class. The German Government is headed by the
Scheidemann gang, who to this day call themselves Social-Democrats
but who are the foulest of butchers; in alliance with the
land-owners and capitalists, they have murdered the leaders of the
German working class, Rosa Luxemburg arid Karl Liebknecht, and
slaughtered fifteen thousand German proletarians. In the period
since its foundation a year ago, the Third (Communist)
International has gained a complete victory. The Second
International has fallen to pieces.

So you see what a strong influence the Soviet power in Russia
has had on the workers of the whole world, despite all the lies
and calumnies directed against it. The soldiers and workers hold
that power should be vested in those who work—he who does
not work, shall not eat, but he who does work is entitled to a
voice in the state, he can influence matters of state. That is a
simple truth, and millions of working-class people have understood
it.

You are now faced with a difficult task, namely, to follow up
our military victories by a much more difficult victory. This will
be all the more difficult because here mere heroism is not enough;
here results can be achieved only by persistent work, and years of
intense effort will be required.

All over the world the capitalists are mustering labour-power
and increasing output. But the workers say in reply, first feed
the workers, first put a stop to the wrangling for which the
workers pay with their lives, first put an endto the carnage, for
millions of people perished in the recent bloodbath to decide
whether the British or some other predators were to rule. As long
as power is in the hands of the capitalists we are not thinking of
increasing production but of overthrowing them.

But now that the capitalists have been overthrown, prove that
you are able to increase productivity without them; refute the lie
which the capitalists spread about the class-conscious workers,
when they say that this is not a revolution, not a new order, but
sheer destruction, mere revenge on the capitalists; they say the
workers alone can never organise the country and lead it out of
economic chaos, that they will only create anarchy. That is the
lie which the capitalists of all countries are spreading in
milions of ways, and which non-party people, opponents of the
Bolsheviks, are conveying in thousands of ways to Russian workers
too, especially to those who are under-educated, have been most
corrupted by capitalism or are most ignorant.
But if, as we have seen, we have been able, in the two years
of Soviet power, to stand up to the whole world, it has been
largely due to the heroism of the workers.

We are reproached for having established the dictatorship of
the proletariat, for the iron, relentless and firm rule of the
workers, which stops at nothing and which says that whoever is not
with us is against us, and that the slightest resistance to this
rule will be crushed. But we are proud of it and say that were it
not for this iron rule of the workers, of this workers’
vanguard, we should not have been able to hold out for two months,
let alone two years. What this dictatorship has given us is
this—every time a difficult situation arose during the war,
the Party mobilised Communists, and it was they who were the first
to perish in the front ranks; they perished in thousands on the
Yudenich and Kolchak fronts. The finest members of the working
class perished; they sacrificed themselves, realising that
although they perished they would save future generations, that
they would save thousands upon thousands of workers and
peasants. They ruthlessly pilloried and hounded the self-seekers—those who during the war were concerned only
for their own skins—and shot them without mercy. We are
proud of this dictatorship, of this iron rule of the workers, which said: “We have overthrown the capitalists
and we will lay down our lives to prevent any attempt of theirs to
restore their rule.” Nobody during these two years went as
hungry as the workers of Petrograd, Moscow and
Ivanovo-Voznesensk. It has now been computed that during these two
years they received not more than seven poods of bread a year,
whereas the peasants of the grain-producing gubernias consumed no
less than seventeen poods. The workers have made great sacrifices,
they have suffered epidemics, and mortality among them has
increased. But they will prove that the workers did not rise up
against the capitalists out of vengeance, but with the inflexible
determination to create a social system in which there will be no
land-owners and capitalists. It was for the sake of this that
these sacrifices were made. It was only because of those
unparalleled sacrifices that were made consciously and voluntarily
and, were backed up by the discipline of the Red Army, without
recourse to old methods of discipline—it was only because of
these tremendous sacrifices that the advanced workers were able to
maintain their dictatorship and earned the right to the respect of
the workers of the whole world. Those who are so eager to slander
the Bolsheviks should not forget that the dictatorship entailed
the greatest sacrifice and starvation on the part of the workers
who were exercising it. During these two years the workers of
Ivanovo-Voznesensk, Petrograd and Moscow suffered more than
anybody fighting on the Red fronts did.

This is what should be, first and foremost, borne in mind and
well remembered by the comrades in the coal industry. You are a
vanguard. We are continuing the war—not the bloody war,
that, fortunately, is over, nobody will now dare to attack Soviet
Russia, because they know that they will he defeated since the
class-conscious workers cannot be led against us; they will blow
up ports, as they did in Archangel under the British and also in
Odessa. This has been proved; this much we have gained. But we are
continuing the war, we are nevertheless continuing it as an
economic war. It is the speculators we are now fighting, the
handful of workers who have been corrupted by the old capitalist
system and who say to themselves, “I must have higher pay,
and to hell with the rest.” “Give me double pay, give me two or three pounds of bread a day,” they say, heedless
of the fact that they are working for the defence of the workers
and peasants, for the defeat of the capitalists. They must be
combated by means of comradely education, by comradely persuasion,
and there is nobody to do this except the trade unions. It must be
explained to such workers that if they side with the speculators
and profiteers, with the rich peasants who say, “the more
grain I have the more money I shall make” and “each for himself, and God for all”, they will be following the
precepts of the capitalist gentry and of all who preserve the old
capitalist traditions; they must be told that we regard all who
act on the old precepts as apostates and traitors whom the working
class must brand and put to shame. There are mostly capitalist
countries surrounding us and all over the world they are uniting
against us, they are joining forces with our speculators; they
want to overthrow us by force, and think they are stronger than we
are. We continue to be a besieged fortress towards which the eyes
of the world’s workers are turned, for they know that their
freedom will come from here, and in this besieged fortress we must
act with military ruthlessness, with military discipline and
self-sacrifice. In the ranks of the workers we cannot tolerate
self-seekers who refuse to combine the interests of their group
with the interests of the workers and peasants in general.

We must, with the help of the trade unions, create the comradely discipline which existed in the Red Army, which is being
worked out by the best of our trade unions, and which I am
convinced you who have now founded the mineworkers’ union
will also establish.

Your union will be one of the foremost unions, and it will have
all the state assistance we can possibly give. And I am sure that
you too will make similar sacrifices to create a firm labour
discipline, raise the productivity of labour and foster the spirit
of self-sacrifice among the workers in the coal industry, among
those who are engaged in what is probably the hardest, dirtiest
and most exhausting labour, and which technicians are striving to
abolish altogether.

But in order to save Soviet power now, industry must be fed,
that is, provided with coal. Unless this is done, it will be
impossible to restore the economy and the railways, it will be
impossible to set the factories going and provide goods to be
exchanged for the peasants’ grain; the peasants cannot, of
course, be content with bits of coloured paper, they are granting
us a loan, because it is their duty to grant a loan to the hungry
workers. But it is our duty to repay this loan, and production,
therefore, must be increased ten-fold and all the factories
started.

That, comrades, is the tremendous task which faces all class-conscious workers, i.e., those workers who realise that the
issue is one of preserving and consolidating Soviet power and
socialism in order to save all future generations from the yoke of
the landowners and capitalists for all time. Those who refuse to
understand this must be driven from the ranks of the workers. The
trade unions, with their training, influence and propaganda, and
their deep concern for production and discipline, will see to
those who do not understand it sufficiently. That is the way to
strengthen the workers’ and peasants’ government. And by this slow but most important work you will achieve, you must
achieve, victories even more important than those gained by our
Red Army at the front.

Endnotes

[1]
The First (Inaugural) All-Russia Congress of Mineworkers was
held in Moscow, April 1-6, 1920. It met at the height of the
struggle for the rehabilitation of the national economy. It was
attended by 173 people, of whom 153 were delegates with the right
to vote and 13 with voice but no vote; 85 were Communists. The
Congress represented about 200,000 workers in the mining
industry. Delegates from the oil industry could not attend the
Congress, because the Caucasus was not yet freed from the
whiteguards.

The delegates endorsed the following agenda:
report of the organising bureau, tasks of the trade unions, the
organisational question, tariffs, the state of the mining
industry, the state of the coal industry, forms of participation
of the unions in the organisation and management of industry,
elections. Lenin, who was elected honorary chairman of the
Congress, made a speech at one of its meetings. The Congress
addressed greetings to miners in all countries.