V. I. Lenin

Speech at Second All-Russia Conference of

Organisers Responsible for Rural Work [1]

June 12, 1920

Comrades, I am very glad to be able to greet you who have come to this conference to discuss work in the rural
areas. Permit me first to dwell briefly on the international
position of the Soviet Republic and our tasks in connection with
it, and then to say a few words about the tasks in the rural
districts, which, in my opinion, should now assume prime
importance to Party workers.

As regards the Republic’s international standing, you are
of course well aware of the main facts about the Polish
offensive. An incredible number of lies are being spread on this
subject abroad, due to the so-called freedom of the press, which
consists in all the most important organs of the press abroad
being bought up by the capitalists, and being filled 99 per cent
with articles by mercenary hacks. That is what they call freedom
of the press, due to which there is no limit to the lies that are
being spread. With regard to the Polish offensive in particular,
they are trying to make out that the Bolsheviks presented
impossible demands to Poland and launched an offensive, whereas
you all know very well that we fully consented even to the immense
frontiers held by the Poles before the offensive began. We set
more store by the lives of our Red Army men than by a war for
Byelorussia and Lithuania, which the Poles had seized. We declared
in the most solemn terms—not only in the name of the Council
of People’s Commissars, but also in a special manifesto of
the All-Russia Central Executive Committee, [2] the supreme body in the Soviet Republic—we declared to the
Polish Government, to the bourgeois and landowner government,
besides appealing to the Polish workers and peasants, that we
proposed negotiations for peace on the basis of the front that
existed at the time, i.e., the front that left Lithuania and
Byelorussia— non-Polish territory—in the hands of the
Poles. We were and still are convinced that the Polish landowners
and capitalists will be unable to retain foreign territory, and
that we shall gain more even from the most unfavourable peace,
since we shall save the lives of our Red Army men, and every month
of peace makes us ten times as strong, whereas to every other
government, including the bourgeois government of Poland, every
month of peace means greater and greater disintegration. Although
our peace proposals were very far-reaching, and although certain
very hasty and, as far as talking goes, highly revolutionary
revolutionaries, even called our proposals Tolstoyan—when,
as a matter of fact, the Bolsheviks’ actions have, I think,
shown sufficiently that there is not a jot of Tolstoyanism in
us—we considered it our duty, in the face of such a thing as
war, to show that we were prepared to make the maximum possible
concessions, and especially to show that we would not wage war for
boundaries for which so much blood had been spilt, since to us
that was a matter of little significance.

We were prepared to make concessions no other government can
make; we offered Poland territory which it would be useful to
compare with that described in a document published yesterday, I
think, and coming from the supreme organ of the Allies, the
British, French and other imperialists, in which Poland’s
eastern frontiers are indicated. [3]

These capitalists in Britain and France imagine that it is they
who lay down boundaries. But, thank goodness, there are others
besides them who do that—the workers and peasants have learnt to establish their boundaries themselves.

These capitalists have fixed the Polish boundaries much farther
to the west than those we proposed. This document, coming from the
Allies in Paris, is clear proof that they have arrived at a deal
with Wrangel. They assure us that they want peace with Soviet
Russia, that they support neither Poland nor Wrangel. We, however,
say that it is an unscrupulous lie with which they are trying to
shield themselves; for they say that they are not supplying any
more arms, when as a matter of fact they are supplying them just
as they did several months ago. Today’s reports state that
rich trophies have been captured—a carload of new British
machine guns; Comrade Trotsky reports that brand new French
cartridges were captured the other day. What other confirmation do
we need that Poland is acting with the aid of British and French
equipment, with the aid of British and French cartridges, that she
is acting with the aid of British and French money? If they now
declare that Poland will herself establish her eastern borders,
then that is in consequence of a direct deal with Wrangel. That is
obvious to anybody. The entire situation makes it perfectly clear
that the Polish landowners and bourgeoisie are fighting
exclusively with the aid of the British and the French. The
latter, however, are lying brazenly, just as they did when they
assured us that they had not sent Bullitt, until he finally
returned to America and came out and published the documents he
had gathered here.

These gentlemen, these capitalist tradesmen, cannot act
contrary to their nature. That is obvious. They can only reason
like tradesmen. When our diplomats do not act like tradesmen, and
when we say that the lives of our Red Army men are more precious
to us than any vast boundary changes they, of course, with their
purely tradesmen’s reasoning, cannot understand it. When, a
year ago, we proposed to Bullitt a treaty which was extremely
favourable to them and extremely unfavourable to us, a treaty that
would have left huge territories in the hands of Denikin and
Kolchak, we did so in the certainty that, if peace were concluded,
the whiteguard government would never be able to retain power.

With their tradesmen’s reasoning, they could only interpret this as a confession of our weakness. “If the
Bolsheviks agree to such a peace,” they argued, “it must mean that they are at their last gasp.” And the
bourgeois press exulted, the diplomats rubbed their hands with
glee, and millions of pounds sterling were advanced to Kolchak and
Denikin. True, they did not give them hard cash, but supplied them
with arms at usurious prices, fully convinced that the Bolsheviks
could not cope with them at all. The upshot was that Kolchak and
Denikin were routed and their hundreds of millions of pounds went
up in smoke. We are now getting trainload after trainload of
excellent British equipment; you can often meet entire divisions
of Russian Red Army men clad in excellent British uniforms; the
other day a comrade who arrived from the Caucasus told me that an
entire division of Red Army men are wearing Italian bersagliere
uniforms. I am very sorry that I am unable to show you photographs
of these Russian Red Army men clad in bersagliere uniforms. All I
can say is that, after all, the British equipment has been of some
use and that Russian Red Army men are grateful to the British
tradesmen who have fitted them out because they reasoned like
tradesmen, and who have been thrashed, are being thrashed, and
will be thrashed time and time again. ( Applause. )

We find the same thing with the Polish offensive. This is
another instance of God (if he exists, of course) first depriving
of reason those whom he would punish. The Entente is undoubtedly
headed by very shrewd men, excellent politicians, yet these people
commit folly after folly. They raise up against us one country
after another, enabling us to smash them one by one. Why, if only
they succeeded in uniting—and they do have the League of
Nations and there is no corner of the earth to which their
military power does not extend. Nobody, it would seem, could unite
all the enemy forces better and launch them against the
Soviets. Yet they cannot unite them. They go into battle part by
part. They merely threaten, boast and bluff. Six months ago they
declared that they had mustered fourteen states against the
Soviets, and that in a matter of months they would be in Moscow
and Petrograd. But today I received a pamphlet from Finland,
containing the reminiscences of a certain whiteguard officer about
the offensive against Petrograd; prior to that I received a
statement of protest from several Russians of the Cadet brand,
members of the North-Western Government, which tells of how
certain British generals invited them to a conference and
suggested to them through an interpreter, and sometimes in
excellent Russian, that they should form a government right away,
on the spot—a Russian government, of course, a democratic
government, it goes without saying, in the spirit of the
Constituent Assembly—and how they were told to sign on the
dotted line. And, though they were bitter enemies of the
Bolsheviks, these Russian officers, these Cadets, were outraged by
the brazen insolence of the British officers, who dictated to
them, and ordered them, in a tone of a drill sergeant (and only
like a Russian one can), to sign what they were told to—and
they go on to relate how the whole affair fell through. I regret
that we are unable to give extensive distribution to these
documents, to these confessions of whiteguard officers who took
part in the advance on Petrograd.

Why is that so? It is because their League of Nations is a
league only in name; in fact it is a pack of wolves that are all
the time at each other’s throats and do not trust one another in the least.

As a matter of fact, they are even now boasting that Latvia,
Rumania and Finland will join Poland in the at tack; it is clear
from the diplomatic negotiations that when Poland began her
offensive the powers that were conducting peace negotiations with
us changed their tone, and came out with statements whose
insolence was sometimes amazing. They reason like tradesmen—and you can not expect anything else from a
tradesman. It seemed to them that this was the time to square
accounts with Soviet Russia, so they turned high and mighty. Let
them do so. We have seen the same thing in the case of other
states, far bigger ones, but we have paid no heed to that because,
as experience has shown, all the threats from Finland, Rumania,
Latvia and the other bourgeois states that are wholly dependent on
the Entente, have come to nought. Poland signed a treaty only with
Petlyura, a general without an army, which has evoked even greater
bitterness among the Ukrainian population and has induced more and
more semi-bourgeois elements to side with Soviet Russia. So, once
again, instead of a general offensive, you have isolated action by
Poland alone. And now we see that although our forces had to spend
a lot of time on the move because they were farther away from the
frontiers than the Poles were and we needed more time to bring up
our troops, the latter have begun to advance. Some days ago our
cavalry captured Zhitomir. Our forces have cut the last road
linking Kiev with the Polish front both in the south and the
north, which means that the Poles have lost Kiev irrevocably. At
the same time we learn that Skólski has resigned, that the
Polish Government are in a state of uncertainty and agitation and
are already declaring that they will offer us new peace
terms. Just as you please, you landowner and capitalist gentlemen!
We will give the Polish peace terms due consideration. What we see
is that their government are waging war against the wishes of
their own bourgeoisie; that the Polish National Democrats, [4] who correspond to our Cadets and
Octobrists—the most bitter counter-revolutionary landowners
and bourgeois—are opposed to the war, for they realise that
they cannot win such a war, and that it is being run by Polish
adventurers, by the Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Polish
Socialist Party, [5] people marked most by features characterising the Socialist-Revolutionaries, namely,
revolutionary talk, boastfulness, patriotism, chauvinism,
buffoonery and sheer claptrap. We are familiar with such
people. When, after they have bitten off more than they can chew
in this war, they begin to reshuffle their Cabinet and to say that
they propose peace talks to us, we say: “Just as you please,
gentlemen, have a try. We, however, are counting only on the
Polish workers and peasants. We shall also talk peace, only not
with you, the Polish landowners and bourgeois, but with the Polish
workers and peasants, and we shall see what will come of such
negotiations.”

Comrades, despite the successes we are gaining on the Polish
front, the position at present demands every effort of us. The
most dangerous thing in a war that breaks out in conditions like
those in the present war with Poland is to underrate the enemy and
to reassure ourselves with the thought that we are the stronger. That is a most dangerous thing, which may lead to defeat
in the war; it is the worst feature in the Russian character,
which expresses itself in enervation and flabbiness. It is
important, not only to begin but to carry on and hold out; that is
what we Russians are not good at. Only by long training, through a
proletarian disciplined struggle against all wavering and
vacillation, only through such endurance can the Russian working
masses be brought to rid themselves of this bad habit.

We have given Kolchak, Denikin and Yudenich a sound thrashing,
but we have not yet finished the job. Wrangel is still in the
Crimea. We said to ourselves: “Well, now we are the stronger” —and that has led to instance after instance
of slackness and slovenliness. Meanwhile, Wrangel is receiving aid
from Great Britain. This is done through traders, but it cannot be
proved. Only the other day he landed troops and captured
Melitopol. True, according to the latest reports we have
re-captured it; but in this case, too, we had let it slip from our
hands most shamefully just because we were strong. Just because
Yudenich, Kolchak and Denikin have been smashed, the Russian
begins to reveal his nature and take things easy, with the result
that we let things slide. His slovenliness leads to tens of
thousands of his comrades losing their lives. Here is a
fundamental Russian trait: when not a single job has been carried
through to the end he is apt to let things slide unless he is
prodded. This trait must be ruthlessly combated, for it leads to
tens of thousands of the finest Red Army men and peasants losing
their lives, and the continued sufferings of famine. And so,
though we are stronger than the Poles, our slogan in the war that
has been imposed on us must be—an end to all slackness!
Since war has proved inevitable, everything must be devoted to the
war effort; the least slackness or lack of drive must be punished
by wartime laws. War means war, and let nobody in the rear or in
any peaceful occupation dare shirk this duty!

The slogan must be—everything for the war effort!
Otherwise we shall be unable to cope with the Polish nobles and
bourgeoisie. To finish with this war, we must teach a conclusive
lesson to the last of the neighbouring powers that still dares to
play at this game. We must give them so severe a lesson that they
will warn their children, their grandchildren and their
great-grandchildren to refrain from such things. ( Applause. ) And so, comrades, at every meeting,
assembly and business conference, in all groups at all party
institutions and on all executive bodies, it is the prime duty of
those who are working in the countryside, of propagandists and
agitators, and all the comrades engaged in any field of peaceful
labour to give top priority and full effect to the slogan:
“Everything for the war effort!”

Until complete victory is won in this war, we must guarantee
ourselves against the errors and follies we have been committing
for years. I do not know how many mistakes a Russian has to make
before he learns his lesson. We have already had an instance of
our thinking that the war was over before we had crushed the
enemy, and we left Wrangel in the Crimea. I repeat, the slogan,
“Everything for the war effort!” must be the chief item on the agenda at every conference, at every meeting, on every
executive body.

We must ask ourselves: have we bent every effort, have we made
every sacrifice to bring the war to an end? This is a question of
saving the lives of tens of thousands of our finest comrades, who
are perishing at the front, in the foremost ranks. It is a matter
of saving ourselves from the famine which is imminent just because
we are not fighting the war to a finish, when we can and must do
that and quickly, too. For this, discipline and subordination must
be enforced at all costs and with the utmost severity. The least
condonement, the least slackness displayed here, in the rear, in
any peaceful pursuit, will mean the loss of thousands of lives,
and starvation in the rear.

That is why faults like these must be treated with ruthless
severity. That is the first and principal lesson to be drawn from
the civil war in Soviet Russia. It is the first and principal
lesson which every Party worker must bear in mind under all
circumstances, especially if his job is one of agitation and
propaganda; he must know that he will be a worthless Communist and
a traitor to the Soviet state if he does not, in respect to every
shortcoming, however slight, implement this slogan with inflexible
firmness and with ruthless determination. If this condition is
observed, an early victory will be assured, and we shall be fully
guaranteed against famine.

We receive reports about the situation in the outlying regions,
from comrades arriving from remote parts of the country. I have
seen comrades from Siberia, and also Comrades Lunacharsky and
Rykov, who have returned from the Ukraine and the North
Caucasus. They speak with boundless amazement of the wealth of
these regions. In the Ukraine pigs are being fed on wheat; in the
Northern Caucasus the peasant women, when selling milk, rinse
their cans with milk. Trainloads of wool, leather and other wealth
are on their way from Siberia; tens of thousands of poods of salt
are lying in Siberia. In our parts, on the other hand, the
peasants have been worn down, and refuse to give grain in exchange
for paper money, which, as they see it, cannot restore their
farms. Here, in Moscow, we may find starving workers carrying on
at their machines. The continuation of the war is the chief
obstacle to our keeping the workers better fed and restoring their
shattered health. Just because we have slipped up on the Crimea,
tens of thousands will go short of food for another six
months. This is all due to poor organisation and discipline on our
part. People here are dying, while in the Ukraine, in the North
Caucasus and in Siberia we have wealth untold, with which we could
feed the hungry workers and restore industry. To restore our
economic life, we need discipline. The proletarian dictatorship
should display itself primarily in the advanced, the most
class-conscious and most disciplined of the urban and industrial
workers—the greatest sufferers from hunger who have made
great sacrifices during these two years—educating, training
and disciplining all the other proletarians, who are often not
class-conscious, and all working people and the peasantry. All
sentimentality, all claptrap about democracy must be scrapped. Let
us leave the claptrap to the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the
Mensheviks; they have spoken enough about democracy to Kolchak,
Denikin and Yudenich. Let them clear out and go over to
Wrangel. He will complete their schooling. But that schooling must
be given to those who have not yet learnt the lesson.

We maintain that the workers who have assumed the burdens and
have ensured the tranquility and strength of the Soviets through
their untold sacrifices, should regard themselves as a vanguard
that will raise up the rest of the working masses by education and
discipline. We know that the working man, as we have inherited him
from capitalism, is in a state of utter benightedness and
ignorance, and does not realise that work can be done, not only
under the lash of capital, but also under the guidance of the
organised worker. He is, however, capable of believing all that if
we demonstrate it in practice. The working man cannot learn that
from books but he can learn it if we demonstrate it to him in
practice: he will have either to work under the guidance of the
class-conscious industrial worker, or submit to the yoke of
Kolchak, Wrangel and the rest. And so, we must, at any cost, have
the strictest discipline, and conscious performance of what the
vanguard of the proletariat prescribes, of what it has learnt from
its hard experience. If all steps are taken for the achievement of
our aim, that will fully guarantee our emergence from the economic
chaos and disruption caused by the imperialist war. Grain
collections yielded 30,000,000 poods in the season following
August 1, 1917, and 110,000,000 poods in the season following
August 1918. That shows that we have begun to emerge from our
difficulties. Since August 1,1919, over 150,000,000 poods have
been brought in to date. That shows that we are making it. But we
have not yet properly seen to the Ukraine, the North Caucasus and
Siberia. If that is done we shall really be able to provide the
worker with a good two pounds of bread a day.

I should also like to dwell, comrades, on a question of
importance to you, rural Party workers, with whom I am in some
measure acquainted from Party documents. I want to tell you that
instruction, Party activities, agitation and propaganda will be
your principal work. One of the main shortcomings in this work is
that we do not know how to run state affairs, and that with our
comrades, even with those who are in charge of work here, the
habits of the old underground conditions are still too strong,
i.e., habits of the time when we used to gather in small circles
here or abroad, and did not have the slightest idea or inkling of
how the work of the state has to be carried on. That, however, is
something we have got to know, for we must remember that we have
to govern millions. Any person in authority who goes to the rural
districts, as delegate or representative of the Central Committee,
must remember that we have a tremendous machinery of state which
is still functioning poorly because we do not know how to run it
properly.

In the rural districts there are hundreds of thousands of
teachers who are browbeaten and intimidated by the kulaks, or
who have been frightened out of their wits by the old tsarist
officials, and cannot understand, are not in a position to
understand, the principles of Soviet government. We have a huge
military apparatus. Without the military commissars we would not
have had a Red Army.

We also have the apparatus of the Vsevobuch , [6] which, together with its military
functions, should be carrying on cultural work, should be
educating the peasants. This state machinery functions very
poorly; it contains no really devoted and convinced people, no
real Communists. And you, who are going to the rural districts as
Communists, must work not in isolation from this apparatus, but,
on the contrary, in close conjunction with it. Every Party
agitator who goes to a rural district must at the same time be an
inspector of schools: not an inspector in the old sense of the
word, not in the sense of meddling in educational affairs—that must not be permitted—but in the sense of
co-ordinating his work with that of the People’s
Commissariat of Education, with the work of the
Vsevobuch , with the work of the military commissars; he
must regard himself as representative of the state, as representative of a party that is governing Russia. When he comes
to a rural district he must not only act as propagandist and
teacher; he must at the same time see to it that the school-teachers, who have never heard a living word, and those
scores and hundreds of military commissars, all play a part in the
Party agitator’s work. Every school-teacher should have
agitational pamphlets, and should not only have them, but read
them to the peasants. He should know that he will lose his job
unless he does that. The same applies to the military commissars;
they should have these pamphlets and read them out to the
peasants.

The Soviet government employs hundreds of thousands of office
workers, who are either bourgeois or semi-bourgeois, or else have
been so downtrodden that they have absolutely no confidence in our
Soviet government, or feel so far removed from that government
that they think it is somewhere far-off, over there in Moscow,
while next to them are the kulaks, who have grain, but hold on to
it and will not let them have any, so that they are starving. Here
the Party worker has a double job. He must remember that he is not
only a propagandist, that he must not only come to the assistance
of the most downtrodden strata of the population—that is his
principal job, not to do which means that he is no Party worker
and has no right to call himself a Communist—but that, in
addition, he must act as a representative of the Soviet
government, he must establish contacts with the teachers, and
co-ordinate his work with that of the People’s Commissariat
of Education. He must not be an inspector in the sense of
exercising control and supervision; he must act as a representative of the governing Party, which is now administering
all Russia through part of the proletariat; in this capacity he
must remember that his job is one of instruction, and that he must
enlist and educate all the teachers and military commissars to do
the same work as his. They are not familiar with this work; you
must teach it to them. They are at present defenceless against the
well-fed peasant. You must help them to shake off this dependence. You must firmly remember that you are not only
propagandists and agitators, but also representatives of the
state; you must not destroy the existing apparatus, or interfere
with it and muddle its organisation, but must organise your work
so that, as efficient instructors, propagandists and agitators,
even after a brief period of work in the rural districts, you will
leave your mark, not only in the papers of the peasant Communists
you have educated, but also in the minds of the people whose work
you inspect and guide, and to whom you give assignments, demanding
that every teacher and military commissar should work in the
Soviet spirit under all circumstances, that he should know that
this is his duty, that he must remember that if he does not
perform that duty, he will lose his job; they should all sense and
see in every agitator a fully empowered representative of the
Soviet government.

If this is done, and if you employ your forces properly, you
will multiply them, with the result that every body of agitators
will leave a mark behind them in the shape of an apparatus of
organisation, which already exists, but as yet functions
imperfectly and unsatisfactorily.

In this sphere too, as in all others, I wish you success. ( Prolonged applause. )

Endnotes

[1]
Called by the Central Committee of the R.C.P.(B.), the Second All-Russia Conference of Organisers Responsible for Rural Work was held in Moscow from June 10 to 15, 1920. It was
attended by gubernia, uyezd and volost organisers for rural work,
a total of over 300 delegates from 61 gubernias. The third meeting
of the Conference, held on June 12, was addressed by
Lenin. M. I. Kalinin greeted the delegates on behalf of the
All-Russia Central Executive Committee.

A report on the activities of the Department for Rural Work under the Party’s Central Committee was made
by V. I. Nevsky. The Conference adopted a resolution on this
report; it dressed the importance of Party work in the countryside, and expressed the firm confidence that “the
Department for Rural Work will unswervingly carry out the
directive of the Party’s Ninth Congress, on improving agitation and propaganda work among the peasantry” (see
Rezolutsii Vtorogo Vserossiiskogo Soveshchaniya rabotnikov v derevne. [ Resolutions of the Second All-Russia Conference of Party Rural Workers ], Moscow, 1920, pp. 4-5). Reports
from the various localities were also heard, and organisational
and other matters discussed. The Conference adopted an appeal
“To All Workers of the World” , greeting the British, Hungarian, Italian and other workers who had decided to prevent
the dispatch of troops and military supplies to help bourgeois-landowner Poland in her war against Soviet Russia.

[2]
Lenin is referring to the Declaration by the R.S.F.S.R. Council of
People’s Commissars addressed to the Government of Poland
and the Polish people, made on January 28, 1920, and the Appeal of
the All-Russia Central Executive Committee to the Polish people on
February 2, 1920.

[3]
The reference is to the declaration of the Entente’s Supreme
Council “On the Temporary Eastern Borders of Poland” , made on December 8, 1919, and published on June 11, 1920, in the
newspaper Izvestia No. 125.

[4]
National Democrats (“ Narodowa Democracya ”)—the main reactionary and nationalist party of
the Polish landowners and bourgeoisie, founded in 1897 and closely
connected with the Catholic church. The National Democrats
advanced the slogans of “class harmony” and “the national interests” , trying to influence the
masses and draw them into the wake of their reactionary
policy. They propagated extreme militant nationalism and
chauvinism as a means of struggle against the socialist and
democratic movement of the Polish people, which they strove to
isolate from the Russian revolutionary movement. During the First
World War (1914-18) the National Democrats unreservedly supported
the Entente, counting on the victory of tsarist Russia, the
unification of the Polish territories then under the yoke of
Austria and Germany, and autonomy for Poland within the framework
of the Russian Empire. The downfall of tsarism drove the National
Democrats towards a pro-French orientation. Though bitterly
opposed to the October Socialist Revolution and the Soviet state,
the National Democrats, following their traditional anti-German
policy, did not always support the adventurist anti-Soviet foreign
policy of the Pilsudski clique, which ruled the country after
1926. At present, separate National-Democrat groups are carrying
on their activities among reactionary émigré elements.

[5]
The Polish Socialist Party ( Polska Partia Socjalistyczna , the P.S.P.)—a reformist nationalist
party founded in 1892. Throughout its history, Left-wing groups
arose in it under the influence of the worker rank and file in the
party. Some of these groups subsequently joined the revolutionary
wing of the Polish working-class movement.

[6]
Vsevobuch—the universal military training of the population
of the Soviet Republic. The question of organising the
Vsevobuch was raised in the resolution “On War and
Peace” adopted by the Seventh Congress of the R.C.P.(B.),
which was held in March 1918. The resolution said that one of the
most important and urgent tasks of the Party was the all-round,
systematic and universal military training of the adult
population, irrespective of sex. The Decree of the All-Russia
Central Executive Committee of April 22, 1918, authorised the
calling up of all citizens between the ages of 18 and 40, who did
not exploit the labour of others. The Vsevobuch bodies were entrusted with the registration of all working people of
military age, their unified military training, and the formation
army units. On June 5-25 1918, the first conference on universal
military training was held; it drew up a programme for the
training and testing of Vsevobuch instructor and discussed the organisation of Vsevobuch departments, the
calling of conferences on the military training and the
registration of the population. The conference also adopted a
resolution on permanent bureaus of Vsevobuch conferences
and the statute of inspections.