V. I. Lenin

Speech Delivered at the

Ninth All-Russia Conference of the Russian Communist
Party

(Bolsheviks) [1]

September 22, 1920

Newspaper Report

The war against Poland, or, to be more precise, the
July-August campaign, has radically changed the international
political situation.

The Poles’ attack against us was preceded by an episode
typical of the international relations existing at the time. When, in January, we offered Poland peace terms that were
most favourable to her and most unfavourable to us, the
diplomatists of all lands interpreted the fact in their own way:
since the Bolsheviks were making such tremendous concessions,
that should be taken to mean that they were very weak. This was
merely more confirmation of bourgeois diplomacy’s inability to understand the methods employed by our new
diplomacy, that of direct and frank declarations. That was why
our proposals evoked merely an outburst of savage chauvinism in
Poland, France and other countries, and prompted Poland to
attack us. At first the Poles captured Kiev, but our forces’ counter-attack then brought them right up to
Warsaw. Then came a turn in the events, and we fell back for
over a hundred versts.

The undoubtedly difficult situation that resulted has not been
a total loss to us. We have completely upset the diplomatists’ expectations to make use of our weakness and
have proved that Poland cannot defeat us, whereas we have never
been and are not far from victory over Poland. At present we
still hold a hundred versts of captured territory. Finally, our
advance on Warsaw has had such a powerful effect on Western
Europe and on the entire world situation that it has profoundly
changed the alignment of the struggling internal and external
political forces.

Our army’s close approach to Warsaw has incontestably shown that the centre of world imperialism’s entire
system, which rests on the Treaty of Versailles, lies somewhere
very close to the Polish capital. Poland, the last anti-Bolshevik stronghold fully controlled by the Entente, is
such an important element in that system that when the Red Army
threatened that stronghold the entire structure was shaken. The
Soviet Republic has become a major factor in world politics.

The new situation which has arisen has, in the first place,
revealed the tremendously significant fact that the bourgeoisie
of the Entente-oppressed countries is in the main for us, and
these countries contain seventy per cent of the world’s
population. We have already seen that the small states, which
have had such a bad time under Entente tutelage (Estonia,
Georgia, etc.), and have been hanging their Bolsheviks, have
made peace with us, against the will of the Entente. This has
been manifesting itself with special force throughout the
world. All Germany began to seethe when our forces approached
Warsaw. In that country a situation arose very much like that
which could be seen in Russia in 1905, when the Black Hundreds
aroused and involved in political life large and most backward
sections of the peasantry, which were opposed to the Bolsheviks
one day, and on the next were demanding all the land from the
landed proprietors. In Germany too we have seen a similar
unnatural bloc between the Black Hundreds and the
Bolsheviks. There has appeared a strange type of Black-Hundred
revolutionary, like the backward rustic youth from East Prussia
who, as I read in a German non-Bolshevik newspaper the other
day, says that the Kaiser will have to return because there is
no order, but one has to follow the Bolsheviks.

Our presence at the walls of Warsaw has had, as another
consequence, a powerful effect on the revolutionary movement in
Europe, particularly in Britain. Though we have not been able to
affect the industrial proletariat of Poland beyond the Vistula and in Warsaw (this being one of the main
reasons for our defeat), we have succeeded in influencing the
British proletariat and in raising the movement there to an
unprecedented level, to an absolutely new stage in the revolution. When the British Government presented an ultimatum
to us, it transpired that it would first have to consult the
British workers. The latter, nine-tenths of whose leaders are
out-and-out Mensheviks, replied to the ultimatum by forming a
Council of Action. [2]

Alarmed by these developments, the British press raised a
hullabaloo about what it called.this “duality of government”. It had every reason to say so. Britain found
herself at the same stage of political relationships as Russia
after February 1917, when the Soviets were obliged to scrutinise
every step taken by the bourgeois government. This Council of
Action unites all workers, irrespective of party, just like our
All-Russia Central Executive Committee of the period when Gotz,
Dan and others were running things, a kind of association which
runs parallel with the government, and in which the Mensheviks
are forced to act in a semi-Bolshevik way. Just as our
Mensheviks finally got confounded and helped win over the masses
to our side, the Mensheviks in the Council of Action have been
forced by the inexorable course of events to clear the way to
the Bolshevist revolution for the worker masses of
Britain. According to testimony by competent persons, the
British Mensheviks already consider themselves a government, and
are prepared to replace the bourgeois government in the near
future. This will be the next step in the general process of the
British proletarian revolution.

These tremendous changes in the British working-class movement
are exerting a powerful influence on the world working-class
movement, and first and foremost on the working-class movement in
France.

Such are the results of our recent Polish campaign in its
effect on world politics and the relations emerging in Western
Europe.

We are now faced with the question of war or peace with
Poland. We want to avoid a winter campaign that will be hard on
us, and are again offering Poland a peace that is to her
advantage and our disadvantage. However, the bourgeois diplomatists, following their old habit, may possibly interpret
our frank statement as a sign of weakness. They have probably
decided on a winter campaign. At this stage we have to ascertain
the conditions in which we shall probably have to enter a new
period of the war.

In Western Europe our defeat has brought about certain changes
and rallied against us heterogeneous elements that are hostile to
us. However, we have on more than one occasion seen even more
powerful groups and currents hostile to us, which nevertheless
could not achieve anything.

We have against us a bloc consisting of Poland, France and
Wrangel. France pins her hopes on the latter. However, this bloc
suffers from the same old malady-the antagonism among its
elements, and the fear felt by the Polish petty bourgeoisie with
regard to Black-Hundred Russia and to Wrangel, its typical
representative. Petty-bourgeois and patriotic Poland, the Polish
Socialist Party, the Ludowa Party, i.e., the well-to-do
peasants-all of these want peace. Here is what spokesmen of these
parties said to us in Minsk, “We know that it was not the
Entente that saved Warsaw and Poland; it was unable to save us. It
was the upsurge of patriotism, that saved us.” Such lessons
are not to be forgotten. The Poles realise very clearly that this
war will ruin them financially. War has to be paid for, and France
upholds the “sanctity of private property”. The representatives of the petty-bourgeois parties are aware that
Poland was on the eve of a crisis even before the war, and that a
war will mean further ruination; that is why they prefer peace. We
want to make use of this by offering peace to Poland.

Another factor of the utmost importance has appeared the change
in the social composition of the Polish army. We defeated Kolchak
and Denikin only after the social composition of their armies had
changed, when their basic cadres were watered down in the mass of
mobilised peasants. The same kind of process is under way in the
Polish army, the government has been obliged to call up workers
and peasants of the older age groups, who have gone through the
even harsher imperialist war. This army is now made up, not of
youngsters, who can easily be “brain-washed”, but of older men, who will not let themselves be talked over.

Poland has passed the point which at first assured her total
victory, and then total defeat.

If we have to wage a winter campaign, we shall win despite
exhaustion and fatigue. There can be no doubt on that score. Our
economic situation also vouches for that outcome. It has improved
considerably. Compared with last year, we have acquired a firm
economic basis. 11 11917-18 we gathered in 30 million poods of grain, in 1918-19- 110 million poods ,
and in 1919-20-260 million; next year we expect to collect 400
million poods . These are far higher figures than those
of the time when we struggled desperately to make both ends
meet. No longer shall we look with such horror upon the
multi-coloured banknotes that run into the thousands of millions,
and today clearly show us that they are the wreckage, the
tatters, of the old bourgeois vestments.

We now have over a hundred million poods of oil. The
Donets Basin now provides us with between twenty and thirty
million poods of coal a month. The firewood situation has
greatly improved. As recently as last year we had only firewood-no
oil or coal.

All this gives us the right to say that, if we close our ranks
and bend every effort, we shall win the victory.

Endnotes

[1]
The Ninth All-Russia Conference of the R.C.P.(B.), held
in Moscow from September 22 to September 25, 1920, was attended by
241 delegates (110 with the right to vote and 125 with voice but
no vote). Among the items on the agenda were: the political and
organisational reports of the Central Committee; the immediate
tasks of Party development; a report of the commission in charge
of the Party history studies, and a report on the Second Congress
of the Communist International. The Conference also heard a report
from the Polish Communists’ delegate. Lenin opened the
Conference, delivered the Central Committee’s political
report, and took the floor during the debate on the immediate
tasks of Party development. The political report dealt mainly with
the two subjects-the question of war and peace with Poland, and
the organisation of Wrangel’s defeat. The Conference passed
a unani- mous resolution on the conditions of peace with Poland,
and approved the statement by the All-Russia Central Executive
Committee on the specific peace terms drawn up on Lenin’s
instructions and edited by Lenin. The resolution on “The
Immediate Tasks of Party Development” provided for practical
measures to extend inner-Party democracy, strengthen Party unity
and discipline, combat red tape in government and economic bodies
and improve the communist training of young Party members. The
Conference deemed it necessary to set up a Control Commission, to
be elected at Party congresses, and Party commissions under
gubernia Party committees, to be elected at gubernia Party
conferences. The Conference gave a rebuff to the “Democratic
Centralism” group, who denied Party discipline and the
Party’s guiding role in the Soviets and the trade unions.

[2]
The Council of Action was set up at a joint conference of
representatives from the Parliamentary Committee of the trade
unions, the Labour Party Executive Committee and the Parliamentary
Labour Party on August 9, 1920. Its aim was to prevent Britain
making war on Russia. Besides the Central Council of Action in
London, local councils of action were also set up. There were 150
councils by the end of August, the figure doubling within the next
month. The Communist Party was largely instrumental in getting
councils organised. It called upon its members to extend Communist
representation in the councils and to win key positions on the
strike committees in order to “withstand any attempts by
trade union and Labour leaders to frustrate the desires of the
rank and file, by capitulating at the crucial moment” (The
(Communist No. 2, London, August 12, 1920).