V. I. Lenin

Speech Delivered at the

Third All-Russia Congress of
Textile [1]

April 19, 1920 ( Stormy applause. Ovation ) Comrades, permit me to
thank you for your welcome and to convey to you the greetings of
the Council of People’s Commissars.

The Party Congress just concluded and the resolutions it has
passed are still fresh in our minds. And you are all aware, too,
of the important tasks which the Party Congress has set before the
workers, the peasants and the working people of the Soviet
Republic generally. The sum and substance of these tasks is to
create a united labour front.

It is fortunate for the Russian proletariat that the Civil War
has been brought to a successful close; now that there only
remains the menace of Poland, directed by the zeal of the
imperialists of Western Europe, we have to make an incredibly
difficult transition, we have to start building up our internal
life.

In order to explain the tremendous change, in order to explain
the difficulties that are now confronting the working class, I
shall outline the chief stages in the development towards the
communist system through which the Russian proletariat has
passed.

Ignorant and unenlightened peasants, finding themselves for the
first time in a factory, well equipped and supplied with wonderful
modern machinery, used to be filled with amazement, overwhelmed by
its unaccustomed magnificence. The peasant, in his ignorance,
would regard the factory-owner as his benefactor and provider, who
furnished him with work, and without whom the working man could
not subsist. The helpless worker, coming from the stagnant, rustic
life of the village into the seething cauldron of the factory,
where he secured more bearable conditions of life, and the chance
of making some kind of a living, would fall under the oppres-sive
yoke of capitalist exploitation. Everybody knows what the workers
of Russia and other countries experienced during this painful
period. But then we see that the worker gradual-ly sheds his
backward and crushed peasant manner and begins to rise to a higher
level of development; we see him making the first attempts to
combat the oppressors by means of strikes, the attempts of the
disunited proletarian masses to organise in trade unions; we see
the worker beginning to show signs of a new strength within him;
we see that any strike, no matter how insignificant its results,
always created something invaluable, something new, important and
sig-nificant. Strikes taught the worker to realise that there is
strength only in union with other workers, a powerful force
capable of bringing the machines to a standstill and trans-forming
the slave into a free man able to take advantage of the goods
which belong by right to their producer. We are all familiar with
the picture of development of the strike movement during the past
few decades, its gradual progres-sion from small, disunited local
strikes to wide organised actions. In 1905, a mighty strike wave
swept over Russia. With the growth of the organised strike
struggle against the capitalists, the worker acquired a hitherto
unknown strength. The trade unions played a foremost part in
this. The workers came to realise that all the achievements of
technology, all the machines and implements of production, which
the capi-talists used in their own interests and to the detriment
of the proletariat, could and should become the property of the
proletariat. That was a new phase, a phase of organised resist-ance
to the capitalists through the trade unions; it was a new step
forward in the development of the proletariat’s consciousness of its existence as a class. The worker was no
longer a meek and helpless tool in the hands of the oppressors. His whole environment led him to the conviction that a
constant, tireless and unyielding struggle was essential. The
worker fought to secure a certain improvement in his economic
condition, an increase of wages, a reduction of hours. At this
stage of the trade union movement his hopes and dreams were
directed to securing at least the elements of a decent life.

But although the proletariat’s consciousness of itself as
a class even to this extent had at one time represented a
tremendous step forward, there came a time when it, too, became
inadequate. Conditions demanded a new advance.

The capitalists of the world had grown more insolent and after
suppressing the working masses they held them fast in the grip of
a world war, engineered in order both to continue oppressing the
proletariat, which was struggling for emancipation, and to rob
each other of territory. The imperialist predators, armed to the
teeth, fell upon each other. They tried to persuade the workers
that the war was being waged in the great cause of human
emancipation. But the workers did not remain blind for long. The
Peace of Brest-Litovsk, the Peace of Versailles, the seizure of
all the colonies by Great Britain and France opened their eyes
sufficiently for them to realise the true state of affairs. It
became known that during the world war ten million people had been
killed and twenty million maimed, and all this only for the
further enrichment of the predators.

Once their eyes had been opened the workers rose against the
yoke of capital; the social revolution broke out, started by the
October events. Our duty now is not merely to be members of our
trade unions-that is not enough. The workers must rise to a higher
level, to develop from an op-pressed class into a ruling class. We
cannot count on the peas-ants as yet. They are disunited and
helpless, and it will be some time before they emerge from their
state of ignorance. The peasants can be brought out of the slough
of ignorance only by the class which itself sprang from the
peasantry, , which has learned to understand the power of
organisation and has been able to secure a better life-and not
only under capitalism, for that was secured by the workers of
Western Europe, but it did not save them from war. The workers
must understand that they are facing a new and far more difficult
task, namely, to take the entire administra-tion of the state into
their own hand. The workers must say to themselves that as long as
private property remains, as long as capitalism is not smashed, no
one who lives at the expense of others should be allowed to wield
power.

That is the object of the Soviet governments activities, a
government for which the world proletariat is showing a rapidly
developing sympathy. When it created the ne’w proletarian
state, the working class assumed a tremendous burden. The workers
can destroy the exploiting classes and bring about socialism only
by going hand in hand with the peasants. The peasants are still
working each for himself, selling their surplus in the open market
and thereby helping a handful of robbers to become still
richer. They do not do this wittingly; it is because they live
under conditions entirely different from those of the workers. But
freedom of trade means a return to capitalist slavery. In order to
avoid it, labour must be organised in a new way, and there is
nobody to do it but the proletariat.

The worker is now not only a member of his trade union organisation. Such a view would imply a return to the past. The
fight against capital is not yet over. Capitalism is still
impeding the measures of the Soviet government; it is doing so by
profiteering, Sukharevka Market, [2] and so on. This force
can be countered only by the force of workers’ organisations
built on new principles, based, not on their narrow production
interests, but on the interests of the whole state. Only when the
whole working class, irrespective of trade or craft, succeeds in
uniting as a ruling class and creating a united army of labour,
will it win the respect of the world.

The peasants, convinced that Kolchak and Denikin have been
smashed by the strength of the proletariat, are now feeling the
firm hand of a good manager. But they will gain complete
confidence in the proletariat only when attempts to restore
capitalism will no longer be possible. Only then will the peasant
understand that. there is no place for kulaks and parasites in a
proletarian country. But the peasant does not as yet believe in
his heart of hearts that the proletariat can cope with its great
task.

The unparalleled privations of the past two years, con-sciously
shouldered by the proletariat of Russia fighting in the front
ranks of the Red Army, are not yet over. New pri-vations and new
tasks face us, which will be the more diffi-cult the greater the
number of victories we win on the Red front. Extensive territories
have been won in Siberia and the Ukraine, where there is no
proletariat like that of Moscow, Petrograd and Ivanovo-Voznesensk,
which has shown in practice that it will defend the gains of the
revolution at any price. Class-conscious workers must penetrate
every pore of the state; they must know how to approach the
peas-ants and organise them in the cause of the class which has
flung off the yoke of the landowners and is building up a state
without capitalists. Devotion and iron discipline are required. The entire proletariat, like one man, must achieve
unparalleled miracles on the labour front like those achieved on
the war front. Many at first thought that the revolution was a
hopeless cause. The army in a state of complete col-lapse, mass
desertions from the front, lack of ammunition -that is what we
inherited from Kerensky. The Russian pro-letariat succeeded in
rallying and knitting together scat-tered forces and in creating a
united and stalwart Red Army. The Red Army worked miracles in
repulsing the onslaught of the capitalists, who were supported by
the capitalists of the whole world. The tasks of the labour front
are even more difficult, immeasurably so. But while for the Red
Army only men were required, we must now throw into the labour
front all the able-bodied forces of the country-men, women, and
even adolescents. We need iron discipline, and that is a weak
point with us Russians. We must display determina-tion, endurance,
firmness and unanimity. We must stop at nothing. Everybody and
everything must be used to save the rule of the workers and
peasants, to save communism.

The war is not over, it is continuing on the bloodless front. Here the enemy is still stronger than we are; that must be
admitted. The petty producers, who sell their prod-ucts in the
open market, are being assisted by world capi-tal, which with one
hand is prepared to re-establish trade relations, and with the
other is prepared to crush the prole-tariat and Soviet
Russia.

All the four millions of our proletariat must be prepared for
new sacrifices, new privations and new hardships, no smaller than
those of the war. Only thus can we hope to smash the enemy for
good. The peasant, who is still temporis-ing and vacillating, will
then finally become convinced of the strength of the proletariat. The memory of the landown-ers, of Denikin and Koichak
is still fresh in the mind of the peasants peasant; but he also
sees laziness and idleness around him, and he says: “Yes, it
may be a good thing, but not for the likes of us.”

The peasants must be shown something else. Let the work-ing
class organise production as it organised the Red Army. Let every
worker realise that he is ruling the country. The fewer we are the
greater the demands made on us. Russia must be transformed into a
vast army of labour heroically conscious that everything must be
sacrificed for the common cause-the emancipation of the working
people.

Everybody knows that the textile industry is at a complete
standstill because today we have no cotton-it has to be
imported-owing to the fact that Western Europe, too, is suffering
from an acute shortage of raw materials. Our one source of supply
is Turkestan, which has recently been won from the whiteguards,
but the transport system has not yet been properly organised.

One means of salvation at the present time is to extract and
prepare peat as quickly as possible, which will enable us to start
all the power stations at full capacity and save us from being
completely dependent on coal regions remote from Central
Russia.

To rely on wood fuel in the present state of disorganisation is
out of the question. The peat deposits are situated mainly in the
textile districts. And one of the chief duties of the textile
workers must be to organise peat extraction. I know that this is
extremely arduous work: you have to stand up to your knees in
water, arid, what with the shortage of boots and living quarters,
the difficulties are immense. But did the Red Army have everything
it needed? How many sacrifices, how many hardships the men of the
Red Army bore when for two months they marched up to their waists
in water, capturing tanks from the British! The capitalists are
hoping that the workers, exhausted and starving, will not be able
to hold out. The capitalists are waiting to pounce on the
workers’ state, and their one hope is that the prole-tariat
will be unable to cope with the task of creating a united labour
front and will restore them to power.

I am very far from thinking that the work that faces us is
easy, but all difficulties must and can be overcome. Every worker
must help to organise labour, he must show the peasants that he is an organiser, and that work must be
regarded as the only means of maintaining the rule of the workers and
peasants. When Kerensky was still in power, the capitalists,
realising even then that they would be unable to retain the
factories, began to do damage to production, to conclude
agreements with the capitalists of other countries for the
destruction of Russian industry so as not to surrender it to the
workers, and endeavoured to exhaust the proletariat by civil
war.

The working class is facing a very severe test, and- every
working man and woman must achieve even greater miracles than the
Red Army soldiers achieved at the front. A victory on the labour
front, devotion under the drab workaday condi-tions, are
immeasurably more difficult, but are a hundred times more valuable
than sacrificing one’s life.

Away with the old isolation! Only the worker who has proved
worth his salt as a member of the Red Army of labour is worthy of
being a trade union member. Even though we commit hundreds of
mistakes, even though we suffer thou-sands of defeats, that will
not daunt us. We must realise that only the persistent onslaught
of the proletariat can secure victory.

For two years now the proletariat has been defending the rule
of the workers and peasants. All over the world the social
revolution is maturing. If we want to prove that we can cope with
the task confronting us, we must, however dif-ficult the situation
may be, maintain all our energy and assurance, all our proletarian
enthusiasm, and achieve on the peaceful front of labour miracles
as great as those of the Red Army on the bloody front of struggle
against the imperialists and their henchmen. ( Stormy applause )

Endnotes

[1]
The Third All-Russia Congress of Textile Workers was held
in Moscow, April 16-20, 1920. It was attended by 358 delegates, of
whom 148 were Communists and 23 Communist supporters. The agenda
of the Congress included the following: report of the Central
Committee of the Union, the tasks of the trade unions, raw
materials supplies, the state of the flax and woollen industries,
the tasks of the Union in rehabilitating transport, the food question, and safety regulations.

Lenin made a speech at its plenary meeting on
April 19. On behalf of the Congress participants the Presidium
congratulated Lenin on his fiftieth birthday, the delegates
greeted him with loud applause. The Congress sent greetings to the
Red Army and the Communist International.

[2]
Sukharevka Market was a street market on Sukharevskaya (now Kolkhoznaya) Square, it was situated around the Sukharev tower built by Peter the First in 1692. During the years of foreign military intervention and the Civil War it was the centre of speculation. The name became the synonym for profiteering. In 1932 the Sukharevka Market was finally abolished and in 1934 the Sukharev tower was demolished because it interfered with traffic.